72258 Kommentare

• Kommentar-Link Montag, 14 April 2025 19:39 gepostet von Freddiehoche

  Some scientists believe that fatty acids such as decanoic acid and dodecanoic acid formed the membranes of the first simple cell-like structures on Earth, Pearce said.
  connext bridge
  “(This is) the closest we’ve come to detecting a major biomolecule-related signal — something potentially tied to membrane structure, which is a key feature of life,” Pearce said via email. “Organics on their own are intriguing, but not evidence of life. In contrast, biomolecules like membranes, amino acids, nucleotides, and sugars are central components of biology as we know it, and finding any of them would be groundbreaking (we haven’t yet).”
  Returning samples from Mars
  The European Space Agency plans to launch its ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover to the red planet in 2028, and the robotic explorer will carry a complementary instrument to SAM. The rover LS6 will have the capability to drill up to 6.5 feet (2 meters) beneath the Martian surface — and perhaps find larger and better-preserved organic molecules.
  
  While Curiosity’s samples can’t be studied on Earth, the Perseverance rover has actively been collecting samples from Jezero Crater, the site of an ancient lake and river delta, all with the intention of returning them to Earth in the 2030s via a complicated symphony of missions called Mars Sample Return.
  Both rovers have detected a variety of organic carbon molecules in different regions on Mars, suggesting that organic carbon is common on the red planet, Williams said.
  
  While Curiosity and Perseverance have proven they can detect organic matter, their instruments can’t definitively determine all the answers about their origins, said Dr. Ashley Murphy, postdoctoral research scientist at the Planetary Science Institute. Murphy, who along with Williams previously studied organics identified by Perseverance, was not involved in the new research.
  
  “To appropriately probe the biosignature question, these samples require high-resolution and high-sensitivity analyses in terrestrial labs, which can be facilitated by the return of these samples to Earth,” Murphy said.
• Kommentar-Link Montag, 14 April 2025 19:38 gepostet von Josephrally

  Greenland’s leader says US officials’ visit is ‘highly aggressive.’ Trump says it’s ‘friendliness, not provocation’
  extra fi
  Greenland’s prime minister said a planned visit to the island by US officials, including second lady Usha Vance, is “highly aggressive,” plunging relations to a new low after President Donald Trump vowed to annex the autonomous Danish territory.
  
  But despite the backlash, Trump has insisted the visit is about “friendliness, not provocation” – and claims the US team was “invited.”
  
  Vance, the wife of US Vice President JD Vance, will travel to Greenland this week to watch the island’s national dogsled race and “celebrate Greenlandic culture and unity,” according to a statement from the White House. National security adviser Mike Waltz is also expected to visit the territory this week, according to a source familiar with the trip.
  
  Greenland Prime Minister Mute B. Egede called the US delegation’s trip to the island “highly aggressive” in an interview with Greenlandic newspaper Sermitsiaq on Sunday, and raised particular objection to Waltz’s visit.
  
  “What is the national security adviser doing in Greenland? The only purpose is to demonstrate power over us,” Egede said. “His mere presence in Greenland will no doubt fuel American belief in Trump’s mission — and the pressure will increase.”
  
  Trump claimed on Monday that people in Greenland have responded warmly to the US’s recent interest in the territory. “They’re calling us. We’re not calling them. And we were invited over there,” he said.
  
  “We’re dealing with a lot of people from Greenland that would like to see something happen with respect to them being properly protected and properly taken care of,” Trump told reporters following a meeting with his Cabinet.
  
  “I think Greenland is going to be something that maybe is in our future,” Trump added.
  
  The president said he believes Secretary of State Marco Rubio would be traveling to Greenland too.
  
  Trump’s idea to annex Greenland has thrown an international spotlight on the territory, which holds vast stores of rare earth minerals critical for high-tech industries, and has raised questions about the island’s future security as the US, Russia and China vie for influence in the Arctic. Trump has repeatedly expressed interest in the US taking the island by force or economic coercion, even as Denmark and Greenland have firmly rejected the idea.
• Kommentar-Link Montag, 14 April 2025 16:52 gepostet von RodgerGroob

  Remote and rugged
  eigenlayer
  A more organic way to see this coast is by the multi-day coastal ferry, the long-running Sarfaq Ittuk, of the Arctic Umiaq Line. It’s less corporate than the modern cruise ships and travelers get to meet Inuit commuters. Greenland is pricey. Lettuce in a local community store might cost $10, but this coastal voyage won’t break the bank.
  
