1/1/2022 8:00 AMShrubs in the desert Southwest have increased their water use efficiency at some of the highest rates ever observed to cope with a decades-long megadrought. That’s the finding of a new study from University of Utah researchers, who found that although the shrubs’ efficiency increases are unprecedented and heroic, they may not be enough to adapt to the long-term drying trend in the West.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-shrubs-cranked-efficiency-survive-megadrought.html
1/1/2022 10:00 AM
1/1/2022 12:00 PMIt’s hard to imagine a more inhospitable world than our closest planetary neighbor. With an atmosphere thick with carbon dioxide, and a surface hot enough to melt lead, Venus is a scorched and suffocating wasteland where life as we know it could not survive. The planet’s clouds are similarly hostile, blanketing the planet in droplets of sulfuric acid caustic enough to burn a hole through human skin.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-acid-neutralizing-life-forms-habitable-pockets-venus.html
1/1/2022 2:00 PMWhat does a quantum computer have in common with a top draft pick in sports? Both have attracted lots of attention from talent scouts. Quantum computers, experimental machines that can perform some tasks faster than supercomputers, are constantly evaluated, much like young athletes, for their potential to someday become game-changing technology.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-quantum-power-faster-accurate.html
1/1/2022 4:00 PMThyme and oregano possess an anti-cancer compound that suppresses tumor development, but adding more to your tomato sauce isn’t enough to gain significant benefit. The key to unlocking the power of these plants is in amplifying the amount of the compound created or synthesizing the compound for drug development.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-scientists-recipe-anti-cancer-compound-herbs.html
1/1/2022 6:00 PMThe largest planet discovered to date, that astronomers are sure is a planet and has an accurately measured diameter, is HAT-P-67 b. This planet is a “hot Jupiter” — a gas giant similar to Jupiter or Saturn, but orbiting so close to its star that it takes only a few days (4.8 days in this case) for the planet to orbit once around its sun.https://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2018/11/the-largest-exoplanet
1/2/2022 8:00 AMNASA marked an impressive milestone when its Parker Solar Probe was the first ever to touch the sun and return earlier this year, and footage from its historic mission offers a stunning glimpse at the massive star’s upper atmosphere. The black-and-white timelapse shows a view from the probe as it hurls through a flurry of glowing bands and sparks that dart across the frame with celestial bodies panning in the background. These structures, known as coronal streamers, are part of the magnetic field surrounding the star—it doesn’t have a solid surface, meaning satellites like Parker come in contact with the fiery matter while flying through it. These sweeping plumes are often visible from Earth during solar eclipses.https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2021/12/nasa-probe-sun-timelapse/
1/2/2022 10:00 AM
1/2/2022 12:00 PMEvery so often, the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud throw galactic snowballs made up of ice, dust and rocks our way: 4.6-billion-year-old leftovers from the formation of the solar system.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-comets-green-tails-years.html
1/2/2022 2:00 PMA Yale-led team of chemists has unveiled the blueprints for a key enzyme that may contain design principles for a new generation of synthetic solar fuel catalysts. The research, led by Yale’s Gary Brudvig and Christopher Gisriel, uses cryo-electron microscopy on a microorganism called Synechocystis to get an extreme close-up picture of Photosystem II, the enzyme in photosynthesis that uses water as a solar fuel, enabling researchers to observe how the enzyme works.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-superstar-enzyme-ready-close-up.html
1/2/2022 4:00 PMHere are some little known facts about bamboo: bamboo grows fast—really fast. It has an amazing regenerative quality. It eats carbon dioxide. And it’s incredibly lightweight, strong and flexible.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-bamboo-fibres-strong-green-alternative.html
1/2/2022 6:00 PMIf you want to be dazzled by a spectacular northern lights display, your best bet is to skywatch near the North Pole. But that wasn’t the case 41,000 years ago, when a disruption of Earth’s magnetic field sent auroras wandering toward the equator.https://www.space.com/wandering-aurora-laschamp-event
1/3/2022 8:00 AMPh.D. student Marloes Bistervels from the Self-Organizing Matter research group at AMOLF has managed to use light to very precisely control the formation of nanocomposites in the shape of corals and vases. By illuminating a solution of the right ingredients with UV light, she can control where, when and which structures arise at the micrometer scale.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-light-controlled-spontaneous-growth-nanostructures.html
1/3/2022 10:00 AM
1/3/2022 12:00 PMHigh-precision measurements have provided important clues about processes that impair the efficiency of superconductors. Future work building on this research could offer improvements in a range of superconductor devices, such quantum computers and sensitive particle detectors.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-moments-silence-superconductors.html
1/3/2022 2:00 PMResearchers have identified the first signature of a magnetic field surrounding a planet outside of our solar system. Earth’s magnetic field acts as a shield against energetic particles from the sun known as the solar wind. Magnetic fields could play similar roles on other planets.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-astronomers-signature-magnetic-field-exoplanet.html
1/3/2022 4:00 PMA 72- to 66-million-year-old embryo found inside a fossilized dinosaur egg sheds new light on the link between the behavior of modern birds and dinosaurs, according to a new study.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-exquisitely-embryo-fossilized-dinosaur-egg.html
1/3/2022 6:00 PMWhen Comet Leonard, a mass of space dust, rock and ice about a half-mile (1 kilometer) wide, makes its closest pass of the Sun on Jan. 3, 2022, it will be a journey 40,000 years in the making. Ahead of its close pass, two Sun-observing spacecraft captured these views of the comet.https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2021/views-of-comet-leonard-from-two-sun-watching-spacecraft
1/4/2022 8:00 AMResearchers made a huge splash last year when they announced the discovery of significant sources of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus. The colorless and odorless gas, they claimed at the time, could be a possible sign of life, as it’s often the result of organic matter breaking down here on Earth. Now, a new study is giving new life to the tantalizing theory. Sulfuric acid, MIT scientists say, could be neutralized by the presence of ammonia, which astronomers also suspect to be present in the planet’s atmosphere thanks to the Venera 8 and Pioneer Venus probe missions in the 1970s.https://futurism.com/mit-scientists-life-venus-ammonia
1/4/2022 10:00 AM
1/4/2022 12:00 PMA previously unknown bird-like dinosaur that used brute strength to overcome its prey has been found by paleontologists combing through fossils found on the Isle of Wight. It dates back to the Early Cretaceous, over 100 million years ago.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-ancient-relative-velociraptor-unearthed-great.html
1/4/2022 2:00 PMResearchers in Australia discovered “the first true millipede” – a 3-inch-long creature with 1,306 legs. But that bug doesn’t come close to a recently discovered ancestor from over 300 million years ago, one that scientists in England say was a giant millipede “as big as a car” at nearly 9 feet long.https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2021/12/21/giant-millipede-fossil-big-as-car/8984712002/
1/4/2022 4:00 PMFor the first time, scientists⁠—starting from a discovery by scientific amateurs⁠—have succeeded in confirm evidence for a fully developed shell of a common-envelope system (CE), the phase of the common envelope of a binary star system.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-scientists-evidence-class-galactic-nebulae.html
1/4/2022 6:00 PMThe finding that some genes are active from the get-go challenges the textbook view that genes don’t become active in human embryos until they are made up of four-to-eight cells, two or three days after fertilization. The newly discovered activity begins at the one-cell stage—far sooner than previously thought—promising to change the way we think about our developmental origins.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-genes-human-embryo-get-go.html
1/5/2022 8:00 AMRogue planets are elusive cosmic objects that have masses comparable to those of the planets in our Solar System but do not orbit a star, instead roaming freely on their own. Not many were known until now, but a team of astronomers, using data from several European Southern Observatory (ESO) telescopes and other facilities, have just discovered at least 70 new rogue planets in our galaxy. This is the largest group of rogue planets ever discovered, an important step towards understanding the origins and features of these mysterious galactic nomads.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-eso-telescopes-uncover-largest-group.html
1/5/2022 10:00 AM
1/5/2022 12:00 PMBlack hole–entanglement link could be simulated in lab, new paper suggests.https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/wormhole-black-hole-quantum-entanglement
1/5/2022 2:00 PMA Rice University-led study is forcing physicists to rethink superconductivity in uranium ditelluride, an A-list material in the worldwide race to create fault-tolerant quantum computers.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-a-list-candidate-fault-free-quantum.html
1/5/2022 4:00 PMThe Matterhorn appears as an immovable, massive mountain that has towered over the landscape near Zermatt for thousands of years. A study now shows that this impression is wrong. An international research team has proven that the Matterhorn is instead constantly in motion, swaying gently back and forth about once every two seconds. This subtle vibration with normally imperceptible amplitudes is stimulated by seismic energy in the Earth originating from the world’s oceans, earthquakes, as well as human activity.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-simulations-resonant-swaying-matterhorn.html
1/5/2022 6:00 PMEver since graphene—a thin carbon sheet just one-atom thick—was discovered more than 15 years ago, the wonder material became a workhorse in materials science research. From this body of work, other researchers learned that slicing graphene along the edge of its honeycomb lattice creates one-dimensional zigzag graphene strips or nanoribbons with exotic magnetic properties.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-technique-tunes-graphene-nanoribbons-electronic.html
1/6/2022 8:00 AMNew research revealing a major migration to the island of Great Britain offers fresh insights into the languages spoken at the time, the ancestry of present-day England and Wales, and even ancient habits of dairy consumption.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-harvard-geneticists-ancient-britain-insights.html
1/6/2022 10:00 AM
1/6/2022 12:00 PMA new study has provided the most detailed timeline of mammal evolution to date. The research describes a new and fast computational approach to obtain precisely dated evolutionary trees, known as ‘timetrees’. The authors used the novel method to analyze a mammal genomic dataset and answer a long-standing question around whether modern placental mammal groups originated before or after the Cretaceous-Palaeogene (K-Pg) mass extinction, which wiped out over 70 percent of all species, including all dinosaurs.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-insights-timeline-mammal-evolution.html
1/6/2022 2:00 PMResearchers thought that a quasar in the Teacup galaxy was fading away, but new data suggests that it’s still blasting powerful radiation into space.https://astronomy.com/news/2019/03/a-quasar-powered-storm-pours-from-the-teacup-galaxy
1/6/2022 4:00 PMResearchers have discovered that using a thin-film coating of copper or copper compounds on surfaces could enhance copper’s ability to inactivate or destroy the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for COVID-19.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-coating-surfaces-thin-layer-copper.html
1/6/2022 6:00 PMWhat will happen to the solar system when the Sun dies? It might be the end of planet Earth, but life could still find a way.https://astronomy.com/news/2020/02/the-suns-death-could-mean-new-life-in-the-outer-solar-system
1/7/2022 8:00 AMThe dayside of this scorching world is so hot that it splits hydrogen molecules in twain. But don’t worry, they can recombine after migrating to the planet’s cooler nightside.https://astronomy.com/news/2020/01/the-hottest-known-exoplanet-is-melting-molecules-in-its-atmosphere
1/7/2022 10:00 AM
1/7/2022 12:00 PMSnakes, some lizards and even a few mammals can have a venomous bite. Although these lineages split more than 300 million years ago, their venoms have evolved from the same ancestral salivary protein, scientists report.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-venoms-snakes-salivary-protein-mammals.html
1/7/2022 2:00 PMNon-dimensional numbers may sound like a scary, incomprehensible term reserved for scientists in a laboratory, but you have more experience with them than you know. The Mach number measures the speed of an object relative to the speed of sound, so whether measuring in kilometers per second or miles per hour, Mach 2 is always twice the speed of sound. With the COVID-19 pandemic still raging worldwide, R0 is an important number constantly in the news that measures how many people a person will infect over the course of an illness, whether that time period is days, weeks or months.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-mystery-small-dimensionless-big-effect.html
1/7/2022 4:00 PMScientists need to pin down the lifetime to better understand fundamental physics questions, like how the universe evolved.https://astronomy.com/news/2021/10/space-may-help-scientists-finally-pin-down-the-lifetime-of-a-neutron
1/7/2022 6:00 PMIn the sports arena, spectators sometimes create a spectacle known as a wave, as successive groups stand up in unison to yell with arms in the air. Now, researchers have shown that small freshwater fish known as sulphur mollies do a similar thing, and for life or death reasons. The collective wave action produced by hundreds of thousands of fish working together helps to protect them from predatory birds.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-fish-hundreds-thousands.html
1/8/2022 8:00 AMThe largest-ever flying animal acted like a giant heron, plucking prey from the water and launching itself into the air. Quetzalcoatlus northropi was a pterosaur which ruled the skies for millions of years, alongside a newly discovered relative.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-largest-ever-animal-giant-heron.html
1/8/2022 10:00 AM
1/8/2022 12:00 PMAn international team of researchers have used a unique tool inserted into an electron microscope to create a transistor that’s 25,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-electron-microscope-nanotube-tiny-transistor.html
1/8/2022 2:00 PMMercury is a most unusual planet. The smallest planet in the solar system, and the closest planet to the sun, it is in a 3:2 spin resonance, slowly turning and experiencing scorching heat up to 430 degrees Celsius, and the night side frigid, down to -170 degrees Celsius. Due to its much larger iron-rich core compared to Earth, it has the second-highest average density in the solar system, just 1.5 percent below Earth’s. Despite its proximity to the sun, the surface of Mercury was, surprisingly, found to be rich in volatile elements such as sodium and sulfur.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-earliest-atmosphere-mercury.html
1/8/2022 4:00 PMThe two-meter skull of a newly discovered species of giant ichthyosaur, the earliest known, is shedding new light on the marine reptiles’ rapid growth into behemoths of the Dinosaurian oceans, and helping us better understand the journey of modern cetaceans (whales and dolphins) to becoming the largest animals to ever inhabit the Earth.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-earth-first-known-giant-big-sperm.html
1/8/2022 6:00 PMAstronomers believe they’ve spotted the first extragalactic exoplanet beyond our own galaxy. Residing some 28 million light-years away near the heart of the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51), the binary system M51-ULS-1 consists of either a neutron star or a black hole that’s tangoing with a more standard companion star.https://astronomy.com/news/2021/10/first-exoplanet-discovered-outside-our-galaxy
1/9/2022 8:00 AMEarth’s magnetic north pole, which has been wandering faster than expected in recent years, has now crossed the prime meridian.https://www.geologyin.com/2019/12/earths-magnetic-north-pole-continues.html
1/9/2022 10:00 AM
1/9/2022 12:00 PMUsing the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), astronomers have detected more than 300 pulsating variable stars by observing the Milky Way’s satellite galaxy Antlia 2 (or Ant 2 for short). The finding could improve our understanding of this galaxy and its surroundings.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-hundreds-pulsating-variable-stars.html
1/9/2022 2:00 PMScientists in Switzerland and Germany have achieved efficient electron-beam modulation using integrated photonics—circuits that guide light on a chip. The experiments could lead to entirely new quantum measurement schemes in electron microscopy.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-photonics-electron-microscopy.html
1/9/2022 4:00 PMWhich factors determine how fast a quantum computer can perform its calculations? Physicists at the University of Bonn and the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology have devised an elegant experiment to answer this question.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-quantum-marbles-bowl.html
1/9/2022 6:00 PMImaginary numbers might seem like unicorns and goblins — interesting but irrelevant to reality. But for describing matter at its roots, imaginary numbers turn out to be essential. They seem to be woven into the fabric of quantum mechanics, the math describing the realm of molecules, atoms and subatomic particles. A theory obeying the rules of quantum physics needs imaginary numbers to describe the real world, two new experiments suggest.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/quantum-physics-imaginary-numbers-math-reality
1/10/2022 8:00 AMIn collaboration with an international team of researchers, Michigan State University (MSU) has helped create the world’s lightest version—or isotope—of magnesium to date.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-team-world-lightest-isotope-magnesium.html
1/10/2022 10:00 AM
1/10/2022 12:00 PMLife is teeming nearly everywhere in the oceans, except in certain pockets where oxygen naturally plummets and waters become unlivable for most aerobic organisms. These desolate pools are “oxygen-deficient zones,” or ODZs. And though they make up less than 1 percent of the ocean’s total volume, they are a significant source of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. Their boundaries can also limit the extent of fisheries and marine ecosystems.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-scientists-atlas-ocean-oxygen-starved.html
1/10/2022 2:00 PMAn international research team of researchers from Kyoto University and University of Strasbourg has used drones to investigate the “multilevel societal structure” of the feral horses in Serra D’Arga, Portugal.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-feral-horses-evidence-societal.html
1/10/2022 4:00 PMAn international scientific group with outstanding Valencian participation has managed to measure for the first time oscillations in the brightness of a magnetar during its most violent moments. In just a 10th of a second, the magnetar released energy equivalent to that produced by the sun in 100,000 years. The observation was carried out without human intervention, thanks to an artificial intelligence system developed at the Image Processing Laboratory (IPL) of the University of Valencia.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-capture-high-frequency-oscillations-gigantic-eruption.html
1/10/2022 6:00 PMFrom insects to primates, from dogs and cats to cold-blooded reptiles, animals have played a significant role in space exploration since the first fruit flies launched to Earth’s upper atmosphere in 1947.https://www.space.com/animals-in-space-history-human-spaceflight
1/11/2022 8:00 AMAn international team of astronomers has investigated a very high energy (VHE) emission from the radio galaxy Messier 87. Results of the study, published December 16 on arXiv.org, could help us better understand the nature of M87 and the processes responsible for VHE emission from this source.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-high-energy-emission-messier.html
1/11/2022 10:00 AMWhile working with helium nanodroplets, scientists at the Department of Ion Physics and Applied Physics led by Fabio Zappa and Paul Scheier have come across a surprising phenomenon: When the ultracold droplets hit a hard surface, they behave like drops of water. Ions with which they were previously doped thus remain protected on impact and are not neutralized.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-large-helium-nanodroplets-splash-surface.html
1/11/2022 12:00 PMThe three-body problem is one of the oldest problems in physics: It concerns the motions of systems of three bodies—like the sun, Earth, and the moon—and how their orbits change and evolve due to their mutual gravity. The three-body problem has been a focus of scientific inquiry ever since Newton.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-drunken-solution-chaotic-three-body-problem.html
1/11/2022 2:00 PMThey’re “gross and slimy and flaccid and wiggling.” But parasites can be just as important as more charismatic animals—and many may be on the verge of disappearing.https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/parasites-are-going-extinct-heres-why-we-need-to-save-them
1/11/2022 4:00 PMEach one of the trillions of cells that make up the human body suffers more than 10,000 DNA lesions every day. These injuries would be catastrophic if cells were unable to repair them, but a very delicate machinery that detects and repair genetic damage is at work to prevent DNA mutations and diseases such as cancer. With the help of machine learning applied to high-throughput microscopy, among other techniques, researcher Bárbara Martínez, a member of the Metabolism and Cell Signalling Group led by Alejo Efeyan at the National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), along with Raul Mostoslavsky and his team from Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston, USA), have managed to visualize this DNA repair machinery in detail and identified new repair proteins. These results, designed in Boston, developed between Boston and Madrid, and published this week in Cell Reports, could help develop new cancer therapies.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-tools-visualize-dna.html
1/11/2022 6:00 PMStrange things are happening at the outer edges of our solar system. An object up to ten times the mass of Earth is pulling others towards it. Is it a planet, or something else?https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210216-the-massive-planet-scientists-cant-find
1/12/2022 8:00 AMStrong winds and unusual ocean currents helped paint a breathtaking icescape on the surface of the ocean near Antarctica, and the rare phenomenon was recently captured in a stunning satellite image.https://www.space.com/antarctica-ice-streaks-satellite-photo
1/12/2022 10:00 AMBy analyzing the acquisition-conservation tradeoff in root systems among different plants, ecologists have put forward the root economics spectrum (RES) hypothesis. Some plant species have finer and cost-effective absorptive roots that contribute to rapid nutrient uptake but have shorter lifespans, whereas others have thicker and less cost-effective absorptive roots marked by slower nutrient acquisition but longer lifespans. The RES hypothesis reflects the correlations among different root traits, which can facilitate the adaptation of plants to the local environment. The RES is one of the core issues in root ecology, but its adaptive role and genetic basis remains largely elusive.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-exploring-genetic-basis-root-economics.html
1/12/2022 12:00 PMAstronomers searching through six years of images from one of the best astro-cameras in the world have just made a massive discovery — literally. Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein, both of the University of Pennsylvania, have spotted a giant comet traveling inward from the fringes of our solar system, headed for a close encounter with the Sun in 2031.https://astronomy.com/news/2021/07/giant-comet-found
1/12/2022 2:00 PMAn international team of researchers has found and excavated the remains of a young man killed approximately 3,600 years ago by a tsunami created by the eruption of Thera—a volcano located on what is now the island of Santorini. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes how the remains were found and how they were identified as belonging to a victim of the Thera tsunami.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-skeleton-young-ancient-tsunami-turkish.html
1/12/2022 4:00 PMChina’s Chang’e-4 lunar rover grew a cotton plant one the Moon for a bit before it died from the cold.https://bigthink.com/hard-science/china-moon-cotton/
1/12/2022 6:00 PMImmunologists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have identified biochemical “switches” that control development of regulatory T cells and offer a novel strategy for treatment of autoimmune diseases and cancer.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-secrets-regulatory-cell-reveal-clinical.html
1/13/2022 8:00 AMhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?ref=saved&v=1274215879756721
1/13/2022 10:00 AMA team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in the U.S., the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, France and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany has found evidence that suggests early humans gained an energy budget by increasing their rate of energy acquisition, not by taking advantage of adaptive strategies. In their paper published in the journal Science, they describe their study of energy expenditure versus energy intake in early humans.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-early-humans-gained-energy-acquisition.html
1/13/2022 12:00 PMNatural evolution is a slow process that relies on the gradual accumulation of genetic mutations. In recent years, scientists have found ways to speed up the process on a small scale, allowing them to rapidly create new proteins and other molecules in their lab.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-evolution-molecules-lab-robotic-platform.html
1/13/2022 2:00 PMLet’s take a journey into the depths of the Earth, down through the crust and mantle nearly to the core. We’ll use seismic waves to show the way, since they echo through the planet following an earthquake and reveal its internal structure like radar waves.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-chemical-leftovers-early-earth-core.html
1/13/2022 4:00 PMRealizing the vision of culturing organs for use in life-saving transplantation procedures is still a long way off. However, the work of Prof. Jacob Hanna on stem cells is paving the way for this to become a reality.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-closer-human-transplantation.html
1/13/2022 6:00 PMWhen a star disappears down the throat of a black hole, the flash is just the start of the show.https://astronomy.com/magazine/news/2021/12/how-do-black-holes-swallow-stars
1/14/2022 8:00 AMA volcanologist says the eruption on the island of La Palma is a unique window into the “personality” of basaltic volcanoes.https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/canary-islands-eruption-resets-volcano-forecasts/
1/14/2022 10:00 AMA new study shows how cell membranes curve to create the “mouths” that allow the cells to consume things that surround them.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-high-resolution-lab-cells.html
1/14/2022 12:00 PMOptical interference is not only a fundamental phenomenon that has enabled new theories of light to be derived, but it has also been used in interferometry for the measurement of small displacements, refractive index changes, and surface irregularities. The Michelson interferometer is a commonly used interferometer, by which the equal-inclination and equal-thickness interference fringes of light can be easily observed. Historically, this interferometer has been used in many famous physical experiments, such as the Michelson-Morey experiment and gravitational wave detection.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-team-angular-spectrum-dependent.html
1/14/2022 2:00 PMAn innovative approach could turn nanoparticles into simple reservoirs for storing hydrogen. The highly volatile gas is considered a promising energy carrier for the future, which could provide climate-friendly fuels for airplanes, ships and trucks, for example, as well as allowing climate-friendly steel and cement production—depending on how the hydrogen gas is generated. However, storing hydrogen is costly: Either the gas has to be kept in pressurized tanks, at up to 700 bar, or it must be liquified, which means cooling it down to minus 253 degrees Celsius. Both procedures consume additional energy.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-team-nano-chocolates-hydrogen.html
