Ancient feathers found in the Ychsma tomb in Pachacamac. Credit: George Olah
Live parrots were transported over the Andes for their feathers in ancient Peru, according to research in Nature Communications. Analysis of still-colourful feathers found in a Ychsma-era tomb suggests a complex and widespread economy that predates the Incan empire. go.nature.com/4umFAnh πΊ π§ͺ
This is figure 1, which shows the Rimae Bode region and proposed landing sites.
Observations of the Rimae Bode region on the Moon shows five distinct types of terrain and identifies several potential landing sites for Chinaβs first crewed mission, according to research published in Nature Astronomy. go.nature.com/40q0JiG π π§ͺ
Recruiters engage in antics that would give Borges and Kafka a headache.
Sign appended to petrol pump saying: βFUEL CONTAINERS RESTRICTED TO 1 PER CUSTOMERβ
The UK petrol panic has officially begun β½οΈ
I havenβt posted for the last few days because what Iβve seen in the news is without description.
I will know that the world is getting better when I no longer have to tack "-ai" onto all my searches
Tangled cable of an iron
Ironing my laundry tonight and I wish my iron came with a topoisomerase to sort out its cable π§Ίπ§¬
The paper which first highlighted the ammonia detection's astrobiological significance was published by Bains et al. in late 2021. I did a thread of it on my Twitter account at the time, where I noted some circular logic (i.e. ammonia helps life and so is made by life).
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Ammonia was tentatively detected in the Venusian cloud decks by Pioneer Venus and Venera 8. Astrobiologists theorised that ammonia might be produced by microbes as a survival strategy to neutralise acid. New research suggests a more mundane, abiotic explanation ππ§ͺ www.nature.com/articles/s41...
View of the night sky taken in a southerly direction around nautical twilight. A dash of light is visible on the right, with Taurus and the Pleiades on the left
A Starlink convoy passing over southeast England π°οΈπ #astrophotography
Corked bottle of Bolgrad Select Pinot Grigio
The removed cork, showing the emblem of Bolgrad and its foundation year of 1821
Glass of white wine held up against a beige wall
Google Maps screenshot showing the location of Yalpuh Lake
Lidl sells Ukrainian wine! It comes from the Bolgrad vineyards in the vicinity of Lake Yalpuh, Odesa Oblast πΊπ¦π±π»
Frog sitting on wet asphalt
Another frog, also sitting on wet asphalt but also with more stripes
Frog lounging in a puddle on the side of the road
Us humans may not like the constant rain, but the frogs are loving it πΈπ¦
That one friend thatβs too into exoplanets. Featuring: diagram of the Kepler space telescope, comparative map of the 55 Cancri system; JWST atmospheric spectrum data for WASP-39b; Hubble Space Telescope image of Ξ²-Pictorisβ accretion disc; temperature map of HD 189733b; TESS; direct imaging of a possible planet around Ξ±-Centauri; layered transit graphs of all seven TRAPPIST-1 planets.
Homemade exoplanet meme πͺππ§ͺ
Bit late to the party...WGS based oral microbiome GWAS makes Nature! Some very cool bacterial functional associations are discussed in the paper. Check it out! www.nature.com/articles/s41... π§ͺ
New paper is finally out!! All about the potential for cryovolcanism on Umbriel, one of the mysterious satellites of Uranus: doi.org/10.1029/2025...
Iβve submitted the last piece of coursework for my Advanced Human Genetics module. Thatβs one module out of four done for my Postgraduate Diploma π§¬π»π§ͺ
Although we still donβt fully understand what Vaults do in nature, that hasnβt stopped Chao et al. from engineering it into a time capsule to sequester mRNAs, allowing researchers to investigate gene expression at multiple time points for the same cell π§ͺ𧫠www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
"Rien que du sang et des douilles" : tΓ©moignage exclusif dβun manifestant iranien
www.france24.com/fr/asie-paci...