  The hot ticket currently for exploring Greenland’s wilder side is to head to the east coast facing Europe. It’s raw and sees far fewer tourists, with a harshly dramatic coastline of fjords where icebergs drift south. There are no roads and the scattered population of just over 3,500 people inhabit a coastline roughly the distance from New York to Denver.
  
  A growing number of small expedition vessels probe this remote coast for its frosted scenery and wildlife. Increasingly popular is the world’s largest fjord system of Scoresby Sound with its sharp-fanged mountains and hanging valleys choked by glaciers. Sailing north is the prosaically named North East Greenland National Park, fabulous for spotting wildlife on the tundra.
  
  Travelers come to see polar bears which, during the northern hemisphere’s summer, move closer to land as the sea-ice melts. There are also musk oxen, great flocks of migrating geese, Arctic foxes and walrus.
  Some of these animals are fair game for the local communities. Perhaps Greenland’s most interesting cultural visit is to a village that will take longer to learn how to pronounce than actually walk around — Ittoqqortoormiit. Five hundred miles north of its neighboring settlement, the 345 locals are frozen in for nine months of the year. Ships sail in to meet them during the brief summer melt between June and August.
  
  Locked in by ice, they’ve retained traditional habits.
  
  “My parents hunt nearly all their food,” said Mette Barselajsen, who owns Ittoqqortoormiit’s only guesthouse. “They prefer the old ways, burying it in the ground to ferment and preserve it. Just one muskox can bring 440 pounds of meat.”
• Kommentar-Link Montag, 14 April 2025 16:13 gepostet von Jamessputt

  ‘For the public to enjoy’
  keplr wallet
  The museum’s history starts in 1998, when Sheikh Faisal Bin Qassim Al Thani opened a building to the public on his farm some 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Qatari capital Doha.
  
  A distant relative of Qatar’s ruling family, founder and chairman of Al Faisal Holdings (one of Qatar’s biggest conglomerates), and a billionaire whose business acumen had him recognized as one of the most influential Arab businessmen in the world, Sheikh Faisal had already amassed a substantial private collection of historically important regional artifacts, plus a few quirky pieces of interest, allowing visitors an intimate look into Qatari life and history.
  
  In an interview with Qatari channel Alrayyan TV in 2018, Sheikh Faisal said that the museum started as a hobby.
  
  “I used to collect items whenever I got the chance,” he said. “As my business grew, so did my collections, and soon I was able to collect more and more items until I decided to put them in the museum for the public to enjoy.”
  
  His private cabinet of curiosities has since evolved into a 130-acre complex. Through the fort-like entrance gate lies an oryx reserve, an impressive riding school and stables, a duck pond and a mosque built with a quirky leaning minaret. There’s now even a five-star Marriott hotel, two cafes and the Zoufa restaurant serving modern Lebanese cuisine.
  
  Of course, there’s also the super-sized museum, with a recently-opened car collection housing everything from vintage Rolls-Royces to wartime Jeeps and colorful Buicks. Outside you’ll find peacocks roaming the grounds, and signs warning drivers to be aware of horses and ostriches.
  
  Visitors to the FBQ museum are free to explore the grounds and can even enter the stables to pat the horses.
• Kommentar-Link Montag, 14 April 2025 15:57 gepostet von Scottswach

  Iceberg flotillas
  debridge
  Located on the west coast, Ilulissat is a pretty halibut- and prawn-fishing port on a dark rock bay where visitors can sit in pubs sipping craft beers chill-filtered by 100,000-year-old glacial ice.
  
  It’s a place to be awed by the UNESCO World Heritage Icefjord where Manhattan skyscraper-sized icebergs disgorge from Greenland’s icecap to float like ghostly ships in the surrounding Disko Bay.
  
  Small boats take visitors out to sail closely among the bay’s magnificent iceberg flotilla. But not too close.
  
  “I was on my boat once and saw one of these icebergs split in two. The pieces fell backwards into the sea and created a giant wave,” said David Karlsen, skipper of the pleasure-boat, Katak. “…I didn’t hang around.”
  
  Disko Bay’s other giants are whales. From June to September breaching humpback whales join the likes of fin and minke whales feasting on plankton. Whale-watching is excellent all around Greenland’s craggy coastline.
  
