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https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/heliophysics/nasa-discovers-long-sought-global-electric-field-on-earth/
NASA Discovers a Long-Sought Global Electric Field on Earth
Aug 28, 2024
Key Points
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A rocket team reports the first successful detection of Earth’s ambipolar electric field: a weak, planet-wide electric field as fundamental as Earth’s gravity and magnetic fields.
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First hypothesized more than 60 years ago, the ambipolar electric field is a key driver of the “polar wind,” a steady outflow of charged particles into space that occurs above Earth’s poles.
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This electric field lifts charged particles in our upper atmosphere to greater heights than they would otherwise reach and may have shaped our planet’s evolution in ways yet to be explored.
Using observations from a NASA suborbital rocket, an international team of scientists has, for the first time, successfully measured a planet-wide electric field thought to be as fundamental to Earth as its gravity and magnetic fields.
Known as the ambipolar electric field, scientists first hypothesized over 60 years ago that it drove how our planet’s atmosphere can escape above Earth’s North and South Poles.
Measurements from the rocket, NASA’s Endurance mission, have confirmed the existence of the ambipolar field and quantified its strength, revealing its role in driving atmospheric escape and shaping our ionosphere — a layer of the upper atmosphere — more broadly.
Understanding the complex movements and evolution of our planet’s atmosphere provides clues not only to the history of Earth but also gives us insight into the mysteries of other planets and determining which ones might be hospitable to life.
The paper was published Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024, in the journal Nature
Since the late 1960s, spacecraft flying over Earth’s poles have detected a stream of particles flowing from our atmosphere into space.
Theorists predicted this outflow, which they dubbed the “polar wind,” spurring research to understand its causes.
Some amount of outflow from our atmosphere was expected. Intense, unfiltered sunlight should cause some particles from our air to escape into space, like steam evaporating from a pot of water. But the observed polar wind was more mysterious. Many particles within it were cold, with no signs they had been heated — yet they were traveling at supersonic speeds.
“Something had to be drawing these particles out of the atmosphere,” said Glyn Collinson, principal investigator of Endurance at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the paper.
Scientists suspected a yet-to-be-discovered electric field could be at work.
The hypothesized electric field, generated at the subatomic scale, was expected to be incredibly weak, with its effects felt only over hundreds of miles.
For decades, detecting it was beyond the limits of existing technology. In 2016, Collinson and his team got to work inventing a new instrument they thought was up to the task of measuring Earth’s ambipolar field.
The team’s instruments and ideas were best suited for a suborbital rocket flight launched from the Arctic.
In a nod to the ship that carried Ernest Shackleton on his famous 1914 voyage to Antarctica, the team named their mission Endurance.
The scientists set a course for Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago just a few hundred miles from the North Pole and home to the northernmost rocket range in the world.
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“Svalbard is the only rocket range in the world where you can fly through the polar wind and make the measurements we needed,” said Suzie Imber, a space physicist at the University of Leicester, UK, and co-author of the paper.
On May 11, 2022, Endurance launched and reached an altitude of 477.23 miles (768.03 kilometers), splashing down 19 minutes later in the Greenland Sea.
Across the 322-mile altitude range where it collected data, Endurance measured a change in electric potential of only 0.55 volts.
“A half a volt is almost nothing — it’s only about as strong as a watch battery,” Collinson said. “But that’s just the right amount to explain the polar wind.”
Hydrogen ions, the most abundant type of particle in the polar wind, experience an outward force from this field 10.6 times stronger than gravity.
“That’s more than enough to counter gravity — in fact, it’s enough to launch them upwards into space at supersonic speeds,” said Alex Glocer, Endurance project scientist at NASA Goddard and co-author of the paper.
Heavier particles also get a boost. Oxygen ions at that same altitude, immersed in this half-a-volt field, weigh half as much.
In general, the team found that the ambipolar field increases what’s known as the “scale height” of the ionosphere by 271%, meaning the ionosphere remains denser to greater heights than it would be without it.
“It’s like this conveyor belt, lifting the atmosphere up into space,” Collinson added.
Endurance’s discovery has opened many new paths for exploration.
The ambipolar field, as a fundamental energy field of our planet alongside gravity and magnetism, may have continuously shaped the evolution of our atmosphere in ways we can now begin to explore.
