Rabu, 31 Maret 2021

Astronaut Talks Physical/Mental Health, Space And Mars - country94.ca

Astronaut Talks Physical/Mental Health, Space And Mars

Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques. (Image: www.canada.ca)

Kids at a local middle school will never have to wonder why the sky is blue but space is black because an astronaut explained it to them.

Quispamsis Middle School won a visit from Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques through the Junior Astronauts program offered by the Canadian Space Agency.

The Junior Astronauts program designs activities for youth in grades 6 to 9 in science and technology, fitness and nutrition, and communications and teamwork to interest them in a future in science, technology, engineering and math.

Saint-Jacques is an engineer, astrophysicist, family doctor. On December 3, 2018, he flew to the International Space Station and spent 204 days in space, the longest Canadian mission to date.

Saint-Jacques advised his audience to take care of themselves especially when it comes to physical and mental health. He said they might feel young and like they will be healthy forever but they still need to take care of what they eat, of how much they sleep and to exercise at least a little bit.

“Your body really is the most important tool you have to accomplish whatever dream you have,” he said.

Saint-Jacques said it’s never too early to practice taking responsibility and becoming a person worthy of confidence.

“As a child, a lot of people make decisions for us and that’s OK but eventually, slowly you need to become responsible for yourself and it’s always good to practice holding your promises to practice taking responsibility for things and becoming someone others can trust I think is really important for whatever you want to do in life,” he said.

Saint-Jacques said it’s important to have fun because you need to have a balance.

“We all want to be someone useful and we all want to be the most beloved person but you have to have fun because you’re no good when you’re sad and the only way to have fun and be successful in your career is to do something you love,” he said.

Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques (Photo: Courtesy of the Canadian Space Agency)

Saint-Jacques said it was harder to adjust back to earth than it was to adjust to space. He said he lost his sense of balance, his body forgot to pump blood more to his head than his feet, and like he had the flu or was moving in slow motion which astronauts tend to call “Space Brain”.

One question asked was how he took care of his mental health.

He said when he was having a hard day, he would go to the window and look at Earth to remember why he’s doing it. He said because of the pandemic, it’s like every person is an astronaut in their home dealing with many similar problems on a different scale.

“There’s graffiti on the space station left by a very old astronaut from a very long time ago it says the most important thing is what you’re doing right now,” he said.

Saint-Jacques said one way to do well is to resolve to talk more to avoid explosions but leave others alone if they need space. He suggested getting organized, don’t stay in pyjamas all day, and make a schedule otherwise, you won’t achieve what you want.

“Sometimes we have a dream that seems too big, too crazy, too ambitious, and we’re afraid that we’re not going to make it. The error is to decide not to try in case we fail. That would be a big mistake,” said Saint-Jacques.

“Your dream is not a destination, it’s just a direction. It’s like the North Star. You’ll never get to the North Star ever, but you can still use it as a guide.”

Some of the questions asked were:

  • How long did it take to re-adjust to the gravity on Earth (One week before he could walk without holding someone’s hand, a month before he could ride a bike and two months to feel normal)
  • What was the hardest training he took (Learning to speak Russian in order to learn to fly the Russian rockets, plus the three years away from his family and the balance between work, family and friends)
  • What were some of the first noticeable changes his body experienced in a zero-gravity environment (The feeling of his organs floating up, like jumping off a high diving board, and nausea, congestion and disorientation)

    Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques (Photo: Screengrab)

  • How can you tell when you pass through the atmosphere (the rocket stops shaking)
  • What it was like when he first arrived at the space station (The feeling that it had moved from being a machine to a home with his friends)
  • How often were you able to communicate with people on earth and how often is it with family (Making a call depends on the satellite connection. He called his wife at least every day and every weekend had a video conversation with his family)
  • Was there anything he had to improvise for on the ISS (Some repairs needed to be done because there was no procedure so every day there was improvisation because you can’t plan everything)
  • If space has a sun, why is it so dark (In space even during the day you see the sun while on earth the sky is blue because sunlight goes through the atmosphere, then diffuses depending on the colours but the blue light doesn’t go straight through although red does. Space is black because it has no reason to be any other colour)
  • Is it possible to one day live on Mars (There’s a lot of issues about living in space so first, we have to get Mars, then we have to deal with the radiation, and then figure out how to land people on Mars ready to work, or to keep them alive since Mars has nothing we need so that will need to require life support systems)

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2021-03-31 22:46:01Z
52781477172708

NASA Curiosity rover snaps dramatic Mars selfie at scenic 'Mont Mercou' - CNET

A new Curiosity rover selfie from March 2021 shows the machine posing with a rock outcrop named "Mont Mercou."

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

NASA's newly landed Perseverance rover may be grabbing all the Mars-related headlines these days, but the long-lasting Curiosity rover is here to remind us of all the good work it's doing on the red planet. On Tuesday, NASA delivered a fresh Curiosity selfie, and it's one for the ages.

Some rover selfies have been focused on the machine itself, but this one is all about celebrating the Martian landscape, and particularly a scenic rock outcrop nicknamed "Mont Mercou" after a mountain in France.

The rock formation stands 20 feet (6 meters) tall and draws the eye. If you look closely to the left of the rover, you'll also spot a dainty hole representing Curiosity's 30th drill sample on Mars. 

The rover is positioned in a transitional zone between the "clay-bearing unit," an area with an intriguing history of water, and the "sulfate-bearing unit," a spot where researchers expect to find sulfates like gypsum and Epsom salts that can form as water evaporates.

"Scientists have long thought this transition might reveal what happened to Mars as it became the desert planet we see today," said NASA in a statement on Tuesday.

The selfie at this lovely site is a composite of 60 images taken by a camera on the rover's arm on March 26, combined with 11 more images taken earlier in the month by the rover's mast-mounted camera. The overall effect is an epic view of the Gale Crater, the outcrop and the rover's little piece of paradise on Mars.

The Perseverance rover -- which is in the process of deploying the Ingenuity helicopter -- arrived on Mars in February 2021. Curiosity has been in residence on the red planet since 2012. 

The Mont Mercou selfie is the latest in a long line of glorious Mars views as the veteran rover continues its mission of exploration.

