An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Today, the LHCb experiment at CERN is presenting a new discovery at the European Physical Society Conference on High Energy Physics (EPS-HEP). The new particle discovered by LHCb, labeled as Tcc+, is a tetraquark -- an exotic hadron containing two quarks and two antiquarks. It is the longest-lived exotic matter particle ever discovered, and the first to contain two heavy quarks and two light antiquarks. Quarks are the fundamental building blocks from which matter is constructed. They combine to form hadrons, namely baryons, such as the proton and the neutron, which consist of three quarks, and mesons, which are formed as quark-antiquark pairs. In recent years a number of so-called exotic hadrons -- particles with four or five quarks, instead of the conventional two or three -- have been found. Today's discovery is of a particularly unique exotic hadron, an exotic exotic hadron if you like. The new particle contains two charm quarks and an up and a down antiquark. Several tetraquarks have been discovered in recent years (including one with two charm quarks and two charm antiquarks), but this is the first one that contains two charm quarks, without charm antiquarks to balance them. Physicists call this "open charm" (in this case, "double open charm"). Particles containing a charm quark and a charm antiquark have "hidden charm" -- the charm quantum number for the whole particle adds up to zero, just like a positive and a negative electrical charge would do. Here the charm quantum number adds up to two, so it has twice the charm! The quark content of Tcc+, has other interesting features besides being open charm. It is the first particle to be found that belongs to a class of tetraquarks with two heavy quarks and two light antiquarks. Such particles decay by transforming into a pair of mesons, each formed by one of the heavy quarks and one of the light antiquarks. According to some theoretical predictions, the mass of tetraquarks of this type should be very close to the sum of masses of the two mesons. Such proximity in mass makes the decay "difficult," resulting in a longer lifetime of the particle, and indeed Tcc+, is the longest-lived exotic hadron found to date.

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The lifestyles of around three average Americans will create enough planet-heating emissions to kill one person, and the emissions from a single coal-fired power plant are likely to result in more than 900 deaths, according to the first analysis to calculate the mortal cost of carbon emissions. From a report: The new research builds upon what is known as the "social cost of carbon," a monetary figure placed upon the damage caused by each ton of carbon dioxide emissions, by assigning an expected death toll from the emissions that cause the climate crisis. The analysis draws upon several public health studies to conclude that for every 4,434 metric tons of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere beyond the 2020 rate of emissions, one person globally will die prematurely from the increased temperature. This additional CO2 is equivalent to the current lifetime emissions of 3.5 Americans. Adding a further 4m metric tons above last year's level, produced by the average US coal plant, will cost 904 lives worldwide by the end of the century, the research found. On a grander scale, eliminating planet-heating emissions by 2050 would save an expected 74 million lives around the world this century. The figures for expected deaths from the release of emissions aren't definitive and may well be "a vast underestimate" as they only account for heat-related mortality rather than deaths from flooding, storms, crop failures and other impacts that flow from the climate crisis, according to Daniel Bressler of Columbia University's Earth Institute, who wrote the paper.

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China's breathtaking economic growth created cities ill-equipped to face extreme weather. Last week's dramatic floods showed that much will have to change. From a report: China's breakneck growth over the last four decades erected soaring cities where there had been hamlets and farmland. The cities lured factories, and the factories lured workers. The boom lifted hundreds of millions of people out of the poverty and rural hardship they once faced. Now those cities face the daunting new challenge of adapting to extreme weather caused by climate change, a possibility that few gave much thought to when the country began its extraordinary economic transformation. China's pell-mell, brisk urbanization has in some ways made the challenge harder to face. No one weather event can be immediately linked to climate change, but the storm that flooded Zhengzhou and other cities in central China last week, killing at least 69 as of Monday, reflects a global trend of extreme weather that has seen deadly flooding recently in Germany and Belgium, and severe heat and wildfires in Siberia. The flooding in China, which engulfed subway lines, washed away roads and cut off villages, also highlights the environmental vulnerabilities that accompanied the country's economic boom and could yet undermine it. China has always had floods, but as Kong Feng, then a public policy professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, wrote in 2019, the flooding of cities across China in recent years is "a general manifestation of urban problems" in the country. The vast expansion of roads, subways and railways in cities that swelled almost overnight meant there were fewer places where rain could safely be absorbed -- disrupting what scientists call the natural hydrological cycle. Faith Chan, a professor of geology with the University of Nottingham in Ningbo in eastern China, said the country's cities -- and there are 93 with populations of more than a million -- modernized at a time when Chinese leaders made climate resiliency less of a priority than economic growth. "If they had a chance to build a city again, or to plan one, I think they would agree to make it more balanced," said Mr. Chan, who is also a visiting fellow at the Water@Leeds Research Institute of the University of Leeds.

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In a preprint posted online Thursday night, researchers at Google in collaboration with physicists at Stanford, Princeton and other universities say that they have used Google's quantum computer to demonstrate a genuine "time crystal" for the first time. From a report: A novel phase of matter that physicists have strived to realize for many years, a time crystal is an object whose parts move in a regular, repeating cycle, sustaining this constant change without burning any energy. "The consequence is amazing: You evade the second law of thermodynamics," said co-author Roderich Moessner, director of the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, Germany. That's the law that says disorder always increases. Time crystals are also the first objects to spontaneously break "time-translation symmetry," the usual rule that a stable object will remain the same throughout time. A time crystal is both stable and ever-changing, with special moments that come at periodic intervals in time. The time crystal is a new category of phases of matter, expanding the definition of what a phase is. All other known phases, like water or ice, are in thermal equilibrium: Their constituent atoms have settled into the state with the lowest energy permitted by the ambient temperature, and their properties don't change with time. The time crystal is the first "out-of-equilibrium" phase: It has order and perfect stability despite being in an excited and evolving state. "This is just this completely new and exciting space that we're working in now," said Vedika Khemani, a condensed matter physicist now at Stanford who co-discovered the novel phase while she was a graduate student and co-authored the new paper.