Because it’s created by the internal dynamics of an atmosphere, similar electric fields are expected to exist on other planets, including Venus and Mars.
“Any planet with an atmosphere should have an ambipolar field,” Collinson said.
“Now that we’ve finally measured it, we can begin learning how it’s shaped our planet as well as others over time.”
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First-ever search for alien ‘supercivilizations’ begins as scientists hunt the galaxy for signs of ‘advanced technology’
Updated: 22:04, 27 Aug 2024
A coalition of scientists have set out to find signs of extraterrestrial technology, called technosignatures, in the first study of its kind.
The SETI Institute, the Berkely SETI Research Center, and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research banded together to search for alien life.
In a paper submitted to arXiv on August 19, the team detailed their hunt for interstellar signals, particularly low radio frequencies around 100 MHz.
They employed the help of the Murchison Widefield Array, a radio telescope in Western Australia.
The telescope's large field of view allowed them to cover roughly 2,800 galaxies in one observation.
Of these, scientists know the distance to 1,300 of them.
The researchers honed in on a cluster of galaxies near the Vela supernova remnant, the remains of a millennia-old explosion in the southern constellation.
The hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence has largely centered around signals within the Milky Way, so the focus on distant galaxies makes this study one of the most comprehensive to date.
"When we consider the search for intelligent life beyond Earth, we often consider the age and advancement of technology that may produce a signal detectable by our telescopes," the paper reads.
"In popular culture, advanced civilizations are portrayed as having interstellar spacecraft and communication."
To send a signal from a distant galaxy, a civilization would have to garner the energy of their sun or stars to power advanced technology.
Scientists have long been charmed by the idea of our extraterrestrial neighbors beaming a signal into space.
Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev devised a scale in 1964 to classify a civilization's level of advancement based on the amount of energy it can use.
Experts haven't shied away from exploring every possibility, even those pulled straight from fiction.
The concept of a Dyson sphere was first proposed in the 1937 novel Star Maker.
This super-advanced structure cages a star and captures enough energy to power a civilization.
While the latest study couldn't detect any technosignatures, it brings us one step closer to locating our distant neighbors.
“This work represents a significant step forward in our efforts to detect signals from advanced extraterrestrial civilizations,” said co-author Chenoa Tremblay.
Other researchers are concurrently searching for different signs of alien technology.
A paper published in The Astrophysical Journal focused on evidence of solar panels on potential "Earth-like exoplanets."
That study, too, was inconclusive. Scientists determined a civilization harnessing solar power would be nearly impossible to detect, as solar energy is too efficient.
But there is another possibility: advanced extraterrestrial civilizations may be so far ahead of us that they don't rely on solar or stellar energy.
Despite the setbacks, scientists remain persistent.
"The MWA continues to open up new ways of exploring the Universe for intelligent civilizations and technosignatures, while using the same data to study the astrophysics of stars and galaxies," co-author Steven Tingay said.
"This work is new and novel, but also paves the way for future observations with even more powerful telescopes."
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/30115309/alien-technology-low-radio-frequencies-galaxies-technosignatures/
https://www.earth.com/news/dark-oxygen-in-the-deep-sea-may-hold-clues-about-alien-life/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01480-8
"Dark oxygen" in Earth's deep seas may hold clues about alien life
08-27-2024
Over 12,000 feet beneath the Pacific Ocean’s surface, in a region called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), ancient rocks blanket the deep seafloor.
While these rocks might seem devoid of life, they actually host a variety of tiny sea creatures and microbes, many of which are specially adapted to survive in the dark.
These deep-sea rocks, known as polymetallic nodules, not only provide a habitat for numerous marine organisms but also, surprisingly, generate oxygen on the ocean floor.
This discovery, made by a team of scientists including experts from Boston University, challenges the conventional understanding that oxygen production requires sunlight and typically occurs near the ocean’s surface, where phytoplankton photosynthesize.
The presence of oxygen at such depths, in complete darkness, was so unexpected that the researchers initially suspected an error.
“This was really weird, because no one had ever seen it before,” said Jeffrey Marlow, an assistant professor of biology at Boston University’s College of Arts & Sciences and co-author of the study.
Marlow, who specializes in studying microbes in extreme environments like hardened lava and deep-sea hydrothermal vents, initially thought that microbial activity might be responsible for the oxygen production.