Follow CNET's 2021 Space Calendar to stay up to date with all the latest space news this year. You can even add it to your own Google Calendar.    

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2021-03-31 18:34:00Z
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Scientists figure out how to put the brakes on antimatter atoms - CBC.ca

Antimatter atoms get annihilated whenever they contact matter — which makes up everything.  That makes them hard to study, which has been a problem, scientists say, because studying antimatter is key to understanding how the universe formed.

So the question has been, how can you manipulate antimatter atoms in order to study and measure them properly? 

A team of scientists say they have figured out a way to do that by slowing down antimatter atoms with blasts from a special Canadian-built laser. And they say that could make it possible to create antimatter molecules — larger particles more similar to the matter we encounter in the real world — in the lab.

"This is where it really gets exciting for us," said Makoto Fujiwara, a research scientist at TRIUMF, Canada's particle accelerator centre in Vancouver, B.C.  "You can really start doing things that are basically unimaginable previously,"

Fujiwara is a member of the international scientific collaboration known as ALPHA, which has created the Canadian-built laser they say could allow scientists to manipulate, study and measure antimatter like never before. The new technique would allow them to study its properties and behaviour in more detail, compare it to matter, and help answer some of the most fundamental questions in physics about the origin of the universe.

The collaboration, based at the underground lab of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, published the new research in the journal Nature Wednesday.

The group includes scientists from countries around the world, including Canadian researchers at the TRIUMF, University of British Columbia (UBC), Simon Fraser University, University of Victoria, British Columbia Institute of Technology, University of Calgary and York University in Toronto It receives funding from government agencies including the European Research Council and the National Research Council of Canada, and a few trusts and foundations.

What is antimatter?

According to our understanding of physics, for each particle of matter that exists, there is a corresponding particle of antimatter with the same mass, but opposite charge. For example, the "antiparticle" of an electron — an antielectron, usually called a positron — has a positive charge. 

Antimatter is produced in equal quantities with matter when energy is converted into mass. This happens in particle colliders such as a the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It's also believed to have happened during the Big Bang at the beginning of the universe.

But there is no longer a significant amount of antimatter in the universe — a big puzzle for scientists. 

Scientists would like to be able to study antimatter to figure out how it's different from matter, as that might provide clues about why the universe's antimatter has apparently disappeared. But there's a problem — when antimatter and matter encounter each other, they both get annihilated, producing pure energy. (A huge amount — that's what powers the fictional warp drive in Star Trek).

Because our world is made of matter, working with antimatter is tricky. For a long time, scientists could produce antimatter atoms in the lab, but they'd last just millionths of a second before hitting the matter walls of their container and getting destroyed.

WATCH | Bob McDonald explains why those earlier antimatter experiments were a big deal

Bob McDonald explains why the antihydrogen experiment is a big deal 1:59

Then in 2010, the ALPHA collaboration developed a way to capture and hold antimatter atoms using an extremely powerful magnetic field generated by a superconducting magnet. That magnetic field could keep them away from the sides of their container, which is made of matter, for up to half an hour — giving scientists plenty of time to do measurements on anti-hydrogen that compare it to hydrogen.

Makoto Fujiwara's 'crazy dream'

There was a problem though. Much as images you take with your camera are blurry if the object you're photographing is moving too fast, it was hard to get precise measurements on hydrogen anti-atoms without being able to slow them down. But Fujiwara had an idea of how to do that.

"It's one of my crazy dreams I had a long time ago — that is, to manipulate and control the motion of antimatter atoms by laser light," he recalled.

He knew that regular atoms could be slowed down by "laser cooling" (atoms move more slowly at colder temperatures and stop moving at a temperature of 0 Kelvin or 0 K, equivalent to -273.15 C, called absolute zero). Atoms of each element are sensitive to specific colours of light. Hitting them with those specific colours under certain conditions can cause them to absorb light and slow down in the process.

In theory, hydrogen anti-atoms should respond to the same colours as regular hydrogen atoms (something the researchers ended up confirming in 2018.)

WATCH | An ALPHA Canada animation explains how the ALPHA experiment makes and traps hydrogen and takes one kind of measurement

ALPHA Canada animation explains its breakthrough experiment 3:25

So as soon as ALPHA succeeded in trapping antimatter atoms of hydrogen, Fujiwara proposed trying laser cooling on them.

His colleagues laughed, initially, he recalled, "because everybody knew that a laser would be so hard to build for this."

The colour they needed, represented in physics by its wavelength (for example, red has a wavelength of around 700 nanometres and blue has a wavelength of around 450 nanometres) had to be very precise. It needed a wavelength of exactly 121.6 nanometres . A laser of that colour had never been built before. The laser would also have to fit in a very confined space in a very complex experimental setup with lots of components.

Then, one day, Fujiwara ran into his colleague Takamasa Momose, a UBC chemistry professor, in the cafeteria at TRIUMF in Vancouver. He mentioned the problem, and Momose said he could make the laser.

The two worked together, and after nearly 10 years, they succeeded.

What you can do with ultra-slow antimatter atoms

Antihydrogen atoms are created and trapped at very cold temperatures, about 0.5 Kelvin or K (-272.65 C). But even at that temperature, they're moving at about 300 kilometres per hour. With laser cooling, the researcher managed to get them down to 0.01 K (-273.14) and a speed of 36 kilometres per hour.

"Almost you can catch up by running," said Fujiwara (that is, if you're Usain Bolt, who averaged 37.58 kilometres per hour in his record-breaking 100-metre sprint).

Makoto Fujiwara stands in front of ALPHA experiment apparatus at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. The international collaboration equipped the apparatus with the special laser to slow down and cool antimatter atoms of hydrogen. (Maximilien Brice )

The team was able to measure the colours that represent the "fingerprint" of the cooled antihydrogen atoms. And those slow speeds, the measurement was four times sharper than the blurry measurements they had taken at faster speeds and higher temperatures.

Momose said that when the atoms move more slowly, it also allows them to bunch closer together — and perhaps even connect to form bigger particles of antimatter, which he said is his next goal.

"So far we have only antihydrogen atoms," he said. "But I think it's cool to make a molecule with antimatter."

