Report on new scientific researches of the solar system. New scientific information about the sun. Stem cell reprogramming

As we all know, the Sun is the closest star to the Earth, the source of light, heat and life on our planet.

The history of the appearance of the Sun

According to scientific information, the Sun owes its appearance to a giant dust and gas cloud that was in the place of the solar system more than 5 billion years ago. The above cloud is the remnants of old destroyed stars. In the center of the cloud, under the influence of gravity, a certain clot of matter and gas was first formed - a protostar. Under ever-increasing pressure and gravity, the protostar flared up at some point and turned into a young star. In the depths of the newborn star, thermonuclear processes began to occur - the formation of helium from hydrogen. As a side effect of these reactions, light and heat appeared, thanks to which life originated on Earth.

And what else do we know about the Sun, besides the fact that without it, earthly life might not have arisen?

10 Enough New Scientific Information and Facts About the Sun

1. The sun is constantly "losing weight", that is, its mass is decreasing. It turned out that in 1 second the luminary decreases by 4 million tons.
2. The force of gravity on the Sun is 28 times greater than on Earth. That is, if we imagine that a person hit the surface of the Sun, then his weight would be 28 times more.
3. If the Sun becomes only 40 percent brighter, then all the liquid - rivers, seas, oceans on Earth will instantly evaporate. Scientists have calculated that in 1.1 billion years the brightness of the Sun will increase by 10%.
4. The sun is one of the 6 thousand stars that can be seen from the surface of our planet with the naked eye.
5. All bodies of the solar system - planets, their satellites, asteroids, due to the gravity of the Sun, are gradually attracted to it. Someday the Sun, which gave life to our planet, will attract and absorb it.
6. The light that the Sun emits reaches the Earth in just 8.3 minutes. During this short period of time, he traveled 149.6 million km.
7. In addition to heat and light, our luminary radiates the solar wind - a high-speed flow of protons and electrons.
8. The temperature on the surface of the Sun is 5.5 thousand degrees, and in the core 13.5 million degrees.
9. The age of the Sun at the moment has already exceeded its middle. That is, we can say that the Sun is a middle-aged star.

Try to find in additional literature, the Internet, information about new scientific studies of the planets of the solar system. Prepare a message.

Answer

New space research. Pluto is no longer a planet.

In scientific studies of the planets of the solar system, the most striking event is the recent flyby of the space station past Pluto, which has lost the status of a planet.

Flying only 12,500 km from the surface of this celestial body on July 14, 2015, the spacecraft was able to collect a huge amount of various data, including about the climate and geology of this dwarf planet. Now there is a phase of active transfer of the collected data to the Earth, and gradually the features of the relief of the surface of Pluto are revealed to us in that place, which is called its heart. There are already suggestions that under the surface of a celestial body there may be an ocean.

On the surface of Pluto, moving ice floes and whole mountains of water ice, reaching a height of 3 km, as well as a young surface, almost free of craters and shaped like a heart, were discovered. This may indicate the presence of an ocean under its surface, which can cause increased geological activity of a celestial body.

The latest scientific studies of the planets of the solar system do not yet allow us to accurately confirm or refute the hypotheses put forward, but scientists hope that as new more detailed information becomes available, more clarity will be brought to this issue.

Physicists have been aware of quantum effects for more than a hundred years, such as the ability of quanta to disappear in one place and appear in another, or to be in two places at the same time. However, the amazing properties of quantum mechanics are applicable not only in physics, but also in biology.

The best example of quantum biology is photosynthesis: plants and some bacteria use the energy of sunlight to build the molecules they need. It turns out that photosynthesis actually relies on an amazing phenomenon - small masses of energy "learn" all possible ways to apply themselves, and then "choose" the most effective one. Perhaps bird navigation, DNA mutations, and even our sense of smell rely on quantum effects in one way or another. Although this area of ​​science is still very speculative and controversial, scientists believe that once gleaned from quantum biology, ideas can lead to the creation of new drugs and biomimetic systems (biomimetrics is another new scientific field where biological systems and structures are used to create new materials and devices). ).