To investigate, the research team used deep-sea chambers that land on the seafloor, encapsulating seawater, sediment, polymetallic nodules, and living organisms.
The team then measured oxygen levels within these chambers over a 48-hour period.
Typically, if organisms are consuming oxygen, the levels would drop based on the amount of activity in the chamber. However, in this case, oxygen levels were rising.
“We did a lot of troubleshooting and found that the oxygen levels increased many more times following that initial measurement,” Marlow explained. “So we’re now convinced it’s a real signal.”
Marlow and his colleagues conducted their research aboard a vessel dedicated to exploring the CCZ’s ecology.
This area, spanning 1.7 million square miles between Hawaii and Mexico, was the focus of an environmental survey sponsored by The Metals Company, a deep-sea mining firm interested in harvesting these rocks for their valuable metals.
After conducting various experiments, the team, led by Andrew Sweetman from the Scottish Association for Marine Science, concluded that the oxygen production was not primarily driven by microbial activity, despite the presence of many microbes on and inside the rocks.
Polymetallic nodules are rich in rare metals such as copper, nickel, cobalt, iron, and manganese, which makes them attractive for mining.
The study suggests that the dense concentration of these metals likely triggers a process called “seawater electrolysis.”
This process involves the uneven distribution of metal ions within the rock layers, creating a separation of electrical charges similar to a battery.
The energy is sufficient to split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen, a process the researchers have termed “dark oxygen” because it occurs without sunlight.
However, the exact mechanism remains unclear, as do questions about whether oxygen levels vary across the CCZ and the role this oxygen plays in sustaining local ecosystems.
The Metals Company describes polymetallic nodules as a “battery in a rock” and claims on its website that mining these nodules could speed up the transition to battery-powered electric vehicles, potentially reducing the need for land-based mining.
Currently, mining in the CCZ is still in the exploratory phase, but the United Nations International Seabed Authority, which oversees this area, may start making decisions about mining as early as next year.
The Metals Company is collaborating with Pacific nations like Nauru, Tonga, and Kiribati to secure mining licenses, though several other South Pacific countries, including Palau, Fiji, and Tuvalu, have expressed strong opposition, advocating for a moratorium or a pause on mining activities.
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Environmental groups like Greenpeace and Ocean Conservancy are calling for a permanent ban, fearing that mining could cause irreversible damage to the seafloor.
Meanwhile, scientists are beginning to study the potential impacts of disrupting this largely unexplored ecosystem. The current study provides valuable baseline data on the area’s conditions before any large-scale mining begins.
“We don’t know the full implications, but to me this finding suggests that we should deeply consider what altering these systems would do to the animal community,” Marlow said, stressing that all animals need oxygen to survive.
The CCZ also offers a unique environment for studying the planet’s smallest organisms, such as bacteria and archaea (single-celled organisms) found in sediments and on the nodules.
Marlow and his co-author Peter Schroedl, a PhD student in Boston University’s ecology, behavior, and evolution program, are particularly interested in using microbes from extreme environments like the CCZ as models for discovering single-celled life on other planets and moons.
This field, known as astrobiology, seeks to enhance the search for extraterrestrial life by studying Earth’s systems.
“Life in environments like the CCZ provides an opportunity to study ecosystems that developed under distinct evolutionary pressures and constraints,” said Schroedl.
He added that the conditions in the CCZ – depth, pressure, and aquatic environment – are analogous to conditions we have measured or expect to discover on icy moons.
For example, Jupiter’s moon Enceladus and Saturn’s moon Europa are covered by thick layers of ice, with no sunlight reaching the water beneath.
“Who knows – if these types of rocks are under the ice making oxygen, that could allow a more productive biosphere to exist,” said Marlow.
He noted that if photosynthesis isn’t required to make oxygen, then other planets with oceans and metal-rich rocks like these nodules could sustain a more evolved biosphere than what we thought was possible.
Marlow acknowledged that there are still many questions to explore regarding the implications of this dark oxygen discovery for both extraterrestrial oceans and our own.
“For the most part, we think of the deep sea as a place where decaying material falls down and animals eat the remnants. But this finding is recalibrating that dynamic,” said Marlow.
“It helps us to see the deep ocean as a place of production, similar to what we have found with methane seeps and hydrothermal vents that create oases for marine animals and microbes.