Fujiwara also wants to measure the force of gravity on the antimatter atoms to see if it's the same as the force of gravity on matter. The force of gravity is very weak on something with as tiny a mass as an atom, and its signal typically gets drowned out by signals from other atomic movements. But because atoms stop moving at absolute zero, those other motions can be greatly reduced with extreme cooling.

Why it's a 'nice step forward'

Randolf Pohl is a professor of experimental atomic physics at the University of Mainz in Germany who was not involved in the study, but has worked with antimatter in the past. He has been following ALPHA's work, and said its latest results are "a nice step forward" toward precise measurements of antihydrogen's "fingerprint."

But he thinks the new technique will have an even bigger impact on measurements of gravitational acceleration on antimatter atoms:  "The big question is: will antimatter fall down to earth — will it be attracted to matter? Or could it be repelled by matter or fall upwards?"

He added that so far, no one expects a difference between matter and antimatter in its behaviour, but that theory still needs to be tested.

"Because there have been some occasions in the past where people measured something where nobody expected to see a discrepancy, and then suddenly a discrepancy showed up," he said. "And that changed our view of the world."

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2021-03-31 18:29:18Z
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Scientists figure out how to put the brakes on antimatter atoms - CBC.ca

Antimatter atoms get annihilated whenever they contact matter — which makes up everything.  That makes them hard to study, which has been a problem, scientists say, because studying antimatter is key to understanding how the universe formed.

So the question has been, how can you manipulate antimatter atoms in order to study and measure them properly? 

A team of scientists say they have figured out a way to do that by slowing down antimatter atoms with blasts from a special Canadian-built laser. And they say that could make it possible to create antimatter molecules — larger particles more similar to the matter we encounter in the real world — in the lab.

"This is where it really gets exciting for us," said Makoto Fujiwara, a research scientist at TRIUMF, Canada's particle accelerator centre in Vancouver, B.C.  "You can really start doing things that are basically unimaginable previously,"

Fujiwara is a member of the international scientific collaboration known as ALPHA, which has created the Canadian-built laser they say could allow scientists to manipulate, study and measure antimatter like never before. The new technique would allow them to study its properties and behaviour in more detail, compare it to matter, and help answer some of the most fundamental questions in physics about the origin of the universe.

The collaboration, based at the underground lab of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, published the new research in the journal Nature Wednesday.

The group includes scientists from countries around the world, including Canadian researchers at the TRIUMF, University of British Columbia (UBC), Simon Fraser University, University of Victoria, British Columbia Institute of Technology, University of Calgary and York University in Toronto It receives funding from government agencies including the European Research Council and the National Research Council of Canada, and a few trusts and foundations.

What is antimatter?

According to our understanding of physics, for each particle of matter that exists, there is a corresponding particle of antimatter with the same mass, but opposite charge. For example, the "antiparticle" of an electron — an antielectron, usually called a positron — has a positive charge. 

Antimatter is produced in equal quantities with matter when energy is converted into mass. This happens in particle colliders such as a the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It's also believed to have happened during the Big Bang at the beginning of the universe.

But there is no longer a significant amount of antimatter in the universe — a big puzzle for scientists. 

Scientists would like to be able to study antimatter to figure out how it's different from matter, as that might provide clues about why the universe's antimatter has apparently disappeared. But there's a problem — when antimatter and matter encounter each other, they both get annihilated, producing pure energy. (A huge amount — that's what powers the fictional warp drive in Star Trek).

Because our world is made of matter, working with antimatter is tricky. For a long time, scientists could produce antimatter atoms in the lab, but they'd last just millionths of a second before hitting the matter walls of their container and getting destroyed.

WATCH | Bob McDonald explains why those earlier antimatter experiments were a big deal

Bob McDonald explains why the antihydrogen experiment is a big deal 1:59

Then in 2010, the ALPHA collaboration developed a way to capture and hold antimatter atoms using an extremely powerful magnetic field generated by a superconducting magnet. That magnetic field could keep them away from the sides of their container, which is made of matter, for up to half an hour — giving scientists plenty of time to do measurements on anti-hydrogen that compare it to hydrogen.

Makoto Fujiwara's 'crazy dream'

There was a problem though. Much as images you take with your camera are blurry if the object you're photographing is moving too fast, it was hard to get precise measurements on hydrogen anti-atoms without being able to slow them down. But Fujiwara had an idea of how to do that.

"It's one of my crazy dreams I had a long time ago — that is, to manipulate and control the motion of antimatter atoms by laser light," he recalled.

He knew that regular atoms could be slowed down by "laser cooling" (atoms move more slowly at colder temperatures and stop moving at a temperature of 0 Kelvin or 0 K, equivalent to -273.15 C, called absolute zero). Atoms of each element are sensitive to specific colours of light. Hitting them with those specific colours under certain conditions can cause them to absorb light and slow down in the process.

In theory, hydrogen anti-atoms should respond to the same colours as regular hydrogen atoms (something the researchers ended up confirming in 2018.)

WATCH | An ALPHA Canada animation explains how the ALPHA experiment makes and traps hydrogen and takes one kind of measurement

ALPHA Canada animation explains its breakthrough experiment 3:25

So as soon as ALPHA succeeded in trapping antimatter atoms of hydrogen, Fujiwara proposed trying laser cooling on them.

His colleagues laughed, initially, he recalled, "because everybody knew that a laser would be so hard to build for this."

The colour they needed, represented in physics by its wavelength (for example, red has a wavelength of around 700 nanometres and blue has a wavelength of around 450 nanometres) had to be very precise. It needed a wavelength of exactly 121.6 nanometres . A laser of that colour had never been built before. The laser would also have to fit in a very confined space in a very complex experimental setup with lots of components.

Then, one day, Fujiwara ran into his colleague Takamasa Momose, a UBC chemistry professor, in the cafeteria at TRIUMF in Vancouver. He mentioned the problem, and Momose said he could make the laser.

The two worked together, and after nearly 10 years, they succeeded.

What you can do with ultra-slow antimatter atoms

Antihydrogen atoms are created and trapped at very cold temperatures, about 0.5 Kelvin or K (-272.65 C). But even at that temperature, they're moving at about 300 kilometres per hour. With laser cooling, the researcher managed to get them down to 0.01 K (-273.14) and a speed of 36 kilometres per hour.