3. Exometeorology

Along with exo-oceanographers and exogeologists, exometeorologists are interested in studying natural processes occurring on other planets. Now that powerful telescopes have made it possible to study the internal processes of nearby planets and moons, exometeorologists can monitor their atmospheric and weather conditions. and Saturn, with its incredible size, are prime candidates for exploration, as is Mars, with its regular dust storms.

Exometeorologists even study planets outside our solar system. And interestingly, it is they who can eventually find signs of extraterrestrial life on exoplanets by detecting organic traces in the atmosphere or elevated levels of carbon dioxide - a sign of industrial civilization.

4. Nutrigenomics

Nutrigenomics is the study of the complex relationships between food and genome expression. Scientists working in this field are striving to understand the role of genetic variation and dietary responses in how nutrients affect the genome.

Food really has a huge impact on health - and it all starts at the molecular level, literally. Nutrigenomics works both ways: it studies how our genome influences food preferences, and vice versa. The main goal of the discipline is to create personalized nutrition - this is necessary to ensure that our food is ideally suited to our unique set of genes.

5. Cliodynamics

Cliodynamics is a discipline that combines historical macrosociology, economic history (cliometrics), mathematical modeling of long-term social processes, and the systematization and analysis of historical data.

The name comes from the name of the Greek muse of history and poetry Clio. Simply put, cliodynamics is an attempt to predict and describe the broad social connections of history - both to study the past and as a potential way to predict the future, for example, to predict social unrest.

6. Synthetic biology

Synthetic biology is the design and construction of new biological parts, devices, and systems. It also includes upgrading existing biological systems for an infinite number of useful applications.

Craig Venter, one of the leading experts in this field, stated in 2008 that he had recreated the entire genome of a bacterium by gluing together its chemical components. Two years later, his team created "synthetic life" - DNA molecules created with a digital code and then 3D printed and inserted into a living bacterium.

Going forward, the biologists intend to analyze different types of genome to create useful organisms for incorporation into the body and biorobots that can produce chemicals - biofuels - from scratch. There is also the idea of ​​creating pollution-fighting artificial bacteria or vaccines to treat serious illnesses. The potential of this scientific discipline is simply enormous.

7. Recombinant memetics

This area of ​​science is just emerging, but it is already clear that it is only a matter of time - sooner or later, scientists will gain a better understanding of the entire human noosphere (the totality of all information known to people) and how the dissemination of information affects almost all aspects of human life.

Like recombinant DNA, where different genetic sequences come together to create something new, recombinant memetics studies how - ideas passed from person to person - can be adjusted and combined with other memes and memeplexes - well-established complexes of interconnected memes. This can be useful for "social therapeutic" purposes, such as combating the spread of radical and extremist ideologies.

8. Computational sociology

Like cliodynamics, computational sociology deals with the study of social phenomena and trends. Central to this discipline is the use of computers and related information processing technologies. Of course, this discipline only developed with the advent of computers and the ubiquity of the Internet.

Particular attention in this discipline is given to the huge flows of information from our daily lives, such as emails, phone calls, social media posts, credit card purchases, search engine queries, and so on. Examples of work can be the study of the structure of social networks and how information is distributed through them, or how intimate relationships arise on the Internet.

9. Cognitive economics

As a rule, economics is not associated with traditional scientific disciplines, but this may change due to the close interaction of all scientific branches. This discipline is often confused with behavioral economics (the study of our behavior in the context of economic decisions). Cognitive economics is the science of how we think. Lee Caldwell, a blogger about the discipline, writes about it:

“Cognitive (or financial) economics… pays attention to what actually happens in a person’s mind when he makes a choice. What is the internal structure of decision-making, what influences it, what information is perceived by the mind at this moment and how is it processed, what are the internal forms of preference for a person, and, ultimately, how all these processes are reflected in behavior?

