Artificial intelligence has developed a treatment for cancer in just 30 days and can predict a patient’s survival rate.

In a new study published in the journal Chemical Science, researchers at the University of Toronto along with Insilico Medicine developed a potential treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) with an AI drug discovery platform called Pharma.AI.

HCC is the most common type of liver cancer and occurs when a tumor grows on the liver, according to Cleveland Clinic.

Researchers applied AlphaFold, an AI-powered protein structure database, to Pharma.AI to uncover a novel target — a previously unknown treatment pathway — for cancer and developed a “novel hit molecule” that could bind to that target without aid.

The creation of the potential drug was accomplished in just 30 days from the selection of the target and after synthesizing just seven compounds.

After a second round of generating compounds, they discovered a more potent hit molecule — but any potential drug would need to go through clinical trials before widespread use.

HCC is the most common type of liver cancer and occurs when a tumor grows on the liver.

In 2022, AlphaFold made a huge breakthrough in both AI and structural biology by predicting protein structure for the whole human genome.

“AlphaFold broke new scientific ground in predicting the structure of all proteins in the human body,” co-author Feng Ren, chief scientific officer and co-CEO of Insilico Medicine, said.

“At Insilico Medicine, we saw that as an incredible opportunity to take these structures and apply them to our end-to-end AI platform in order to generate novel therapeutics to tackle diseases with high unmet need. This paper is an important first step in that direction.”

7

Researchers also explained how different AI information can revolutionize health care.

“What this paper demonstrates is that for health care, AI developments are more than the sum of their parts,” Alan Aspuru-Guzik, a professor of chemistry and computer science at U of T’s Faculty of Arts & Science, said. “If one uses a generative model targeting an AI-derived protein, one can substantially expand the range of diseases that we can target. If one adds self-driving labs to the mix, we will be in uncharted territory. Stay tuned!”

A separate study published in the journal JAMA Network Open showed an AI system invented by scientists at the University of British Columbia and BC Cancer was able to predict cancer patient survival rates using doctors’ notes.

The model uses natural language processing (NLP), which is a part of AI that can understand complex human language.

The NLP can analyze doctors’ notes after an initial consultation visit and identify individual characteristics specifically for each patient.

It was able to predict six-month, 36-month, and 60-month survival with an accuracy rate of over 80%. This model can also determine rates for all cancers, while previous models were only able to apply to certain cancer types.

7

“The AI essentially reads the consultation document similar to how a human would read it,” lead author Dr. John-Jose Nunez, a psychiatrist and clinical research fellow with the UBC Mood Disorders Centre and BC Cancer, said in a statement. “These documents have many details like the age of the patient, the type of cancer, underlying health conditions, past substance use, and family histories. The AI brings all of this together to paint a more complete picture of patient outcomes.”

Cancer survival rates are traditionally calculated retrospectively and only categorized by a few generic factors such as tissue type and cancer site.

This model was tested using data from 47,625 patients across six BC cancer sites located in British Columbia.

7

“Because the model is trained on BC data, that makes it a potentially powerful tool for predicting cancer survival here in the province,” Nunez said.

“The great thing about neural NLP models is that they are highly scalable, portable, and don’t require structured data sets,” he added. “We can quickly train these models using local data to improve performance in a new region. I would suspect that these models provide a good foundation anywhere in the world where patients are able to see an oncologist.”

AI could be a cutting-edge technology for future cancer care that could be applied in cancer clinics around the world.

“Predicting cancer survival is an important factor that can be used to improve cancer care,” Nunez said. “It might suggest health providers make an earlier referral to support services or offer a more aggressive treatment option upfront. Our hope is that a tool like this could be used to personalize and optimize the care a patient receives right away, giving them the best outcome possible.”

Source: AI develops cancer treatment in 30 days, predicts survival rate

The post AI develops cancer treatment in 30 days, predicts survival rate appeared first on Digital Marketing .

div class=”hds-caption-text p-sm margin-0 color-carbon-30″>

Infrared emission from methane suggests atmospheric heating by auroral processes.

Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found a brown dwarf (an object more massive than Jupiter but smaller than a star) with infrared emission from methane, likely due to energy in its upper atmosphere. This is an unexpected discovery because the brown dwarf, W1935, is cold and lacks a host star; therefore, there is no obvious source for the upper atmosphere energy. The team speculates that the methane emission may be due to processes generating aurorae.

These findings are being presented at the 243^rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans.