1/14/2022 4:00 PMFor decades, the Rafflesia has resisted attempts to grow it outside Southeast Asian rainforests. But one Indonesian botanist’s efforts have finally blossomed.https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/cultivating-the-worlds-largest-stinkiest-flower-is-no-small-task
1/14/2022 6:00 PMAstronomers have managed to link the properties of the inner planets of our solar system with our cosmic history: with the emergence of ring structures in the swirling disk of gas and dust in which these planets were formed. The rings are associated with basic physical properties such as the transition from an outer region where ice can form where water can only exist as water vapor. The astronomers made use of a spread of simulation to explore different possibilities of inner planet evolution. Our solar system’s inner regions are a rare, but possible outcome of that evolution.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-cosmic-history-properties-mercury-venus.html
1/15/2022 8:00 AMUsing ESA’s XMM-Newton spacecraft, an international team of astronomers has conducted X-ray observations of the most distant known gravitationally lensed quasar—J0439+1634. Results of the study, published December 20 on the arXiv pre-print server, shed more light on the properties of this source.https://phys.org/news/2021-12-distant-quasar-j04391634-explored-x-rays.html
1/15/2022 10:00 AMThe search for habitable exoplanets spans far and wide, pushing the limits of what our modern telescopes are capable of. But rest assured that we aren’t ignoring what’s in our own backyard. Researchers have kept diligent eyes on Alpha Centauri, the closest system to Earth that happens to house Sun-like stars. And now, a comprehensive study published in Research Notes of the AAS clears Alpha Centauri’s two brightest stars of a crucial habitability factor: dangerous X-ray radiation.https://astronomy.com/news/2018/06/alpha-centauri-system-could-have-favorable-conditions-for-life
1/15/2022 12:00 PMEvidence that cross-continental Stone Age networking events powered human evolution ramped up in 2021. A long-standing argument that Homo sapiens originated in East Africa before moving elsewhere and replacing Eurasian Homo species such as Neandertals has come under increasing fire over the last decade. Research this year supported an alternative scenario in which H. sapiens evolved across vast geographic expanses, first within Africa and later outside it.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/human-evolution-mating-2021-research
1/15/2022 2:00 PMThe years following the asteroid impact that wiped out non-avian dinosaurs were dark times — literally. Soot from raging wildfires filled the sky and blocked the sun, directly contributing to the wave of extinctions that followed, new research has found.https://www.space.com/asteroid-impact-dinosaur-extinction-darkness
1/15/2022 4:00 PMTardigrades — those microscopic, plump-bodied critters lovingly known as “moss piglets” — have been put through the ringer for science. The amazingly durable creatures have been shot out of guns, bathed in boiling-hot water, exposed to intense ultraviolet radiation and even (accidentally) crash-landed on the moon, all to test the limits of their impressive “tun” state — a survival mechanism wherein tardigrades curl up into shrunken, dehydrated balls and suspend their biological functions indefinitely in order to endure extreme environmental conditions.https://www.space.com/tardigrade-quantum-entangled-experiment
1/15/2022 6:00 PMThere once was a small fish called “tequila splitfin” or “zoogoneticus tequila” that swam in a river in western Mexico, but disappeared in the 1990s. Scientists and residents, however, have achieved the return of a species extinct in nature—but conserved in captivity—to its native habitat.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-mexican-fish-extinct-wild-successfully.html
1/16/2022 8:00 AMThey’re prickly on the outside, sweet on the inside, and beloved for their iconic pink shells and pearly, fragrant fruit. In the US, you might encounter them as a flavorful ingredient in bubble tea, ice cream or a cocktail. You can also peel them and eat them fresh.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-lychee-genome-story-tropical-fruit.html
1/16/2022 10:00 AMChina’s Tianwen 1 spacecraft at Mars pulled a big New Year’s surprise with stunning new images captured by a small camera that flew free of the orbiter to snap epic selfies above the Red Planet.https://www.space.com/china-tianwen-1-mars-orbiter-amazing-selfies-photos
1/16/2022 12:00 PMe may soon be able to test one of Stephen Hawking’s most controversial theories, new research suggests. In the 1970s, Hawking proposed that dark matter, the invisible substance that makes up most matter in the cosmos, may be made of black holes formed in the earliest moments of the Big Bang. Now, three astronomers have developed a theory that explains not only the existence of dark matter, but also the appearance of the largest black holes in the universe.https://www.space.com/testable-primordial-black-holes-theory
1/16/2022 2:00 PMNASA’s new space telescope is on the verge of completing the riskiest part of its mission—unfolding and tightening a huge sunshade—after ground controllers fixed a pair of problems, officials said Monday.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-nasa-space-telescope-hunky-dory-problems.html
1/16/2022 4:00 PMWhy the sun’s corona reaches temperatures of several million degrees Celsius is one of the great mysteries of solar physics. A “hot” trail to explain this effect leads to a region of the solar atmosphere just below the corona, where sound waves and certain plasma waves travel at the same speed. In an experiment using the molten alkali metal rubidium and pulsed high magnetic fields, a team from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), a German national lab, has developed a laboratory model, and for the first time experimentally confirmed the theoretically predicted behavior of these plasma waves.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-liquid-metal-insight-mechanism-sun-corona.html
1/16/2022 6:00 PMOne afternoon, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in Panama, a bored teenager with a slingshot and a clay ball accidentally shot entry and exit holes in a Cecropia tree trunk. These are “ant-plant” trees, which famously cooperate with fierce Azteca ants; the trees provide shelter and food to the ants, and in exchange the ants defend their leaves against herbivores. The next morning, to the student’s surprise, the Azteca alfari ants living within the Cecropia trunk had patched up the wound.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-accidental-tree-wound-reveals-symbiotic.html
1/17/2022 8:00 AMA meteor that caused an earthshaking boom over suburban Pittsburgh on New Year’s Day exploded in the atmosphere with an energy blast equivalent to an estimated 30 tons (27,216 kilograms) of TNT, officials said.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-nasa-metrics-meteor-shook-ground.html
1/17/2022 10:00 AMA new study by Tel Aviv University and the Israel Antiquities Authority has exposed the remains of 2,700-year-old intestinal worm eggs below the stone toilet of a magnificent private estate. The egg remnants belong to four different types of intestinal parasites: roundworm, tapeworm, whipworm, and pinworm. According to the researchers, the stone toilet seat was in the estate’s “restroom,” and the presence of the worms indicates that even the wealthy residents of Jerusalem at that time suffered from diseases and epidemics.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-toilet-temple-period-luxury-villa.html
1/17/2022 12:00 PMA new video of solar streamers evokes the streaking stars seen during spacecraft hyperdrives in “Star Wars.” The new NASA video from the Parker Solar Probe shows these mysterious sun structures up close for the first time, flowing past the spacecraft like interstellar fireflies. Previously, we could only catch a glimpse of streamers during solar eclipses.https://www.space.com/sun-coronal-streamers-parker-solar-probe-video
1/17/2022 2:00 PMThe field of extrasolar planet studies continues to reveal some truly amazing things about our Universe. After decades of having just a handful of exoplanets available for study, astronomers are now working with a total of 4,884 confirmed exoplanets and another 8,288 awaiting confirmation. This number is expected to increase exponentially in the coming years as next-generation missions like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Euclid, PLATO, and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST) reveal tens of thousands more.https://www.universetoday.com/153883/astronomers-find-70-planets-without-stars-floating-free-in-the-milky-way/
1/17/2022 4:00 PMThe rhythms of activity in all biological organisms, both plants and animals, are closely linked to the gravitational tides created by the orbital mechanics of the sun-Earth-moon system. This truth has been somewhat neglected by scientific research but is foregrounded in a study by Cristiano de Mello Gallep at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, and Daniel Robert at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-gravitational-action-sun-moon-behavior.html
1/17/2022 6:00 PMWith many people heading indoors for the winter months and respiratory droplets acting as a major contributor to COVID-19 spread, the scientific community has renewed interest in the dynamics behind how they spread. Modeling such behavior in a variety of scenarios for particles that range from less than 1 micrometer in size to 1,000 micrometers proves challenging.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-downward-respiratory-droplets.html
1/18/2022 8:00 AMWhen the most massive stars die, they collapse to form some of the densest objects known in the Universe: black holes. They are the “darkest” objects in the cosmos, as not even light can escape their incredibly strong gravity. Because of this, it’s impossible to directly image black holes, making them mysterious and quite perplexing. But our new research has road-tested a way to spot some of the most voracious black holes of all, making it easier to find them buried deep in the hearts of distant galaxies.https://www.space.com/black-holes-anything-but-black-75000-brightest-ones
1/18/2022 10:00 AMDuring long portions of the past 2.4 billion years, the Earth may have been more  inhospitable to life than scientists previously thought, according to new computer simulations.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-reveals-hostile-conditions-earth-life.html
1/18/2022 12:00 PMA new hypothesis suggests the universe’s expansion could be causing all material objects to grow in mass.https://www.space.com/black-holes-expanding-with-universe
1/18/2022 2:00 PMIn March 2021, after years of analyzing and confirming data, astrophysicists reported that the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a detector buried at the South Pole, had picked up an unusual signal in 2016. It suggested that a particle called an antineutrino had crossed space and time — originating far beyond our galaxy — before smashing into Antarctica and releasing a particle shower in the ice.https://astronomy.com/news/2021/12/alien-antimatter-crashes-into-earth
1/18/2022 4:00 PMThe first comprehensive analysis of viral horizontal gene transfer (HGT) illustrates the extent to which viruses pick up genes from their hosts to hone their infection process, while at the same time hosts also co-opt useful viral genes.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-gene-exchange-viruses-hosts-evolution.html
1/18/2022 6:00 PMPotential evidence of extraterrestrial radio signals from Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Earth, were likely just interference from human technology, researchers say.https://www.space.com/proxima-centauri-radio-signal-not-aliens-breakthrough-listen
1/19/2022 8:00 AMResearchers working at China’s tokamak facility have announced that the team was able to hold 120-million-degree Celsius plasma for 1,056 seconds. In their announcement to the press, they noted that their achievement was a new record for holding superheated plasma.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-chinese-tokamak-facility-million-degree-seconds.html
1/19/2022 10:00 AMChina welcomed the New Year with a live stream from cameras outside the new Tianhe space station module. In a new video from the China National Space Administration, livestreamed on New Year’s Day (Jan. 1), you can now see the beauty of the Earth below from the Tianhe module on China’s Tiangong space station. China Central Television began the stream (you can also watch it on Youtube) on the Sina Weibo social media platform, delivering three hours of live footage from the module.https://www.space.com/china-live-stream-new-space-station
1/19/2022 12:00 PMThe world we experience is governed by classical physics. How we move, where we are, and how fast we’re going are all determined by the classical assumption that we can only exist in one place at any one moment in time.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-physicists-ultracold-atoms-crystal-quantum.html
1/19/2022 2:00 PMAs part of an experiment to measure—to an extremely precise degree—the charge-to-mass ratios of protons and antiprotons, the RIKEN-led BASE collaboration at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, has found that, within the uncertainty of the experiment, matter and antimatter respond to gravity in the same way.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-antimatter-equally-gravity.html
1/19/2022 4:00 PMThe Flame Nebula rings in the New Year from the constellation Orion in a blazing new photo from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).https://www.space.com/orion-flame-nebula-image-eso-telescope
1/19/2022 6:00 PM3D holograms, previously seen only in science fiction movies, may soon make their way to consumer technology. Until now, 3D holograms based on phase shifting holography method could be captured using a large, specialized camera with a polarizing filter. However, a Korean research group has just developed technology that can acquire holograms on mobile devices, such as smartphones.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-3d-digital-holograms-smartphones.html
1/20/2022 8:00 AMOver the past decade, the CRISPR genome-editing system has revolutionized molecular biology, giving scientists the ability to alter genes inside living cells for research or medical applications. Now, researchers at Gladstone Institutes have fine-tuned an additional system for more efficient gene editing, using molecules called retrons.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-method-genes-human-cells.html
1/20/2022 10:00 AMA remarkable link between the number of nearby exploding stars, called supernovae, and life on Earth has been discovered. Evidence demonstrates a close connection between the fraction of organic matter buried in sediments and changes in supernovae occurrence. This correlation is apparent during the last 3.5 billion years and in closer detail over the previous 500 million years.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-supernovae-life-earth.html
1/20/2022 12:00 PMThe almost impossibly brief Planck time has been known since the 19th century. Originally dismissed as a mere curiosity, it may hold the key to understanding the universe.https://www.space.com/what-is-the-planck-time
1/20/2022 2:00 PMIn the most comprehensive analysis to date, researchers found that the shapes of fingerprints—whether they are circular, wavy, or winding—are influenced by the genes responsible for limb development instead of skin patterning. The study, presented January 6 in the journal Cell, could help scientists better understand the association between genes and phenotypical traits in humans.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-fingerprint-patterns-linked-limb-genes.html
1/20/2022 4:00 PMDog brains can detect speech and show different activity patterns to familiar and unfamiliar languages, according to a new brain imaging study by researchers from the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary). This is the first demonstration that a non-human brain can differentiate two languages.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-dog-brains-distinguish-languages.html
1/20/2022 6:00 PMIn 1992, astronomers discovered the first planet outside the solar system. Since then, telescopes have spotted thousands of these so-called exoplanets orbiting not only stars similar to the sun but also in binary star systems; small, cool stars called red dwarfs; and even ultradense neutron stars. It’s enough to make you wonder: Does every star out there have at least one planet orbiting it?https://www.space.com/does-every-star-have-planets
1/21/2022 8:00 AMJohns Hopkins Medicine researchers have developed a color-coded test that quickly signals whether newly developed nanoparticles—ultra small compartments designed to ferry medicines, vaccines and other therapies—deliver their cargo into target cells. Historically, nanoparticles have a very low delivery rate to the cytosol, the inside compartment of cells, releasing only about 1%–2% of their contents. The new testing tool, engineered specifically to test nanoparticles, could advance the search for next-generation biological medicines. The technology builds upon nanoparticles currently used against cancer and eye disease, and in vaccines for viruses including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-color-coded-quickly-reveals-medical-nanoparticles.html
1/21/2022 10:00 AMProchlorococcus are the smallest and most abundant photosynthesizing organisms on the planet. A single Prochlorococcus cell is dwarfed by a human red blood cell, yet globally the microbes number in the octillions and are responsible for a large fraction of the world’s oxygen production as they turn sunlight into energy.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-predator-interactions-chiefly-prochlorococcus-microbes.html
1/21/2022 12:00 PMWhen two sheets of the carbon nanomaterial graphene are stacked together at a particular angle with respect to each other, it gives rise to some fascinating physics. For instance, when this so-called “magic-angle graphene” is cooled to near absolute zero, it suddenly becomes a superconductor, meaning it conducts electricity with zero resistance.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-magnetic-revealed-magic-angle-graphene.html
1/21/2022 2:00 PMOne of the characteristic features of modern cosmology is its description of how galaxies evolve: via a hierarchical process of colliding and merging with other systems. Nowhere in the universe do we have a clearer view of this buildup than in our own Milky Way. Currently one of our nearby neighbors, the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, is being tidally disrupted (a dwarf galaxy has less than about 1% of the stellar mass of a normal spiral galaxy like the Milky Way, and often much less). Two other nearby dwarfs, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (with about 1% and 0.7% of the stellar mass of the Milky Way, respectively) are falling towards us. Meanwhile streams of globular clusters encircle the Galaxy, marking the effects of prior mergers. The record of even more ancient mergers can be extracted from the positions and motions of stars in the Milky Way’s stellar halo, the roughly spherical distribution of stars (about one hundred thousand light-years in diameter) older than about 10-12 billion years. Meanwhile Andromeda, our nearest large neighboring galaxy, is about ten times farther away than these dwarfs; a merger with it is expected in another five billion years.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-galaxy-major-collision.html
1/21/2022 4:00 PMIt’s much easier for scientists to see the messy aftermath of stellar explosions than to watch the prelude to the drama. But finally, astronomers managed to observe a red giant star just as it “went supernova,” as exploding stars are called. Using a telescope in Hawaii, a team of scientists gathered observations of a red supergiant star in summer 2020. Lo and behold, in September, that very same star died in a supernova dubbed (SN) 2020tlf — an explosion that team members called “one of the most intriguing” supernovas of its type.https://www.space.com/supernova-observations-what-happens-before-star-explodes
1/21/2022 6:00 PMNASA’s next generation James Webb Space Telescope is slowly making its way to its final orbit around the Sun, roughly 1 million miles from Earth. As seen in an official NASA animation, it’ll end up in a seemingly chaotic trip around the solar system that’ll involve a series of bona fide loop-the-loops — but of course, there’s plenty of method to the madness.https://futurism.com/the-byte/james-webb-space-telescope-orbit
1/22/2022 8:00 AMA group of mysterious, ultradense structures just outside Earth’s core may be the remnants of an ancient interplanetary collision, new research suggests. These strange structures are known as ultralow-velocity zones (ULVZs), because seismic waves generated by earthquakes travel about 50% more slowly through these zones than through the surrounding mantle. That means the ULVZs are also much denser than the rest of the mantle, and possibly made of heavier elements.https://www.space.com/ulvz-giant-impact-hypothesis.html
1/22/2022 10:00 AMThe electric eel is the closest thing nature’s got to a living, breathing battery. Running up to eight feet in length, these serpentine swimmers (which actually aren’t true eels, but a type of knifefish) are packed with thousands of cells that can generate their own electricity. Some of their homemade jolts are low-voltage, radar-like pulses that help the fish navigate. When prompted, however, electric eels can also serve up shocks powerful enough to incapacitate a horse.https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/electric-eel-species/
1/22/2022 12:00 PMAccording to the neuronal computational scheme, each neuron functions as an excitable element. The incoming electrical signals from connecting neurons are accumulated, and the neuron generates a short electrical pulse, a spike, when its threshold is crossed.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-century-old-assumption-neurons-brain-disproven.html
1/22/2022 2:00 PMSomething has been discovered in Tennessee—something that only exists in one museum. It’s something enormous, slightly puzzling, and possibly the first of its kind discovered. Five years after its excavation, it remains incomplete.https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/12/a-fossil-site-reveals-an-ancient-sinkhole-and-its-enormous-occupant/
1/22/2022 4:00 PMhttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/10/giant-deep-surfaces-midlands-one-britains-greatest-ever-prehistoric/
1/22/2022 6:00 PMIn 1779, the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler posed a puzzle that has since become famous: Six army regiments each have six officers of six different ranks. Can the 36 officers be arranged in a 6-by-6 square so that no row or column repeats a rank or regiment? The problem can be solved – so long as the officers are quantum.https://www.quantamagazine.org/eulers-243-year-old-impossible-puzzle-gets-a-quantum-solution-20220110/
1/23/2022 8:00 AMThe world’s very first invention of writing took place over 5000 years ago in the Middle East, before it was reinvented in China and Central America. Today, almost all human activities—from education to political systems and computer code—rely on this technology.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-rare-african-script-clues-evolution.html
1/23/2022 10:00 AMAstronomers have watched a giant star blow up in a fiery supernova for the first time ever — and the spectacle was even more explosive than the researchers anticipated.https://www.livescience.com/first-supernova-real-time-observations
1/23/2022 12:00 PMHurtling around Jupiter and its 79 moons is the Juno spacecraft, a NASA-funded satellite that sends images from the largest planet in our solar system back to researchers on Earth. These photographs have given oceanographers the raw materials for a new study published in Nature Physics that describes the rich turbulence at Jupiter’s poles and the physical forces that drive the large cyclones.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-ocean-physics-cyclones-jupiter.html
1/23/2022 2:00 PMA physics problem that has plagued science since the days of Isaac Newton is closer to being solved, say a pair of Israeli researchers. The duo used “the drunkard’s walk” to calculate the outcome of a cosmic dance between three massive objects, or the so-called three-body problem.https://www.space.com/three-body-problem-solution
1/23/2022 4:00 PMIn the particle world, sometimes two is better than one. Take, for instance, electron pairs. When two electrons are bound together, they can glide through a material without friction, giving the material special superconducting properties. Such paired electrons, or Cooper pairs, are a kind of hybrid particle—a composite of two particles that behaves as one, with properties that are greater than the sum of its parts.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-physicists-hybrid-particle-held-uniquely.html
1/23/2022 6:00 PMAbout 400,000 years after the universe was created began a period called “The Epoch of Reionization.” During this time, the once hotter universe began to cool and matter clumped together, forming the first stars and galaxies. As these stars and galaxies emerged, their energy heated the surrounding environment, reionizing some of the remaining hydrogen in the universe.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-astronomers-potential-clue-reinonization-universe.html
1/24/2022 8:00 AMIndependent concepts from each nation envision launching high-speed spacecraft on aspirational multigenerational voyages into the great unknown of interstellar space.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-s-and-chinese-scientists-propose-bold-new-missions-beyond-the-solar-system/
1/24/2022 10:00 AMA study published by researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago describes a new method for analyzing pyroptosis—the process of cell death that is usually caused by infections and results in excess inflammation in the body—and shows that process, long thought to be irreversible once initiated, can in fact be halted and controlled.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-scientists-uncover-cellular-death-previously.html
1/24/2022 12:00 PMGalaxies like the Milky Way are thought to have been built through a series of mergers, drawing in smaller galaxies and clusters of stars and making these foreign stars their own. In some cases, the mergers were recent enough that we can still detect the formerly independent object as a cluster of stars orbiting the Milky Way together. But, as time goes on, interactions with the rest of the stars in the Milky Way will slowly disrupt any structures the cluster incorporates. So it’s a bit of a surprise that researchers found what appear to be the remains of a globular cluster composed of some of the oldest stars around. The finding is consistent with a “growth through merger” model of galaxy construction, but it raises questions about how the cluster stayed intact for as long as it did.https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/01/stars-from-ancient-cluster-found-in-the-milky-way/
1/24/2022 2:00 PMThe ice giants Uranus and Neptune don’t get nearly enough press; all the attention goes to their larger siblings, mighty Jupiter and magnificent Saturn. At first glance, Uranus and Neptune are just bland, boring balls of uninteresting molecules. But hiding beneath the outer layers of those worlds, there may be something spectacular: a constant rain of diamonds.https://www.space.com/diamond-rain-atmosphere-uranus-neptune
1/24/2022 4:00 PMStars are giant factories that produce most of the elements in the universe—including the elements in us, and in Earth’s metal deposits. But how do stars produce changes over time?https://phys.org/news/2022-01-heavy-metal-stars.html
1/24/2022 6:00 PMA simple roadside weed may hold the key to understanding and predicting DNA mutation, according to new research from University of California, Davis, and the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Germany.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-evolutionary-theory-dna-mutations-random.html
1/25/2022 8:00 AMThe Earth sits in a 1,000-light-year-wide void surrounded by thousands of young stars—but how did those stars form? In a paper appearing in Nature, astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) reconstruct the evolutionary history of our galactic neighborhood, showing how a chain of events beginning 14 million years ago led to the creation of a vast bubble that’s responsible for the formation of all nearby, young stars.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-light-year-wide-earth-source-nearby.html
1/25/2022 10:00 AMNASA’s newest space observatory, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), is set to begin spying on some of the universe’s most dramatic objects — black holes and neutron stars — potentially changing our understanding of the cosmos in the process.https://www.space.com/nasa-ixpe-satellite-begins-gathering-science-data
1/25/2022 12:00 PMThe age of the oldest fossils in eastern Africa widely recognized as representing our species, Homo sapiens, has long been uncertain. Now, dating of a massive volcanic eruption in Ethiopia reveals they are much older than previously thought. The remains—known as Omo I—were found in Ethiopia in the late 1960s, and scientists have been attempting to date them precisely ever since, by using the chemical fingerprints of volcanic ash layers found above and below the sediments in which the fossils were found.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-earliest-human-eastern-africa-dated.html
1/25/2022 2:00 PMChina’s “artificial sun” has set a new world record after superheating a loop of plasma to temperatures five times hotter than the sun for more than 17 minutes, state media reported.https://www.space.com/china-artificial-sun-fusion-reactor-five-times-hotter-than-the-sun