Diagram of a flagellum on a sketch pad. Snapchat caption reads βThis needs to be hung in the fricking Louvreβ
Et voilΓ ! (for context in 2017 I was spamming nonstop on Snapchat)
Somewhere I still have the hand-drawn revision diagram I did of a bacterial flagellum for my first year undergrad exams π§ͺ
Kefir grains in sieve after the milk they fermented into kefir passed through to the jug beneath
Tending to my kefir π₯π¦
I will be pronouncing the βfβ in the future tense of Irish verbs and there is nothing anyone can do to stop me #speirgorm
'There were no fancy pieces of equipment, no incomprehensible statistical analyses (...) Instead, it merely involved a researcher, some petri dishes & a lab book in which to record the results of crosses that were intellectually complex to conceive of, but which were remarkably simple to carry out.'
It took the IAU more than 20 years to name the first known exoplanets, and as the TRAPPIST-1 planets were only found in 2017, we may be waiting until at least the 2030s for official proper names.
β¦or Indra (god of storms and weather) if it is an exo-Titan with a thick atmosphere and plenty of volatiles. The Graeco-Roman pantheon has been given our Solar System, so itβs only fitting that the Hindu pantheon are honoured with a system just as fascinating.
Star and two inner super-Earths are named after the Trimurti (male trinity); the three habitable zone planets are named for the Tridevi (female trinity); Ganesha is placed between his parents Shiva and Parvati; and h is named Kali (outer guardian) if it is airlessβ¦
I propose that the planets of TRAPPIST-1 be given names from the Hindu pantheon, as follows:
β’ TRAPPIST-1: Brahma
β’ b: Vishnu
β’ c: Shiva
β’ d: Ganesha
β’ e: Parvati
β’ f: Lakshmi
β’ g: Saraswati
β’ h: Kali or Indra
Explanations in the following skeets ππ΄π
An image of the speaker, Moa Persson. She is smiling and looking into the camera over her shoulder. She has light brown hair down to her shoulders, and is wearing a blue shirt with glasses. She is holding a hammer as she is completing her "thesis nailing", a tradition at many Swedish universities for finishing PhD students.
An artist illustration of Venus, and its atmosphere eroding against solar winds. Credit: ESA (Animation by C. Carreau) Longer caption attached to the image on ESAs website, posted November 2007: "Mars, Earth and Venus are immersed in a flow of plasma, an ionised and highly variable gas originating from the Sun, called the solar wind. While Earth has a planetary magnetic field, which can deviate the flow of solar wind, Venus (and Mars) donβt. Gases in the upper atmospheres of these planets are ionised and can thus interact with the solar wind. Venus is as large as Earth and it is difficult for its atmosphere to escape due to the planetβs gravity. The solar wind is the best source of energy to accelerate the upper atmosphereβs charged particles, giving them enough energy to escape. This is why Venus loses its atmosphere due to interaction with the solar wind. To understand this phenomenon, the key questions that the instruments studying plasma on Venus Express must answer are: what and how much of the atmosphere is lost, and where is it lost? Right now, solar activity is at its minimum in the 11-year cycle, making the solar wind weaker than average. The critical question now is how solar wind interacts with Venus when solar activity is low."
Would you dare to stand up against the wrath of a star?! Brave little Venus does... and still has an atmosphere! βοΈπ¨πͺπ§²
Next #RockyWorldsDiscussion on Thu 5 Feb @ 14:00 UTC features Moa Persson on "Venus: Defying the Solar Wind Without a Magnetic Shield"
More: www.rockyworlds.org/event-detail...
π§ͺπ
Colony of pink crocuses amidst the grass, with a flying striped insect
Isolated sprig of crocuses backlit by the late afternoon sun
First crocuses of spring, including what I suspect is a honeybee, assuming itβs not some fly with Batesian mimicry π·ππͺ°
Who knew yaks and humans had so much in common π¦¬π§¬ππ§ͺ