"Almost you can catch up by running," said Fujiwara (that is, if you're Usain Bolt, who averaged 37.58 kilometres per hour in his record-breaking 100-metre sprint).

Makoto Fujiwara stands in front of ALPHA experiment apparatus at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. The international collaboration equipped the apparatus with the special laser to slow down and cool antimatter atoms of hydrogen. (Maximilien Brice )

The team was able to measure the colours that represent the "fingerprint" of the cooled antihydrogen atoms. And those slow speeds, the measurement was four times sharper than the blurry measurements they had taken at faster speeds and higher temperatures.

Momose said that when the atoms move more slowly, it also allows them to bunch closer together — and perhaps even connect to form bigger particles of antimatter, which he said is his next goal.

"So far we have only antihydrogen atoms," he said. "But I think it's cool to make a molecule with antimatter."

Fujiwara also wants to measure the force of gravity on the antimatter atoms to see if it's the same as the force of gravity on matter. The force of gravity is very weak on something with as tiny a mass as an atom, and its signal typically gets drowned out by signals from other atomic movements. But because atoms stop moving at absolute zero, those other motions can be greatly reduced with extreme cooling.

Why it's a 'nice step forward'

Randolf Pohl is a professor of experimental atomic physics at the University of Mainz in Germany who was not involved in the study, but has worked with antimatter in the past. He has been following ALPHA's work, and said its latest results are "a nice step forward" toward precise measurements of antihydrogen's "fingerprint."

But he thinks the new technique will have an even bigger impact on measurements of gravitational acceleration on antimatter atoms:  "The big question is: will antimatter fall down to earth — will it be attracted to matter? Or could it be repelled by matter or fall upwards?"

He added that so far, no one expects a difference between matter and antimatter in its behaviour, but that theory still needs to be tested.

"Because there have been some occasions in the past where people measured something where nobody expected to see a discrepancy, and then suddenly a discrepancy showed up," he said. "And that changed our view of the world."

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2021-03-31 17:46:53Z
52781476810723

Scientists figure out how to put the brakes on antimatter atoms - CBC.ca

Antimatter atoms get annihilated whenever they contact matter — which makes up everything.  That makes them hard to study, which has been a problem, scientists say, because studying antimatter is key to understanding how the universe formed.

So the question has been, how can you manipulate antimatter atoms in order to study and measure them properly? 

A team of scientists say they have figured out a way to do that by slowing down antimatter atoms with blasts from a special Canadian-built laser. And they say that could make it possible to create antimatter molecules — larger particles more similar to the matter we encounter in the real world — in the lab.

"This is where it really gets exciting for us," said Makoto Fujiwara, a research scientist at TRIUMF, Canada's particle accelerator centre in Vancouver, B.C.  "You can really start doing things that are basically unimaginable previously,"

Fujiwara is a member of the international scientific collaboration known as ALPHA, which has created the Canadian-built laser they say could allow scientists to manipulate, study and measure antimatter like never before. The new technique would allow them to study its properties and behaviour in more detail, compare it to matter, and help answer some of the most fundamental questions in physics about the origin of the universe.

The collaboration, based at the underground lab of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, published the new research in the journal Nature Wednesday.

The group includes scientists from countries around the world, including Canadian researchers at the TRIUMF, University of British Columbia (UBC), Simon Fraser University, University of Victoria, British Columbia Institute of Technology, University of Calgary and York University in Toronto It receives funding from government agencies including the European Research Council and the National Research Council of Canada, and a few trusts and foundations.

What is antimatter?

According to our understanding of physics, for each particle of matter that exists, there is a corresponding particle of antimatter with the same mass, but opposite charge. For example, the "antiparticle" of an electron — an antielectron, usually called a positron — has a positive charge. 

Antimatter is produced in equal quantities with matter when energy is converted into mass. This happens in particle colliders such as a the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It's also believed to have happened during the Big Bang at the beginning of the universe.

But there is no longer a significant amount of antimatter in the universe — a big puzzle for scientists. 

Scientists would like to be able to study antimatter to figure out how it's different from matter, as that might provide clues about why the universe's antimatter has apparently disappeared. But there's a problem — when antimatter and matter encounter each other, they both get annihilated, producing pure energy. (A huge amount — that's what powers the fictional warp drive in Star Trek).

Because our world is made of matter, working with antimatter is tricky. For a long time, scientists could produce antimatter atoms in the lab, but they'd last just millionths of a second before hitting the matter walls of their container and getting destroyed.

WATCH | Bob McDonald explains why those earlier antimatter experiments were a big deal

Bob McDonald explains why the antihydrogen experiment is a big deal 1:59

Then in 2010, the ALPHA collaboration developed a way to capture and hold antimatter atoms using an extremely powerful magnetic field generated by a superconducting magnet. That magnetic field could keep them away from the sides of their container, which is made of matter, for up to half an hour — giving scientists plenty of time to do measurements on anti-hydrogen that compare it to hydrogen.

Makoto Fujiwara's 'crazy dream'

There was a problem though. Much as images you take with your camera are blurry if the object you're photographing is moving too fast, it was hard to get precise measurements on hydrogen anti-atoms without being able to slow them down. But Fujiwara had an idea of how to do that.

"It's one of my crazy dreams I had a long time ago — that is, to manipulate and control the motion of antimatter atoms by laser light," he recalled.

He knew that regular atoms could be slowed down by "laser cooling" (atoms move more slowly at colder temperatures and stop moving at a temperature of 0 Kelvin or 0 K, equivalent to -273.15 C, called absolute zero). Atoms of each element are sensitive to specific colours of light. Hitting them with those specific colours under certain conditions can cause them to absorb light and slow down in the process.

In theory, hydrogen anti-atoms should respond to the same colours as regular hydrogen atoms (something the researchers ended up confirming in 2018.)

WATCH | An ALPHA Canada animation explains how the ALPHA experiment makes and traps hydrogen and takes one kind of measurement

ALPHA Canada animation explains its breakthrough experiment 3:25

So as soon as ALPHA succeeded in trapping antimatter atoms of hydrogen, Fujiwara proposed trying laser cooling on them.