1/25/2022 4:00 PMAstronomers have found evidence of a black hole snacking on a star in data gathered back in the 1980s, according to new research.https://www.space.com/scientists-missed-black-hole-eating-star
1/25/2022 6:00 PMScientists have found that adding a common household cleaning agent—the mineral boron contained in such cleaners as borax—can vastly improve the ability of some fusion energy devices to contain the heat required to produce fusion reactions on Earth the way the sun and stars do.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-common-household-cleaner-boost-effort.html
1/26/2022 8:00 AMHidden in the mud along the banks of Washington D.C.’s Potomac River may be a profound new source of electricity. The microbe makes nanowires that produce a charge from water vapor in ordinary air. Already capable of powering small electronics, it appears that larger-scale power generation is within reach.https://bigthink.com/the-present/air-gen/
1/26/2022 10:00 AMScientists understand quite well how temperature affects electrical conductance in most everyday metals like copper or silver. But in recent years, researchers have turned their attention to a class of materials that do not seem to follow the traditional electrical rules. Understanding these so-called “strange metals” could provide fundamental insights into the quantum world, and potentially help scientists understand strange phenomena like high-temperature superconductivity.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-newly-strange-metal-deep-insights.html
1/26/2022 12:00 PMBefore Earth and the other planets in our solar system existed, the sun may have been surrounded by giant rings of dust similar to Saturn’s, according to a new study.https://www.space.com/baby-sun-had-rings-like-saturn
1/26/2022 2:00 PMScientists from Wageningen University and Research (WUR) and Indiana University have discovered that the increasing irrelevance of factual truth in public discourse is part of a groundswell trend that started decades ago.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-rationality-declined-decades.html
1/26/2022 4:00 PMThe supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy is leaking. The Milky Way’s central black hole, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), has been “leaking” or emitting jet-like superheated beams for several thousand years. In a composite image captured with the Hubble Space Telescope, researchers have revealed bright X-ray radiation as well as bright clouds of molecular gas and heated ionized gas near the black hole.https://www.space.com/supermassive-black-hole-leaking-in-milky-way
1/26/2022 6:00 PMRocks returned to Earth during NASA’s Apollo program from 1968 to 1972 have provided volumes of information about the Moon’s history, but they’ve also been the source of an enduring mystery. Analysis of the rocks revealed that some seemed to have formed in the presence of a strong magnetic field—one that rivaled Earth’s in strength. But it wasn’t clear how a Moon-sized body could have generated a magnetic field that strong.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-explanation-moon-half-century-magnetic-mystery.html
1/27/2022 8:00 AMA corkscrew-shaped microrobot inspired by the tails of bacteria like E. coli can swim through blood vessels and help unblock clots.https://www.newscientist.com/article/2303981-corkscrew-shaped-robot-swims-through-blood-vessels-to-clear-blockages/
1/27/2022 10:00 AMA newly discovered “mini” supermassive black hole could help reveal some of the secrets behind the biggest black holes in the cosmos.https://www.space.com/mini-supermassive-black-hole-dwarf-galaxy
1/27/2022 12:00 PMA University of California Riverside (UCR) astronomer and a group of eagle-eyed citizen scientists have discovered a giant gas planet hidden from view by typical stargazing tools.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-unusual-team-gigantic-planet-hidden.html
1/27/2022 2:00 PMThe Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has capped off the first seven months of its survey run by smashing through all previous records for three-dimensional galaxy surveys, creating the largest and most detailed map of the universe ever. Yet it’s only about 10% of the way through its five-year mission. Once completed, that phenomenally detailed 3D map will yield a better understanding of dark energy, and thereby give physicists and astronomers a better understanding of the past—and future—of the universe. Meanwhile, the impressive technical performance and literally cosmic achievements of the survey thus far are helping scientists reveal the secrets of the most powerful sources of light in the universe.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-dark-energy-spectroscopic-instrument-largest.html
1/27/2022 4:00 PMElectrons flowing through power lines and computers inevitably encounter resistance; when they do, they lose some of their energy, which dissipates as heat. That’s why laptops get hot after being used for too long and why the server farms that power the cloud require so much air conditioning to keep the machines from overheating. Likewise, any particles carrying energy tend to lose that energy when they flow in a typical environment. There are a few exceptions, which usually occur at very low temperatures when particles form pairs called quantum condensates. This leads to superconductivity, with vanishing electrical resistance, in some metals such as aluminum, and superfluidity in liquified helium, which can then flow without dissipation.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-tuning-bonds-paired-quantum-particles.html
1/27/2022 6:00 PMThe International Space Station (ISS) is a multi-nation laboratory, orbiting 248 miles (400 kilometers) above our heads. It perhaps comes as no surprise that the ISS can easily be seen and tracked from Earth.https://www.space.com/how-to-track-the-international-space-station
1/28/2022 8:00 AMCurtin-led research has revealed an increase in levels of both acid and hydrogen sulfide in the ocean was the double whammy that wiped out marine life during a mass extinction event 201 million years ago.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-twin-triggers-triassic-era-extinction.html
1/28/2022 10:00 AMMIT physicists and colleagues have discovered the “secret sauce” behind some of the exotic properties of a new quantum material that has transfixed physicists due to those properties, which include superconductivity. Although theorists had predicted the reason for the unusual properties of the material, known as a kagome metal, this is the first time that the phenomenon behind those properties has been observed in the laboratory.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-physicists-secret-sauce-exotic-properties.html
1/28/2022 12:00 PMA breeding colony of 60 million fish has been discovered in Antarctica’s ice-covered Weddell Sea — a unique and previously unknown ecosystem that covers an area the size of Malta.https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/13/world/icefish-colony-discovery-scn/index.html
1/28/2022 2:00 PMThe wormhole theory postulates that a theoretical passage through space-time could create shortcuts for long journeys across the universe. Wormholes are predicted by the theory of general relativity. But be wary: wormholes bring with them the dangers of sudden collapse, high radiation and dangerous contact with exotic matter.https://www.space.com/20881-wormholes.html
1/28/2022 4:00 PMOrganic molecules found in a Mars meteorite that crash-landed on Earth are not signs of life, but instead formed in chemical reactions between water and rock on the Red Planet about 4 billion years ago, a new study finds. These findings could shed light on the origins of the building blocks of life on early Earth, researchers add.https://www.space.com/mars-meteorite-evidence-water-rock-interactions
1/28/2022 6:00 PMIt’s time for another tantalizing glimpse of what alien solar systems might look like. Astronomers have announced the possible detection of an exomoon, or a moon in another stellar system from our own, the second such candidate observation to date. The signal comes from a star studied by NASA’s now-retired Kepler space telescope, and scientists behind the new research say that their analysis points to a mini-Neptune moon orbiting a planet about the size of Jupiter. If the strange signal does turn out to represent an exomoon, the discovery would give scientists a new understanding of not just this stellar system, but of how such systems work across the galaxy more generally.https://www.space.com/exomoon-candidate-kepler-1708-discovery
1/29/2022 8:00 AM2022 marks half a century since the Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan left the last footprints on the moon in 1972 and a lot has changed since then.https://www.space.com/artemis-1-going-back-to-the-Moon
1/29/2022 10:00 AMIn 1797, English scientist Henry Cavendish measured the strength of gravity with a contraption made of lead spheres, wooden rods and wire. In the 21st century, scientists are doing something very similar with rather more sophisticated tools: atoms.https://www.space.com/space-time-curvature-measured-atomic-fountain
1/29/2022 12:00 PMThe cosmic microwave background (CMB) is leftover radiation from the Big Bang or the time when the universe began. As the theory goes, when the universe was born it underwent rapid inflation, expansion and cooling. (The universe is still expanding today, and the expansion rate appears different depending on where you look). The CMB represents the heat leftover from the Big Bang.https://www.space.com/33892-cosmic-microwave-background.html
1/29/2022 2:00 PMIf you’ve seen water drops dance and jitter on a hot pan or griddle, you’ve seen the Leidenfrost effect in action. Or you may have seen the “Mythbusters” episode where Adam and Jamie thrust their wet fingers and hands into molten lead and pulled them out unharmed.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-levitating-colliding-liquid.html
1/29/2022 4:00 PMThe results of a comprehensive search for a background of ultra-low frequency gravitational waves has been announced by an international team of astronomers including scientists from the Institute for Gravitational Wave Astronomy at the University of Birmingham.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-international-collaboration-evidence-gravitational-background.html
1/29/2022 6:00 PMClouds can give scientists a lot of important information about Earth’s climate. That’s why NASA and The GLOBE Program, an international science and education program that engages students and the public in data collection and the scientific process, are once again calling on Earth’s citizen scientists to help NASA investigate clouds during the NASA GLOBE Cloud Challenge 2022: Clouds in a Changing Climate.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/langley/nasa-globe-cloud-challenge-2022-clouds-in-a-changing-climate
1/30/2022 8:00 AMA solar eclipse over the Arctic created changes in auroras in both of Earth’s hemispheres due to connections through the planet’s magnetic field, according to a new study. The new work could help scientists predict changes in the near-Earth environment that can interfere with satellite communication.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-north-pole-solar-eclipse-auroras.html
1/30/2022 10:00 AMA rare type of white dwarf star has been erupting in the most extreme superflares of its kind ever seen, researchers find in a new study.https://www.space.com/superflares-discovered-recurrent-nova-v2487-oph
1/30/2022 12:00 PMFirst, the beer was named for the fossil. Now, it’s come full circle, as a species of the fossil found in Nevada is named for the maker of the beer. The first giant creature to inhabit the earth, the ichthyosaur, dominated the earth’s oceans in the Triassic period. Nearly 2.5 million years later, in 1993, Great Basin Brewing Company in Sparks debuted the Ichthyosaur IPA in honor of the extinct creature.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-fossil-nevada-brewer-beer.html
1/30/2022 2:00 PMA team of astronomers, led by Arizona State University undergraduate student Emma Softich, has discovered a rare pair of brown dwarfs that has the widest separation of any brown dwarf binary system found to date.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-team-astronomers-widest-brown-dwarf.html
1/30/2022 4:00 PMNASA’s newly appointed science and Earth science lead says there is “more to plan” when it comes to figuring out next priorities for the agency’s aging satellite fleet.https://www.space.com/nasa-earth-satellite-renewal-climate-advisor-chief-scientist
1/30/2022 6:00 PMA pair of researchers at The Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics in the U.K. has found evidence suggesting that strong vertical winds in the upper atmosphere could push bacteria higher than 120 km. In their paper, Arjun Berera and Daniel Brener describe a model that shows how strong winds might behave in the upper reaches of the atmosphere.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-vertical-bacteria-altitude-120km.html
1/31/2022 8:00 AMstronomers have reported a second, super-sized moon orbiting a Jupiter-sized planet beyond our solar system. If confirmed, the sighting could mean that exomoons are as common in the universe as exoplanets, and that big or small, such moons are a feature of planetary systems. But it could be a long wait. The first-ever sighting of an exomoon four years ago is still awaiting confirmation, and verification of this newest candidate could be as equally long and contentious.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-astronomers-evidence-supermoon-solar.html
1/31/2022 10:00 AMA group of astronomers and citizen scientists has uncovered a hidden planet the size of Jupiter in a distant solar system, and they should get the chance to see it again soon. The planet, designated TOI-2180 b, is relatively close to us here on Earth, at only 379 light-years away. But what makes this world special among the sample of known giant exoplanets is that it takes a whopping 261 days to orbit its host star, much longer than most gas giants discovered outside of our solar neighborhood.https://www.space.com/hidden-exoplanet-discovery-tess-citizen-scientists
1/31/2022 12:00 PMThe laws of physics underlying everyday life are, at one level of description, completely known, and can be summarized in a single elegant—if quite complex—equation. That’s the claim physicist Sean Carroll, an SFI Fractal Faculty member and External Professor, makes in a recent paper.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-quantum-field-theory-everyday-world.html
1/31/2022 2:00 PMhttps://astronomy.com/news/2021/03/space-hurricane-of-whirling-plasma-spotted-above-earths-north-pole
1/31/2022 4:00 PMThe atomic nucleus is a tough nut to crack. The strong interaction between the protons and neutrons that make it up depends on many quantities, and these particles, collectively known as nucleons, are subject to not only two-body forces but also three-body ones. These and other features make the theoretical modeling of atomic nuclei a challenging endeavor.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-advances-theoretical-atomic-nuclei.html
1/31/2022 6:00 PMElements in the periodic table can take up multiple forms. Carbon, for example, exists as diamond or graphite depending on the environmental conditions at the time of formation. Crystal structures that have been formed in ultra-high-pressure environments are particularly important as they provide clues to the formation of planets. However, recreating such environments in a laboratory is difficult, and materials scientists often rely on simulation predictions to identify the existence of such structures.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-crystal-hydrogen-high-pressure.html
2/1/2022 8:00 AMInspired by the growth of bones in the skeleton, researchers at the universities of Linköping in Sweden and Okayama in Japan have developed a combination of materials that can morph into various shapes before hardening. The material is initially soft, but later hardens through a bone development process that uses the same materials found in the skeleton.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-bone-growth-microrobots.html
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2/1/2022 12:00 PMSince 2019, SpaceX has been launching an increasing number of internet satellites into orbit around Earth. The satellite constellation, called Starlink, now includes nearly 1,800 members orbiting at altitudes of about 550 kilometers. Astronomers have expressed concerns that that these objects, which can appear as streaks in telescope images, could hamper their scientific observations.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-palomar-survey-instrument-impact-starlink.html
2/1/2022 2:00 PMResearchers at the University of Adelaide and their overseas partners have taken a key step in making quantum batteries a reality. They have successfully proved the concept of superabsorption, a crucial idea underpinning quantum batteries.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-superabsorption-key-next-generation-quantum-batteries.html
2/1/2022 4:00 PMOne viral protein could provide information to deter pneumonia causing the body’s exaggerated inflammatory response to respiratory viruses, including the virus that causes COVID-19.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-respiratory-viruses-hijack-immune-mechanisms.html
2/1/2022 6:00 PMScientists have named a newly discovered species of worm that kills tarantulas after American actor, musician and producer Jeff Daniels, a distinction no other entertainer can claim.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-scientists-tarantula-killing-worms-parasite-actor.html
2/2/2022 8:00 AMNumbers like π, e and φ often turn up in unexpected places in science and mathematics. Pascal’s triangle and the Fibonacci sequence also seem inexplicably widespread in nature. Then there’s the Riemann zeta function, a deceptively straightforward function that has perplexed mathematicians since the 19th century. The most famous quandary, the Riemann hypothesis, is perhaps the greatest unsolved question in mathematics, with the Clay Mathematics Institute offering a $1 million prize for a correct proof.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-quantum-zeta-epiphany-physicist-approach.html
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2/2/2022 12:00 PMAt the turn of the 20th century, the American chestnut towered over other trees in Eastern forests. The trees would grow as much as 100 feet high, and 13 feet wide. According to legend, a squirrel could scamper from New England to Georgia on the canopies of American chestnuts, never touching the ground.https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/american-chestnut-resurrecting-a-forest-giant/
2/2/2022 2:00 PMA contagious blood cancer jumped from one species of clam to another and spread among clams living in the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea, a new study shows.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-contagious-cancer-clams.html
2/2/2022 4:00 PMNeutrinos are one of the most elusive particles in the cosmos, second only to ultra-mysterious dark matter. They are made in considerable quantity — they participate in the weak nuclear force and they’re responsible for nuclear fusion and decay. So any time something nuclear is happening, neutrinos are involved.https://www.space.com/pacific-ocean-neutrino-detector-p-one-concept
2/2/2022 6:00 PMAustralian researchers have proven that near error-free quantum computing is possible, paving the way to build silicon-based quantum devices compatible with current semiconductor manufacturing technology.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-quantum-silicon-accuracy.html
2/3/2022 8:00 AMA pair of University of Houston engineers has discovered that they can create upward fountains in water by shining laser beams on the water’s surface. Jiming Bao, professor of electrical and computer engineering at UH, and his postdoctoral student Feng Lin, attribute the finding to a phenomenon known as the Marangoni effect, which causes convection and explains the behavior of water when differences in surface tension exist.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-method-upward-fountain-deep.html
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2/3/2022 12:00 PMAbout 2.4 billion years ago, Earth’s atmosphere underwent what is called the Great Oxidation Event (GOE). Prior to the GOE, early Earth had far less molecular oxygen than we have today. After the GOE, molecular oxygen began to increase in abundance, eventually making life like ours possible.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-weathering-clues-earth-great-oxidation.html
2/3/2022 2:00 PMOne of the biggest challenges in biology today is to explain the structure of cristae, the inner membranes of mitochondria. An explanation in this case is a set of principles to predict what form the cristae will take after basic metabolic manipulations of the environment the mitochondria are in. These principles will therefore be a description of the true function of mitochondria, something that has so far only been scarcely imagined.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-mitochondria.html
2/3/2022 4:00 PMNASA’s Curiosity rover landed on Mars on Aug. 6, 2012, and since then has roamed Gale Crater taking samples and sending the results back home for researchers to interpret. Analysis of carbon isotopes in sediment samples taken from half a dozen exposed locations, including an exposed cliff, leave researchers with three plausible explanations for the carbon’s origin—cosmic dust, ultraviolet degradation of carbon dioxide, or ultraviolet degradation of biologically produced methane.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-newly-carbon-yield-clues-ancient.html
2/3/2022 6:00 PMThe Triassic-Jurassic transition (~ 201 Ma) saw one of the most catastrophic volcanic eruptions during the Phanerozoic, namely the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP), and it has been suggested to have triggered a series of environmental/climatic perturbations which eventually caused the end-Triassic mass extinction.However, due to the lack of volcanic ash sediments outside its eruption sites, the spatial extent of the impact is not well understood.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-linkage-volcanism-weathering.html
2/4/2022 8:00 AMA team of researchers from several institutions in France, the U.S. and Sweden has used models of possible conditions on Mars to show that the red planet may have sported a northern ocean 3 billion years ago and that the climate was likely wet and cold. In their paper, the group describes theories to explain conditions on the surface of Mars today, and a model that simulated a wet and cold planet.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-simulation-mars-cold-billion-years.html
2/4/2022 10:00 AMT 10
2/4/2022 12:00 PMFor the first time, scientists believe they have detected a merger of two black holes with eccentric orbits. According to a paper, this can help explain how some of the black hole mergers detected by LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration are much heavier than previously thought possible.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-scientists-highly-eccentric-black-hole.html
2/4/2022 2:00 PMLast August, a group of mammoth tusk hunters unearthed the nearly intact remains of a 42,000-year-old foal during an expedition to Siberia’s Batagaika crater. Preserved by the region’s permafrost, or permanently frozen ground, the young horse showed no signs of external damage, instead retaining its skin, tail and hooves, as well as the hair on its legs, head and other body parts.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-extracted-liquid-blood-42000-year-old-foal-found-siberian-permafrost-180971979/
2/4/2022 4:00 PMAtoms bind together by sharing electrons. The way this happens depends on the atom types but also on conditions such as temperature and pressure. In two-dimensional (2D) materials, such as graphene, atoms join along a plane to form structures just one atom thick, which leads to fascinating properties determined by quantum mechanics. Researchers at the University of Vienna in collaboration with the Universities of Tübingen, Antwerp and CY Cergy Paris, together with Danubia NanoTech, have produced a new 2D material made of copper and iodine atoms sandwiched between two graphene sheets.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-impossible-material-graphene-sandwich.html
2/4/2022 6:00 PMThe Gouy-Chapman theory describes what happens near an electrode when it is in contact with a salt solution, but this description does not match reality. Researcher Kasinath Ojha, assistant professor Katharina Doblhoff-Dier and professor Marc Koper present a new version. “The next generation of textbooks on electrochemistry is going to look different.”https://phys.org/news/2022-01-century-old-electrochemistry-law.html
2/5/2022 8:00 AMBlack holes are intriguing and widely studied cosmic bodies with extremely high tidal forces, from which even light is unable to escape. While many studies predicted the existence of black holes, which have also recently been detected, many questions about these cosmic bodies remain unanswered.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-black-hole-horizons-discharged.html
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2/5/2022 12:00 PMA semiconducting material that performed a quantum “flip” from a conductor to an insulator above room temperature has been developed at the University of Michigan. It potentially brings the world closer to a new generation of quantum devices and ultra-efficient electronics.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-quantum-tech-semiconductor-flipped-insulator.html
2/5/2022 2:00 PMA group of scientists may have stumbled upon a radical new way to do cosmology.https://www.quantamagazine.org/with-one-galaxy-ai-defines-a-whole-simulated-universe-20220120/
2/5/2022 4:00 PMProduction of high-energy fats by microalgae may provide a sustainable, renewable energy source that can help tackle climate change. However, microalgae engineered to produce lipids rapidly usually grow slowly themselves, making it difficult to increase overall yields.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-microscopic-picoshell-particles.html
2/5/2022 6:00 PMMost galaxies, including our own, grow by accumulating new material and turning them into stars—that much is known. What has been unknown is where that new material comes from and how it flows into galaxies to create stars.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-astronomers-star-fuel-galaxies.html
2/6/2022 8:00 AMA team of researchers has discovered a jumping behavior that is entirely new to insect larvae, and there is evidence that it is occurring in a range of species—we just haven’t noticed it before.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-scientists-previously-unknown-behavior-insects.html
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2/6/2022 12:00 PMThere are more than 9,000 species of marine sponges (Phylum Porifera) worldwide, which are a source of novel natural products. They contain promising chemical agents that may be useful in combatting cancer, COVID-19 and antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus bacteria. These chemicals interact with molecules that have been conserved throughout evolutionary history and are involved in human disease processes, for example, cell cycling, immune and inflammatory responses, and calcium and sodium regulation.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-marine-sponge-cells-3d-ramp.html
2/6/2022 2:00 PMIn the first millionths of a second after the Big Bang, the universe was a roiling, trillion-degree plasma of quarks and gluons—elementary particles that briefly glommed together in countless combinations before cooling and settling into more stable configurations to make the neutrons and protons of ordinary matter.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-exotic-particles-quark-gluon-plasma.html
2/6/2022 4:00 PMA study of electron dynamics timed to millionths of a billionth of a second reveals the damage radiation can do on a molecular level. The first-of-its kind study used ultrafast X-ray laser pulses to disrupt the electrons in a molecule of nitrous oxide and measure the resultant changes with unprecedented accuracy.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-fastest-ever-electrons-x-rays.html
2/6/2022 6:00 PMThe world’s most commonly used system of measurement, the International System of Units (SI), was redefined in 2019. Since then, units have needed to be defined in terms of the constants of nature—that is, nature’s rules that are fixed and of no uncertainty, such as the speed of light—and not in terms of arbitrary references.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-turnstiles-electrons-power-standard.html
2/7/2022 8:00 AMNew Curtin University research has confirmed the frequency of asteroid collisions that formed impact craters on Mars has been consistent over the past 600 million years.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-asteroid-showers-previous-mars-craters.html
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2/7/2022 12:00 PMThe alpha-rich giant stars with theoretical young ages have been treated as an abnormal population, since they cannot be understood in the canonical scheme of the Galactic chemical evolution.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-alpha-rich-young-stars.html
2/7/2022 2:00 PMAssociate Professor Jonathan Boreyko and graduate fellow Mojtaba Edalatpour have made a discovery about the properties of water that could provide an exciting addendum to a phenomenon established over two centuries ago. The discovery also holds interesting possibilities for cooling devices and processes in industrial applications using only the basic properties of water.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-ice-discovery-18th-century-principle.html