To help explain the mystery of the infrared emission from methane, the team turned to our solar system. Methane in emission is a common feature in gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. The upper-atmosphere heating that powers this emission is linked to aurorae.

Image: Artist Concept Brown Dwarf W1935

This artist concept portrays the brown dwarf W1935, which is located 47 light-years from Earth. Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope found infrared emission from methane coming from W1935. This is an unexpected discovery because the brown dwarf is cold and lacks a host star; therefore, there is no obvious source of energy to heat its upper atmosphere and make the methane glow. The team speculates that the methane emission may be due to processes generating aurorae, shown here in red. NASA, ESA, CSA, and L. Hustak (STScI)

Continue at Source: NASA’s Webb Finds Signs of Possible Aurorae on Isolated Brown Dwarf – NASA

City Lights on another planet?

It’s likely not city lights on another planet. 

city lights on another planet

The post NASA’s Webb Finds Aurorae on Brown Dwarf appeared first on Digital Marketing .

Longview paper mill helps boost WestRock net sales following November merger via The Daily News, Longview, WA

Demand for corrugated packaging products boomed during the start of COVID, with an E-commerce packaging report estimated the industry would be worth $101.7 billion in 2027, up from $34.7 billion in 2019. The Longview WestRock mill, which makes carboard materials, is expected to see the strength in Longview’s site due to its recent expansion.

However, 2023 hasn’t been as profitable as expected, with North American pulp and paper companies’ profit margins dipping to 4.2% in the first quarter of 2023. WestRock, an S&P 500 company, has hundreds of locations in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Smurfit Kappa, a Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 company, specializes in corrugated and containerboard, with 32 locations in the U.S. and Mexico, and hundreds in South America, Europe, and Africa. The new company, Smurfit WestRock, will be sold on the New York Stock Exchange and the London Stock Exchange, with Smurfit Kappa CEO and board chairman remaining in their positions.

Source: Longview paper mill owner WestRock, Irish company to form packaging giant

The post WestRock to Merge with Smurfit Kappa, Forming Largest Listed Packaging Company in the World appeared first on Digital Marketing .

The Carrington Event was a major reality check for a rapidly industrializing humanity.

In September 1859, the Sun unleashed an eruption so powerful it sent electrical currents sweeping across Earth’s surface, wiping out telegraph systems around the world, with fires and mayhem.

We’ve not seen its like since, but ancient evidence suggests that our Sun is capable of more – so very much more. In the rings of ancient, partially fossilized trees, scientists have found evidence of a solar storm at least an order of magnitude more powerful than the Carrington Event.

A solar flare. (NASA/SDO)

It took place, they say, some 14,300 years ago, well before there was a technology grid to disrupt. Such events, more powerful than Carrington, appear periodically in the fossil record. But this one is the most powerful ever seen.

Solar, or geomagnetic, storms are common here on Earth. They occur when the Sun erupts in a colossal flare or coronal mass ejection. If the eruption occurs in the direction of Earth, a huge influx of charged particles will hit our magnetosphere.

A graphic showing a solar flare directed at Earth. (NASA)

The effects of this are mostly pretty mild. The interaction between the particles and atmospheric molecules result in some pretty spectacular auroras. It can disrupt satellite and radio communications at certain bands.

During particularly powerful (and thankfully relatively rare) solar storms, the disruption to Earth’s electromagnetic field can produce currents that can impact power grids.

Another quirk of solar storms is the effect they have on the radioactive carbon-14 constantly raining down on Earth. This radiocarbon is produced in the upper atmosphere as cosmic particles interact with atmospheric particles.

Carbon-14 is incorporated into organisms, such as trees and animals, and because it decays at a known rate, scientists can use it to determine when these organisms lived.

And it can also reveal historical solar eruptions, hidden in the annual rings of old trees.

“Radiocarbon is constantly being produced in the upper atmosphere through a chain of reactions initiated by cosmic rays,” explains geologist Edouard Bard of the Collège de France and European Centre for Research and Teaching in Environmental Geosciences (CEREGE).

“Recently, scientists have found that extreme solar events including solar flares and coronal mass ejections can also create short-term bursts of energetic particles which are preserved as huge spikes in radiocarbon production occurring over the course of just a single year.”

The solar storm that took place 14,300 years ago was found in subfossilized trees within the eroded banks of the Drouzet River in the Southern French Alps. A subfossil is one that has not yet completed the fossilization process.