His colleagues laughed, initially, he recalled, "because everybody knew that a laser would be so hard to build for this."

The colour they needed, represented in physics by its wavelength (for example, red has a wavelength of around 700 nanometres and blue has a wavelength of around 450 nanometres) had to be very precise. It needed a wavelength of exactly 121.6 nanometres . A laser of that colour had never been built before. The laser would also have to fit in a very confined space in a very complex experimental setup with lots of components.

Then, one day, Fujiwara ran into his colleague Takamasa Momose, a UBC chemistry professor, in the cafeteria at TRIUMF in Vancouver. He mentioned the problem, and Momose said he could make the laser.

The two worked together, and after nearly 10 years, they succeeded.

What you can do with ultra-slow antimatter atoms

Antihydrogen atoms are created and trapped at very cold temperatures, about 0.5 Kelvin or K (-272.65 C). But even at that temperature, they're moving at about 300 kilometres per hour. With laser cooling, the researcher managed to get them down to 0.01 K (-273.14) and a speed of 36 kilometres per hour.

"Almost you can catch up by running," said Fujiwara (that is, if you're Usain Bolt, who averaged 37.58 kilometres per hour in his record-breaking 100-metre sprint).

Makoto Fujiwara stands in front of ALPHA experiment apparatus at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. The international collaboration equipped the apparatus with the special laser to slow down and cool antimatter atoms of hydrogen. (Maximilien Brice )

The team was able to measure the colours that represent the "fingerprint" of the cooled antihydrogen atoms. And those slow speeds, the measurement was four times sharper than the blurry measurements they had taken at faster speeds and higher temperatures.

Momose said that when the atoms move more slowly, it also allows them to bunch closer together — and perhaps even connect to form bigger particles of antimatter, which he said is his next goal.

"So far we have only antihydrogen atoms," he said. "But I think it's cool to make a molecule with antimatter."

Fujiwara also wants to measure the force of gravity on the antimatter atoms to see if it's the same as the force of gravity on matter. The force of gravity is very weak on something with as tiny a mass as an atom, and its signal typically gets drowned out by signals from other atomic movements. But because atoms stop moving at absolute zero, those other motions can be greatly reduced with extreme cooling.

Why it's a 'nice step forward'

Randolph Pohl is a professor of experimental atomic physics at the University of Mainz in Germany who was not involved in the study, but has worked with antimatter in the past. He has been following ALPHA's work, and said its latest results are "a nice step forward" toward precise measurements of antihydrogen's "fingerprint."

But he thinks the new technique will have an even bigger impact on measurements of gravitational acceleration on antimatter atoms:  "The big question is: will antimatter fall down to earth — will it be attracted to matter? Or could it be repelled by matter or fall upwards?"

He added that so far, no one expects a difference between matter and antimatter in its behaviour, but that theory still needs to be tested.

"Because there have been some occasions in the past where people measured something where nobody expected to see a discrepancy, and then suddenly a discrepancy showed up," he said. "And that changed our view of the world."

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2021-03-31 16:47:22Z
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Scientists say Canadian-built laser lets them manipulate antimatter - CBC.ca

Antimatter atoms get annihilated whenever they contact matter — which makes up everything.  That makes them hard to study, which has been a problem, scientists say, because studying antimatter is key to understanding how the universe formed.

So the question has been, how can you manipulate antimatter atoms in order to study and measure them properly? 

A team of scientists say they have figured out a way to do that by slowing down antimatter atoms with blasts from a special Canadian-built laser. And they say that could make it possible to create antimatter molecules — larger particles more similar to the matter we encounter in the real world — in the lab.

"This is where it really gets exciting for us," said Makoto Fujiwara, a research scientist at TRIUMF, Canada's particle accelerator centre in Vancouver, B.C.  "You can really start doing things that are basically unimaginable previously,"

Fujiwara is a member of the international scientific collaboration known as ALPHA, which has created the Canadian-built laser they say could allow scientists to manipulate, study and measure antimatter like never before. The new technique would allow them to study its properties and behaviour in more detail, compare it to matter, and help answer some of the most fundamental questions in physics about the origin of the universe.

The collaboration, based at the underground lab of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, published the new research in the journal Nature Wednesday.

The group includes scientists from countries around the world, including Canadian researchers at the TRIUMF, University of British Columbia (UBC), Simon Fraser University, University of Victoria, British Columbia Institute of Technology, University of Calgary and York University in Toronto It receives funding from government agencies including the European Research Council and the National Research Council of Canada, and a few trusts and foundations.

What is antimatter?

According to our understanding of physics, for each particle of matter that exists, there is a corresponding particle of antimatter with the same mass, but opposite charge. For example, the "antiparticle" of an electron — an antielectron, usually called a positron — has a positive charge. 

Antimatter is produced in equal quantities with matter when energy is converted into mass. This happens in particle colliders such as a the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It's also believed to have happened during the Big Bang at the beginning of the universe.

But there is no longer a significant amount of antimatter in the universe — a big puzzle for scientists. 

Scientists would like to be able to study antimatter to figure out how it's different from matter, as that might provide clues about why the universe's antimatter has apparently disappeared. But there's a problem — when antimatter and matter encounter each other, they both get annihilated, producing pure energy. (A huge amount — that's what powers the fictional warp drive in Star Trek).

Because our world is made of matter, working with antimatter is tricky. For a long time, scientists could produce antimatter atoms in the lab, but they'd last just millionths of a second before hitting the matter walls of their container and getting destroyed.

WATCH | Bob McDonald explains why those earlier antimatter experiments were a big deal

Bob McDonald explains why the antihydrogen experiment is a big deal 1:59

Then in 2010, the ALPHA collaboration developed a way to capture and hold antimatter atoms using an extremely powerful magnetic field generated by a superconducting magnet. That magnetic field could keep them away from the sides of their container, which is made of matter, for up to half an hour — giving scientists plenty of time to do measurements on anti-hydrogen that compare it to hydrogen.

Makoto Fujiwara's 'crazy dream'

There was a problem though. Much as images you take with your camera are blurry if the object you're photographing is moving too fast, it was hard to get precise measurements on hydrogen anti-atoms without being able to slow them down. But Fujiwara had an idea of how to do that.