2/7/2022 4:00 PMWe’re willing to bet that as a kid, most of us blew bubbles and tried to see which ones lasted the longest. We’re also willing to bet that none of them lasted more than a few fleeting moments. Now, scientists have pulled off the seemingly impossible, leaving our childhood attempts in the dust. In a new study, researchers from the University of Lille in France created bubbles that can live as long as 465 days. They did, however, take some liberties.https://futurism.com/scientists-bubble-lasted
2/7/2022 6:00 PMScientists got a close look at an extreme case of seasons thanks to a retired NASA telescope. Researchers used NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope to film a year on an exoplanet called XO-3b. Conveniently, a year on this world lasts only three Earth days. Within that time, the exoplanet experiences a one-day-long summer and a two-day-long winter — and while the seasons pass fast, they’re also awfully dramatic.https://www.space.com/strong-seasons-exoplanet-eccentric-orbit
2/8/2022 8:00 AMA study led by geophysicist Anne M. Hofmeister in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis proposes that imbalanced forces and torques in the Earth-moon-sun system drive circulation of the whole mantle.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-sun-moon-plate-motions-imbalanced.html
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2/8/2022 12:00 PMRebooting a quantum computer is a tricky process that can damage its parts, but now two RIKEN physicists have proposed a fast and controllable way to hit reset. Conventional computers process information stored as bits that take a value of zero or one. The potential power of quantum computers lies in their ability to process ‘qubits’ that can take a value of zero or one—or be some fuzzy mix of both simultaneously.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-faster-technique-resetting-quantum-circuits.html
2/8/2022 2:00 PMIron that rusts in water theoretically shouldn’t corrode in contact with an “inert” supercritical fluid of carbon dioxide. But it does. The reason has eluded materials scientists to now, but a team at Rice University has a theory that could contribute to new strategies to protect iron from the environment.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-simulations-iron-catalyzes-corrosion-inert.html
2/8/2022 4:00 PMScientists at the University of Bristol have developed new biological parts that are able to shape the flow of cellular processes along DNA.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-scientists-valves-dna-biological.html
2/8/2022 6:00 PMTalk about a long, strange trip. An old SpaceX rocket stage is about to reach its final destination after a roughly six year journey — by crashing into the Moon in spectacular fashion. The rocket will crash on the far side of the Moon on March 4.https://futurism.com/the-byte/spacex-crash-moon
2/9/2022 8:00 AMAt the far edges of continents, where the continental shelf transitions into the deep ocean, continental and oceanic plates come face to face. At many of these margins, the denser oceanic plate is pushed below the continental plate in a process called subduction. However, in some cases, known as obduction, the oceanic plate ends up atop the more buoyant continental plate instead of diving below it.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-radiometric-dating-tectonic-debate.html
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2/9/2022 12:00 PMThe universe is a pretty busy place, with stars blowing up, black holes consuming material and high-energy radiation galore. Some of these events show up on Earth as high-energy neutrinos, ghostly particles that hardly ever interact with normal matter. Still others show up as fast radio bursts (FRBs), which are brief but intense flashes of radio energy.https://www.space.com/high-energy-neutrinos-fast-radio-bursts-no-connection
2/9/2022 2:00 PMThe queen is the most powerful piece on the chessboard. Unlike any other (including the king), it can move any number of squares vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. Now consider this queen’s gambit: If you put eight of them on a standard board of eight squares by eight squares, how many ways could they be arranged so that none could attack the other? Turns out there are 92. But what if you place an even larger number of queens on a chessboard of the same relative size, say, 1,000 queens on a 1,000-by-1,000 square chessboard, or even a million queens on a similarly sized board?https://phys.org/news/2022-01-harvard-mathematician-year-old-chess-problem.html
2/9/2022 4:00 PMLiquid water previously detected under Mars’ ice-covered south pole is probably just a dusty mirage, according to a new study of the red planet led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-present-day-martian-groundwater-dries.html
2/9/2022 6:00 PMA study conducted by researchers affiliated with São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Brazil shows that large mammals have a major impact on plant diversity, primary productivity and biomass in the understory of Neotropical forests. Species like the lowland tapir (Tapirus terrestris) and white-lipped peccary (Tayassu peccari) help keep an ecological balance in areas such as the Atlantic Rainforest with different levels of productivity, while also influencing the spatial structure of plant communities.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-tapirs-large-peccaries-key-ecological.html
2/10/2022 8:00 AMAstronomers have discovered a black hole unlike any other. At one hundred thousand solar masses, it is smaller than the black holes we have found at the centers of galaxies, but bigger than the black holes that are born when stars explode. This makes it one of the only confirmed intermediate-mass black holes, an object that has long been sought by astronomers.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-extraordinary-black-hole-neighboring-galaxy.html
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2/10/2022 12:00 PMA team of researchers at the University of Western Australia has set a record for stability when sending a laser beam across an atmospheric distance.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-laser-stability-atmospheric-distances.html
2/10/2022 2:00 PMIts name sounds legendary, but the newly discovered insect Neuroterus (noo-ROH’-teh-rus) valhalla doesn’t look or act the part. It’s barely a millimeter long and spends 11 months of the year locked in a crypt.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-biologists-insect-species.html
2/10/2022 4:00 PMA team of researchers working on the Warsaw Mummy Project studying the Egyptian “Mysterious Lady” mummy has determined how a fetus was preserved in her womb for more than 2,000 years. The team discovered the fetus last summer using a CT scanner and published their results in the Journal of Archaeological Science. In this new effort they uncovered the reasons for the survival of the fetus and have published a follow-up in the same journal.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-pickled-fetus-ancient-egyptian-mummy.html
2/10/2022 6:00 PMThe Atlantic Ocean was born roughly 200 million years ago when the supercontinent Pangea began to break apart. As continental crust stretched and fractured, oceanic crust took its place. To investigate this rifting process, scientists can analyze the structure of the present-day eastern North American margin, where North America and the Atlantic Ocean meet. The composition of the crust and upper mantle provides clues about geological processes that accompanied continental breakup.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-role-magma-birth-atlantic-ocean.html
2/11/2022 8:00 AMResearchers have uncovered the earliest example of a flower bud in a 164 million-year-old plant fossil in China. The discovery firmly pushes back the emergence of flowering plants into the Jurassic period, between 145 million and 201 million years ago.https://www.livescience.com/oldest-flower-bud-fossil
2/11/2022 10:00 AMA Southwest Research Institute scientist measured the properties of ice-brine mixtures as cold as -145 degrees Fahrenheit to help confirm that salty water likely exists between grains of ice or sediment under the ice cap at Mars’ south pole. Laboratory measurements conducted by SwRI geophysicist Dr. David Stillman support oddly bright reflections detected by the MARSIS subsurface sounding radar aboard ESA’s Mars Express orbiter.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-liquid-beneath-martian-south-polar.html
2/11/2022 12:00 PMScientists have estimated the number of “small” black holes in the universe. And no surprise: It’s a lot.https://www.space.com/how-many-black-holes-in-universe
2/11/2022 2:00 PMAn international team of researchers has demonstrated a technique for producing perovskite photovoltaic materials on an industrial scale, which will reduce the cost and improve the performance of mass-produced perovskite solar cells.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-technique-boosts-efficiency-sustainability-large-scale.html
2/11/2022 4:00 PMA Lancaster physicist has proposed a radical solution to the question of how a charged particle, such as an electron, responded to its own electromagnetic field. This question has challenged physicists for over 100 years but mathematical physicist Dr. Jonathan Gratus has suggested an alternative approach with controversial implications.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-physicist-century-problem-reaction.html
2/11/2022 6:00 PMThe first molecular electronics chip has been developed, realizing a 50-year-old goal of integrating single molecules into circuits to achieve the ultimate scaling limits of Moore’s Law. Developed by Roswell Biotechnologies and a multi-disciplinary team of leading academic scientists, the chip uses single molecules as universal sensor elements in a circuit to create a programmable biosensor with real-time, single-molecule sensitivity and unlimited scalability in sensor pixel density. This innovation, appearing this week in a peer-reviewed article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), will power advances in diverse fields that are fundamentally based on observing molecular interactions, including drug discovery, diagnostics, DNA sequencing, and proteomics.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-team-molecular-electronics-sensors-semiconductor.html
2/12/2022 8:00 AMIt is attractive to convert CO2 into multicarbon hydrocarbons and oxygenates (C2+ products), but it is challenging to enhance the kinetics of carbon-carbon (C-C) coupling during CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR). Cu has a superior catalytic performance in C-C coupling. However, its selectivity is undermined in a neutral medium due to the acceleration of the competing hydrogen evolution reaction (HER).https://phys.org/news/2022-01-cu-interface-co2-electroreduction.html
2/12/2022 10:00 AMAll cells on Earth are enveloped in a fatty layer of lipids. Lipid membranes protect the content of the cells, including genetic information such as RNA and DNA. A new study from the researchers at the B CUBE—Center for Molecular Bioengineering at TU Dresden reveals how lipids and RNA can directly interact and how this regulates RNA activity in unexpected ways. The study could help explain how RNA could be regulated in primordial or synthetic biological systems and lead to improvements in the design of RNA vaccines.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-unexpected-nucleic-acids-fat.html
2/12/2022 12:00 PMOur dating assumptions for the Red Planet might need a second look. Fresh analysis of craters on Mars suggests that asteroids have been smashing into the surface at a consistent rate for at least 600 million years.https://www.space.com/mars-asteroid-shower-constant-rate
2/12/2022 2:00 PMOn a brisk December day in Pacific Grove, California, 10,000 monarch butterflies hang in the crown of a Monterey pine. Where the branches cast shade, they huddle body-to-body in thick brown clusters, wings folded. But where the light touches, the boughs are bejeweled with splashes of orange. Warming monarchs flap languidly, some flitting among the trees or fluttering down to the ground. Whenever the sun shifts, the air is busy with wings.https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/western-monarch-population-growth-2021/
2/12/2022 4:00 PMIn the past few years, we have finally captured actual photos of these fearsome creatures and measured the gravitational waves — ripples in spacetime — that they create when colliding. But there’s still a lot we don’t know about black holes. One of the biggest enigmas is exactly how they form in the first place.https://www.space.com/black-hole-birth-observations
2/12/2022 6:00 PMConcrete fractures that are invisible to the naked eye stand out in images produced through a technique created at Rice University. A collaboration between research groups at Rice and the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research discovered by chance that common Portland cement contains microscopic crystals of silicon that emit near-infrared fluorescence when illuminated with visible light. That led to two realizations. The first was that the exact wavelength of the emission can be used to identify the particular type of cement in a structure.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-silicon-fluorescence-microcracks-cement-revealing.html
2/13/2022 8:00 AMA distant exoplanet looks more like a football than the usual sphere, researchers report in a groundbreaking new study.https://www.space.com/hot-jupiter-exoplanet-football-shape
2/13/2022 10:00 AMProtective coatings are common for many things in daily life that see a lot of use. We coat wood floors with finish; apply Teflon to the paint on cars; even use diamond coatings on medical devices. Protective coatings are also essential in many demanding research and industrial applications.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-atomic-armor-enables-discoveries.html
2/13/2022 12:00 PMSmall animals don’t usually grow very old. Since they’re always at risk of becoming another critter’s quick snack, the best way to ensure that their genes will make it into the next generation is having a bunch of young as soon as possible. This is certainly true for insects, which, with some famous exceptions like cicadas, often have a life expectancy best expressed in days, weeks or months.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-can-ant-and-termite-queens-live-so-long-180979408/
2/13/2022 2:00 PMNew research provides further evidence that rocks representing up to a billion years of geological time were carved away by ancient glaciers during the planet’s “Snowball Earth” period, according to a study.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-link-glaciers-earth-great-unconformity.html
2/13/2022 4:00 PMAn unprecedented new telescope image of the Milky Way galaxy’s turbulent center has revealed nearly 1,000 mysterious strands, inexplicably dangling in space.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-mysterious-strands-revealed-milky-center.html
2/13/2022 6:00 PMA new visualization shows the power of an epic star explosion erupting in deep space. The video shows the famous explosion in the Eta Carinae star system that briefly made it the brightest object in the sky in the year 1843. More than 170 years later, the two lobes of the nova are still expanding into space, providing a rich trove of data to gather.https://www.space.com/eta-carinae-epic-explosion
2/14/2022 8:00 AMThrough analyzes of ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica, a research team led by Lund University in Sweden has found evidence of an extreme solar storm that occurred about 9,200 years ago. What puzzles the researchers is that the storm took place during one of the sun’s more quiet phases—during which it is generally believed our planet is less exposed to such events.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-ancient-ice-reveals-mysterious-solar.html
2/14/2022 10:00 AMMIT physicists have discovered a new quantum bit, or “qubit,” in the form of vibrating pairs of atoms known as fermions. They found that when pairs of fermions are chilled and trapped in an optical lattice, the particles can exist simultaneously in two states—a weird quantum phenomenon known as superposition. In this case, the atoms held a superposition of two vibrational states, in which the pair wobbled against each other while also swinging in sync, at the same time.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-vibrating-atoms-robust-qubits-physicists.html
2/14/2022 12:00 PMSubtle signals from black hole mergers might confirm the existence of “Hawking radiation”—and gravitational-wave detectors may have already seen them.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-echoes-from-colliding-black-holes-prove-stephen-hawkings-greatest-prediction1/
2/14/2022 2:00 PMA research team led by scientists from City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has recently designed a structured thermal armor (STA) that achieves efficient liquid cooling even over 1,000°C, fundamentally solving a 266-year-old challenge presented by the Leidenfrost effect. This breakthrough can be applied in aero and space engines, as well as improve the safety and reliability of next-generation nuclear reactors.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-thermal-armor-liquid-cooling-1000c.html
2/14/2022 4:00 PMMagnetic fields are detected throughout the universe and widely participate in astrophysical dynamics. Various fundamental phenomena, including coronal mass ejections, solar flares, gamma-ray bursts and pulsar winds, are dominated by variations in magnetic fields. Although the mechanisms involved in the origin of magnetic fields in space are still uncertain, one of the widely accepted plausible scenarios is the turbulent dynamo, which amplifies weak magnetic fields. Recent numerical studies and experiments with long pulse laser-produced colliding plasma flows have demonstrated the capability of seed field amplification. Coupling strong magnetic fields and high-power lasers supports cutting-edge research in laboratory astrophysics and laser-driven charged particle accelerations. With moderate laser intensities and a relatively long pulse length, mega-gauss (MG) magnetic fields in plasmas at the edges of focal spots have been achieved. Numerical and theoretical studies predict a magnetic field strength of 100 MG, while state-of-the-art experimental results are about 10 MG.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-instant-turn-over-magnetism-gyro-motion.html
2/14/2022 6:00 PMA mysterious new object – unlike anything astronomers have seen before – has been discovered by the MWA Telescope in Western Australia. The object appears to blast out an energetic beam of radio waves every 18-minutes, becoming one of the brightest radio sources in the sky.https://spaceaustralia.com/feature/mwa-telescope-catches-mysterious-new-radio-object
2/15/2022 8:00 AMWith 192 lasers and temperatures more than three times hotter than the center of the sun, scientists hit—at least for a fraction of a second—a key milestone on the long road toward nearly pollution-free fusion energy.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-hot-lab-milestone-road-fusion.html
2/15/2022 10:00 AMCobalt sits in the center of the corrin ring of vitamin B12 and the important cobalamins we derive from it. Perhaps surprisingly, only two of our enzymes bother to use these painfully constructed and meticulously channeled cofactors. Why do our cells go to such great lengths to get a little bit of the cobalt magic, and what catalytic properties might make it so special?https://phys.org/news/2022-01-cobalt-essential-life.html
2/15/2022 12:00 PMThe origin of water on our planet is a hot question: Water has immense implications for plate tectonics, climate, the origin of life on Earth, and potential habitability of other Earth-like planets. In a recent study, a Skoltech professor and his Chinese colleagues suggest a chemical compound that—although now extinct—could have preserved water deep underground in the violent era when massive collisions must have evaporated the Earth’s surface water.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-probes-planet-turbulent-oceans.html
2/15/2022 2:00 PMResearch done at Cornell University has uncovered from gravitation wave data the first potential signs of spin-orbit resonances in binary black holes, a step toward understanding the mechanisms of supernovas and other big questions in astrophysics.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-binary-black-hole-behavior-revealed.html
2/15/2022 4:00 PMIn spring 2018, Dr. Philip Matthews spent a typical afternoon capturing dragonflies in the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) experimental ponds. Little did the zoologist know he was about to embark on a journey to solve a century-old entomological mystery involving a much smaller but equally intriguing insect. As he worked in the ponds, larvae floating in rainwater in a nearby cattle tank caught his eye.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-zoologist-year-old-mystery-phantom-midge.html
2/15/2022 6:00 PMThe same phenomenon by which an opera singer can shatter a wineglass also underlies the very existence of subatomic particles.https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-physics-of-resonance-shapes-reality-20220126/
2/16/2022 8:00 AMUCLA scientists have devised a method for producing intricately shaped hydrogel microparticles at a rate of more than 40 million per hour—at least 10 times faster than the current standard approach.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-method-microparticles-drug-production-cell.html
2/16/2022 10:00 AMOne of the most promising applications of artificial intelligence technologies is the identification of tumors from high-resolution medical imagery. Can the same techniques be used to help paleontologists more quickly analyze similar scans of dinosaur fossils? Researchers reported some of the early answers—and remaining challenges—in a new paper published in Frontiers in Earth Science.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-ai-breakthrough-revolutionize-dinosaur-fossils.html
2/16/2022 12:00 PMPlants that secrete colored nectars are part of an exclusive club. To date, only 70 plants in the world are on that list. The colors lure in pollinators, but more recently they sparked the interest of researchers and industry partners in search of natural colorant options.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-copycat-red-nectar-natural-gecko-approved.html
2/16/2022 2:00 PMCould we send a spacecraft to the giant, cigar-shaped interstellar interloper ‘Oumuamua? Should we?https://www.space.com/oumuamua-space-rock-interstellar-asteroid-comet-spacecraft
2/16/2022 4:00 PMIn January 1999, scientists observed mysterious motions within a solar flare. Unlike typical flares that showed bright energy erupting outwards from the Sun, this solar flare also displayed a downward flow of motion, as if material was falling back towards the Sun. Described as “downward-moving dark voids,” astronomers wondered what exactly they were seeing.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-scientists-mysterious-finger-like-features-solar.html
2/16/2022 6:00 PMIt doesn’t have a brain and survives on rotting vegetable matter—but it could offer valuable insights into city planning, according to a team of University of Toronto researchers.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-virtual-slime-mold-subway-network.html
2/17/2022 8:00 AMThere’s a whole lot of talking going on beneath the waves. A new Cornell study finds that fish are far more likely to communicate with sound than generally thought—and some fish have been doing this for at least 155 million years.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-fishes.html
2/17/2022 10:00 AMThe thought of bacteria joining together to form a socially organized community capable of cooperation, competition and sophisticated communication might at first seem like the stuff of science fiction—or just plain gross.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-bacteria-chemical-radio.html
2/17/2022 12:00 PMScientists from the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe and the University of Minnesota, Tomotake Matsumura and Shaul Hanany, and their collaborators have made a new type of optical element that will improve the performance of telescopes studying radiation from the Big Bang.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-scientists-optical-device-alumina.html
2/17/2022 2:00 PMWhen an exciting and unconventional new class of superconducting materials was discovered 35 years ago, researchers cheered. Like other superconductors, these materials, known as copper oxides or cuprates, conducted electricity with no resistance or loss when chilled below a certain point—but at much higher temperatures than scientists had thought possible. This raised hopes of getting them to work at close to room temperature for perfectly efficient power lines and other uses.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-reveal-fourth-signature-superconducting-transition.html
2/17/2022 4:00 PMIn October 2017, the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua passed through our solar system, leaving many questions in its wake. Not only was it the first object of its kind ever observed, but the limited data astronomers obtained as it shot out of our solar system left them all scratching their heads. Even today, almost five years after this interstellar visitor made its flyby, scientists are still uncertain about its true nature and origins. In the end, the only way to get real answers from ‘Oumuamua is to catch up with it.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-spacecraft-oumuamua-years.html
2/17/2022 6:00 PMWhen bears and ground squirrels hibernate in winter, they stop eating, lasting until spring simply on the fat reserves they’ve stored up in their bodies. Usually, this sort of prolonged fasting and inactivity would significantly reduce the mass and function of muscle, but hibernators don’t suffer this fate. How they avoid it, however, has been a mystery.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-wintering-squirrels-astronauts.html
2/18/2022 8:00 AMA newly created nano-architected material exhibits a property that previously was just theoretically possible: it can refract light backward, regardless of the angle at which the light strikes the material.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-nano-architected-material-refracts-important-photonic.html
2/18/2022 10:00 AMA new study has shed light on how birds navigate back to their breeding site after flying across two continents. The study, part of an international collaboration led by researchers at the University of Oxford and including scientists from the University of Oldenburg, suggests that information extracted from the Earth’s magnetic field tells birds where and when to stop migrating. This trick allows them to precisely target the same breeding site year-on-year from thousands of kilometers away.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-magnetic-songbirds-earth-field-migration.html
2/18/2022 12:00 PMTrapped ions excited with a laser beam can be used to create entangled qubits in quantum information systems, but addressing several stationary pairs of ions in a trap requires multiple optical switches and complex controls. Now, scientists at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) have demonstrated the feasibility of a new approach that moves trapped ion pairs through a single laser beam, potentially reducing power requirements and simplifying the system.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-approach-ions-entangling-gates.html
2/18/2022 2:00 PMPhysicists at the world’s largest atom smasher have detected a mysterious, primordial particle from the dawn of time. About 100 of the short-lived “X” particles — so named because of their unknown structures — were spotted for the first time amid trillions of other particles inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest particle accelerator, located near Geneva at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research).https://www.space.com/x-particle-spotted-inside-lhc
2/18/2022 4:00 PMAn international team including researchers from the University of Bern and the University of Geneva as well as the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS analyzed the atmosphere of one of the most extreme known planets in great detail. The results from this hot, Jupiter-like planet that was first characterized with the help of the CHEOPS space telescope, may help astronomers understand the complexities of many other exoplanets—including Earth-like planets.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-extreme-exoplanet-complex-exotic-atmosphere.html
2/18/2022 6:00 PMResearchers have known about high-temperature superconducting copper-based materials, or cuprates, since the 1980s. Below a certain temperature (approximately -130 degree Celsius), electrical resistance vanishes from these materials and magnetic flux fields are expelled. However, the basis for that superconductivity continues to be debated and explored.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-superconducting-mystery-precise.html
2/19/2022 8:00 AMImagine you’re baking a cake, but you run out of salt. Even with the missing ingredient, the batter still looks like cake batter, so you stick it in the oven and cross your fingers, expecting to end up with something pretty close to a normal cake. Instead, you come back an hour later to find a fully cooked steak.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-mutant-stem-cells-defy.html
2/19/2022 10:00 AMDrilling with the beam of an electron microscope, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory precisely machined tiny electrically conductive cubes that can interact with light and organized them in patterned structures that confine and relay light’s electromagnetic signal. This demonstration is a step toward potentially faster computer chips and more perceptive sensors.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-precision-machining-tiny-light-guiding-cubes.html