The researchers created slices of these trees, and found a ring with a huge spike in radiocarbon, dated to around 14,300 years ago.

Subfossilized trees in the Drouzet River. (Cécile Miramont)

We have other records of this time, in ice cores extracted from Greenland. At around the 14,300 years ago mark, the researchers found in these ice cores a higher concentration of an isotope of beryllium that is also linked to a radiation storm.

The concentrations of both of these signatures are consistent with what we call Miyake events. These are incredibly powerful geomagnetic storms – way more powerful than the Carrington event.

Including this new discovery, nine Miyake events have been identified in the last 15,000 years, the most recent being around 774 CE.

We aren’t entirely sure what causes them; solar storms are thought to be the most likely, but nearby supernovae could also be responsible. Either way, the effects would probably be the same here on Earth – devastating.

“Extreme solar storms could have huge impacts on Earth. Such super storms could permanently damage the transformers in our electricity grids, resulting in huge and widespread blackouts lasting months,” says statistician Tim Heaton of the University of Leeds in the UK.

“A precise understanding of our past is essential if we want to accurately predict our future and mitigate potential risks. We still have much to learn. Each new discovery not only helps answer existing key questions but can also generate new ones.”

The research has been published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A.

Source: Giant Solar Storm 14,000 Years Ago Leaves The Carrington Event in The Dust : ScienceAlert

The post Giant Solar Storm 14,000 Years Ago Leaves The Carrington Event in The Dust appeared first on Digital Marketing .

The Roscosmos space agency had earlier reported an “abnormal situation” on Luna-25, Russia’s first moon probe in almost 50 years.

A rocket carrying the probe took off more than a week ago from the Russian Far East – Image: Sergei Savostyanov/TASS/dpa/picture alliance

Russia’s space corporation Roscosmos said on Sunday that its Luna-25 spacecraft crashed into the moon after it spun into uncontrolled orbit.

The mission was the first stage of Russia’s new lunar program and Luna-25 was Moscow’s first moon probe since 1976.

What we know so far

The Russian space agency on Saturday said there had been an “abnormal situation” during an operation to bring the craft into a landing pre-orbit.

Preliminary findings, it said on Sunday, showed the lander “has ceased to exist following a collision with the Moon’s surface.”

“During the operation, an unplanned situation arose on board the automatic station, which did not allow the maneuver to be carried out under the given parameters.”

Specialists are investigating the incident to determine the cause, Roscosmos said.

The probe had been due to touch down near the lunar South Pole on Monday. Among its tasks was a search for water, with Russia aiming to establish a base on the Moon by 2040.

The rocket took off last week from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, in Russia’s Far East region.

West cuts cooperation with Moscow on space

Roscosmos had originally cooperated with the European Space Agency (ESA) on the lunar program. However, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, ESA ended its work with Moscow.

Russia’s access to Western technology has been curtailed since sanctions were imposed over the invasion.

The Luna-25 had been set to carry a small moon rover, but that plan had to be abandoned to reduce weight and improve reliability.

Russia has considered various moon missions in the past decades, but all had to be delayed or shelved.

The failure of Russia’s 2011 Phobos-Grunt mission to one of the moons of Mars highlighted the challenges that have faced Russia’s space program. The spacecraft did not even fully exit the earth’s orbit and fell into the Pacific Ocean more than two months after launch.

rc/fb (AFP, Reuters, dpa)
Read full article here: Russia says Luna-25 probe crashed into moon – DW – 08/20/2023

The post Russia says Luna-25 probe crashed into moon appeared first on Digital Marketing .

The benefits to humanity outweigh the fear of discovering we’re not alone in the universe.

By CHRISTOPHER MELLON
06/03/2023 07:00 AM EDT

Since 2017, my life has been dominated by efforts to help Congress and the public discover the truth about unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), what many still refer to as UFOs. I’ve lost count of the number of cities visited, meetings attended, books read, articles written, media appearances and hours spent on the phone. At the outset, my goal was simply to help our government overcome a glaring intelligence failure. UAP were routinely violating restricted U.S. airspace but these encounters, documented on cockpit videos, weren’t being reported up the military chain of command because of the stigma surrounding this issue. It wasn’t clear if these bizarre craft were Russian, Chinese, extraterrestrial or some combination of the above, but it seemed unacceptable and outrageous that no effort was being made by the intelligence community to alert policymakers or undertake an investigation.

