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Scientists discover ‘dark’ oxygen being produced more than 13,000 feet below the ocean surface

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“I basically told my students, just put the sensors back in the box. We’ll ship them back to the manufacturer and get them tested because they’re just giving us gibberish,” said Sweetman, a professor at the Scottish Association for Marine Science and lead of the institution’s seafloor ecology and biogeochemistry group. “And every single time the manufacturer came back: ‘They’re working. They’re calibrated.’” Photosynthetic organisms such as plants, plankton and algae use sunlight to produce oxygen that cycles into the ocean depths, but previous studies conducted in the deep sea have shown that oxygen is only consumed, not produced, by the organisms that live there, Sweetman said. Now, his team’s research is challenging this long-held assumption, finding oxygen produced without photosynthesis. “You’re cautious when you see something that goes against what should be happening,” he said. The study , published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience, demonstrates how much is still unknow
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NASA Ends VIPER Project, Continues Moon Exploration

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Following a comprehensive internal review, NASA announced Wednesday its intent to discontinue development of its VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) project. NASA stated cost increases, delays to the launch date, and the risks of future cost growth as the reasons to stand down on the mission. The rover was originally planned to launch in late 2023, but in 2022, NASA requested a launch delay to late 2024 to provide more time for preflight testing of the Astrobotic lander. Since that time, additional schedule and supply chain delays pushed VIPER’s readiness date to September 2025, and independently its CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) launch aboard Astrobotic’s Griffin lander also has been delayed to a similar time. Continuation of VIPER would result in an increased cost that threatens cancellation or disruption to other CLPS missions. NASA has notified Congress of the agency’s intent. “We are committed to studying and exploring the Moon for the benefit of h
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China's Artificial Sun Generated a Magnetic Field, Clearing a Real Path for Fusion

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  China’s large Huanliu-3 nuclear fusion reactor follows decades of research in Chengdu. The world’s dozens of active tokamak experiments share ideas, scientists, and more. This tokamak, like many others, contributes to International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). China joined the quest for an enormous, internationally cooperative nuclear fusion reactor in 2023. Now, they’ve reached a milestone by generating its magnetic field for the first time—a field that is entirely new in tis design. The “ artificial sun ” reactor, Huanliu-3 (HL-3), is a tokamak run by 17 collaborating labs and facilities around the world. But the much-ballyhooed quest to make energy using these huge reactors still has a decade or more to go, with a lot of misinformation in the mix. While HL-3 puts China in the group of forerunners in nuclear fusion research, this reactor isn’t the largest (by far), and this milestone is only for its own timeline. This reactor is not close to operating consistently or
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A middleweight black hole has been spotted for the first time in our galaxy

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For the first time, astronomers have spotted a middleweight black hole in the nearby universe. The discovery could help solve the riddle of how even heftier black holes form and grow up with their host galaxies. The black hole, which sits about 16,000 light-years from Earth in the center of star cluster Omega Centauri, is at least 8,200 times as massive as the sun, putting it squarely in a rare category of intermediate-mass black holes, researchers report July 10 in Nature. Most of the black holes astronomers have detected fall into one of two categories. They’re either stellar-mass black holes, with masses up to about 100 times that of the sun, or supermassive black holes, which reside in the centers of galaxies and clock in at hundreds of thousands to billions of times the mass of the sun. Black holes with masses in the middle could help span the gap between the two categories and explain how the supermassive ones got so big. But these black holes are a little like Bigfoot: There hav
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A Primeval Force Once Ruled the Universe—and Scientists Have Revived It

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  In the very early, very hot moments of the universe, the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces were actually the same force—the electroweak interaction. Scientists can now study this interaction using particle accelerators, such as the LHC, and a new study recently fined tuned the precision measurements of what is known as the electroweak mixing angle, which tells us a lot—both about these forces and about how the Higgs mechanism delineates mass among particles. This study also highlights the importance of building a future electron-positron collider (a.k.a. a “Higgs factory”), which the particle physics world considers a top priority. Today, the universe as we know it is governed by four fundamental forces: the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, electromagnetism, and gravity. However, these four forces aren’t exactly as distinct as you think. Electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force, for example, were once the same force—the electroweak interaction. This force only e
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Scientists say they’ve confirmed a slowdown in Earth’s inner core rotation. Now what?

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This inner core has intrigued researchers since its discovery by Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann in 1936, and how it moves — its rotation speed and direction — has been at the center of a decades-long debate. A growing body of evidence suggests the core’s spin has changed dramatically in recent years, but scientists have remained divided over what exactly is happening — and what it means. Part of the trouble is that Earth’s deep interior is impossible to observe or sample directly. Seismologists have gleaned information about the inner core’s motion by examining how waves from large earthquakes that ping this area behave. Variations between waves of similar strengths that passed through the core at different times enabled scientists to measure changes in the inner core’s position and calculate its spin. “Differential rotation of the inner core was proposed as a phenomenon in the 1970s and ’80s, but it wasn’t until the ‘90s that seismological evidence was published,” said Dr. Lauren W
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Members agree to turn GPAI into apex body for AI

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  Under the chairmanship of India, the 29 members of the global partnership on artificial intelligence (GPAI) have agreed for a “renewed vision" for GPAI turning into a central body for all matters related to AI. In a meeting held on July 3, the member nations have agreed for an integrated partnership with the OECD by bringing together all current OECD members as well as GPAI countries on equal footing, under the GPAI brand, the ministry of electronics and IT said in a late evening statement. "GPAI is a great institution which has built the foundations for global thought process around AI. Its time to think collaboratively. We have the global South on-board and all of us have to work together to ensure that humanity harnesses the potential while containing the risks," union minister for electronics and IT, Ashwini Vaishnaw said while inaugurating the India AI Summit 2024. The 29-member international initiative on AI also agreed to a “renewed vision for GPAI through an in
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