"It's one of my crazy dreams I had a long time ago — that is, to manipulate and control the motion of antimatter atoms by laser light," he recalled.

He knew that regular atoms could be slowed down by "laser cooling" (atoms move more slowly at colder temperatures and stop moving at a temperature of 0 Kelvin or 0 K, equivalent to -273.15 C, called absolute zero). Atoms of each element are sensitive to specific colours of light. Hitting them with those specific colours under certain conditions can cause them to absorb light and slow down in the process.

In theory, hydrogen anti-atoms should respond to the same colours as regular hydrogen atoms (something the researchers ended up confirming in 2018.)

WATCH | An ALPHA Canada animation explains how the ALPHA experiment makes and traps hydrogen and takes one kind of measurement

ALPHA Canada animation explains its breakthrough experiment 3:25

So as soon as ALPHA succeeded in trapping antimatter atoms of hydrogen, Fujiwara proposed trying laser cooling on them.

His colleagues laughed, initially, he recalled, "because everybody knew that a laser would be so hard to build for this."

The colour they needed, represented in physics by its wavelength (for example, red has a wavelength of around 700 nanometres and blue has a wavelength of around 450 nanometres) had to be very precise. It needed a wavelength of exactly 121.6 nanometres . A laser of that colour had never been built before. The laser would also have to fit in a very confined space in a very complex experimental setup with lots of components.

Then, one day, Fujiwara ran into his colleague Takamasa Momose, a UBC chemistry professor, in the cafeteria at TRIUMF in Vancouver. He mentioned the problem, and Momose said he could make the laser.

The two worked together, and after nearly 10 years, they succeeded.

What you can do with ultra-slow antimatter atoms

Antihydrogen atoms are created and trapped at very cold temperatures, about 0.5 Kelvin or K (-272.65 C). But even at that temperature, they're moving at about 300 kilometres per hour. With laser cooling, the researcher managed to get them down to 0.01 K (-273.14) and a speed of 36 kilometres per hour.

"Almost you can catch up by running," said Fujiwara (that is, if you're Usain Bolt, who averaged 37.58 kilometres per hour in his record-breaking 100-metre sprint).

Makoto Fujiwara stands in front of ALPHA experiment apparatus at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. The international collaboration equipped the apparatus with the special laser to slow down and cool antimatter atoms of hydrogen. (Maximilien Brice )

The team was able to measure the colours that represent the "fingerprint" of the cooled antihydrogen atoms. And those slow speeds, the measurement was four times sharper than the blurry measurements they had taken at faster speeds and higher temperatures.

Momose said that when the atoms move more slowly, it also allows them to bunch closer together — and perhaps even connect to form bigger particles of antimatter, which he said is his next goal.

"So far we have only antihydrogen atoms," he said. "But I think it's cool to make a molecule with antimatter."

Fujiwara also wants to measure the force of gravity on the antimatter atoms to see if it's the same as the force of gravity on matter. The force of gravity is very weak on something with as tiny a mass as an atom, and its signal typically gets drowned out by signals from other atomic movements. But because atoms stop moving at absolute zero, those other motions can be greatly reduced with extreme cooling.

Why it's a 'nice step forward'

Randolph Pohl is a professor of experimental atomic physics at the University of Mainz in Germany who was not involved in the study, but has worked with antimatter in the past. He has been following ALPHA's work, and said its latest results are "a nice step forward" toward precise measurements of antihydrogen's "fingerprint."

But he thinks the new technique will have an even bigger impact on measurements of gravitational acceleration on antimatter atoms:  "The big question is: will antimatter fall down to earth — will it be attracted to matter? Or could it be repelled by matter or fall upwards?"

He added that so far, no one expects a difference between matter and antimatter in its behaviour, but that theory still needs to be tested.

"Because there have been some occasions in the past where people measured something where nobody expected to see a discrepancy, and then suddenly a discrepancy showed up," he said. "And that changed our view of the world."

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2021-03-31 16:16:18Z
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Discovery in Kalahari shifts our understanding of early humans, new paper in Nature reports - UM Today

March 31, 2021 — 

Archaeological evidence from Ga-Mohana Hill North rock shelter at the edge of the Kalahari Desert in South Africa is challenging the idea that our species’ origins were linked to coastal environments, a new paper in Nature reports.

One of the most important finds from the site is 22 calcite crystals (smooth, white, rectangular structures).

An overhead shot of the archeological dig, and a pull out image of a white rectangular crystal

“There’s no geological reason for those crystals to be there and yet there’s 22 of them,” says Benjamin Collins, a UM researcher involved in the recent study. // Image: Jayne Wilkins

“There’s no geological reason for those crystals to be there and yet there’s 22 of them,” says Benjamin Collins, a researcher in the University of Manitoba’s Department of Anthropology who is part of the international team that published the recent findings in the paper “Innovative Homo sapiens behaviours at 105,000 years ago in a wetter Kalahari.”

“So that is a pretty good indicator that past people, 105,000 years ago, were bringing these crystals to the site,” Collins says. “The big question is, why were people bringing calcite crystals here? They serve no technological function and would not help with survival, yet they had some sort of importance, so this symbolism suggests culture. It is an indicator of complex thinking. It really changes how we view the story of human evolution.”

The crystals from Ga-Mohana may have been linked to spiritual beliefs, which is all the more remarkable considering the Ga-Mohana Hill North Rock shelter is also used to practice ritual activities today.

“One of the big questions in human evolution research is trying to understand when humans became humans—when did we start using culture as an adaptive tool,” Collins says. “So, a big part of trying to understand human evolution is to try and track these changes in culture through time.”

The discoveries of this research team, led by Jayne Wilkins from Griffith University’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution and a University of Toronto PhD alumni, change our perception of early Homo sapiens: Our species emerged in Africa and evidence of this has—until now—been largely discovered at coastal sites in South Africa, supporting the idea that our origins were linked to coastal environments. This new discovery from rock shelter in the interior, changes the plot of humanity’s story.