Working closely with former Pentagon official Lue Elizondo and later a group of U.S. Navy aviators, we quickly captured the attention of Congress. We managed to convince them the phenomena were real and America needed to take action to determine the capabilities of these craft and the identity and intentions of their operators. To my surprise and delight, in 2020 the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) adopted my proposal to seek an official report on UAP from the intelligence community. The resulting “Preliminary Assessment” arrived in June of 2021. Although it was wildly incomplete, it did identify 144 military UAP encounters since 2004, a figure which has since jumped to over 800 military UAP reports by early 2023. Spurred by growing evidence of the problem, Congress took additional steps, establishing the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).

Democracy requires transparency. In our democracy the American people have a right to know the truth of this matter. Censoring vitally important information is inconsistent with our values and institutions. It would be the modern equivalent of repressing Galileo’s insights regarding the solar system or Darwin’s theory of evolution. It hinders scientific and technological progress and undermines faith in government.

We own any discovery. Any recovered materials belong to the American people. Any secretive government programs that may have existed were funded by American tax dollars and as such, any proceeds belong to the taxpayer.

We can handle it. Although disclosure would initially frighten and shock many people, polling data reveals that most Americans already believe we are not alone in the universe. Further, a high percentage of Americans already believe some UAP are in fact extraterrestrial craft. Our ancestors persevered despite profound fears of the unknown and so can we.

We don’t control UAP. Commercial satellite imagery is becoming ubiquitous and algorithms are already being written to identify UAP from space. As more powerful, dedicated sensors are deployed to collect UAP data, it is only a matter of time before more compelling UAP imagery and data emerges. Although UAP generally seem to avoid public exposure, there are exceptions. For example: the March 1950 incident in which dozens of UAP flew over Farmington, New Mexico in broad daylight; the famous flyover of Washington D.C. on successive weekends in July of 1952; the “Night of the UFOs” in Brazil in 1986; and the “Phoenix Lights” in 1997. The next time there is a mass UAP flyover of a major city, or even an event like the incident at Chicago’s O’Hare airport in 2006, the ubiquitous video cameras and powerful radars that will cover the event are going to provide far more substantial amounts of data with ever-greater levels of detail. Better to have disclosure on our terms rather than a sudden event that might cause panic.

Disclosure is only a matter of time. Foreign nations and civilian scientific groups around the world are undertaking ever more sophisticated and extensive UAP collection campaigns. The Galileo Project at Harvard, led by Dr. Avi Loeb, the former Chairman of the Harvard Department of Astronomy, is a case in point. Numerous other domestic and foreign groups ranging from the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies, to Americans for Safe Aerospace and Enigma Labs are also investigating as are many foreign governments, from Japan to France.

Congress is proceeding. A number of credible individuals have shared compelling information behind closed doors in meetings with congressional staff, the intelligence community inspector general and AARO. Congress should seek a report from the ICIG on the evidence it has acquired on the issue of crash retrievals. That alone may be enough to provide leads that confirm the truth of long-standing accusations regarding a cover-up of recovered off-world technology. The goal is not to prosecute or punish, but to bring the truth to light.

Secrecy stifles science. If we have recovered off-world technologies, our best and brightest minds should be engaged in evaluating it. Assuming UAP propulsion technology is distinct from anything known to the public, a successful reverse engineering program might bring about a revolution in energy, transportation and materials technologies. We might be able to accelerate a transition to clean and cheap energy; perhaps even develop superconducting materials and propulsion technologies that are now the stuff of Hollywood movies.

Time to reduce international tensions. If it turns out that we’ve had some contact with other life forms, a reframing of international relations would be inevitable, almost certainly for the better. To the degree the U.S. has these materials and our rivals do not, this could provide new and unprecedented leverage for the U.S. Our adversaries will naturally fear unilateral advances on the part of the U.S. that render their defenses and technology obsolete. Adversaries are undeterred if they are ignorant of their opponents’ military capabilities. Better they know. And if any of these countries have also recovered off-world technology, all the more reason to make the most of what we have rather than risk being overtaken in research, development and deployment. Above all, once it becomes clear we are not alone, this should reduce or divert tensions among the leading nuclear powers. As Ronald Reagan said during an address to the United Nations General Assembly in 1987:

“In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.”