In other words, scientists start their research at a lower, simplified level, and form micromodels of decision principles to develop a model of large-scale economic behavior. Often this scientific discipline interacts with related fields, such as computational economics or cognitive science.

10. Plastic electronics

Typically, electronics is associated with inert and inorganic conductors and semiconductors such as copper and silicon. But the new branch of electronics uses conductive polymers and conductive small molecules based on carbon. Organic electronics includes the development, synthesis and processing of functional organic and inorganic materials along with the development of advanced micro- and nanotechnologies.

In truth, this is not such a new branch of science, the first developments were made back in the 1970s. However, it was only recently that it was possible to bring all the accumulated data together, in particular, due to the nanotechnological revolution. Thanks to organic electronics, we may soon have organic solar cells, self-organizing monolayers in electronic devices and organic prostheses, which in the future will be able to replace damaged human limbs: in the future, the so-called cyborgs, it is quite possible that they will consist more of organic than of synthetic parts.

11 Computational Biology

If you like mathematics and biology equally, then this discipline is just for you. Computational biology seeks to understand biological processes through the language of mathematics. This is equally used for other quantitative systems, such as physics and computer science. Scientists from the University of Ottawa explain how this was possible:

“With the development of biological instrumentation and easy access to computing power, biology as such has to operate with an increasing amount of data, and the speed of knowledge gained is only growing. Thus, making sense of the data now requires a computational approach. At the same time, from the point of view of physicists and mathematicians, biology has grown to a level where theoretical models of biological mechanisms can be tested experimentally. This led to the development of computational biology.”

Scientists working in this field analyze and measure everything from molecules to ecosystems.

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Perhaps everyone knows that a piece of the universe that sheltered us is called the solar system. The hot star, along with the planets surrounding it, began its formation about 4.6 billion years ago. Then occurred parts of the molecular interstellar cloud. The center of the collapse, where most of the matter accumulated, subsequently became the Sun, and the protoplanetary cloud that surrounded it gave rise to all other objects.

Information about the solar system was originally collected only during the observation of the night sky. As telescopes and other instruments improved, scientists learned more and more about the outer space around us. However, all the most interesting facts about the solar system were obtained only after - in the 60s of the last century.

Compound

The central object of our piece of the Universe is the Sun. Eight planets revolve around it: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. Beyond the latter are the so-called Trans-Neptunian objects, including Pluto, which was stripped of planet status in 2006. It and several other cosmic bodies were classified as minor planets. The eight major objects after the Sun are divided into two categories: the terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars) and the huge planets of the solar system, interesting facts about which begin with the fact that they are almost entirely composed of gas. These include Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.

Between Mars and Jupiter lies the Asteroid Belt, where many asteroids and irregularly shaped minor planets are located. Beyond the orbit of Neptune lies the Kuiper belt and its associated scattered disk. The asteroid belt mainly contains objects composed of rocks and metals, while the Kuiper Belt is filled with bodies of ice of various origins. Scattered disk objects also have a predominantly icy composition.

The sun

Interesting facts about the solar system should start from its center. A giant hot ball with an internal temperature of over 15 million degrees concentrated more than 99% of the mass of the entire system. The sun belongs to the third generation of stars, it is located approximately in the middle of its life cycle. Its core is a place of continuous as a result of which hydrogen is converted into helium. The same process leads to the formation of a huge amount of energy, which then falls, including on the Earth.

Future

After about 1.1 billion years, the Sun will use up most of its hydrogen fuel, its surface will heat up to the maximum. At this time, most likely, almost all life on Earth will disappear. Conditions will allow only organisms to survive in the depths of the ocean. When the age of the Sun is 12.2 billion years, it will turn into the outer layers of the star and reach the orbit of the Earth. Our planet at this time will either move to a more distant orbit, or be absorbed.

At the next stage of development, the Sun will lose its outer shell, which will turn into a white dwarf, which is the core of the Sun - the size of the Earth - in the center.