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The U.S. agency leading the fight against Covid-19 gave up a crucial surveillance tool tracking the effectiveness of vaccines just as a troublesome new variant of the virus was emerging. From a report: While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped comprehensively tracking what are known as vaccine breakthrough cases in May, the consequences of that choice are only now beginning to show. At the time, the agency had identified only 10,262 cases across the U.S. where a fully vaccinated person had tested positive for Covid. Most people who got infected after vaccination showed few symptoms, and appeared to be at low risk of infecting others. But in the months since, the number of vaccine breakthrough cases has grown, as has the risk that they present. Further reading: 'The War Has Changed': Internal CDC Document Urges New Messaging, Warns Delta Infections Likely More Severe.

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Anyone who still loves the guy with the bad combover is a Trumphole™.

It's always a good time to watch the Pale Blue Dot, regain perspective.

Several readers shared this story: Tesla CEO Elon Musk reportedly demanded to become Apple's CEO in a 2016 phone call with current Apple CEO Tim Cook, according to an upcoming book about Tesla. The story, shared by the Los Angeles Times, comes from Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century by The Wall Street Journal reporter Tim Higgins. As the book tells it, Cook suggested to Musk that Apple acquire Tesla, and Musk said he wanted to be CEO. Cook reportedly agreed, but Musk clarified that he wanted to be the CEO of Apple. "According to a former aide who heard (Musk's) retelling of the exchange," Cook said "Fuck you" before hanging up the phone. But Musk and Apple have both suggested that the conversation couldn't have happened because Musk and Cook have never spoken. Musk, in a tweet on Friday, flat out said that "Cook & I have never spoken or written to each other ever." He also said that he attempted to meet with Cook about Apple acquiring Tesla, a meeting that Cook refused. When asked for comment about the reported conversation, Apple pointed to remarks Cook made during an interview with The New York Times' Kara Swisher where he denied having ever spoken to Elon. "You know, I've never spoken to Elon, although I have great admiration and respect for the company he's built," Cook said.

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The new operations centre will help the UK maintain a "battle-winning advantage", ministers say.

Bacteria, fungus and enzymes can all digest plastic, but can they work at a useful commercial scale?

Security researchers say they have uncovered an ongoing hacking campaign carried out by suspected Russian spies who are continuing to stage attacks amid U.S. pressure on the Kremlin to curtail its alleged cyber-intrusions. From a report: The California-based cybersecurity firm RiskIQ Inc. said in a report released on Friday that it had uncovered more than 30 command and control servers -- used by cybercriminals to send orders to compromised networks or receive stolen data -- associated with the state-sponsored hacking group, which is known as APT29 or Cozy Bear. The group is using the servers to deploy malicious software named WellMess, according to RiskIQ. APT stands for "advanced persistent threat," and is a term often used to describe state-sponsored hacking groups. In July last year, government agencies from the U.S., U.K., and Canada, said that APT29 was "almost certainly" part of the Russian intelligence services and accused it of hacking organizations involved in the development of the Covid-19 vaccine and stealing intellectual property. The same group was also allegedly involved in the 2016 hack on the Democratic National Committee and the breach of SolarWinds, which was disclosed last year, according to U.S. officials. The Russian embassy in Washington referred to an earlier statement, in which it urged journalists to stop "sweeping accusations" and said it was confident that discussions with the U.S. related to cyberspace would "improve the security of the information infrastructure of our countries."

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Epic, which sued Apple last year and has expressed concerns about the exorbitant fees the iPhone-maker charges on App Store, has found a new backer in the court of public opinion: Elon Musk. In a tweet Friday, Musk likened Apple's App Store charges to "a de facto global tax on the Internet." He added, "Epic is right."

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China ordered more than two dozen technology firms to carry out internal inspections as part of a campaign to root out illegal online activity. From a report: The Ministry of Industry Information Technology on Friday told 25 of its largest internet and hardware companies including Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings to carry out internal reviews and rectify issues ranging from data security to consumer rights protections. The twin giants and 10 other firms were also asked separately on Wednesday to step up data security protections, including the export of key information, by the Internet Society of China, which was acting on behalf of MIIT. The meetings this week come after the internet industry regulator announced on Monday it was beginning a six-month campaign to crackdown on illegal online activity. Days later, it told Tencent and 13 other corporations to address problems related to pop-ups within their ads. The crackdown is the latest move by Beijing to rein in the country's internet leaders in areas from antitrust to data security and ride-hailing. Meituan, Xiaomi and ByteDance were among firms summoned to both meetings. On Friday, the MIIT ordered the companies to address eight types of problematic behavior including pop-ups, data collection and storage as well as the blocking of external links.

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It's always a good time to watch the Pale Blue Dot, regain perspective.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Alphabet's Google asked a federal judge to order Microsoft to hand over internal documents from certain executives that Google says it needs to defend a Justice Department's monopoly lawsuit. Google said in a court filing Thursday night in Washington that Microsoft refuses to search the files of 19 executives that are relevant to Google's defense. Microsoft is a key player in the Justice Department's lawsuit, which accuses Google of abusing its dominance in internet search. The government says Google illegally used its power in the market to thwart competitive threats from rivals like Microsoft's Bing search engine. "No third party is more central to this litigation than Microsoft," Google said in the filing. Microsoft countered in a separate filing that Google's request for documents is unreasonable and burdensome. Microsoft said it offered to collect documents from 27 individuals and that Google has proposed it provide information from an additional 28, for a total of 55. Further reading: Google and Microsoft End Their Five-Year Cease-Fire.

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