No imminent threat. It seems unlikely that revealing the truth would change the pattern of UAP behavior we have been observing for many decades. Furtive activities around the planet and in our oceans are likely to continue. In the unlikely event there is a threat, our chances of survival are obviously far greater if we acknowledge the possibility and work with other nations to develop an effective deterrent. Although we are not experiencing acts of aggression, there is a pattern of persistent surveillance around DoD test ranges and facilities, especially our nuclear weapons capabilities. Hopefully any interest in our military capabilities is purely defensive.

Spark vitally needed collaboration. I cannot think of anything more likely to shock humanity out of its present complacence than the revelation we are not alone. Our species and planetary civilization is following a dangerous trajectory, one involving a serious prospect of nuclear conflagration. If that were not enough, all nations face the joint prospect of accelerating ecological devastation, the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the threat that AI will become weaponized or turned against humanity. As the brilliant Israeli historian Yuval Hariri has observed,

“Each of these three problems — nuclear war; ecological collapse, and technological disruption — is enough to threaten the future of human civilization. But taken together, they add up to an unprecedented existential crisis, especially because they are likely to reinforce and compound one another.” He goes on to say, “a common enemy is the best catalyst for forging a common identity…”

What better way to provide an existential catalyst?

In conclusion, I believe it is in our interest to follow the facts of the UAP issue wherever they lead. All living things, all nations and corporations, can only survive by continuing to adapt to changing circumstances. But to do so we must know the facts. We can’t adapt to what we don’t perceive. Concealing such vital information, if indeed we are not alone, poses a huge barrier to understanding and successfully adapting to the world around us. Lies and disinformation are already polluting public discourse. We can’t have meaningful debates on policy if we cannot even agree on the basic facts.

Admittedly, disclosure would initially be shocking and disorienting, but we would of necessity modify our beliefs to accommodate a new understanding of the universe and our place within it. What is deemed possible technologically would certainly change, but if our government can reveal the truth of such a deep secret it will demonstrate that government can change as well. Maybe we can build on that, perhaps even mitigating the dynamic of our current, frighteningly polarized political process.

As Arthur C. Clarke, the brilliant author and inventor of modern communications satellites once said, commenting on the possibility of extraterrestrial contact: “Strangeness, wonder, mystery and magic — these things that not long ago seemed lost forever, will soon return to the world.” Some people will be afraid of change, as always, but change is inevitable and as always those who recognize and embrace it are the most likely to benefit. Thankfully, there are many reasons to believe that if UAP are manifestations of extraterrestrial intelligence, this stunning revelation can work to humanity’s advantage.

Source: If the Government Has UFO Crash Materials, It’s Time to Reveal Them – POLITICO

The post If the Government Has UFO Crash Materials, It’s Time to Reveal Them appeared first on Digital Marketing .

New research on the Thwaites Glacier, also known as the Doomsday Glacier, in Antarctica, shows it is rapidly melting due to warming ocean temperatures. Underwater robots have revealed the unique mechanisms behind its retreat, underscoring the need to address climate change and its impact on global sea levels. 

The Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is rapidly melting due to warming ocean temperatures, and its potential impact on global sea levels is a cause for concern.

Recent articles highlight new research on the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica, also known as the Doomsday Glacier, which is one of the largest and most rapidly melting glaciers in the world. Scitech Daily reports that scientists are using underwater robots to explore the glacier’s melting process and have discovered novel mechanisms behind its rapid retreat.

Warm ocean water is flowing underneath the glacier and melting it from below, causing it to retreat and potentially leading to catastrophic sea-level rise. The research underscores the need to address climate change and its impact on the world’s oceans and coastlines.

Indy100 reports on the potential consequences of the glacier’s melting, noting that it has the potential to raise global sea levels by up to 2.4 meters (8 feet), which would have devastating consequences for coastal cities and communities around the world.

The icefin robot under the ice near McMurdo research station, operated by the US Antarctic Program. Credit: Rob Robbins USAP

Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is extremely remote and challenging to get to. Credit: Britney Schmidt

Borehole drilling site on Thwaites Glacier 2022. Credit: Peter Davis – British Antarctic Survey

BAS team deploying the hot water drill at Thwaites Glacier including Paul Anker, Keith Nicholls, James Smith and Peter Davis. Credit: Icefin/ITGC/Schmidt

The MELT team melted large amounts of snow to create the hot water to drill through Thwaites Glacier to reach the ‘grounding line’. Credit: Peter Davis

Picture of Icefin operating under the sea ice near McMurdo Station. Credit: Icefin/NASA/PSTAR RISE UP/Schmidt/Lawrence

Source: Exploring the Secrets of the Doomsday Glacier: Underwater Robot Reveals Novel Processes Behind its Rapid Retreat

Scientists troubled by ‘doomsday glacier’ discovery

https://www.indy100.com/science-tech/doomsday-glacier-thwaites-climate-change-2659452693

The post Underwater Robots Reveal Processes Behind Rapid Retreat of Doomsday Glacier appeared first on Digital Marketing .