Mercury

As long as the Sun is relatively stable, exploration of the planets of the solar system will continue. The first cosmic body of a sufficiently large size that can be found if we move away from our star to the outskirts of the system is Mercury. The closest to the Sun and at the same time the smallest planet was explored by the Mariner-10 apparatus, which managed to photograph its surface. The study of Mercury is hampered by its proximity to the luminary, so for many years it remained poorly understood. After Mariner 10, launched in 1973, Mercury was visited by Messenger. The spacecraft began its mission in 2003. He flew up to the planet several times, and in 2011 became its satellite. Thanks to these studies, information about the solar system has expanded significantly.

Today we know that although Mercury is closest to the Sun, it is not the hottest planet. Venus in this regard is far ahead of him. Mercury does not have a real atmosphere: it is blown away by the solar wind. The planet is characterized by a gas envelope with extremely low pressure. A day on Mercury is equal to almost two Earth months, while the year lasts 88 days of our planet, that is, less than two Mercury days.

Venus

Thanks to the flight of Mariner-2, interesting facts about the solar system, on the one hand, became scarce, and on the other hand, they were enriched. Prior to receiving information from this spacecraft, Venus was considered the owner of a temperate climate and, possibly, an ocean, the probability of finding life on it was considered. Mariner 2 dispelled those dreams. Studies of this apparatus, as well as several others, painted a rather bleak picture. Under a layer of the atmosphere, mostly consisting of carbon dioxide, and clouds of sulfuric acid, there is a surface heated to almost 500 ºС. There is no water here and there cannot be life forms known to us. On Venus, even spacecraft can't stand it: they melt and burn.

Mars

The 4th planet of the solar system and the last of the earth-like ones is Mars. The red planet has always attracted the attention of scientists, it remains the center of research today. Mars has been studied by numerous Mariners, two Vikings and Soviet Mars. For a long time, astronomers believed to find water on the surface of the Red Planet. Today it is known that once upon a time Mars looked completely different than it does now, perhaps there was water on it. There is an assumption that the change in the nature of the surface was facilitated by the collision of Mars with a huge asteroid, which left a trail in the form of five craters. The result of the catastrophe was the displacement of the planet's poles by almost 90º, a significant increase in volcanic activity and the movement of lithospheric plates. At the same time, climate change has also taken place. Mars lost water, the atmospheric pressure on the planet dropped significantly, the surface began to resemble a desert.

Jupiter

The large planets of the solar system, or gas giants, are separated from the earth-like ones by the asteroid belt. The closest one to the Sun is Jupiter. In size, it surpasses all other planets in our system. The gas giant was studied using the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, as well as Galileo. The latter recorded the fall of fragments of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 onto the surface of Jupiter. Both the event itself and the opportunity to observe it were unique. As a result, scientists were able to obtain not only a number of interesting images, but also some data on the comet and the composition of the planet.

The fall on Jupiter itself differs from that on the cosmic bodies of the terrestrial group. Fragments of even huge sizes cannot leave a crater on the surface: Jupiter is almost entirely composed of gas. The comet was absorbed by the upper layers of the atmosphere, leaving dark traces on the surface, which soon disappeared. Interestingly, Jupiter, due to its size and mass, plays the role of a kind of protector of the Earth, protecting it from various space debris. It is believed that the gas giant played an important role in the emergence of life: any of the fragments that fell on Jupiter on Earth could lead to mass extinction. And if such falls occurred frequently in the early stages of the development of life, perhaps people would not exist until now.

Signal to brothers in mind

The study of the planets of the solar system and the cosmos as a whole is not least carried out in order to search for conditions where life can originate or has already appeared. However, they are such that humanity may not be able to cope with the task even for all the time allotted to it. Therefore, the Voyager spacecraft were equipped with a round aluminum box containing a video disc. It contains information, according to scientists, capable of explaining to representatives of other civilizations, possibly existing in space, where the Earth is located and who inhabits it. The images capture landscapes, the anatomical structure of a person, the structure of DNA, scenes from the life of people and animals, sounds are recorded: the singing of birds, the cry of a child, the sound of rain, and many others. The disk is provided with the coordinates of the solar system relative to 14 powerful pulsars. Explanations are made using the binary year.