“At coastal sites, the earliest evidence for this kind of behaviour dates to about the same time, 105,000 years ago,” Wilkins says. “This suggests that early humans in the Kalahari were no less innovative than those on the coast.”

a panorama of the Ga-Mohana Hill North rock shelter at the edge of the Kalahari Desert in South Africa

Ga-Mohana Hill North rock shelter. // Image: Jayne Wilkins

Collins examined animal bones at the site, which showed signs of tools being used to cut and smash them to extract marrow, and ostrich eggshells, a rare find at such an old site. Ostrich eggshells change colour when exposed to heat: 200-250 C heat sources turn them yellow, and 300 C or greater turns them red. The shells he examined were red, and answers for exactly why are enticingly out of reach.

“We’re not sure how the ostrich eggshells were used, potentially they could have been used as containers, but we aren’t sure,” he says. “Either way, it’s something that someone 105,000 years ago used and there is this tangible connection to the past. It’s just really, really cool and it’s a big privilege to be able to contribute to telling this story and sharing this information with others.”

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2021-03-31 15:01:46Z
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Watch NASA's Mars helicopter unfold like a butterfly (video) - Space.com

The Mars helicopter Ingenuity is preparing for a historic take-off as NASA attempts the first powered, guided flight on another world.

That flight could occur as soon as April 8. But before then, the little chopper had to unpack itself from the belly of its much larger companion, the Perseverance rover. Because Ingenuity made the long trek to Mars folded up, the process took a week, but the helicopter is finally unfurled, with its four landing legs suspended just above the surface of the Red Planet.

Next, the Perseverance rover will set the helicopter down in what will be the center of Ingenuity's airfield, a 33-foot (10 meters) square section of Mars hand-selected by mission scientists to be as safe as possible for the little aircraft.

Related: NASA's Mars helicopter is slowly unfolding beneath the Perseverance rover

The Mars helicopter Ingenuity with all four legs unfolded, as seen by the Perseverance rover on March 30, 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Then, Perseverance will drive away and give Ingenuity time to charge up its solar batteries. Mission personnel will run a series of tests on the helicopter to ensure its ready to attempt flight.

Ingenuity's first flight is planned to take the helicopter just 10 feet (3 m) above the Red Planet's surface and see the chopper hover for no more than 30 seconds before touching down on the now-unfolded legs.

If all goes well, the team behind Ingenuity will have a full Earth month to fly the little helicopter, which Perseverance will watch from a safe distance. Then, the mission must pivot to the big rover's busy science schedule.

Perseverance is designed to look for traces of life on Mars and to cache rock samples for a future mission to carry to Earth.

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

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2021-03-31 13:06:47Z
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Here's who got the last 2 seats for the 1st all-civilian space flight - CBC.ca

A college science professor and an aerospace data analyst were named on Tuesday to round out a four-member crew for a SpaceX launch into orbit that's planned for later this year and billed as the first all-civilian space flight in history.

The two latest citizen astronauts were introduced at a news briefing live streamed from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida by SpaceX human space flight chief Benji Reed and billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who conceived the mission in part as a charity drive.

Isaacman, founder and CEO of e-commerce firm Shift4 Payments, is forking over an unspecified but presumably exorbitant sum to fellow billionaire and SpaceX owner Elon Musk to fly himself and three others into orbit aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.

The flight, scheduled for no earlier than Sept. 15, is expected to last three to four days from launch to splashdown.

"When this mission is complete, people are going to look at it and say this was the first time that everyday people could go to space," Isaacman, 38, told reporters.

Dubbed Inspiration4, the mission is designed primarily to raise awareness and support for one of Isaacman's favourite causes, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, a leading pediatric cancer centre. He has pledged $100 million US personally to the institute.

Assuming the role of mission "commander," Isaacman in February designated St. Jude physician's assistant Hayley Arceneaux, 29, a bone cancer survivor and one-time patient at the Tennessee-based hospital, as his first crewmate.

Sweepstakes, online business contest winners

Announced on Tuesday, Chris Sembroski, 41, a Seattle-area aerospace industry employee and U.S. Air Force veteran, was selected through a sweepstakes that drew 72,000 applicants and has raised $113 million US in St. Jude donations.

Sian Proctor, 51, a geoscience professor at South Mountain Community College in Phoenix, Ariz., and entrepreneur who was once a NASA astronaut candidate, was chosen separately through an online business contest run by Shift4 Payments.

All four will undergo extensive training modelled after the curriculum NASA astronauts use to prepare for SpaceX missions.

The Inspiration4 mission may mark a new era in space flight, but it is not the only all-civilian crewed rocket launch in the works.

British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic enterprise is developing a spaceplane to carry paying customers on suborbital excursions.

SpaceX plans a separate launch, possibly next year, of a retired NASA astronaut, a former Israeli fighter pilot and two other people in conjunction with Houston-based private space flight company Axiom Space.

Musk also intends to fly Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa around the moon in 2023. Fees charged for those flights will help finance the development of Musk's new, heavy-lift Starship rocket for missions to the moon and Mars.

Inspiration4 is about more than a billionaire's joyride through space, organizers say, promising the crew will conduct a number of as-yet undetermined science experiments during its brief voyage.

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2021-03-31 12:45:16Z
52781474127184

Here's who got the last 2 seats for the 1st all-civilian spaceflight - CBC.ca

A college science professor and an aerospace data analyst were named on Tuesday to round out a four-member crew for a SpaceX launch into orbit planned later this year billed as the first all-civilian spaceflight in history.

The two latest citizen astronauts were introduced at a news briefing livestreamed from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida by SpaceX human spaceflight chief Benji Reed and billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who conceived the mission in part as a charity drive.

Isaacman, founder and CEO of e-commerce firm Shift4 Payments, is forking over an unspecified but presumably exorbitant sum to fellow billionaire and SpaceX owner Elon Musk to fly himself and three others into orbit aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.

The flight, scheduled for no earlier than Sept. 15, is expected to last three to four days from launch to splashdown.

"When this mission is complete, people are going to look at it and say this was the first time that everyday people could go to space," Isaacman, 38, told reporters.

Dubbed Inspiration4, the mission is designed primarily to raise awareness and support for one of Isaacman's favorite causes, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, a leading pediatric cancer centre. He has pledged $100 million US personally to the institute.