Kaci Foultner
February 22, 2023

The United States government has been investigating and documenting UFO sightings for over 75 years, yet official reports and statements have been elusive and inconsistent. In 1947, the U.S. Air Force launched Project Sign to investigate the surge of UFO sightings reported by civilians and military personnel. The project was followed by Project Grudge and Project Blue Book, which investigated UFO sightings and released several public reports, though their conclusions were often criticized as biased and dismissive.

Since then, the government has continued to investigate UFO sightings through various agencies, including the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which was formed in 2007 and reportedly had a $22 million budget. In 2020, the Pentagon released three videos of UFO sightings recorded by U.S. Navy pilots, confirming the existence of the AATIP program.

In 2020, the U.S. Navy released multiple videos of unidentified aerial phenomena, sparking interest in the public and government. U.S. Navy

Despite these disclosures, the government has not confirmed the existence of extraterrestrial life, nor has it provided any definitive explanation for the sightings. Officials have often attributed sightings to weather phenomena, human error, or experimental military aircraft, while some UFO researchers and enthusiasts have criticized the government for withholding information and perpetuating a culture of secrecy.

The recent report of an American Airlines pilot’s UFO sighting in New Mexico has sparked renewed interest in the topic and raised questions about the government’s role in investigating and disclosing information about UFO sightings. The ongoing debate underscores the need for greater transparency and communication regarding the government’s investigations and findings on this mysterious and intriguing topic.

Source: US Government Has Been Dancing Around UFOs for 75 Years – The Washington Post

https://www.govexec.com/oversight/2023/02/what-ufo-us-shot-down-three-mysterious-objects-interest-and-concern-increase-over-unidentified-craft/383036/

The post US Government Remains Elusive and Inconsistent Regarding UFOs appeared first on Digital Marketing .

Scientists have just spotted a strange circular filament wobbling around the sun’s pole that has them really excited.

(Image credit: NASA)

A huge filament of solar plasma has broken off the sun’s surface and is circling its north pole like a vortex of powerful winds, but scientists have no clue what caused it.

“Talk about polar vortex! Material from a northern prominence just broke away from the main filament & is now circulating in a massive polar vortex around the north pole of our star,” space weather forecaster Tamitha Skov said on Twitter while sharing a video sequence taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory showing the odd whirlwind. “Implications for understanding the sun’s atmospheric dynamics above 55° here cannot be overstated!”

Other solar physicists shared Skov’s excitement about the unusual phenomenon. But what exactly is it and why is it important?

Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist and deputy director at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, told Space.com that while he has never seen a vortex like this, something odd is happening at the sun’s 55 degree latitudes with clockwork regularity once every solar cycle, the 11-year period characterized by an ebb and flow in the generation of sunspots and eruptions.

The prominence mentioned by Skov, something that McIntosh describes as a “hedgerow in the solar plasma”, appears exactly at the 55 degree latitude around the sun’s polar crowns every 11 years. Scientists know that it has something to do with the reversal of the sun’s magnetic field that happens once every solar cycle, but they have no clue what drives it.

“Once every solar cycle, it forms at the 55 degree latitude and it starts to march up to the solar poles,” McIntosh told Space.com. “It’s very curious. There is a big ‘why’ question around it. Why does it only move toward the pole one time and then disappears and then comes back, magically, three or four years later in exactly the same region?”

Scientists have regularly observed filaments tear away from this pole-embracing plasma hedgerow, but they have yet to see it form such a polar whirlwind until now.

Scientists know that the sun’s polar regions play a key role in the generation of the star’s magnetic field, which, in turn, drives its 11-year cycle of activity. They couldn’t, however, observe that region directly.

“We can only observe the sun from the ecliptic plane [the plane in which planets orbit],” McIntosh said.

The European Space Agency Solar Orbiter mission may shed some light on this odd phenomenon in the coming years. The mission, which is taking images of the sun from within the orbit of Mercury, will have its orbit tilted by up to 33 degrees. McIntosh thinks that might not be enough to crack the mystery of the polar vortex. Scientists might need a completely new mission to do that.