Voyager 1 will leave the solar system around 2020 and will roam the outer space for many centuries to come. Scientists believe that the discovery of the message of earthlings by other civilizations may not happen very soon, at a time when our planet will cease to exist. In this case, the disk with information about people and the Earth is all that will remain of humanity in the Universe.

New turn

At the beginning of the 21st century, interest in Interesting facts about the solar system continue to accumulate. The data on the gas giants are being equipped. Every year the equipment is being improved, in particular, new types of engines are being developed that will allow flights to more remote areas of space with less fuel consumption. The movement of scientific progress allows us to hope that all the most interesting things about the solar system will soon become part of our knowledge: we will be able to find evidence of existence, understand exactly what led to climate change on Mars and what it was like before, study Mercury, scorched by the Sun, finally, build a base on Moon. The wildest dreams of modern astronomers are even bigger than some science fiction films. It is interesting that the achievements of technology and physics speak of the real possibility of implementing grandiose plans in the future.

Scientific discoveries are made all the time. Throughout the year, a huge number of reports and articles on various topics are published, and thousands of patents are issued for new inventions. Among all this, one can find truly incredible achievements. This article presents ten of the most interesting scientific discoveries that were made in the first half of 2016.

1. A small genetic mutation 800 million years ago led to the emergence of multicellular life forms

According to research, an ancient molecule, GK-PID, caused unicellular organisms to evolve into multicellular organisms approximately 800 million years ago. It was found that the GK-PID molecule acted as a "molecular carabiner": it collected the chromosomes together and fixed them on the inner wall of the cell membrane when division occurred. This allowed the cells to multiply properly and not become cancerous.

A fascinating discovery indicates that the ancient version of GK-PID did not behave the way it does now. The reason why she turned into a "genetic carbine" is due to a small genetic mutation that reproduced itself. It turns out that the emergence of multicellular life forms is the result of one identifiable mutation.

2. Discovery of a new prime number

In January 2016, mathematicians discovered a new prime number as part of the "Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search", a large-scale voluntary computing project to search for Mersenne primes. This is 2^74,207,281 - 1.

You might want to clarify what the "Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search" project was created for. Modern cryptography uses Mersenne prime numbers (49 such numbers are known in total) as well as complex numbers to decipher encoded information. "2^74,207,281 - 1" is currently the longest prime number in existence (it is almost 5 million digits longer than its predecessor). The total number of digits that make up the new prime number is about 24,000,000, so "2^74,207,281 - 1" is the only practical way to write it down on paper.

3. A ninth planet has been discovered in the solar system.

Even before the discovery of Pluto in the 20th century, scientists suggested that there was a ninth planet, Planet X, outside the orbit of Neptune. This assumption was due to gravitational clustering, which could only be caused by a massive object. In 2016, Caltech researchers presented evidence that a ninth planet - with an orbital period of 15,000 years - does exist.

According to the astronomers who made the discovery, there is "only a 0.007% chance (1:15,000) that the clustering is a coincidence." At the moment, the existence of the ninth planet remains hypothetical, but astronomers have calculated that its orbit is huge. If Planet X really exists, then it weighs approximately 2-15 times more than the Earth and is located at a distance of 600-1200 astronomical units from the Sun. The astronomical unit is 150,000,000 kilometers; this means that the ninth planet is 240,000,000,000 kilometers from the Sun.

4. An almost eternal way to store data has been discovered

Sooner or later, everything becomes obsolete, and at the moment there is no way that would allow you to store data on one device for a really long period of time. Or does it exist? Recently, scientists from the University of Southampton made an amazing discovery. They used nano-structured glass to successfully create a data recording and retrieval process. The storage device is a small glass disk the size of a 25 cent coin that can store 360 ​​terabytes of data and is not affected by high temperatures (up to 1000 degrees Celsius). Its average shelf life at room temperature is approximately 13.8 billion years (about the same time that our universe has existed).