I think it’s a fun inversion of how we tend to think about the deep sea.”
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For Sale: Nuwaubian UFO Cult Compound, Slightly Used
August 26, 2024
For-sale signs have been affixed around what appears to be one of the last public outposts of the Nuwaubian Nation in Brooklyn; an ominous, windowless, sand-colored compound on 717 Bushwick Avenue affixed with equally large Egyptian imagery, cartoon-blue window panels and a huge ankh cross for much of the past decade.
“We’re just collecting offers,” says Tommy Ashley, who picked up the phone number listed on the signs, speaking on behalf of “United Sabaeans Worldwide,” which has been operating both the colorful building on the border between Bushwick and Bey-Stuy, as well as the next door gift shop and bookstore, where it goes by the name “All Eyes on Egipt.”
The larger building goes by the name “Sanctuary of the Sabaeans,” as declared by a sign in front of that building’s imposing black doors. Both are taking offers, says Ashley.
Per Ashley, who calls himself an “in between” for the group and possible buyers, the group is not planning on closing down its operations in Bushwick just yet.
Ashley declined to say how much the Sabaeans are seeking to sell the building for and says the group is only soliciting offers through him, by phone. No posting has been made online through a traditional broker.
He declined to say why the group is doing this now, before quickly hanging up.
A longtime subject of local curiosity, the building is all that remains of a miniature empire of some twenty or so buildings in Bushwick that were operated in the late 1970s and 1980s by Dwight York, a cult leader who espoused what the Southern Poverty Law Center, which catalogs the outfit as a “black supremacist” hate group, describes as “a disorienting mix of UFO theories, talk about the significance of Egypt and the pyramids, references to Atlantis, and retellings of stories from the Bible and other religious texts.”
Most of York’s operations in Bushwick had left by the 1990s, when the group started calling themselves the “United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors” and moved to a compound in Putnam County, Georgia, citing “rivalries with Islamic organizations in New York,” per a 1999 report in the New York Times.
According to that story, the group was collectively of the belief, at least then, that a UFO from a faraway galaxy called Illyuwn was going “to visit Earth in 2003 and to take with it 144,000 chosen people.”
While waiting in Georgia, the group built an enormous black and gold pyramid that could be seen from the highway, amid other, elaborately painted temples and colonnades.
(“Mostly made of particle board, chicken wire, and artificial stucco,” says a later story in the Oxford American.)
The group didn’t make it to 2003, however. By then, York had been arrested and, following a fourteen-day trial, given a 135 year prison sentence on accusations he ran the group as a front to coordinate his own “unlawful sexual activity with minors,” according to a ruling from a state appeals court in Georgia that affirmed the sentence in 2005.
The government later seized his Georgia compound and the elaborate buildings “collapsed with just a tap,” as one report put it.
The smaller building in Bushwick, currently identifies as the headquarters of the Sabaeans’ sect of York’s Nuwaubian cult, operated at first, as it still does, as a small bookstore under the “Eyes on Egipt” name, described by a Vice blog post as “a Fisher-Price version of Cleopatra’s palace,” adjoining a large, windowless building, painted dark black.
Sometime around 2017, it was painted its current desert yellow and the more elaborate “Egyptian” structure was suddenly built it, feel free to insert your own metaphor-of-aesthetic cheapness.
As it happens, the group in Bushwick still stand by York, currently an inmate at a federal maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado.
“Malachi Z. K. York Will Be FREE,” reads a post on the Sabaeans’ website, which started circulating a renewed pledge to “Help Free an Innocent Man,” dated as recently as last year.
The charges of pedophilia that are keeping him there, in which he is was accused of abusing children of cult members “as young as six years old,” according to court records, go unmentioned.
Outside of Brooklyn, the larger Nuwaubian cult, operating these days under the name “Wu·Ṡabaṫ” appears to be still be moving steadily along the margins of society, opening their newest “Eyes on Egipt” bookstore in a strip mall in North Charleston, South Carolina earlier this year.
The group did not return a request for comment about their plans to sell their building in Bushwick, and any inquiries can be directed toward Tommy Ashley himself.
https://bushwickdaily.com/real-estate/sanctuary-of-the-sabaeans-for-sale-brooklyn-cult-bookstore/