Source: Strange unprecedented vortex appears around the sun’s pole | Space

The post Strange solar plasma vortex appears around the sun’s pole appeared first on Digital Marketing .

The plummeting cost of renewable energy, which has been supercharged by last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, means that it is cheaper to build an array of solar panels or a cluster of new wind turbines and connect them to the grid than it is to keep operating all of the 210 coal plants in the contiguous US, bar one, according to the study.

The plummeting cost of energy has been supercharged by last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. Photograph: Tannen Maury/EPA

“Coal is unequivocally more expensive than wind and solar resources, it’s just no longer cost competitive with renewables,” said Michelle Solomon, a policy analyst at Energy Innovation, which undertook the analysis. “This report certainly challenges the narrative that coal is here to stay.”

The new analysis, conducted in the wake of the $370bn in tax credits and other support for clean energy passed by Democrats in last summer’s Inflation Reduction Act, compared the fuel, running and maintenance cost of America’s coal fleet with the building of new solar or wind from scratch in the same utility region.

On average, the marginal cost for the coal plants is $36 each megawatt hour, while new solar is about $24 each megawatt hour, or about a third cheaper. Only one coal plant – Dry Fork in Wyoming – is cost competitive with the new renewables. “It was a bit surprising to find this,” said Solomon. “It shows that not only have renewables dropped in cost, the Inflation Reduction Act is accelerating this trend.”

Coal, which is a heavily carbon-intensive fuel and responsible for 60% of planet-heating emissions from electricity generation, once formed the backbone of the American grid, generating enough power to light up 186m homes at its peak in 2007. However, by 2021 this output had dropped by 55%, while jobs in the coal mining sector have more than halved over the past decade, to less than 40,000.

Most of the US’s coal plants are aging and increasingly expensive to maintain, while their fuel source has been widely displaced by cheap sources of gas. Environmental regulations, which Donald Trump vowed to roll back in an unfulfilled mission to revive the coal industry when president, have also imposed costs on the sector by enforcing cuts to toxic emissions such as mercury and sulphur dioxide.

Coal production hit a 55-year low in 2020 but the industry saw subsequent signs of an uptick in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which pushed up the price of energy worldwide and saw pressure on countries to find an alternative fuel source to Russian gas.

Supporters of coal contend it is a reliable fuel source at a time of instability and have attacked Joe Biden for attempting to shift the US away from fossil fuels. “Forcing essential coal capacity off the grid – without reliable alternatives and the infrastructure to support them – will only deepen reliability and economic challenges,” said Rich Nolan, president of the National Mining Association, in November.

“Look to our friends in Europe, who blindly rushed to close coal plants at a rapid pace and are now working from Germany to Denmark to bring those same plants back online. The global energy crisis is real and imposing costly burdens on people around the world and here at home; taking deliberate steps to intensify that crisis is reckless and unthinkable.”

While coal is in long-term decline it is unlikely to disappear in the immediate future – many utilities are still deeply invested in the fuel source and the scale of renewable infrastructure, including energy projects, new transmission lines and battery and other storage to cope with intermittent delivery, isn’t yet vast enough to trigger a mass shutdown of coal. But analysts say the broader trends, bolstered by last year’s climate spending, look set to call time on the era of coal.

A solar power farm in San Antonio, Texas. Photograph: Tannen Maury/EPA

“We can’t just snap our fingers and retire all coal plants but we need to accelerate the buildout of wind and solar so that when the time comes we can wean ourselves off coal,” said Solomon.

“There’s a huge opportunity here to invest in coal communities, build local economic resilience and save money in the process.”

James Stock, an economist at Harvard University who was not involved in the Energy Innovation report, said the analysis “rings true” and that coal is no longer economically competitive.

“We can’t shutter all these plants tomorrow, we need to do it in an orderly fashion to support grid reliability but we should be able to do it in fairly fast order,” he said. “Coal has been on a natural decline due to economics and those economics are going to continue, this is a transition that’s just going to happen.

“We built a lot of coal plants in the US around 50 years ago because we were worried about energy security in the world. That made sense at the time and they made an important contribution. But we know a lot more now about climate change, so now we need to make different decisions.”

Source: US renewable energy farms outstrip 99% of coal plants economically – study | US news | The Guardian

The post US renewable energy farms outstrip 99% of coal plants economically – study | US news | The Guardian appeared first on Digital Marketing .