Data is written to the device using an ultra-fast laser using short, intense light pulses. Each file consists of three layers of nanostructured dots that are only 5 micrometers apart from each other. Data reading is performed in five dimensions due to the three-dimensional arrangement of nanostructured dots, as well as their size and directionality.

5. Blind-eyed fish, which are able to "walk on the walls", show similarities with four-legged vertebrates.

Over the past 170 years, science has found that land-dwelling vertebrates evolved from fish that swam in the seas of ancient Earth. However, researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology found that Taiwan's wall-walking blind-eyed fish have the same anatomical features as amphibians or reptiles.

This is a very important discovery in terms of evolutionary adaptation, as it could help scientists better understand how prehistoric fish evolved into terrestrial tetrapods. The difference between blind-eyed fish and other types of fish that are able to move on land lies in their gait, which provides "support for the pelvic girdle" when they rise.

6. Private company "SpaceX" carried out a successful vertical landing of the rocket

In comics and cartoons, you usually see rockets landing on planets and the moon in a vertical manner, but in reality, this is extremely difficult to do. Government agencies like NASA and the European Space Agency are developing rockets that either fall into the ocean to be retrieved (expensive) or purposefully burn up in the atmosphere. Being able to land a rocket vertically would save an incredible amount of money.

On April 8, 2016, the private company "SpaceX" carried out a successful vertical landing of the rocket; she managed to do this on an autonomous spaceport drone ship. This incredible achievement will save money as well as time between launches.

For SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, this goal has been a top priority for years. Although the achievement belongs to a private enterprise, vertical landing technology will also be available to government agencies like NASA so that they can advance further in space exploration.

SourcePhoto 7A cybernetic implant helped a paralyzed man move his fingers

A man who has been paralyzed for six years has been able to move his fingers thanks to a small chip implanted in his brain.

This is the merit of researchers from Ohio State University. They managed to create a device that is a small implant connected to an electronic sleeve worn on the patient's arm. This sleeve uses wires to stimulate specific muscles to cause real-time finger movement. Thanks to the chip, the paralyzed man was even able to play the musical game "Guitar Hero", much to the surprise of the doctors and scientists who took part in the project.

8. Stem cells implanted in the brains of stroke patients allow them to walk again

In a clinical trial, researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine implanted modified human stem cells directly into the brains of eighteen stroke patients. The procedures were successful, without any negative consequences, except for a mild headache observed in some patients after anesthesia. In all patients, the recovery period after a stroke was quite fast and successful. What's more, patients who were previously wheelchair-bound were able to walk freely again.

9. Carbon dioxide pumped into the ground can turn into solid stone.

Carbon capture is an important part of keeping the balance of CO2 emissions on the planet. When fuel burns, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. This is one of the causes of global climate change. Icelandic scientists may have found a way to keep carbon out of the atmosphere and exacerbate the greenhouse effect problem.

They pumped CO2 into volcanic rocks, accelerating the natural process of turning basalt into carbonates, which then become limestone. This process usually takes hundreds of thousands of years, but the Icelandic scientists managed to reduce it to two years. Carbon injected into the ground can be stored underground or used as a building material.

10 Earth Has A Second Moon

NASA scientists have discovered an asteroid that orbits the Earth and is therefore the second permanent near-Earth satellite. There are many objects in the orbit of our planet (space stations, artificial satellites, etc.), but we can only see one Moon. However, in 2016 NASA confirmed the existence of 2016 HO3.

The asteroid is far from the Earth and is more under the gravitational influence of the Sun than our planet, but it does revolve around its orbit. 2016 HO3 is much smaller than the Moon: its diameter is only 40-100 meters.

According to Paul Chodas, manager of the NASA Center for the Study of Near-Earth Objects, 2016 HO3, which has been a quasi-satellite of the Earth for more than a hundred years, will leave the orbit of our planet in a few centuries.