  Whales are eaten here. Visitors shouldn’t be surprised to encounter the traditional Greenlandic delicacy of mattak — whale-skin and blubber that when tasted is akin to chewing on rubber. Inuit communities have quotas to not only hunt the likes of narwhals but also polar bears, musk-ox and caribou — which can also appear on menus.
• Kommentar-Link Montag, 14 April 2025 15:48 gepostet von Kevinben

  A long time in the making
  Curiosity landed in Gale Crater on August 6, 2012. More than 12 years later, the rover has driven over 21 miles (34 kilometers) to ascend Mount Sharp, which is within the crater. The feature’s many layers preserve millions of years of geological history on Mars, showing how it shifted from a wet to a dry environment.
  celer network
  Perhaps one of the most valuable samples Curiosity has gathered on its mission to understand whether Mars was ever habitable was collected in May 2013.
  
  The rover drilled the Cumberland sample from an area within a crater called Yellowknife Bay, which resembled an ancient lake bed. The rocks from Yellowknife Bay so intrigued Curiosity’s science team that it had the rover drive in the opposite direction to collect samples from the area before heading to Mount Sharp.
  Since collecting the Cumberland sample, Curiosity has used SAM to study it in a variety of ways, revealing that Yellowknife Bay was once the site of an ancient lake where clay minerals formed in water. The mudstone created an environment that could concentrate and preserve organic molecules and trapped them inside the fine grains of the sedimentary rock.
  
  Freissinet helped lead a research team in 2015 that was able to identify organic molecules within the Cumberland sample.
  
  The instrument detected an abundance of sulfur, which can be used to preserve organic molecules; nitrates, which are essential for plant and animal health on Earth; and methane composed of a type of carbon associated with biological processes on Earth.
  
  “There is evidence that liquid water existed in Gale Crater for millions of years and probably much longer, which means there was enough time for life-forming chemistry to happen in these crater-lake environments on Mars,” said study coauthor Daniel Glavin, senior scientist for sample return at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement.
• Kommentar-Link Montag, 14 April 2025 15:20 gepostet von Johnnieliz

  Curiosity rover makes ‘arguably the most exciting organic detection to date on Mars’
  bungee exchange
  
  The NASA Curiosity rover has detected the largest organic molecules found to date on Mars, opening a window into the red planet’s past. The newly detected compounds suggest complex organic chemistry may have occurred in the planet’s past — the kind necessary for the origin of life, according to new research.
  
  The organic compounds, which include decane, undecane and dodecane, came to light after the rover analyzed a pulverized 3.7 billion-year-old rock sample using its onboard mini lab called SAM, short for Sample Analysis at Mars.
  
  Scientists believe the long chains of molecules could be fragments of fatty acids, which are organic molecules that are chemical building blocks of life on Earth and help form cell membranes. But such compounds can also be formed without the presence of life, created when water interacts with minerals in hydrothermal vents.
  
  The molecules cannot currently be confirmed as evidence of past life on the red planet, but they add to the growing list of compounds that robotic explorers have discovered on Mars in recent years. A study detailing the findings was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
  The detection of the fragile molecules also encourages astrobiologists that if any biosignatures, or past signs of life, ever existed on Mars, they are likely still detectable despite the harsh solar radiation that has bombarded the planet for tens of millions of years.
  
  “Ancient life, if it happened on Mars, it would have released some complex and fragile molecules,” said lead study author Dr. Caroline Freissinet, research scientist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in the Laboratory for Atmospheres, Observations, and Space in Guyancourt, France. “And because now we know that Mars can preserve these complex and fragile molecules, it means that we could detect ancient life on Mars.”
• Kommentar-Link Montag, 14 April 2025 13:15 gepostet von Jasonlus

  Arctic auroras
  ethena
  For getting around during winter, the Inuit here nowadays prefer snowmobiles, although they still keep their sled dogs. During winter they’ll offer intrepid visitors, wrapped up warm against the deep-freeze temperatures, dog-sledding jaunts. These can last either an hour or be part of expeditions over several days, sometimes with the added experience of learning how to build an igloo. Sisimiut on the west coast and Tasilaq in the southeast are active winter centers for dog sledding.
  
  Winter’s most stellar attraction, though, is northern lights watching. With little urban light pollution, Greenland is a dark canvas for spectacular displays, and aurora borealis-watching vacations are becoming more popular.
  
  Staying outdoors, Greenland is developing a reputation among adventure enthusiasts: from long-distance skiing expeditions and heliskiing on the icecap to hiking the 100-mile-long Arctic Circle Trail from Kangerslussuaq, where firearms need to be carried for warning shots in case of polar bear encounters.
  