2/19/2022 12:00 PMAn international team, including several researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, has mapped the active galaxy OJ 287 with an angular resolution of 12 microarcseconds in the radio range. This is currently the highest resolution that can be achieved with astronomical observations. This was made possible by the technique of interferometry with very long baselines. The signals from twelve radio telescopes—one on board the Russian Spektr-R satellite—were combined. The resulting virtual telescope had a diameter of 193,000 kilometers.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-highest-resolution-view-heart-blazar.html
2/19/2022 2:00 PMHumans experience the world in three dimensions, but a collaboration in Japan has developed a way to create synthetic dimensions to better understand the fundamental laws of the universe and possibly apply them to advanced technologies.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-synthetic-dimensions.html
2/19/2022 4:00 PMIf you had to guess which part of the world has the highest levels of atmospheric mercury pollution, you probably wouldn’t pick a patch of pristine Amazonian rainforest. Yet, that’s exactly where they are.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-peruvian-gold-pristine-rainforests-heavily.html
2/19/2022 6:00 PMThe Higgs boson, the mysterious particle that lends other particles their mass, could have kept our universe from collapsing. And its properties might be a clue that we live in a multiverse of parallel worlds, a wild new theory suggests. That theory, in which different regions of the universe have different sets of physical laws, would suggest that only worlds in which the Higgs boson is tiny would survive.https://www.space.com/higgs-particle-universe-collapse-in-multiverse
2/20/2022 8:00 AMTransport yourself 50,000 years into the past, and you’d see that the Australian landscape of the Late Pleistocene wasn’t all that different from today’s. Upon leaving your time machine, however, you might wonder if the waters brimmed with steroids. Many of the creatures that prowled the ancient outback were both strange and supersized, including a wombat-like marsupial the size of a Mini Cooper and a gargantuan turtle with a horned head and spiked tail.https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/first-complete-thylacoleo-carnifex/
2/20/2022 10:00 AMA Mars probe has snapped a peculiar image of the Red Planet’s surface that looks like a giant tree stump, rings and all.https://www.space.com/tree-rings-impact-crater-mars-exomars
2/20/2022 12:00 PMThe subject of this image is a group of three galaxies, collectively known as NGC 7764A. They were imaged by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, using both its Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3. The two galaxies in the upper right of the image appear to be interacting with one another. The long trails of stars and gas extending from them give the impression that they have both just been struck at great speed, thrown into disarray by the bowling-ball-shaped galaxy to the lower left of the image. In reality, interactions between galaxies happen over very long time periods, and galaxies rarely collide head-on with one another. It is also unclear whether the galaxy to the lower left is interacting with the other two, although they are so relatively close in space that it seems possible that they are. By happy coincidence, the collective interaction between these galaxies has caused the two on the upper right to form a shape, which from our solar system’s perspective, resembles the starship known as the USS Enterprise from Star Trek!https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/hubble-spots-a-starship-shaped-galactic-pair
2/20/2022 2:00 PMPhysicists from the University of Amsterdam have proposed a new architecture for a scalable quantum computer. Making use of the collective motion of the constituent particles, they were able to construct new building blocks for quantum computing that pose fewer technical difficulties than current state-of-the art methods.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-method-quantum.html
2/20/2022 4:00 PMEuropean astronomers have observed a peculiar high-mass X-ray binary known as 4U 2206+54. Results of the research provide essential information regarding the origin of this system. The study was presented in a paper published January 19 on the arXiv pre-print repository.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-high-mass-x-ray-binary-4u.html
2/20/2022 6:00 PMScientists have long agreed that the Moon formed when a protoplanet, called Theia, struck Earth in its infancy some 4.5 billion years ago. Now, a team of scientists has a provocative new proposal: Theia’s remains can be found in two continent-size layers of rock buried deep in Earth’s mantle.https://www.science.org/content/article/remains-impact-created-moon-may-lie-deep-within-earth
2/21/2022 8:00 AMAs the world searches for and demands more sustainable sources of energy and materials, plant biomass may provide the solution by serving as a renewable resource for biomaterials and biofuel production. However, until now, the complex physical and chemical interactions in plant biomass have been a challenge in post-harvest processing.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-chemists-key-biofuel-biomaterial-production.html
2/21/2022 10:00 AMThis NASA Hubble Space Telescope image captures one of three segments that comprise a 65-light-year wide star-forming region named the Chamaeleon Cloud Complex. The segment in this Hubble composite image, called Chamaeleon Cloud I (Cha I), reveals dusty-dark clouds where stars are forming, dazzling reflection nebulae glowing by the light of bright-blue young stars, and radiant knots called Herbig-Haro objects.https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/hubble-examines-a-star-forming-chamaeleon
2/21/2022 12:00 PMHibernating astronauts could be the best way to save mission costs, reduce the size of spacecraft by a third and keep crew healthy on their way to Mars. An ESA-led investigation suggests that human hibernation goes beyond the realm of science-fiction and may become a game-changing technique for space travel.https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Hibernate_for_a_trip_to_Mars_the_bear_way
2/21/2022 2:00 PMWhen did the Earth reach oxygen levels sufficient to support animal life? Researchers from McGill University have discovered that a rise in oxygen levels occurred in step with the evolution and expansion of complex, eukaryotic ecosystems. Their findings represent the strongest evidence to date that extremely low oxygen levels exerted an important limitation on evolution for billions of years.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-oxygen-early-earth-life-planets.html
2/21/2022 4:00 PMA new study by a team of researchers from Israel and Ghana has brought the first evidence of nonrandom mutation in human genes, challenging a core assumption at the heart of evolutionary theory by showing a long-term directional mutational response to environmental pressure. Using a novel method, researchers led by Professor Adi Livnat from the University of Haifa showed that the rate of generation of the HbS mutation, which protects against malaria, is higher in people from Africa, where malaria is endemic, than in people from Europe, where it is not.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-uncovers-evidence-long-term-directionality-human.html
2/21/2022 6:00 PMScientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have invented and demonstrated a novel scheme for substantially improving the detection accuracy of information transmitted in pulses of light through telecommunications systems such as the Internet. The “smart” quantum receiver system continuously estimates the reliability of the signals it measures, making error correction easier and more efficient.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-telecom-reliability-message-components-real.html
2/22/2022 8:00 AMWhen a solid object hits a liquid, the impact produces shock waves: a process that has long occupied engineers due to its implications for design of hydraulic systems or motors. KAUST researchers now show that impacts at speeds lower than expected can still induce these damaging shock waves.https://phys.org/news/2022-01-low-speed-impacts-liquids.html
2/22/2022 10:00 AMA single flash of lightning in the United States nearly two years ago cut across the sky for nearly 770 kilometres, setting a new world record, the United Nations said. The new record for the longest detected megaflash, measured in the southern US on April 29, 2020, stretched a full 768 kilometres, or 477.2 miles, across Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-longest-lightning-miles-states.html
2/22/2022 12:00 PMWith the help of a “playground” they created for observing exotic physics, MIT scientists and colleagues have not only found a new way to manipulate magnetism in a material with light but have also realized a rare form of matter. The former could lead to applications including computer memory storage devices that can read or write information in a much faster way, while the latter introduces new physics.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-physicists-magnetism.html
2/22/2022 2:00 PMIn 2020, astronomers thought they’d found something incredible: the second so-called Earth Trojan asteroid ever seen. Now, a new team of researchers has confirmed that it’s real.https://www.space.com/earth-extra-moon-trojan-asteroid-2020-xl5-discovery
2/22/2022 4:00 PMA team of researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently announced that they had engineered a new rubber-like solid substance that has surprising qualities. It can absorb and release very large quantities of energy. And it is programmable. Taken together, this new material holds great promise for a very wide array of applications, from enabling robots to have more power without using additional energy, to new helmets and protective materials that can dissipate energy much more quickly.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-scientists-material-absorb-enormous-amounts.html
2/22/2022 6:00 PMAn unprecedentedly detailed new telescope image of the complex heart of our galaxy is now giving researchers their best view yet of hundreds of strange magnetic filaments seen nowhere else.https://www.space.com/meerkat-milky-way-mosaic-filaments
2/23/2022 8:00 AMUsing a novel polymerization process, MIT chemical engineers have created a new material that is stronger than steel and as light as plastic, and can be easily manufactured in large quantities. #science #MIT #steel #plastichttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-two-dimensional-polymer-lightweight-material-stronger.html
2/23/2022 10:00 AMThe South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) has released a new MeerKAT telescope image of the centre of our Galaxy, showing radio emission from the region with unprecedented clarity and depth. The international team behind the work is publishing the initial science highlights from this image in The Astrophysical Journal. The article is accompanied by a public release of the data to the worldwide astronomical community for their further scientific exploration. #science #sarao #meerkat #galaxyhttps://www.sarao.ac.za/media-releases/new-meerkat-radio-image-reveals-complex-heart-of-the-milky-way/
2/23/2022 12:00 PMFor 15 years, scientists have been baffled by the mysterious way water flows through the tiny passages of carbon nanotubes—pipes with walls that can be just one atom thick. The streams have confounded all theories of fluid dynamics; paradoxically, fluid passes more easily through narrower nanotubes, and in all nanotubes it moves with almost no friction. What friction there is has also defied explanation. #science #carbon #nanotube #atomhttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-quantum-friction-carbon-nanotubes-long-standing.html
2/23/2022 2:00 PMAn international team of researchers has confirmed that a possible microlensing event witnessed in 2011 was due to the presence of a free-floating black hole roaming through interstellar space—the first of its kind ever observed. The group has published a paper describing their findings on the arXiv preprint server. #science #microlensing #blackhole #spacehttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-free-floating-black-hole-roaming-interstellar.html
2/23/2022 4:00 PMUniversity of Delaware (UD) engineers have demonstrated a way to effectively capture 99% of carbon dioxide from air using a novel electrochemical system powered by hydrogen. It is a significant advance for carbon dioxide capture and could bring more environmentally friendly fuel cells closer to market. #science #electrochemical #hydrogen #carbondioxidehttps://techxplore.com/news/2022-02-game-changing-technology-carbon-dioxide-air.html
2/23/2022 6:00 PMAnalyzing as many as one billion proton collisions per second or tens of thousands of very complex lead collisions is not an easy job for a traditional computer farm. With the latest upgrades of the LHC experiments due to come into action next year, their demand for data processing potential has significantly increased. As their new computational challenges might not be met using traditional central processing units (CPUs), the four large experiments are adopting graphics processing units (GPUs). #science #proton #lhchttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-lhc-game.html
2/24/2022 8:00 AMBlack holes aren’t always in the dark. Astronomers have spotted intense light shows shining from just outside the event horizon of supermassive black holes, including the one at our galaxy’s core. However, scientists couldn’t identify the cause of these flares beyond the suspected involvement of magnetic fields. #science #blackhole #eventhorizon #supermassivehttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-supermassive-black-hole-flares-simulations.html
2/24/2022 10:00 AMGiant mountain ranges at least as high as the Himalayas and stretching up to 8,000 kilometers across entire supercontinents played a crucial role in the evolution of early life on Earth, according to a new study by researchers at The Australian National University (ANU). #science #mountains #supercontinent #evolutionhttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-supermountains-evolution-life-earth.html
2/24/2022 12:00 PMEverything in our universe moves, but the timescales needed to see motion are often vastly greater than human lifetimes. In a major new study, a team of astronomers from the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy (IfA), University of Maryland and University of Paris-Saclay has traced the movement of 10,000 galaxies and clusters of galaxies, the dominant congregations of matter, within 350 million light-years. Their motions are followed throughout a span of 11.5 billion years––from the galaxies’ origins when the universe was only 1.5 billion-years-old, until today, at an age of more than 13 billion years. #science #galaxy #matter #motionhttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-astronomers-galaxy-million-years.html
2/24/2022 2:00 PMZombie bites and airborne transmission are some of the fictional and all-too-real methods that pathogens like bacteria and viruses use to infect new hosts. Biologists from San Diego State University have identified a new way that one type of bacteria invades multiple cells within a living organism. #science #zombie #bacteria #biologyhttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-never-before-seen-bacteria-infect-cells.html
2/24/2022 4:00 PMNASA is preparing for the day its astronauts explore the south pole of the moon by heading underwater with the lights out. #science #nasa #astronaut #moonhttps://www.space.com/lights-out-artemis-spacewalk-practice-underwater
2/24/2022 6:00 PMThe deep-ocean floor is the least explored ecosystem on the planet, despite covering more than 60 percent of the Earth surface. Largely unknown life in abyssal sediments, from benthic animals to microbes, helps to recycle and/or sequester the sinking (in)organic matter originating from pelagic communities that are numerically dominated by microscopic plankton. Benthic ecosystems thus underpin two major ecosystem services of planetary importance: the healthy functioning of ocean food-webs and the burial of carbon on geological timescales, both of which are critical regulators of the Earth climate. #science #ocean #abyss #organichttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-abyssal-world-terra-incognita-earth.html
2/25/2022 8:00 AMAstronomers have identified two different cases of “mini-Neptune” planets that are losing their puffy atmospheres and likely transforming into super-Earths. Radiation from the planets’ stars is stripping away their atmospheres, driving hot gas to escape like steam from a pot of boiling water. #science #astronomy #minineptune #superearthhttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-puffy-planets-atmospheres-super-earths.html
2/25/2022 10:00 AMResearchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have gained insight into a fundamental process found throughout the universe. They discovered that the magnetic fields threading through plasma, the charged state of matter composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei, can affect the coming together and violent snapping apart of the plasma’s magnetic field lines. This insight could help scientists predict the occurrence of coronal mass ejections, enormous burps of plasma from the sun that could threaten satellites and electrical grids on Earth. #science #energy #plasma #universe #magneticfieldhttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-insight-blobs-universal.html
2/25/2022 12:00 PMTo understand how life emerged, scientists investigate the chemistry of carbon and water. In the case of water, they track the various forms, or isotopes, of its constituent hydrogen and oxygen atoms over the history of the universe, like a giant treasure hunt. #science #chemistry #carbon #waterhttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-earth.html
2/25/2022 2:00 PMUranus is a fascinating place. Planetary scientists are captivated by the ice giant’s unusual methane-rich atmosphere, sporadic weather, and magnetic field that interacts with the Sun all the way from its distant orbit. And, unfortunately, it also has a name that lends itself really well to dirty jokes, and its pronounciation opens up endless possibilities for potty humor. #science #uranus #planet #youranushttps://futurism.com/scientists-gross-uranus-jokes
2/25/2022 4:00 PMEvery last particle in the universe—from a cosmic ray to a quark—is either a fermion or a boson. These categories divide the building blocks of nature into two distinct kingdoms. Now researchers have discovered the first examples of a third particle kingdom … anyons. #science #quark #fermion #boson #anyonhttps://www.wired.com/story/milestone-evidence-for-anyons-a-third-kingdom-of-particles/
2/25/2022 6:00 PMToday, the colorless and deadly gas cyanide is known as a fast-acting poison and a chemical weapon. Four billion years ago, however, it may have been a harbinger of life. Chemists at Scripps Research have shown for the first time how cyanide could have enabled some of the earliest metabolic reactions to create carbon-based compounds from carbon dioxide. In addition to better understanding the evolution of life on Earth, this discovery gives scientists insight into the potential chemistry of life on other planets. #science #cyanide #carbondioxide #evolutionhttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-role-cyanide-early-earth-extraterrestrial.html
2/26/2022 8:00 AMA new study leaves large tooth marks in previous conclusions about the body shape of the Megalodon, one of the largest sharks that ever lived. #science #shark #sharks #megalodonhttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-holes-theories-megalodons.html
2/26/2022 10:00 AMA few years ago, a novel measurement technique showed that protons are probably smaller than had been assumed since the 1990s. The discrepancy surprised the scientific community; some researchers even believed that the Standard Model of particle physics would have to be changed. Physicists at the University of Bonn and the Technical University of Darmstadt have now developed a method that allows them to analyze the results of older and more recent experiments much more comprehensively than before. This also results in a smaller proton radius from the older data. So there is probably no difference between the values—no matter which measurement method they are based on. #science #physics #standardmodelhttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-protons-smaller-previously-believed.html
2/26/2022 12:00 PMLeicester space scientists have discovered a never-before-seen mechanism fuelling huge planetary aurorae at Saturn. #science #saturn #aurora #auroraehttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-saturn-high-altitude-extraordinary-aurorae.html
2/26/2022 2:00 PMA research team from Osnabrück University and the Ozouga Chimpanzee Project has, for the first time, observed chimpanzees applying insects to their own wounds and the wounds of conspecifics. #science #primates #chimpanzee #medicinehttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-chimpanzees-insects-wounds-potential-case.html
2/26/2022 4:00 PMUniversity of Exeter scientists have discovered new information about the tiny propellers used by single-cell organisms called archaea. Like bacteria, archaea are found in a vast range of habitats—including inside human bodies—but unlike bacteria they are not known to cause disease. #science #organisms #archaea #bacteriahttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-biologists-smallest-propeller-earth.html
2/26/2022 6:00 PMA new study highlights there could be up to four times more fish in the mesopelagic, or “twilight,” zone of the Southern Ocean than previously thought. #science #fish #mesopelagic #oceanhttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-fish-twilight-zone-oceanic-layer.html
2/27/2022 8:00 AMWhen temperature changes, many materials undergo a phase transition, such as liquid water to ice, or a metal to a superconductor. Sometimes, a so-called hysteresis loop accompanies such a phase change, so that the transition temperatures are different depending on whether the material is cooled down or warmed up. #science #temperature #hysteresis #phasechangehttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-scientists-mysterious-transition-electronic-crystal.html
2/27/2022 10:00 AMWhether for use in cybersecurity, gaming or scientific simulation, the world needs true random numbers, but generating them is harder than one might think. But a group of Brown University physicists has developed a technique that can potentially generate millions of random digits per second by harnessing the behavior of skyrmions—tiny magnetic anomalies that arise in certain two-dimensional materials. #science #numbers #math #skyrmionshttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-tiny-magnetic-swirls-true-random.html
2/27/2022 12:00 PMUniversity of Manchester research fellow David Legg, in collaboration with a team of international scientists from China, Switzerland, and Sweden, has announced a new fossil that reveals the origin of gills in arthropods. #science #fossil #gills #evolutionhttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-fossil-reveals-arthropod.html
2/27/2022 2:00 PMIn a new University of Houston study using an advanced remote imaging system known as synthetic aperture radar interferometry, three glaciers at the South Pole are being documented with levels of clarity and completeness never seen before. The new remote sensing data system is not just uncovering icy secrets from Earth’s least explored continent, it also is raising alarms about global climate risks—both present and future. #science #radar #interferometry #glacierhttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-radar-technology-antarctic-glaciers-ice.html
2/27/2022 4:00 PMStar formation in the Milky Way primarily occurs in long, dense filaments of gas and dust that stretch along the spiral arms. Dubbed “bones” because they delineate the galaxy’s densest skeletal spiral structures, these filaments are characterized by being at least fifty times longer than they are wide and having coherent internal motions along their lengths. While most of the key physical properties of these bones are known, what we know of their magnetic field properties is generally unconstrained. These fields can play a critical role either in supporting the gas and dust against gravitational collapse into new stars, or alternatively, in assisting the flow of mass along the bone into cores making new stars. #science #astronomy #milkyway #galaxyhttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-magnetic-field-milky-filamentary-bone.html
2/27/2022 6:00 PMSupersymmetry is symmetry of nature that is often hypothesized to exist among elementary particles. In a new paper, physicists from the University of Amsterdam and QuSoft propose a setup where supersymmetry can also be observed between lumps of energy in a material—so-called kinks and skinks. #science #symmetry #supersymmetry #particleshttps://phys.org/news/2022-02-kinks-skinks-supersymmetry.html
2/28/2022 8:00 AMTwice in our planet’s history, colossal mountain ranges that towered as tall as the Himalayas and stretched thousands of miles farther reared their craggy heads out of the Earth, splitting ancient supercontinents in two. Geologists call them the “supermountains.”https://www.space.com/supermountains-drove-evolution-on-earth
2/28/2022 10:00 AMCould a laser send a spacecraft to Mars? That’s a proposed mission from a group at McGill University, designed to meet a solicitation from NASA. The laser, a 10-meter wide array on Earth, would heat hydrogen plasma in a chamber behind the spacecraft, producing thrust from hydrogen gas and sending it to Mars in only 45 days. There, it would aerobrake in Mars’ atmosphere, shuttling supplies to human colonists or, someday perhaps, even humans themselves.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-laser-mars.html
2/28/2022 12:00 PMn his book Wonderful Life, the late Stephen Jay Gould, former professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard, popularized the “weird wonder” stem-group arthropods Opabinia and Anomalocaris, discovered in the Cambrian Burgess Shale, turning them into icons in popular culture. While the “terror of the Cambrian’ Anomalocaris—with its radial mouth and spiny grasping appendages—is a radiodont with many relatives, the five-eyed Opabinia—with its distinctive frontal proboscis—remains the only opabiniid ever discovered. That is, until now.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-century-opabiniid.html
2/28/2022 2:00 PMTwo knights stand face to face. One has a plain average-sized sword. The other has a massive fear-inducing sword stained with blood. After one quick look at it, the first knight quickly puts his average sword away, backs off to a safe distance, and runs for his life.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-animal-cheaters.html
2/28/2022 4:00 PMA team of astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile have found evidence of another planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Solar System. This candidate planet is the third detected in the system and the lightest yet discovered orbiting this star. At just a quarter of Earth’s mass, the planet is also one of the lightest exoplanets ever found.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-planet-star-closest-sun.html
2/28/2022 6:00 PMMuch like people can learn more about themselves by stepping outside of their comfort zones, researchers can learn more about a system by giving it a jolt that makes it a little unstable—scientists call this “out of equilibrium”—and watching what happens as it settles back down into a more stable state.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-possibilities-triggering-room-temperature-superconductivity.html
3/1/2022 8:00 AMFerromagnetic materials have a self-generating magnetic field, ferroelectric materials generate their own electrical field. Although electric and magnetic fields are related, physics tells us that they are very different classes of material. Now the discovery by University of Warwick-led scientists of a complex electrical ‘vortex’-like pattern that mirrors its magnetic counterpart suggests that they could actually be two sides of the same coin.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-tiny-electrical-vortexes-bridge-gap.html
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3/1/2022 12:00 PMThe fossilized remains of an immature diplodocid—a large, long-necked herbivorous sauropod dinosaur, like Brontosaurus—may provide the first evidence of a unique respiratory infection in a dinosaur, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. The findings increase our understanding of the illnesses that affected dinosaurs.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-sauro-throat-evidence-indicating-dinosaur-respiratory.html
3/1/2022 2:00 PMWhen light hits a material, electrons can be released from this material—the photoelectric effect. Although this effect played a major role in the development of the quantum theory, it still holds a number of secrets: To date it has not been clear how quickly the electron is released after the photon is absorbed. Jonas Rist, a Ph.D. student working within an international team of researchers at the Institute for Nuclear Physics at Goethe University Frankfurt, has now been able to find an answer to this mystery with the aid of a COLTRIMS reaction microscope which had been developed in Frankfurt: The emission takes place lightning fast, namely within just a few attoseconds—within a billionth of billionths of a second.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-einstein-photoelectric-effect-electron.html
3/1/2022 4:00 PMThe strongest part of a tree lies not in its trunk or its sprawling roots, but in the walls of its microscopic cells.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-plant-derived-composite-tough-bone-hard.html
3/1/2022 6:00 PMEngineers working to reverse the proliferation of greenhouse gases know that in addition to reducing carbon dioxide emissions we will also need to remove carbon dioxide from power plant fumes or from the skies. But, what do we do with all that captured carbon? Matteo Cargnello, a chemical engineer at Stanford University, is working to turn it into other useful chemicals, such as propane, butane or other hydrocarbon fuels that are made up of long chains of carbon and hydrogen.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-catalyst-carbon-dioxide-gasoline-efficiently.html