Assuming the role of mission "commander," Isaacman in February designated St. Jude physician's assistant Hayley Arceneaux, 29, a bone cancer survivor and onetime patient at the Tennessee-based hospital, as his first crewmate.

Sweepstakes, online business contest winners

Announced on Tuesday, Chris Sembroski, 41, a Seattle-area aerospace industry employee and U.S. Air Force veteran, was selected through a sweepstakes that drew 72,000 applicants and has raised $113 million US  in St. Jude donations.

Sian Proctor, 51, a geoscience professor at South Mountain Community College in Phoenix, Arizona, and entrepreneur who was once a NASA astronaut candidate, was chosen separately through an online business contest run by Shift4 Payments.

All four will undergo extensive training modelled after the curriculum NASA astronauts use to prepare for SpaceX missions.

The Inspiration4 mission may mark a new era in spaceflight, but it is not the only all-civilian crewed rocket launch in the works.

British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic enterprise is developing a spaceplane to carry paying customers on suborbital excursions.

SpaceX plans a separate launch, possibly next year, of a retired NASA astronaut, a former Israeli fighter pilot and two other people in conjunction with Houston-based private spaceflight company Axiom Space.

Musk also intends to fly Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa around the moon in 2023. Fees charged for those flights will help finance the development of Musk's new, heavy-lift Starship rocket for missions to the moon and Mars.

Inspiration4 is about more than a billionaire's joyride through space, organizers say, promising the crew will conduct a number of as-yet undetermined science experiments during its brief voyage.

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2021-03-31 12:13:03Z
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NASA's Mars Curiosity rover beams back dramatic selfie and panoramas at majestic rock formation - CBS News

NASA's Perseverance rover may still be finding its footing in the Jezero Crater, but in the meantime, the Curiosity rover is having a blast taking selfies at a fascinating rock formation. 

Since 2014, Curiosity has been slowly but surely climbing the 3-mile-high Mount Sharp, which is located in the middle of the Gale Crater. NASA revealed new images from the rover Tuesday that were captured earlier this month. 

On March 16 and March 26, Curiosity snapped 60 images using the Mars Hand Lens Imager on its robotic arm and 11 using its Mastcam, located on its "head." It captured an impressive rock formation called "Mont Mercou" — named after a mountain in southeastern France. 

In the selfies, as well as an accompanying pair of majestic panoramas taken on March 4, Mont Mercou can be seen to the left of the rover. The formation is 20 feet tall. 

"Wish you were here!" the rover tweeted with the selfie. 

pia24543-1-16.jpg
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used two different cameras to create this selfie in front of Mont Mercou, a rock outcrop that stands 20 feet tall.  NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Using its drill, Curiosity acquired a sample of rock near the formation — the 30th sample it's collected so far. NASA scientists have named the sample "Nontron" after a French village near the actual Mont Mercou. 

The names were chosen for this part of the mission because Mars orbiters previously detected nontronite, a type of iron-rich clay mineral found close to the French town, in the region. 

The rover's drill turned the sample to dust and tucked it safely inside its body for further study using its internal instruments. Scientists hope to learn more about the rock's composition — and maybe uncover secrets of the planet's past. 

2-pia24266-comboadjust-350.gif
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used its Mastcam instrument to take the 32 individual images that make up this panorama of the outcrop nicknamed "Mont Mercou." It took a second panorama, rolling sideways 13 feet, to create a stereoscopic effect similar to a 3D viewfinder. The effect helps scientists get a better idea of the geometry of Mount Mercou's sedimentary layers, as if they're standing in front of the formation. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The sample was collected as the rover transitions from the "clay-bearing unit" and the "sulfate-bearing unit" of its ascent — an area scientists believe could reveal how Mars transitioned from a potentially habitable planet billions of years ago to the frozen desert planet it is today.

Until Perseverance arrived a little over a month ago, Curiosity was the only rover currently active on the red planet. The two rovers are located about 2,300 miles apart. 

Perseverance is now busy preparing the Ingenuity helicopter for its first flight in April — marking the first flight on another planet. After that, it will begin its hunt for ancient life.  

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2021-03-31 11:34:36Z
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'One who causes fear': Newly discovered dinosaur was a true meat-eating terror - CNET

Llukalkan aliocranianus was a large meat-eating dinosaur that would have been at the top of the food chain.

Jorge Blanco and Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology

There's a tradition of giving dinosaurs badass names. "Tyrannosaurus rex" means "king of the tyrant lizards." In 2020, scientists named a new species "reaper of death." Now say hello to the "one who causes fear," a toothy dinosaur discovered in South America.

Llukalkan aliocranianus roamed current-day Argentina about 80 million years ago. It reached over 16 feet (5 meters) in length and sported a short head with bulging bones that would have looked a bit like a jumbo-sized Gila monster.

A team of researchers led by paleontologist Federico Gianechini of the National University of San Luis in Argentina published a paper on the dino in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology this week.

"This is a particularly important discovery because it suggests that the diversity and abundance of abelisaurids were remarkable, not only across Patagonia, but also in more local areas during the dinosaurs' twilight period," Gianechini said in statement from journal publisher Taylor & Francis Group.    

Llukalkan aliocranianus is a species of abelisaurids, bipedal, short-armed dinosaurs from the Cretaceous period that resembled T. rex. The name is a mixture of Mapuche -- an Indigenous language of South America -- and Latin. Llukalkan means "one who causes fear" and aliocranianus is Latin for "different skull."

A well-preserved braincase fossil led helped scientists describe the hearing capabilities of Llukalkan aliocranianus.

Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology

The scientists discovered parts of a skull fossil, including a well-preserved brain case, the area that encloses the brain. 

The fossil shows Llukalkan aliocranianus had some different features than its cousins, notably "a small posterior air-filled sinus in the middle ear zone." "This finding implies a different hearing adaptation from other abelisaurids, and likely a keener sense of hearing," said study co-author Ariel Mendez of the Patagonian Institute of Geology and Palaeontology.

Fierce, stubby-armed dinosaurs like T. rex have long captured the public's imagination. Llukalkan aliocranianus may not have the name recognition, but it builds on a fascinating history of meat-munching dinosaurs that once ruled South America.

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2021-03-31 10:42:00Z
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