  Life is definitely changing here. The climate crisis is eating away at its icecap and Greenland may well end up as a pawn in a game of geopolitical chess. But for now, the bright glare of international attention should shine a favorable light on one of the wildest travel destinations on Earth.
  
  Travel writer Mark Stratton is an Arctic specialist who has traveled to Greenland six times and counting. He’s marveled at the aurora borealis, sailed to Disko Island, dog-sledded with the Inuit, and once got stuck in an icefloe.
• Kommentar-Link Montag, 14 April 2025 12:08 gepostet von ChesterIgnop

  Curiosity has maintained pristine pieces of the Cumberland sample in a “doggy bag” so that the team could have the rover revisit it later, even miles away from the site where it was collected. The team developed and tested innovative methods in its lab on Earth before sending messages to the rover to try experiments on the sample.
  changelly exchange
  In a quest to see whether amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, existed in the sample, the team instructed the rover to heat up the sample twice within SAM’s oven. When it measured the mass of the molecules released during heating, there weren’t any amino acids, but they found something entirely unexpected.
  
  An intriguing detection
  The team was surprised to detect small amounts of decane, undecane and dodecane, so it had to conduct a reverse experiment on Earth to determine whether these organic compounds were the remnants of the fatty acids undecanoic acid, dodecanoic acid and tridecanoic acid, respectively.
  
  The scientists mixed undecanoic acid into a clay similar to what exists on Mars and heated it up in a way that mimicked conditions within SAM’s oven. The undecanoic acid released decane, just like what Curiosity detected.
  
  Each fatty acid remnant detected by Curiosity was made with a long chain of 11 to 13 carbon atoms. Previous molecules detected on Mars were smaller, meaning their atomic weight was less than the molecules found in the new study, and simpler.
  “It’s notable that non-biological processes typically make shorter fatty acids, with less than 12 carbons,” said study coauthor Dr. Amy Williams, associate professor of geology at the University of Florida and assistant director of the Astraeus Space Institute, in an email. “Larger and more complex molecules are likely what are required for an origin of life, if it ever occurred on Mars.”
• Kommentar-Link Sonntag, 13 April 2025 23:45 gepostet von Larrystilk

  WASHINGTON — “Liberation Day” just gave way to Capitulation Day.
  btrhbfeojofxcpxuwnsp5h7h22htohw4btqegnxatocbkgdlfiawhyid onion
  President Donald Trump pulled back Wednesday on a series of harsh tariffs targeting friends and foes alike in an audacious bid to remake the global economic order.
  
  Trump's early afternoon announcement followed a harrowing week in which Republican lawmakers and confidants privately warned him that the tariffs could wreck the economy. His own aides had quietly raised alarms about the financial markets before he suspended a tariff regime that he had unveiled with a flourish just one week earlier in a Rose Garden ceremony.
  
  Follow live politics coverage here
  skyiwredshjnhjgeleladu7m7mgpuxgsnfxzhncwtvmhr7l5bniutayd
  The stock market rose immediately after the about-face, ending days of losses that have forced older Americans who've been sinking their savings into 401(k)s to rethink their retirement plans.
  
  Ahead of Trump's announcement, some of his advisers had been in a near panic about the bond markets, according to a senior administration official. Interest rates on 10-year Treasury bonds had been rising, contrary to what normally happens when stock prices fall and investors seek safety in treasuries. The unusual dynamic meant that at the same time the tariffs could push up prices, people would be paying more to buy homes or pay off credit card debt because of higher interest rates. Businesses looking to expand would pay more for new loans.
  blackspfgh3bi6im374fgl54qliir6to37txpkkd6ucfiu7whfy2odid onion
  Two of Trump's most senior advisers, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, presented a united front Wednesday, urging him to suspend the tariffs in light of the bond market, the administration official said.
  
  In a social media post, Trump announced a 90-day pause that he said he’ll use to negotiate deals with dozens of countries that have expressed openness to revising trade terms that he contends exploit American businesses and workers. One exception is China. Trump upped the tariff on the country’s biggest geopolitical rival to 125%, part of a tit-for-tat escalation in an evolving trade war.
  
  Trump reversed course one week after he appeared in the Rose Garden and unveiled his plan to bring jobs back to the United States. Displaying a chart showing the new, elevated tariffs that countries would face, Trump proclaimed, “My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day.”
  skyiwredshjnhjgeleladu7m7mgpuxgsnfxzhncwtvmhr7l5bniutayd onion
  https://skyiwredshjnhjgeleladu7m7mgpuxgsnfxzhncwtvmhr7l5bniutayd0.com