3/2/2022 8:00 AMNASA’s Parker Solar Probe has taken its first visible light images of the surface of Venus from space.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-parker-solar-probe-captures-images.html
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3/2/2022 12:00 PMA ring of planetary debris studded with moon-sized structures has been observed orbiting close to a white dwarf star, hinting at a nearby planet in the “habitable zone” where water and life could exist, according to a new study led by UCL researchers.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-planetary-bodies-habitable-zone-dead.html
3/2/2022 2:00 PMNew research has shown that future gravitational wave detections from space will be capable of finding new fundamental fields and potentially shed new light on unexplained aspects of the Universe.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-gravitational-lisa-fundamental-fields.html
3/2/2022 4:00 PMThe moment that debris from destroyed planets impacts the surface of a white dwarf star has been observed for the first time by astronomers at the University of Warwick.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-moments-planetary-remnants.html
3/2/2022 6:00 PMScientists have verified the finding of the biggest comet ever seen and revised its measurements to around 85 miles in diameter. It is nearly double the size of the notorious comet Hale-Bopp, which held the previous record.https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/36035/20220210/comet-bernardinelli-bernstein-is-as-big-as-15-mount-everests-experts-say-will-it-pass-by-earth-by-2031.htm
3/3/2022 8:00 AMRare earth elements are hard to get and hard to recycle, but a flash of intuition led Rice University scientists toward a possible solution.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-joule-rare-earth-elements-ash.html
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3/3/2022 12:00 PMAt the center of spiral galaxies—those near to us but also those billions of light-years away—there is a vast spherical region made up of dark matter particles. This region has two defining characteristics: a density that is constant out to a certain radius that amazingly expands over time, while the density decreases. This suggests the existence of a direct interaction between the elementary particles that make up the dark matter halo and those that make up ordinary matter—protons, electrons, neutrons, and photons. We anticipate that this hypothesis is in direct conflict with the current prevailing theory used to describe the universe—known as Lambda-Cold Dark Matter—which posits that particles of cold dark matter are inert and do not interact with any other particle except gravitationally.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-distant-galaxies-true-nature-dark.html
3/3/2022 2:00 PMcarved stone drum unearthed in England is one of the most significant pieces of prehistoric art ever found in the country, the British Museum said. The 5,000-year-old drum carved from chalk is set to go on display for the first time in a major exhibition about the Neolithic site of Stonehenge and its historical context.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-prehistoric-ancient-british-museum.html
3/3/2022 4:00 PMA team of researchers from the California Institute of Technology and Sony Computer Science Laboratories has begun to search for life on other planets using a tool that analyzes statistical complexity. In their paper, the group describes using epsilon machines to search for life on alien worlds.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-epsilon-machines-alien-life.html
3/3/2022 6:00 PMAll through history, humans have created and shared stories that ponder the creation of stars—what they are and how the first stars came to be. Now, with new results from the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA), a radio telescope located at the South Africa Karoo Astronomy Reserve, MIT scientists are one small, but significant, step closer to understanding that history.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-early-hera-telescope-deeper-cosmic.html
3/4/2022 8:00 AMA team of astronomers have made the discovery of a lifetime that will help answer burning questions on the evolution of stars. The group is led by Evolutionary Studies Initiative member and Stevenson Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Keivan Stassun.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-astronomers-exceedingly-rare-magnetic-hybrid.html
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3/4/2022 12:00 PMAn international team of astronomers led by Dutch scientists has discovered that even a weak jet stream from a low-active black hole can be a kind of leaf blower to clean parts of a galaxy. The observed black hole removes about 75% of the cold gas in the central regions of the galaxy in a few million years. This probably stops the formation of stars.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-powerful-black-hole-environment.html
3/4/2022 2:00 PMIn the beginning, there was an infinitely dense, tiny ball of matter. Then, it all went bang, giving rise to the atoms, molecules, stars and galaxies we see today. Or at least, that’s what we’ve been told by physicists for the past several decades.https://www.space.com/what-came-before-big-bang.html
3/4/2022 4:00 PMJust over 12 months ago, we were sitting at Woomera, in the Australian outback, waiting for a streak of light in the sky to testify that the Hayabusa2 spacecraft had returned from its voyage to collect a little piece of a near-Earth asteroid called Ryugu. Unfortunately for us, it was cloudy in Woomera that day and we didn’t see the spacecraft come in.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-asteroids-sample-earth-reveals-solar.html
3/4/2022 6:00 PMThe international KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino Experiment (KATRIN), located at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), has broken an important barrier in neutrino physics that is relevant for both particle physics and cosmology. Based on data published in the journal Nature Physics, a new upper limit of 0.8 electronvolt (eV) for the mass of the neutrino has been obtained. This first push into the sub-eV mass scale of neutrinos by a model-independent laboratory method allows KATRIN to constrain the mass of these “lightweights of the universe” with unprecedented precision.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-neutrinos-lighter-electronvolts-limits-neutrino.html
3/5/2022 8:00 AMIt takes a lot of force to cough a loogie up a nearly 4-meter-long neck, but that’s what one dinosaur had to do. Paleontologists have found strange nodules on the neck of a 150-million-year-old sauropod, evidence of the first known respiratory infection in a dinosaur, The Guardian reports. The long-necked dinosaur, nicknamed Dolly, lived during the late Jurassic period and was unearthed in Montana more than 30 years ago. When researchers recently re-examined the skeleton, they found strange broccoli-shaped bone clusters near where the animal’s air sacs would have been. They looked just like similar spurs that spring up in birds’ lungs when they get a respiratory infection, and computerized tomography scans confirmed the idea, the researchers write this week in Scientific Reports. The team thinks the infection was similar to aspergillosis, which is caused by inhaling mold and can be fatal to modern birds. Although they don’t know whether the infection killed Dolly, it’s clear the poor dino would have been feverish, coughing, and sniffling, they say.https://www.science.org/content/article/sick-dinosaur-may-have-had-earliest-known-cough
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3/5/2022 12:00 PMTogether with an international team, Senckenberg scientist Dr. Mónica M. Solórzano Kraemer studied stingless bees from East Africa that were encased in tree resin and copal. In their study, published in the journal The Holocene, the researchers describe two new species and explains that they most likely became extinct prior to their discovery. The coastal forests where the bees were found are among the most threatened areas worldwide.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-tree-resin-bees-extinct.html
3/5/2022 2:00 PMIn a new study, an international team led by astrophysicists from the University of California, Irvine and Pomona College report how, when tiny galaxies collide with bigger ones, the bigger galaxies can strip the smaller galaxies of their dark matter—matter that we can’t see directly, but which astrophysicists think must exist because, without its gravitational effects, they couldn’t explain things like the motions of a galaxy’s stars.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-scientists-galaxies-dark.html
3/5/2022 4:00 PMUniversity of Chicago scientists have been able to create a new kind of quantum object at will in the laboratory: “domain walls.”https://phys.org/news/2022-02-scientists-strange-quantum-domain-walls.html
3/5/2022 6:00 PMAs ice sheets began melting at the end of the last ice age, a series of cataclysmic floods called the Missoula megafloods scoured the landscape of eastern Washington, carving long, deep channels and towering cliffs through an area now known as the Channeled Scablands. They were among the largest known floods in Earth’s history, and geologists struggling to reconstruct them have now identified a crucial factor governing their flows.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-tilting-earth-crust-ancient-megafloods.html
3/6/2022 8:00 AMDude, what if everything around us was just … a hologram? The thing is, it could be—and a University of Michigan physicist is using quantum computing and machine learning to better understand the idea, called holographic duality.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-black-hole-physicist-quantum-machine.html
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3/6/2022 12:00 PMScientists from SANKEN (the Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research) at Osaka University measured the thermal effects of ionic flow through a nanopore using a thermocouple. They found that under most conditions, both the current and heating power varied with applied voltage as predicted by Ohm’s law. This work may lead to more advanced nanoscale sensors.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-tiny-thermometer-temperature-ions-nanopore.html
3/6/2022 2:00 PMNASA has detected the most energetic light ever seen on Jupiter and, in the process, solved a 30-year-old mystery.https://www.space.com/nasa-nustar-space-telescope-jupiter-xray-detection
3/6/2022 4:00 PMWe have all seen crystals, whether a simple grain of salt or sugar, or an elaborate and beautiful amethyst. These crystals are made of atoms or molecules repeating in a symmetrical three-dimensional pattern called a lattice, in which atoms occupy specific points in space. By forming a periodic lattice, carbon atoms in a diamond, for example, break the symmetry of the space they sit in. Physicists call this “breaking symmetry.”https://phys.org/news/2022-02-crystals-persist-indefinitely-room-temperature.html
3/6/2022 6:00 PMAdvanced nuclear and synchrotron imaging has confirmed that a 93-million-year-old crocodile found in Central Queensland devoured a juvenile dinosaur based on remains found in the fossilized stomach contents.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-nuclear-techniques-rare-crocodile-devoured.html
3/7/2022 8:00 AMThe asteroid 16 Psyche, which NASA intends to visit with a spacecraft in 2026, may be less heavy metal and more hard rock than scientists have surmised, according to a new study by researchers from Brown and Purdue universities.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-psyche-iron-giant-asteroids-thought.html
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3/7/2022 12:00 PMHow much the ground moves during an earthquake strongly depends on properties of rock and soil just beneath Earth’s surface. Modeling studies suggest that ground shaking is amplified in sedimentary basins, on which populated urban areas are often located. However, imaging near-surface structure around urban areas at high resolution has been challenging.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-fiber-optic-cables-high-resolution-underground.html
3/7/2022 2:00 PMA new museum exhibit hopes to uncover the secrets behind the doodles, in-jokes and coded messages on a blackboard that legendary physicist Stephen Hawking kept untouched for more than 35 years.https://www.space.com/stephen-hawking-blackboard-mystery-exhibit
3/7/2022 4:00 PMThermoelectric materials convert heat to electricity and vice versa, and their atomic structures are closely related to how well they perform. Now researchers have discovered how to change the atomic structure of a highly efficient thermoelectric material, tin selenide, with intense pulses of laser light. This result opens a new way to improve thermoelectrics and a host of other materials by controlling their structure, creating materials with dramatic new properties that may not exist in nature.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-material-atomic-ultrafast-laser.html
3/7/2022 6:00 PMResearchers from the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences examined the validity of the theory of relativity with the highest accuracy in a study entitled “Exploring Lorentz Invariance Violation from Ultrahigh-Energy γRays Observed by LHAASO.”https://phys.org/news/2022-02-einstein-relativity-theory-strict-based.html
3/8/2022 8:00 AMThe discovery of two new and unusual species of diatoms (phytoplankton) in Hawaiian waters was announced by a team of University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa researchers in the Department of Oceanography’s Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education (C-MORE), along with collaborators at the University of California Santa Cruz, and California State University San Marcos. The organisms were also found to fix nitrogen, a critical process that converts gaseous nitrogen into a form that supports productivity in the nutrient-poor open ocean they inhabit.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-marine-phytoplankton-species-symbiont-fertilizer.html
3/8/2022 10:00 AMT 10
3/8/2022 12:00 PMLactic acid bacteria are essential in creating fermented foods like yogurt, cheese and sauerkraut. Certain strains are also used as probiotics to improve human gut health.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-hybrid-metabolism-fermented-food-microbe.html
3/8/2022 2:00 PMA paleontological study on the latest occurrences of the North African tree-toed horse (Hipparion) has been published in the German journal Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie, based on fossil materials discovered in the Plio-Pleistocene sites of Ain Boucherit and Ain Hanech in northeastern Algeria.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-pattern-north-south-extinction-group-primitive.html
3/8/2022 4:00 PMA group of Japanese and American researchers found that the Ptychodera flava, a worm-like marine organism capable of regenerating its entire head or body, draws on reprogramming-based mechanisms that help somatic cells in higher-order animals branch out into complete body parts. Commonly known as the acorn worm, the animal shares evolutionary roots with chordates and mammals that can be traced back from the most advanced vertebrates, including humans.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-acorn-worm-clues-vertebrates-regenerate.html
3/8/2022 6:00 PMTwo particularly strange stars may have formed in a lucky collision, according to new research. What makes these two stars unusual is the high levels of carbon and oxygen at the surface of their atmospheres. Those elements are left behind as a star burns its helium, but that process takes place in the star’s core and wraps up long before carbon and oxygen start to dominate the star’s atmosphere. Weirdly, these stars seem to still be running through helium despite their odd surfaces.https://www.space.com/strange-stars-helium-ashes-white-dwarf
3/9/2022 8:00 AMA team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in the U.S. has found that a species of spider uses its web to expand its hearing capabilities.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-spider-web-capabilities.html
3/9/2022 10:00 AMT 10
3/9/2022 12:00 PMResearchers at Lund University in Sweden have succeeded in developing a simple hydrocarbon molecule with a logic gate function, similar to that in transistors, in a single molecule. The discovery could make electric components on a molecular scale possible in the future.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-molecule-pave-mini-transistors.html
3/9/2022 2:00 PMPhonons are collective atomic vibrations, or quasiparticles, that act as the main heat carriers in a crystal lattice. Under certain circumstances, their properties can be modified by electric fields or light. But until now, nobody had noticed that they can respond to magnetic fields as well.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-strong-magnets-phonons-reveals-unexpected.html
3/9/2022 4:00 PMDespite being among the topics most researched on supercomputers, a fundamental understanding of the effects of turbulent motion on fluid flows still eludes scientists. A new approach developed at TU Darmstadt and running at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre aims to change that.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-supercomputers-largest-ever-turbulence-simulations.html
3/9/2022 6:00 PMResearchers at Uppsala University have discovered that the ancestors of legionella bacteria infected eukaryotic cells as early as two billion years ago. It happened soon after eukaryotes began to feed on bacteria. These results also contributes to the chicken-or-egg debate about whether mitochondria or phagocytosis came first.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-ancestors-legionella-bacteria-infected-cells.html
3/10/2022 8:00 AMResearchers led by professor Yue Zongyu and professor Di Kaichang from the Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and their collaborators have established an updated lunar chronology model that provides a more accurate timescale not just for lunar history but also for the evolution of planetary bodies in the inner solar system.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-china-moon-sample-lunar-chronology.html
3/10/2022 10:00 AMT 10
3/10/2022 12:00 PMFish genetically engineered to glow blue, green, or red under blacklight have been a big hit among aquarium lovers for years. But the fluorescent pet is not restricted to glass displays anymore. The red- and green-glowing versions, more vivid than normal zebrafish even in natural light, have escaped fish farms in southeastern Brazil and are multiplying in creeks in the Atlantic Forest, a new study shows. It is a rare example of a transgenic animal accidentally becoming established in nature, and a concern for biologists, who worry the exotic fish could threaten the local fauna in one of the most biodiverse spots on the planet.https://www.science.org/content/article/transgenic-glowing-fish-invades-brazilian-streams
3/10/2022 2:00 PMAs climate change continues to progress, so will its effects. In a new collaborative report, NASA and other U.S. government agencies have found that sea levels will rise up to a foot by 2050.https://www.space.com/sea-level-rise-foot-2050-climate-change-report-nasa
3/10/2022 4:00 PMUsing India’s AstroSat spacecraft, astronomers have inspected ultraviolet (UV) bright sources in a globular cluster known as NGC 4590 and identified more than 1,400 stellar objects presenting various evolutionary status.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-ultraviolet-bright-sources-ngc-stars.html
3/10/2022 6:00 PMThe European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (ESO’s VLTI) has observed a cloud of cosmic dust at the center of the galaxy Messier 77 that is hiding a supermassive black hole. The findings have confirmed predictions made around 30 years ago and are giving astronomers new insight into active galactic nuclei, some of the brightest and most enigmatic objects in the universe.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-supermassive-black-hole-caught-cosmic.html
3/11/2022 8:00 AMScientists analyzing one of the largest genomic datasets of plants have discovered how the first plants on Earth evolved the mechanisms used to control water and transpire on land hundreds of millions of years ago. The study by the University of Bristol and University of Essex has important implications in understanding how plant water transport systems have evolved and how these might adapt in future in response to climate change.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-scientists-evolved-colonize-million-years.html
3/11/2022 10:00 AMJILA physicists have measured Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, or more specifically, the effect called time dilation, at the smallest scale ever, showing that two tiny atomic clocks, separated by just a millimeter or the width of a sharp pencil tip, tick at different rates.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-jila-atomic-clocks-einstein-relativity.html
3/11/2022 12:00 PMData captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft is revealing incredible new images of Jupiter and its moon Ganymede.https://www.space.com/nasa-juno-stunning-images-jupiter-ganymede
3/11/2022 2:00 PMWhile developing a reusable liquid nanofoam material for football helmets, Michigan State University researchers have made a big discovery that puts the material that much closer to practical use in a variety of applications.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-discovery-reusable-helmet-padding.html
3/11/2022 4:00 PMA study based on a new varanid fossil species from China shows that the transition from the ancient Varaniformes to Varanus occurred in Asia and supports the Asian origin of Varanidae.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-varanid-fossil-china-asian-varanidae.html
3/11/2022 6:00 PMThe reason most structures fail isn’t due to shoddy material or violent impact. It’s something far simpler, smaller and even dull: prolonged, low-amplitude fatigue. The mechanics behind—and inside—this slow fatigue are difficult to study. They’re literally hiding in the cracks.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-mechanism-fatigue.html
3/12/2022 8:00 AMAstronomers have been waiting decades for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, which promises to peer farther into space than ever before. But if humans want to actually reach our nearest stellar neighbor, they will need to wait quite a bit longer: a probe sent to Alpha Centauri with a rocket would need roughly 80,000 years to make the trip.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-wont-interstellar-voyage.html
3/12/2022 10:00 AMA scientist at Osaka City University has discovered skyrmions with half-integer topological numbers in a ferromagnetic superfluid.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-eccentric-fractional-skyrmion-numerical-simulations.html
3/12/2022 12:00 PMOne longstanding enigma in geology is how one tectonic plate can break Earth’s rock-hard shell and begin diving under another in the process known as subduction. Now, a new study describes how a small break in one tectonic plate was squeezed and pulled over millions of years until it unzipped and set in motion a runaway geologic process.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-major-subduction-zone-small.html
3/12/2022 2:00 PMNASA’s newly-launched X-ray hunting probe has snapped its first science image and — wow — it’s spectacular. The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) probe launched Dec. 9, 2021, on a mission to observe objects like black holes and neutron stars in X-ray light, shedding much-anticipated light on the inner workings of the cosmos. The probe spent its first month in space checking out its various systems to get ready to capture its first images, and now the IXPE team has released its very first science image.https://www.space.com/nasa-ixpe-xray-observatory-first-image
3/12/2022 4:00 PMPhysicists have predicted the existence of dark matter, a material that does not absorb, emit or reflect light, for decades. While there is now significant evidence hinting to the existence of dark matter in the universe, as it was never directed detected before its composition remains unknown.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-results-dark-pandax-4t-admx-collaborations.html
3/12/2022 6:00 PMParents face a trade-off between putting resources into their offspring versus using resources to enhance their chances of survival so they can have more offspring. The best allocation of resources depends on age. More experienced parents are better at getting food, so they can pass on more to their offspring. However, resources are needed to combat ‘wear and tear’, so in old age less can be passed on.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-parents-prime-offspring.html
3/13/2022 8:00 AMEPFL’s Swiss Plasma Center (SPC) has decades of experience in plasma physics and plasma control methods. DeepMind is a scientific discovery company acquired by Google in 2014 that’s committed to “solving intelligence to advance science and humanity.” Together, they have developed a new magnetic control method for plasmas based on deep reinforcement learning, and applied it to a real-world plasma for the first time in the SPC’s tokamak research facility, TCV.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-epfl-deepmind-ai-plasmas-nuclear.html
3/13/2022 10:00 AMResearchers at the University of Nottingham have devised a revolutionary new technique for measuring the microscopic elasticity of materials for the first time. Known as SRAS, the technology works by measuring the speed of sound across the material’s surface.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-elasticity-materials.html
3/13/2022 12:00 PMCocaine, opioids, and other drugs of abuse disrupt the brain’s reward system, often shifting users’ priorities to obtaining more drug above all else. For people battling addiction, this persistent craving is notoriously difficult to overcome—but new research from scientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research and collaborators points toward a therapeutic strategy that could help.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-specific-acetylcholine-receptor-brain-cocaine.html
3/13/2022 2:00 PMA team of researchers from the Netherlands, China, Belgium, Japan and the U.S. has developed a double-shelled hollow sphere that serves as a tandem catalyst. In their paper, the group describes the spheres and their use in converting hydrogen and carbon monoxide into a liquid hydrocarbon.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-double-shelled-hollow-spheres-tandem-catalysts.html
3/13/2022 4:00 PMJust before the closing scenes of the Cretaceous Period, India was a rogue subcontinent on a collision course with Asia. Before the two landmasses merged, however, India rafted over a “hot spot” within the Earth’s crust, triggering one of the largest volcanic eruptions in Earth’s history, which likely contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-explosive-fossil-fruit-beneath-ancient.html
3/13/2022 6:00 PMNorthwestern University synthetic biologists have developed a low-cost, easy-to-use, hand-held device that can let users know—within mere minutes—if their water is safe to drink. The new device works by using powerful and programmable genetic networks, which mimic electronic circuits, to perform a range of logic functions.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-dna-quality.html
3/14/2022 8:00 AMAmerica’s national bird is more beleaguered than previously believed, with nearly half of bald eagles tested across the U.S. showing signs of chronic lead exposure, according to a study.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-widespread-poisoning-bald-golden-eagles.html
3/14/2022 10:00 AMEight years ago an unusual bacterium was discovered in Lake Tian E Hu (Swan lake) in the Gobi desert. The new organism belongs to a rare bacterial genus called Gemmatimonas, and it contained bacteriochlorophyll, a pigment related to chlorophylls found in plants. Analysis of its genome by a collaboration of European and British scientists suggested that this novel bacterium conducts an ancient form of photosynthesis.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-scientists-enigmatic-bacterium-gobi-harvests.html
3/14/2022 12:00 PMMirror self-recognition (MSR) is seen as evidence for self-awareness and passing the mark test, in which animals touch or scrape a mark placed on their body in a location that can only be indirectly viewed in a mirror, is used to determine the capacity of an animal for MSR. Aside from chimpanzees, the evidence for other animals having passed the mark test has been criticized and thus inconclusive. By addressing criticisms placed against their previous work on the cleaner fish Labroides dimidiatus, an international team of researchers led by Masanori Kohda from the Graduate School of Science, Osaka City University, has provided further evidence to suggest the fish have the capacity for MSR.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-scientists-self-awareness-fish.html
3/14/2022 2:00 PMA group of physicists has announced one of the highest performance atomic clocks ever made. The instrument is said to measure time so precisely that it will only lose one second every 300 billion years, allowing for more exact measurements of gravitational waves, dark matter and other physics phenomena.https://www.space.com/atomic-clock-one-second-300-billion-years
3/14/2022 4:00 PMMeasurements of London’s atmosphere show the city is releasing more of the potent greenhouse gas methane, primarily from natural gas leaks. The measurements, performed by researchers at Imperial College London, show that most methane released in London is the result of natural gas infrastructure leaks, rather than landfill sites as previously thought.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-london-methane.html
