Science

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https://www.ndtv.com/science/140-trillion-oceans-of-water-found-in-space-around-12-billion-light-years-away-7312922/amp/1

https://medium.com/@codebykrishna/a-cosmic-wonder-massive-water-reservoir-discovered-in-space-f8da984fbbc5

https://www.moneycontrol.com/science/astronomers-discover-140-trillion-oceans-of-water-circling-a-supermassive-black-hole-quasar-in-space-article-12896760.html

Ursid Meteor Shower Peaked Over The Weekend, Ends December 26th: https://www.space.com/stargazing/the-ursid-meteor-shower-peaks-this-weekend-heres-how-to-see-it

Calendar for Upcoming Meteor Showers: https://www.amsmeteors.org/meteor-showers/meteor-shower-calendar/

Quadrantids appears to peak around Jan 2-3

The human nose can detect one trillion different odours, far more than we previously thought, say US scientists.

Until now, the long-held belief was that we can sniff out about 10,000 smells.

New estimates published in Science, external suggest the human nose outperforms the eye and the ear in terms of the number of stimuli it can distinguish between.

Researchers at the Rockefeller University say we use only a tiny part of our olfactory powers.

The human eye uses three light receptors that work together to see up to 10 million colours, while the ear can hear almost half a million tones.

Until now it was believed the nose, with its 400 olfactory receptors, could detect only about 10,000 different odours.

Not an official term, but it's two "new moons" in the same month

The first new moon is today (December 1st), the second is Decemeber 30th

Last month brought good news for the great Indian bustard, a critically endangered bird found mainly in India.

Wildlife officials in the western state of Rajasthan have performed the first successful hatching of a chick through artificial insemination.

A lone adult male in one of two breeding centres in Jaisalmer city was trained to produce sperm without mating, which was then used to impregnate an adult female at the second centre some 200km (124 miles) away.

Officials said the development was important as it has opened up the possibility of creating a sperm bank.

Over the years, habitat loss, poaching and collisions with overhead power lines have effected great Indian bustards. Their numbers have fallen from more than 1,000 in the 1960s to around 150 at present.

The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs also brought opportunities for new life. Scientists have found that after the asteroid wiped out many plants, ants started farming fungi to help them survive and get the food they needed in tough times.

The meteor impact 66 million years ago created a low-light environment that allowed fungi that fed on organic matter to survive, as many plants and animals died. Additionally, the dust in the skies made it difficult for plants to undergo photosynthesis — converting light energy to make food. With the spread of fungus, researchers found it allowed fungus-farming ants to thrive in these dark times. The findings preview the start of the mutualistic relationship shared between several fungi species and ants.

“The origin of fungus-farming ants was relatively well understood, but a more precise timeline for these microorganisms was lacking. The work provides the smallest margin of error to date for the emergence of these fungal strains, which were previously thought to be more recent,” says study co-author André Rodrigues, a professor at the Institute of Biosciences of São Paulo State University (IB-UNESP) in Brazil, in a media release. The study is published in the journal Science.

Researchers studied the genetic remains of 475 fungal species cultivated by ants from all over the Americas. They narrowed their focus on ultra-conserved elements of the fungal genomes. These regions stay in the genome through the evolution of a group, genetic evidence that links back to the most ancient ancestors.

Vegetation cover across the Antarctic Peninsula has increased more than 10-fold over the last four decades, new research shows.

The Antarctic Peninsula, like many polar regions, is warming faster than the global average, with extreme heat events in Antarctica becoming more common.

The new study—by the universities of Exeter and Hertfordshire, and the British Antarctic Survey—used satellite data to assess how much the Antarctic Peninsula has been "greening" in response to climate change.

It found that the area of vegetation cover across the Peninsula increased from less than one square kilometer in 1986 to almost 12 square kilometers by 2021.

Published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the study also found this greening trend accelerated by over 30% in recent years (2016–2021) relative to the full study period (1986–2021)—expanding by over 400,000 square meters per year in this period. The paper is titled "Satellites evidence sustained greening of the Antarctic Peninsula."

In a previous study, which examined core samples taken from moss-dominated ecosystems on the Antarctic Peninsula, the team found evidence that rates of plant growth had increased dramatically in recent decades.

This new study uses satellite imagery to confirm that a widespread greening trend, across the Antarctic Peninsula, is under way and accelerating.