Tag Archives: mystery

Is Eastern Wolf a Distinct Species?

The top-down regulation of ecosystems requires the action of top carnivorous predators like wolves. However, due to human activities, there has been a large reduction in the number of wolves in North America, which requires our immediate conservation. It is urgent to save endangered species because protecting endangered species like wolves from extinction is protecting ourselves from extinction. To be specific, without wolves in the ecosystem, the conditions of other animals and plants will be disturbed and altered unpredictably, and the disturbance may result in a more wide-spread collapse of species, including human beings.

 

Wolves in Yellow Stone National Park affect many aspects of the ecosystem (credit: National Park service)

 

Eastern wolves, native to North America, are one of the wolves/coyotes that have been disappearing, and are claimed to require protection by the law. The origin of eastern wolves (Canis lycaon) has been the subject of an ongoing debate and controversy. Specifically, while some claimed that eastern wolves are a distinct species, others argued that they are the hybrids from other wolves.

 

Eastern wolf (Canis Lycanon) (credit: Michael Runtz)

 

As the debate proceeds, scientists have found controversial evidence, including morphological and genetic analysis of wolves, giving inconsistent interpretations of the origin of eastern wolves.

 

Different canis types, eastern wolves (second from left) (credit: ScienceNews)

 

According to the law, only endangered species are qualified for protection, while hybrids are not. Therefore, the mysterious origin of eastern wolves creates problem for the government because whether eastern wolves are qualified for protection by law cannot be determined currently.

In conclusion, the most urgent act is for scientists to solve the mystery of the origin of eastern wolves, and then the government can determine whether eastern wolves should be saved as a top predator.

Fast radio burst signals

Artificial Radio waves is one of the most common electromagnetic radiations in the modern world. Nowadays, people use it in broadcasting, radar, and other systems. However, natural radio waves come from the space objects and we will talk about one of these natural radio waves, Fast radio burst(FRB).  On 9 January 2019, it is reported that the astronomers found the second repeating FRB source by using CHIME which is a new radio telescope in Canada. This repeating FRB source was from over 1.5 billion light years away and it was named as FRB 180814. But, what is FRB exactly?

CHIME experiment construction (Mateus A. Fandiño)

FRB is a transient radio pulse and the length of it start from a millisecond to a few milliseconds. Although FRBs is reported for multiple times, the repeating fast radio burst is quite rare and only two of the repeating FRB is FRB 121102 and this FRB 180814. The first signals from FRB 121102 were discovered in 2012 and it was confirmed that it was caused by plasma dispersion. However, FRB 121102 was observed by astronomer Paul Scholz in November 2015 again. He used the Arecibo radio telescope to find 10 repeating fast radio pulses from May 2015 TO June 2015. In the next few years, the FRB 121102 was recorded once again in 2016,2017 and 2018, this showed that it is not a one-time event.

But what are the sources of these FRBs? We are still yet to confirm the source of fast radio burst signals, but it is suggested that it could come from a highly magnetized rotating neutron star(pulsar). A neutron star is the collapsed core of a giant star. Some of the neutron stars will emit electromagnetic radiations such as FRB so that they can be detected by instruments.

Neutron Stars(NASA Goddard)

 

Some scientist suggested that the repeating FRB could come from an unknown extraterrestrial intelligence. They argued that the FRB repeating signals is an artificial stray blast and they are caused by spaceships. However, this is also a hypothesis and it is not be proven.

In conclusion, these “sources” for FRB are all assumptions and the source of FRB signals still remain to be unknown. Scientists are still working on it and looking forward to solving this mystery.

 

Siming tang