3/14/2022 6:00 PMIt’s been more than a year since scientists lost one of the most iconic telescopes ever built — and yet the collapse of the famed Arecibo Observatory remains something of a mystery.https://www.space.com/arecibo-telescope-collapse-analysis-national-academies
3/15/2022 8:00 AMWhether it involves nectar-sucking butterflies or blood-sucking mosquitoes, the ingestion of liquid food has long been known for many insects and other arthropods. A research team from Germany and Switzerland, led by the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change (LIB) and the University of Bonn, now shows that millipedes also use a sucking pump to ingest liquid food. The sucking pump has thus evolved independently in different groups of organisms over several 100 million years. In the process, astonishingly similar biomechanical solutions for ingesting liquid food have evolved in widely distant animal groups.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-millipedes-ingest-liquid-food.html
3/15/2022 10:00 AMAnew study describes previously unexpected properties in a complex quantum material known as Ta2NiSe5. Using a novel technique developed at Penn, these findings have implications for developing future quantum devices and applications. This research was conducted by graduate student Harshvardhan Jog and led by professor Ritesh Agarwal in collaboration with Penn’s Eugene Mele and Luminita Harnagea from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-uncovering-unexpected-properties-complex-quantum.html
3/15/2022 12:00 PMToday’s rechargeable batteries are a wonder, but far from perfect. Eventually, they all wear out, begetting expensive replacements and recycling. “But what if batteries were indestructible?” asks William Chueh, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford University and senior author of a new paper detailing a first-of-its-kind analytical approach to building better batteries that could help speed that day.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-scientists-combine-ai-atomic-scale-images.html
3/15/2022 2:00 PMA drop in the total number of rainy days each year is contributing to an earlier arrival of spring for plants in northern climates, a new study finds. Scientists have known that warmer temperatures due to climate change have led to the first leaves coming out at earlier dates in recent decades.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-rainy-days-earlier-northern-climes.html
3/15/2022 4:00 PMA new dinosaur which formed part of an array of ‘unusual’ creatures has been discovered in Argentina. The new species, Guemesia ochoai, could be the close relative of the ancestors of an armless group of dinosaurs, which roamed the southern hemisphere over 70 million years ago.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-armless-abelisaur-dinosaur-species-argentina.html
3/15/2022 6:00 PMA team of astronomers has discovered a rare pair of brown dwarfs that has the widest separation of any brown dwarf binary system found to date. “Because of their small size, brown dwarf binary systems are usually very close together,” said Emma Softich, an undergraduate astrophysics student at the Arizona State University (ASU) School of Earth and Space Exploration and lead author of the study. “Finding such a widely separated pair is very exciting.”https://phys.org/news/2022-02-astronomers-widest-brown-dwarf-pair.html
3/16/2022 8:00 AMOver 10,000 light-years from Earth, two mega-hot stars are changing what astronomers know about stellar evolution and how the gassy balls can be constructed. The stars are unique for their exotic surface composition: They are cocooned in carbon and oxygen, the ashen remains of helium burning.https://gizmodo.com/astronomers-find-weird-stars-covered-in-burned-up-heliu-1848534151
3/16/2022 10:00 AMThe blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is the largest animal ever to inhabit Earth. Despite its gargantuan size, many aspects of its biology, behavior and ecology still elude us. This magnificent mammal spends most of its time below the ocean’s surface, out of sight from scientists seeking to unlock its mysteries.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-insight-blue-whales.html
3/16/2022 12:00 PMAstronomers have discovered the largest radio galaxy ever, stretching at least 16 million light-years through space, new research shows. The galaxy — named Alcyoneus after the son of Ouranos, the Greek primordial god of the sky — was discovered about 3 billion light-years from Earth by a “stroke of luck,” according to a statement from Leiden University in the Netherlands.https://www.space.com/large-radio-galaxy-alcyoneus-discovery
3/16/2022 2:00 PMMinute fossils unearthed in preserved charcoal point to the existence of an entirely unknown group of plants that were among the first to move onto land. The eophytes offer a glimpse of the early evolution of life on land, and may be closely related to the ancestor of many terrestrial plants that followed.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-group-colonize.html
3/16/2022 4:00 PMAstrophysicists for the first time have calculated the original mass and size of a dwarf galaxy that was shredded in a collision with the Milky Way billions of years ago. Reconstructing the original dwarf galaxy, whose stars today thread through the Milky Way in a stellar “tidal stream,” will help scientists understand how galaxies like the Milky Way formed and could aid in the search for dark matter in our galaxy.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-ancient-dwarf-galaxy-reconstructed-milkywayhome.html
3/16/2022 6:00 PMIt was a Viking saga written in genes. In 2008, construction work on an isolated Estonian beach near the town of Salme uncovered the skeletons of more than 40 powerfully built men. They were buried around 750 C.E. in two ships with Viking-style weapons and treasure—apparently the aftermath of a raid gone wrong. DNA from the bones has now added a poignant detail: Four of the men, buried shoulder to shoulder holding their swords, were brothers.https://www.science.org/content/article/viking-was-job-description-not-matter-heredity-massive-ancient-dna-study-shows
3/17/2022 8:00 AMThe next time a space rock races through our solar system from beyond, humans will be a little more prepared to unlock its secrets.https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-interstellar-asteroid-studies
3/17/2022 10:00 AMA study led by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory used the nation’s fastest supercomputer to close in on the answer to a central question of modern physics that could help conduct development of the next generation of energy technologies.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-summit-insights-electron.html
3/17/2022 12:00 PMWinters on the Canadian prairies can be brutally cold, but researchers at Western University and Natural Resources Canada have found that even a freezing polar vortex poses little problem for the invasive emerald ash borer.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-emerald-ash-borer-survive-polar.html
3/17/2022 2:00 PMNew applications in energy, defense and telecommunications could receive a boost after a team from The University of Texas at Austin created a new type of “nanocrystal gel”—a gel composed of tiny nanocrystals each 10,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair that are linked together into an organized network.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-versatile-nanocrystal-gel-enable-advances.html
3/17/2022 4:00 PMThe Colorado potato beetle has evolved resistance to more than 50 different kinds of insecticides, making the insect a “super pest” that wreaks havoc on potatoes around the world. New research finds that the beetle achieved this feat largely by turning to a deep pool of diversity within its genome, which allowed different populations across the U.S. to quickly evolve resistance to nearly anything humans have thrown at it.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-super-pest-colorado-potato-beetle.html
3/17/2022 6:00 PMPiezoelectricity is used everywhere: Watches, cars, alarms, headphones, pickups for instruments, electric lighters and gas burners. One of the most common examples is probably the quartz watch, where the piezoelectric material quartz is a prerequisite for the watch’s function.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-paradigm-shift-piezoelectricity.html
3/18/2022 8:00 AMA fossil ‘cold case’ in Queensland Museum’s geosciences collection has led to the description of a new species of sea scorpion (eurypterid), Woodwardopterus freemanorum, which is not only the last known one of its kind in the world, but the first fossil evidence of sea scorpions in Queensland.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-museum-cold-case-uncovers-species.html
3/18/2022 10:00 AMApproximately 80 miles from the westernmost reach of China’s Great Wall, paleontologists found relics of an even more ancient world. Over the last two decades, teams of researchers unearthed more than 100 specimens of fossil birds that lived approximately 120 million years ago, during the time of the dinosaurs. However, many of these fossils have proved difficult to identify: they’re incomplete and sometimes badly crushed. In a new paper, researchers examined six of these fossils and identified two new species. And as a fun side note, one of those new species had a movable bony appendage at the tip of its lower jaw that may have helped the bird root for food.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-fossil-birds-china-great-wall.html
3/18/2022 12:00 PMBrown dwarfs are strange celestial bodies, occupying a kind of intermediate position between stars and planets. Astrophysicists sometimes call them “failed stars” because they have insufficient mass to burn hydrogen in their cores and shine like stars. It is continually debated if the formation of brown dwarfs is simply a scaled-down version of the formation of Sun-like stars. Astrophysicists are focusing on the youngest brown dwarfs, also called proto-brown dwarfs. They are only a few thousand years old and are still in the early formation stages. They want to know if the gas and dust in these proto-brown dwarfs resemble the composition of the youngest Sun-like proto-stars.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-insights-formation-brown-dwarfs.html
3/18/2022 2:00 PMA new study revealed that Portugal was once home to a huge 33ft-long dinosaur that may be a new species of a spinosaurus. A reanalysis of its fossils showed a crocodile-like skull and spiny back. It likely roamed the Earth about 130 million years ago.https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/36160/20220217/33ft-long-new-species-spinosaurus-constantly-grew-teeth-replace-those.htm
3/18/2022 4:00 PMA trio of researchers from the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand, Université de Lyon and Sorbonne Université, respectively, has made the first sighting of a quadruple asteroid system—an asteroid with three moons orbiting around it. In their paper published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, Anthony Berdeu, Maud Langlois and Frédéric Vachier, describe how they spotted a third moon around asteroid Elektra and some of its characteristics.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-quadruple-asteroid.html
3/18/2022 6:00 PMIs it time NASA sent an orbiter to study the other blue planet in our solar system? Proposals for missions to study the ice giant planet Neptune and its mysterious moon Triton have been on NASA’s to-do list for over a decade, but nothing has happened until now.https://www.planetary.org/articles/return-to-neptune-plans
3/19/2022 8:00 AMResearchers have created a device that enables them to electronically steer and focus a beam of terahertz electromagnetic energy with extreme precision. This opens the door to high-resolution, real-time imaging devices that are hundredths the size of other radar systems and more robust than other optical systems.https://techxplore.com/news/2022-02-wallet-sized-device-focuses-terahertz-energy.html
3/19/2022 10:00 AMEngineers at Caltech have developed an approach for quantum storage that could help pave the way for the development of large-scale optical quantum networks. The new system relies on nuclear spins—the angular momentum of an atom’s nucleus—oscillating collectively as a spin wave. This collective oscillation effectively chains up several atoms to store information.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-chaining-atoms-yields-quantum-storage.html
3/19/2022 12:00 PMBringing back beavers, bears and bison around the world could significantly improve the state of the world’s ecosystems.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-reintroducing-large-mammals-world-ecosystems.html
3/19/2022 2:00 PMIn the long-term battle between a herpesvirus and its human host, a University of Massachusetts virologist and her team of students have identified some human RNA able to resist the viral takeover—and the mechanism by which that occurs.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-advances-knowledge-viruses-human-cells.html
3/19/2022 4:00 PMA supermassive black hole masked by a cloud of cosmic dust was found at the center of an active galaxy in new images from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).https://www.space.com/supermassive-black-hole-found-through-cosmic-dust
3/19/2022 6:00 PMVacation photos of zebras and whales that tourists post on social media may have a benefit they never expected: helping researchers track and gather information on endangered species.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-vacation-photos-zebras-whales.html
3/20/2022 8:00 AMImagine making some liquids mix that do not mix, then unmixing them.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-fluidic-device-oil.html
3/20/2022 10:00 AMBacteria are known for breaking down lactose to make yogurt. Now researchers led by Northwestern University and LanzaTech have harnessed bacteria to break down waste carbon dioxide (CO2) to make valuable industrial chemicals.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-bacteria-upcycle-carbon-valuable-chemicals.html
3/20/2022 12:00 PMMIT astronomers have obtained the clearest view yet of the perpetual dark side of an exoplanet that is “tidally locked” to its star. Their observations, combined with measurements of the planet’s permanent day side, provide the first detailed view of an exoplanet’s global atmosphere.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-hot-jupiter-dark-side-revealed.html
3/20/2022 2:00 PMWhile human males tend to suffer more than females from infectious diseases like COVID-19 or flu, for birds it’s the males that appear to have stronger immune systems, suggests a new study led by the University of Bath.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-male-birds-stronger-immune-females.html
3/20/2022 4:00 PMSome 280 million years ago, before the rise of the Rocky Mountains—or even the dinosaurs—a 2.5-kilometer-wide asteroid smashed into the supercontinent of Pangaea, near the eastern border of present-day Wyoming. The impact’s heat and shock wave would have killed anything within 400 kilometers, making it one of the largest asteroid strikes in North American history.https://www.science.org/content/article/evidence-giant-asteroid-strike-may-be-buried-under-wyoming
3/20/2022 6:00 PMEuropean astronomers report the detection of a new giant radio galaxy (GRG) as part of the LOFAR Two-meter Sky Survey (LoTSS). The newly found object, named Alcyoneus, turns out to be the largest GRG known to date. The finding is detailed in a paper published February 11 on the arXiv pre-print repository.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-giant-radio-galaxy.html
3/21/2022 8:00 AMProteins need to interact in a complex manner for a so-called “messenger RNA” (mRNA) to be created in human cells from a precursor molecule. mRNA provides a blueprint for proteins; the first vaccines against the coronavirus are also based on mRNAs. A team from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the Max Planck Institute (MPI) of Biochemistry in Martinsried has discovered how an essential final step in the production of mRNA precisely works.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-blueprint-proteins-mrna.html
3/21/2022 10:00 AMOur spatial sense doesn’t extend beyond the familiar three dimensions, but that doesn’t stop scientists from playing with whatever lies beyond.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-physicists-harness-electrons-synthetic-dimensions.html
3/21/2022 12:00 PMExploding a photo subject in order to take its picture? An international research team at the European XFEL, the world’s largest X-ray laser, applied this “extreme” method to take pictures of complex molecules. The scientists used the ultra-bright X-ray flashes generated by the facility to take snapshots of gas-phase iodopyridine molecules at atomic resolution. The X-ray laser caused the molecules to explode, and the image was reconstructed from the pieces. “Thanks to the European XFEL’s extremely intense and particularly short X-ray pulses, we were able to produce an image of unprecedented clarity for this method and the size of the molecule,” reports Rebecca Boll from the European XFEL, principal investigator of the experiment and one of the two first authors of the publication in the scientific journal Nature Physics in which the team describes their results. Such clear images of complex molecules have not been possible using this experimental technique until now.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-molecule-snapshot-explosion.html
3/21/2022 2:00 PMWith the advent of Big Data, current computational architectures are proving to be insufficient. Difficulties in decreasing transistors’ size, large power consumption and limited operating speeds make neuromorphic computing a promising alternative.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-magnetic-artificially-functions-brain.html
3/21/2022 4:00 PMResearchers have observed extremely high rates of melting at the bottom of the Greenland Ice Sheet, caused by huge quantities of meltwater falling from the surface to the base. As the meltwater falls, energy is converted into heat in a process like the hydroelectric power generated by large dams.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-greenland-ice-sheet-world-largest.html
3/21/2022 6:00 PMIf a star is gigantic enough, it can collapse in on itself to form a black hole. Stars that are still huge, but not big enough to become black holes, tend to explode in supernovae, eventually transforming into what is known as a neutron star. What has long puzzled scientists is that the smallest black holes tend to be at least five times the mass of the Sun, while neutron stars are at most 2.5 times the mass of the Sun. Inside those boundaries lies what has become known as the “mass gap” — a mysterious range between the mass of black holes and neutron stars. Now, though, a new discovery by a team of European astronomers seems to fit into that gap, suggesting a new class of objects that were thought to be impossible.https://futurism.com/astronomers-may-have-discovered-first-ever-black-neutron-star
3/22/2022 8:00 AMA probe launched by the United Arab Emirates to explore the Martian environment captured a very unusual phenomenon on camera: a nighttime aurora on Mars.https://www.physics-astronomy.com/2021/10/new-images-show-stunning-auroras-on-mars.html
3/22/2022 10:00 AMA combined team of researchers from Japan and Egypt has found evidence that suggests a dagger found in King Tut’s tomb had origins outside of Egypt. In their paper published in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science, the group describes their study of the dagger and also of the Amarna Letters tablets and what they learned by doing so.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-year-old-tablets-king-tut-ancient.html
3/22/2022 12:00 PMFood is necessary for survival, but an East African species of ticks adapted to survive without feeding for eight years. Not only did they live for a total of 27 years, but they healthily reproduced long after the last male tick died.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-survive-years-entomologist-lab.html
3/22/2022 2:00 PMFor the first time, researchers have demonstrated an artificial organic neuron, a nerve cell, that can be integrated with a living plant and an artificial organic synapse. Both the neuron and the synapse are made from printed organic electrochemical transistors.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-artificial-nerve-cells.html
3/22/2022 4:00 PMScientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered a long-predicted magnetic state of matter called an “antiferromagnetic excitonic insulator.”https://phys.org/news/2022-02-evidence-exotic-magnetic-phase.html
3/22/2022 6:00 PMThe fossil of a 170-million-year-old pterosaur, described as the world’s best-preserved skeleton of the prehistoric winged reptile, has been found on the Isle of Skye in Scotland, scientists said Tuesday.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-superbly-pterosaur-fossil-unearthed-scotland.html
3/23/2022 8:00 AMThe third-largest crater on the dwarf planet Ceres was geologically active at least once many millions of years after its formation. In a recent study published today in the journal Nature Communications, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Göttingen, the University of Münster (WWU) and the National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER) in Bhubaneswar, India present the most detailed study of Urvara crater to date. For the first time, they evaluated camera images from the last phase of NASA’s Dawn mission, which reveal geological structures only a few meters in size. The Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around the dwarf planet in 2015 and studied it up close for about three and a half years. Like Occator crater, Urvara crater may have been the scene of cryovolcanic activity, the researchers argue. The study supports the picture that a global saline ocean extended beneath Ceres’ crust, some of which may still be liquid today.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-dwarf-planet-ceres-chemistry-salt.html
3/23/2022 10:00 AMThe ability of cells to self-organize into specific patterns in tissues that serve a function is a universal feature of life. The stripes of a zebra, our eyelashes, the spiral of seeds in a sunflower and the maze patterns of snakeskins are just a few examples.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-first-of-its-kind-imaging-major-discovery-cells.html
3/23/2022 12:00 PMA rare exoplanet which orbits around two stars at once has been detected using a ground-based telescope by a team led by the University of Birmingham. The planet, called Kepler-16b, has so far only been seen using the Kepler space telescope. It orbits around two stars, with the two orbits also orbiting one another, forming a binary star system. Kepler-16b is located some 245 light years from Earth and, like Luke Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine, in the Star Wars universe, it would have two sunsets if you could stand on its surface.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-tatooine-like-exoplanet-ground-based-telescope.html
3/23/2022 2:00 PMSwimming in complex underwater environments, fish are unmatched when it comes to motion control and flexibility. For decades, researchers have been inspired to copy nature’s most gifted swimmers to optimize underwater vehicle propulsion and maneuverability.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-fish-movable-pairs-vortices-propel.html
3/23/2022 4:00 PMIn most circumstances, disordered working conditions prevent us from performing accurate work. But in a reversal of this common wisdom, a team of researchers from the University of Adelaide and the University of St Andrews, Scotland has achieved recent breakthroughs in precision measurement by “scrambling” laser light.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-team-breakthroughs-precision-scrambling-laser.html
3/23/2022 6:00 PMScientists think they may have uncovered a whole new approach to fighting antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which, if successful, would help address a health crisis responsible for more deaths every year than either AIDS or malaria.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-method-antibiotic-resistance-deadly-bacteria.html
3/24/2022 8:00 AMThe asteroid that killed nearly all dinosaurs struck Earth during springtime. An international team of scientists from the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam (The Netherlands), Uppsala University (Sweden), Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) and the ESRF, the European Synchrotron (France), have determined when the meteorite crashed into the Earth after analyzing the remains of fishes that died just after the impact.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-dinosaurs.html
3/24/2022 10:00 AMAn object hidden below ground has been located using quantum technology—a long-awaited milestone with profound implications for industry, human knowledge and national security.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-sensor-breakthrough-paves-groundbreaking-world.html
3/24/2022 12:00 PMScientists from Durham University and Kings College London have presented a theoretical review in a new study strongly supporting the search for axion dark matter. The identity of dark matter, which makes up 85% of the matter in the universe, is one of the big unanswered questions in particle physics.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-axion-dark.html
3/24/2022 2:00 PMNeurons are constantly performing complex calculations to process sensory information and infer the state of the environment. For example, to localize a sound or to recognize the direction of visual motion, individual neurons are thought to multiply two signals. However, how such a computation is carried out has been a mystery for decades. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence have now discovered in fruit flies the biophysical basis that enables a specific type of neuron to multiply two incoming signals. This provides fundamental insights into the algebra of neurons—the computations that may underlie countless processes in the brain.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-algebra-neurons-deciphers-nerve-cell.html
3/24/2022 4:00 PMScientists from University of Regensburg, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Moscow institute of Physics and Technology, and University of Kansas have discovered abnormally strong light absorption in graphene. The effect arises from the conversion of ordinary electromagnetic waves into super-slow surface waves running through graphene. The observation is of fundamental interest and shows in an impressive way how the interaction of Bernstein modes, collective excitations of electrons driven by their cyclotron motion and the smearing of electric fields at the smallest scales due to nonlocality can influence the radiation absorption of graphene. This behavior could serve as the basis for extremely sensitive infrared and terahertz detectors much smaller than existing ones, with similar absorption efficiency.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-abnormally-strong-absorption-graphene.html
3/24/2022 6:00 PMA new database called AVONET contains measurements of more than 90,000 individual birds, allowing researchers to test theories and aid conservation. AVONET was collated by a team of international researchers, led by Dr. Joseph Tobias, from the Department of Life Sciences at Silwood Park at Imperial College London. In a special issue of the journal Ecology Letters, edited by Dr. Tobias, he and researchers from across the world present the first iteration of the complete AVONET database and some initial findings using the data.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-body-bird-species-open-access-database.html
3/25/2022 8:00 AMFast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are among the top mysteries facing astronomers today. First discovered in 2007 (the famous “Lorimer Burst“), these energetic events consist of huge bursts of radio waves that typically last mere milliseconds. While most events observed to date have been one-off events, astronomers have detected a few FRBs that were repeating in nature.https://www.universetoday.com/154666/astronomers-detect-the-closest-fast-radio-burst-ever-seen/
3/25/2022 10:00 AMThe field of machine learning on quantum computers got a boost from new research removing a potential roadblock to the practical implementation of quantum neural networks. While theorists had previously believed an exponentially large training set would be required to train a quantum neural network, the quantum No-Free-Lunch theorem developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory shows that quantum entanglement eliminates this exponential overhead.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-entanglement-scaling-quantum-machine.html
3/25/2022 12:00 PMSpace scientists have discovered a never-before-seen mechanism fueling huge planetary aurorae at Saturn.https://keckobservatory.org/saturn-aurora/
3/25/2022 2:00 PMThe most ancient black hole ever discovered is so big it defies explanation. This active supermassive black hole, or quasar, boasts a mass of 1.6 billion suns and lies at the heart of a galaxy more than 13 billion light-years from Earth. The quasar, dubbed J0313-1806, dates back to when the universe was just 670 million years old, or about 5 percent of the universe’s current age. That makes J0313-1806 two times heavier and 20 million years older than the last record-holder for earliest known black hole (SN: 12/6/17).https://www.sciencenews.org/article/most-ancient-supermassive-black-hole-quasar-bafflingly-big
3/25/2022 4:00 PMComputers are an indispensable part of our daily lives, and the need for ones that can work faster, solve complex problems more efficiently, and leave smaller environmental footprints by minimizing the required energy for computation is increasingly urgent. Recent progress in photonics has shown that it’s possible to achieve more efficient computing through optical devices that use interactions between metamaterials and light waves to apply mathematical operations of interest on the input signals, and even solve complex mathematical problems. But to date, such computers have required a large footprint and precise, large-area fabrication of the components, which, because of their size, are difficult to scale into more complex networks.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-breakthrough-discovery-interactions-nanoparticles-paves.html
3/25/2022 6:00 PMAn earth scientist from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science discovered evidence of an ancient underwater landslide and associated tsunami in the Gulf of Aqaba, a subsidiary of the Red Sea, that should serve as a warning for many nations in the Middle East.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-discovery-ancient-underwater-landslide-middle.html
3/26/2022 8:00 AMAn international team of researchers, led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, recently announced in the journal Current Biology that an amoeba called Naegleria has evolved more distinct sets of tubulins, used for specific cellular processes, than previously thought. Their insight has a host of implications, which range from developing treatments for brain-eating infections to better understanding how life on earth evolved such enormous diversity.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-brain-eating-amoebae-diversity-life-earth.html
3/26/2022 10:00 AMPhysicists searching—unsuccessfully—for today’s most favored candidate for dark matter, the axion, have been looking in the wrong place, according to a new supercomputer simulation of how axions were produced shortly after the Big Bang 13.6 billion years ago.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-simulations-refine-axion-mass-refocusing.html
3/26/2022 12:00 PMWhen it comes to describing the fundamental structure and composition of matter, the research field of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) comes into play. With the help of QCD, the strong interaction—one of the four fundamental forces of physics—between the elementary particles of quarks and gluons can be described in hadrons. Hadrons are subatomic particles held together by the strong interaction. The best-known examples are neutrons and protons (so-called baryons), and the lesser-known pion (a so-called meson) is also a hadron. “To a first approximation, the pions are the driving particles behind the strong interaction,” says the physicist Urs Wenger, professor at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Bern.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-simulate-important-elements-pion.html
3/26/2022 2:00 PMA new University of Michigan study has found that higher levels of biodiversity—the enormous variety of life on Earth and the species, traits and evolutionary history they represent—appear to reduce extinction risk in birds.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-higher-biodiversity-extinction-birds.html
3/26/2022 4:00 PMNew research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst uncovers the negative link between flightworthiness and fight-worthiness in birds. Evolutionary pressure demanded that birds could either fly or arm themselves—but not both. Furthermore, the new research suggests that developing wings and not bony spurs involved both sexual and natural selection. This insight helps us better understand how the enormous diversity of life and earth came to be.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-flight-birds-reveal-mysteries-evolution.html
3/26/2022 6:00 PMThe almost 11-cm-high Venus figurine from Willendorf (Austria) is one of the most important examples of early art in Europe. It is made of a rock called oolite that is not found in or around Willendorf. A research team led by the anthropologist Gerhard Weber from the University of Vienna and the two geologists Alexander Lukeneder and Mathias Harzhauser as well as the prehistorian Walpurga Antl-Weiser from the Natural History Museum Vienna have now found out with the help of high-resolution tomographic images that the material from which the Venus was carved likely comes from northern Italy. This sheds new light on the remarkable mobility of the first modern humans south and north of the Alps.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-year-old-venus-willendorf.html
3/27/2022 8:00 AMFor the first time, Northwestern University-led astronomers may have detected an afterglow from a kilonova. A kilonova occurs when two neutron stars—some of the densest objects in the universe—merge to create a blast 1,000 times brighter than a classical nova. In this case, a narrow, off-axis jet of high-energy particles accompanied the merger event, dubbed GW170817. Three-and-a-half years after the merger, the jet faded away, revealing a new source of mysterious X-rays.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-kilonova-afterglow-potentially.html
3/27/2022 10:00 AMIn a new study, Stanford researchers demonstrate how to manipulate atoms so they interact with an unprecedented degree of control. Using precisely delivered light and magnetic fields, the researchers programmed a straight line of atoms into treelike shapes, a twisted loop called a Möbius strip and other patterns.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-atomic-interactions.html
3/27/2022 12:00 PMTightening a string, e.g. when tuning a guitar, makes it vibrate faster. But when strings are nano-sized, increased tension also reduces, or ‘dilutes’, the loss of the string’s vibrational modes.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-silicon-nano-strings.html
3/27/2022 2:00 PMWater is an abundant and essential compound, found everywhere on earth. Yet despite its familiarity and simple structure, water displays many unusual physical properties. For more than a century, scientists have turned their attention to the study of water, attempting to better interpret its structure. An international team of researchers, led by a scholar from Hiroshima University, has developed a procedure allowing them to reproduce the double peak feature of X-ray emission spectroscopy (XES) spectra in liquid water.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-procedure-x-ray-emission-spectra-liquid.html
3/27/2022 4:00 PMA new analysis of Tyrannosaurus skeletal remains reveals physical differences in the femur, other bones and dental structures across specimens that could suggest Tyrannosaurus rex specimens need to be re-categorized into three distinct groups or species, reports a study published in Evolutionary Biology.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-tyrannosaurus-hint-species-distinct-rex.html
3/27/2022 6:00 PMAn MIT spinoff has locked down significant funding for a literally groundbreaking project: using fusion power tech to drill 12 miles into the Earth and harvest the immense energy down there.https://futurism.com/the-byte/mit-startup-fusion-drill
3/28/2022 8:00 AMFor almost 10 years, NASA’s NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) X-ray space observatory has been studying some of the highest-energy objects in the universe, such as colliding dead stars and enormous black holes feasting on hot gas. During that time, scientists have had to deal with stray light leaking in through the sides of the observatory, which can interfere with observations much like external noise can drown out a phone call.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-nasa-nustar-illuminating-discoveries-nuisance.html
3/28/2022 10:00 AMEarthworms could have the potential to replace some high-cost mineral/synthetic fertilizers, new research suggests.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-earthworms-potential-synthetic-fertilisers.html
3/28/2022 12:00 PMThe physics and chemistry that take place deep inside our planet are fundamental to the existence of life as we know it. But what forces are at work in the interiors of distant worlds, and how do these conditions affect their potential for habitability?https://phys.org/news/2022-03-depths-distant-worlds.html
3/28/2022 2:00 PMPhysicists at UC Santa Barbara have become the first to experimentally observe a quirky behavior of the quantum world: a “quantum boomerang” effect that occurs when particles in a disordered system are kicked out of their locations. Instead of landing elsewhere as one might expect, they turn around and come back to where they started and stop there.https://phys.org/news/2022-02-physicists-quantum-boomerang-effect-disordered.html
3/28/2022 4:00 PMIn 2020 a team led by European Southern Observatory (ESO) astronomers reported the closest black hole to Earth, located just 1,000 light-years away in the HR 6819 system. But the results of their study were contested by other researchers, including by an international team based at KU Leuven, Belgium. In a paper published today, these two teams have united to report that there is in fact no black hole in HR 6819, which is instead a “vampire” two-star system in a rare and short-lived stage of its evolution.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-closest-black-hole.html
3/28/2022 6:00 PMMany coronal loops—ropey strands of plasma that scientists have long thought existed in the Sun’s atmosphere—may actually be optical illusions, according to a new paper that challenges prevailing assumptions of what we know, and don’t know, about the Sun.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-solar-illusion-coronal-loops.html
3/29/2022 8:00 AMA huge amount of mysterious dark energy is necessary to explain cosmological phenomena, such as the accelerated expansion of the Universe, using Einstein’s theory. But what if dark energy was just an illusion and general relativity itself had to be modified? A new SISSA study, published in Physical Review Letters, offers a new approach to answer this question. Thanks to huge computational and mathematical effort, scientists produced the first simulation ever of merging binary neutron stars in theories beyond general relativity that reproduce a dark-energy like behavior on cosmological scales. This allows the comparison of Einstein’s theory and modified versions of it, and, with sufficiently accurate data, may solve the dark energy mystery.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-dark-energy-neutron-stars-illusion.html
3/29/2022 10:00 AMJust as electrons flow through an electrical conductor, magnetic excitations can travel through certain materials. Such excitations, known in physics as “magnons” in analogy to the electron, could transport information much more easily than electrical conductors. An international research team has now made an important discovery on the road to such components, which could be highly energy-efficient and considerably smaller.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-magnetic-loss.html
3/29/2022 12:00 PMScientists’ increasing mastery of quantum mechanics is heralding a new age of innovation. Technologies that harness the power of nature’s most minute scale show enormous potential across the scientific spectrum, from computers exponentially more powerful than today’s leading systems, sensors capable of detecting elusive dark matter, and a virtually unhackable quantum internet.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-giant-quantum-internet-bell-state.html
3/29/2022 2:00 PMLouisiana State University physicists have leveraged quantum information theory techniques to reveal a mechanism for amplifying, or “stimulating,” the production of entanglement in the Hawking effect in a controlled manner. Furthermore, these scientists propose a protocol for testing this idea in the laboratory using artificially produced event horizons. These results have been recently published in Physical Review Letters, “Quantum aspects of stimulated Hawking radiation in an analog white-black hole pair,” where Ivan Agullo, Anthony J. Brady and Dimitrios Kranas present these ideas and apply them to optical systems containing the analog of a pair white-black hole.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-event-horizons-tunable-factories-quantum.html
3/29/2022 4:00 PMScientists from Washington University in St. Louis are helping to recover gases from a container of lunar soil that astronauts collected and sealed under vacuum on the surface of the moon in 1972. The effort is part of NASA’s Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis (ANGSA) initiative.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-scientists-recover-gases-moon-capsule.html
3/29/2022 6:00 PMScientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have designed a new type of magnet that could aid devices ranging from doughnut-shaped fusion facilities known as tokamaks to medical machines that create detailed pictures of the human body.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-magnet-fusion-medical-devices.html
3/30/2022 8:00 AMA study into tooth wear in a group of wild Japanese macaques has significant implications for the study of human evolution, a University of Otago study has shown.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-tooth-prompts-rethink-human-evolution.html
3/30/2022 10:00 AMAbrupt shifts in the evolution of animals—short periods of time when an organism rapidly changes size or form—have long been a challenge for theorists including Darwin. Now a newly published research paper supports the idea that even these abrupt changes are underpinned by a gradual directional process of successive incremental changes, as Darwin’s theory of evolution assumes.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-gradual-evolution-darwinian-theory.html
3/30/2022 12:00 PMWhen did populations of Homo sapiens first arrive in China and what happened when they encountered the Denisovans or Neanderthals who lived there? A new study in Nature by an international team of researchers opens a window into hunter-gatherer lifestyles 40,000 years ago. Archaeological excavations at the site of Xiamabei in the Nihewan Basin of northern China have revealed the presence of innovative behaviors and unique toolkits.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-archaeologists-year-old-culture-china.html
3/30/2022 2:00 PMResearchers at Yale and Caltech have a bold new theory to explain how Earth transformed itself from a fiery, carbon-clouded ball of rocks into a planet capable of sustaining life.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-fireball-earth-habitable.html
3/30/2022 4:00 PMThey grow up to 12–15 feet tall and are causing havoc in the wetlands of North America. Known as Phragmites australis, the non-native common reed is one of the most important and most studied plants in the world.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-uncovers-mystery-invasive-common-reed.html
3/30/2022 6:00 PMThe next time you get a craving for sushi rolls, you may feel a renewed appreciation for the ocean. It’s to thank not only for your fish and seaweed wrapper, but, as a new Michigan Medicine study suggests, for the bacteria in your gut that digest seaweed.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-gut-sushi.html
3/31/2022 8:00 AMAntarctic waters have conditions in which objects and living creatures can freeze even under water. This is a major problem for marine travel in polar regions. So-called supercooled water has a temperature just below the freezing point. Due to the high salt content, water in Antarctica has a freezing point of about -1.9 °C, but is about 0.05 °C colder. The smallest disturbances such as grains of sand or surfaces can cause this supercooled water to freeze—with sometimes fatal consequences for creatures that cannot survive frozen.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-mussels-ice-free-icy-world.html
3/31/2022 10:00 AMYou don’t need to be an expert in science to understand that black holes often pull things in rather than spit them out. However, NASA has just discovered something quite weird around the supermassive black hole Markarian 335.https://www.physics-astronomy.com/2022/03/nasa-just-saw-something-come-out-of.html
3/31/2022 12:00 PMIn findings that could help advance another “viable pathway” to fusion energy, research led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) physicists has proven the existence of neutrons produced through thermonuclear reactions from a sheared-flow stabilized Z-pinch device.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-scientists-thermonuclear-fusion-sheared-flow-z-pinch.html
3/31/2022 2:00 PMLike the charged power suit worn by Black Panther of Marvel Comics, UCF researchers have advanced NASA technologies to develop a power suit for an electric car that is as strong as steel, lighter than aluminum and helps boosts the vehicle’s power capacity.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-power-electric-vehicles-spacecraft.html
3/31/2022 4:00 PMA black hole gets a large corona before it emits jets. This is revealed, among other things, by the heartbeat graph that an international team of astronomers has made of a black hole and a star orbiting around each other. The team, led by Mariano Méndez from the University of Groningen (the Netherlands), will publish their results in Nature Astronomy.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-astronomers-heartbeat-black-hole.html
3/31/2022 6:00 PMNew computer models and simulations from Los Alamos National Laboratory are showing researchers how the virus that causes COVID-19 manages to use its spike protein to fuse with and infect human cells. To be presented at the March meeting of the American Physical Society, the atomistic-level imagery is highly consistent with cryo-electron microscopy data, despite the severe challenges of imaging at such high resolution.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-3d-atomistic-imagery-sars-cov-virus.html
4/1/2022 8:00 AMArchaeologists have uncovered a Pictish symbol stone close to the location of one of the most significant carved stone monuments ever uncovered in Scotland.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-rare-pictish-stone-potential-site.html
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4/1/2022 12:00 PMIn 2020, the X-ray telescope eRosita took images of two enormous bubbles extending far above and below the center of our galaxy.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-massive-center-milky-supermassive-black.html
4/1/2022 2:00 PMA team of Johns Hopkins University researchers created shock-absorbing material that protects like a metal, but is lighter, stronger, reusable. The new foam-like material could be a game-changer for helmets, body armor, and automobile and aerospace parts.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-shock-absorbing-material-stronger-lighter-safer.html
4/1/2022 4:00 PMEveryone considers sperm to be made exclusively by males. Well, it turns out that females also contribute to what makes a sperm a sperm.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-biologists-molecular-hand-off-key-role.html
4/1/2022 6:00 PMFor the first time, NASA’s Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) has observed the merging of multimillion-degree X-ray spots on the surface of a magnetar, a supermagnetized stellar core no larger than a city.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-nasa-nicer-telescope-hot-merge.html
4/2/2022 8:00 AMContinents reconfigure, oceans shift, and ice sheets thicken and thaw, but for the past 95 million years Earth’s engine for distributing ocean heat has remained remarkably consistent.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-core-aspects-climate-proof-plankton.html
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4/2/2022 12:00 PMResearchers have provided the first plausible explanation to why one of the most massive black hole pairs observed to date by gravitational waves also seemed to merge on a non-circular orbit. Their suggested solution, now published in Nature, involves a chaotic triple drama inside a giant disk of gas around a supermassive black hole in another galaxy.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-black-hole-billiards-centers-galaxies.html
4/2/2022 2:00 PMDanish and Swedish researchers have dated the enormous Hiawatha impact crater, a 31 km-wide meteorite crater buried under a kilometer of Greenlandic ice. The dating ends speculation that the meteorite impacted after the appearance of humans and opens up a new understanding of Earth’s evolution in the post-dinosaur era.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-giant-impact-crater-greenland-million.html
4/2/2022 4:00 PMDinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, mammoths 4,000 years ago, and the Christmas Island Rat 119 years ago. Since becoming a popular concept in the 1990s, de-extinction efforts have focused on grand animals with mythical stature, but in a paper published March 9 in the journal Current Biology, a team of paleogeneticists turn their attention to Rattus macleari, and their findings provide insights into the limitations of de-extinction across all species.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-mammothsthese-exploring-extinct-christmas-island.html
4/2/2022 6:00 PMChina’s Yutu 2 rover has returned a view of its path over three years of travels across the harsh environment of the moon’s far side. The new images — released by Ourspace, a Chinese language science outreach channel affiliated with the China National Space Administration, in late February — give a sense of the rover’s winding journey. One image offers a panorama view looking back on Yutu 2’s most recent tracks, with the Chang’e 4 lander visible far in the distance. Yutu 2 touched down on the lunar far side in January 2019 atop the Chang’e 4 lander, making the pair the first spacecraft to land and operate on the moon’s hidden hemisphere.https://www.space.com/china-yutu-2-moon-rover-3-years-panorama
4/3/2022 8:00 AMIn the simplest terms, superconductivity between two or more objects means zero wasted electricity. It means electricity is being transferred between these objects with no loss of energy.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-pressure-quench-superconductivity-goal-energy.html
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4/3/2022 12:00 PMThe ability to interact with light provides important functionalities for quantum systems, such as communicating over large distances, a key ability for future quantum computers. However, it is very difficult to find a material that can fully exploit the quantum properties of light. A research team from the CNRS and l’Université de Strasbourg, with support from Chimie ParisTech-PSL and in collaboration with German teams from KIT, has demonstrated the potential of a new material based on rare earths as a photonic quantum system. The results, which were published on 9 March 2022 in Nature, show the potential of europium molecular crystals for quantum memories and computers.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-europium-platform-quantum.html
4/3/2022 2:00 PMDisasters such as hurricanes, wildfires, floods, tornadoes, and droughts are not only increasing in intensity and frequency, they are also striking the same place multiple times. Yet to date, disaster research largely focuses on individual events, and fails to account for legacy effects that leave people vulnerable in the wake of repeated disasters.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-lightning.html
4/3/2022 4:00 PMWith the help of special telescopes, researchers have observed a cosmic particle accelerator as never before. Observations made with the gamma ray observatory H.E.S.S. in Namibia show for the first time the course of an acceleration process in a stellar process called a nova, which comprises powerful eruptions on the surface of a white dwarf. A nova creates a shock wave that tears through the surrounding medium, pulling particles with it and accelerating them to extreme energies. Surprisingly, the nova “RS Ophiuchi” seems to cause particles to accelerate at speeds reaching the theoretical limit, corresponding to ideal conditions.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-cosmic-particle-theoretical-limit.html
4/3/2022 6:00 PMRecent technological advances have enabled the development of increasingly advanced telescope and astrophysical instruments. This includes the IceCube telescope, which was originally built to detect and examine high-energy neutrinos in the universe.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-icecube-collaboration-restrictive-constraints-relic.html
4/4/2022 8:00 AMA new discovery by physicists at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) could make certain components in computers and smartphones obsolete. The team has succeeded in directly converting frequencies to higher ranges in a common magnetic material without the need for additional components. Frequency multiplication is a fundamental process in modern electronics.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-physicists-frequencies-easily-special-circuitry.html
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4/4/2022 12:00 PMPlanetary debris, including some objects the size of moons, may hint at a rocky exoplanet within the habitable zone of a stellar zombie, a new study suggests.https://www.space.com/possible-planet-habitable-zone-white-dwarf
4/4/2022 2:00 PMTuberculosis (TB) is the second most common cause of death worldwide by an infectious pathogen (after Covid-19), but many aspects of its long history with humans remain controversial. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and Arizona State University in Tempe, USA, found that ancient TB discovered in archeological human remains from South America is most closely related to a variant of TB associated today with seals, but surprisingly these cases were found in people who lived nowhere near the coast. This implies that these cases were not the result of direct transmission from seals, and instead one, or more, spillover events were likely to be the primary drivers of human infection.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-exploring-ancient-tuberculosis-transmission-chains.html
4/4/2022 4:00 PMPhysicists in the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms (CUA) have developed a new approach to control the outcome of chemical reactions. This is traditionally done using temperature and chemical catalysts, or more recently with external fields (electric or magnetic fields, or laser beams).https://phys.org/news/2022-03-physicists-chemical-reactions-magnetic-fields.html
4/4/2022 6:00 PMBlack holes are among the most compelling mysteries of the universe. Nothing, not even light, can escape a black hole. And at the center of nearly every galaxy there is a supermassive black hole that’s millions to billions of times more massive than the sun. Understanding black holes, and how they become supermassive, could shed light on the evolution of the universe.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-dark-side-universe-black-holes.html
4/5/2022 8:00 AMDeep within the Andromeda constellation, some 320 million light-years away, two galaxies are consumed by a gravitationally bound dance, and the Hubble Space Telescope has just photographed the action in extraordinary three-dimensional detail.https://www.space.com/hubble-telescope-photo-galaxy-tidal-interactions
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4/5/2022 12:00 PMIn the classic example of mountain-building, the Indian and Asian continental plates crashed—and continue colliding today—to form the world’s largest and highest geologic structures: the Himalayan Mountains and the Tibetan Plateau.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-hot-reveal-continental-plates-collide.html
4/5/2022 2:00 PMAstronomers have imaged a beam of matter and antimatter that is 40 trillion miles long with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The record-breaking beam is powered by a pulsar, a rapidly rotating collapsed star with a strong magnetic field.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-tiny-star-unleashes-gargantuan-anti-matter.html
4/5/2022 4:00 PMExperimental physicists led by Gerhard Kirchmair, together with theoretical physicists at the University of Oulu, Finland, have succeeded for the first time in controlling protected quantum states—so-called dark states—in superconducting quantum bits. The entangled states are 500 times more robust and could be used in quantum simulations. The method could also be used on other technological platforms.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-dark-states-superconducting-circuits-microwave.html
4/5/2022 6:00 PMIrradiation with fast protons is a more effective and less invasive cancer treatment than X-rays. However, modern proton therapy requires large particle accelerators, which has experts investigating alternative accelerator concepts, such as laser systems to accelerate protons. Such systems are deployed in preclinical studies to pave the way for optimal radiation therapy. A research team led by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has now successfully tested irradiation with laser protons on animals for the first time.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-laser-cancer-team-milestone-proton.html
4/6/2022 8:00 AMDeep within Earth’s mantle, there are two giant blobs. One sits under Africa, while the other is almost precisely opposite the first, under the Pacific Ocean. But these two blobs are not evenly matched.https://www.space.com/mantle-blobs-under-earth
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4/6/2022 12:00 PMAstronomers from Jena Observatory in Germany and elsewhere have performed follow-up observations of a nearby binary star system known as Gamma Cephei. Results of the observational campaign, published March 8 on arXiv.org, deliver essential information about the properties of this system.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-explore-properties-binary-gamma-cephei.html
4/6/2022 2:00 PMThe first worlds beyond our solar system were discovered three decades ago. Since then, close to 5,000 exoplanets have been confirmed in our galaxy. Astronomers have detected another 5,000 planetary candidates—objects that might be planets but have yet to be confirmed. Now, the list of planets has shrunk by at least three.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-thousands-exoplanets-astronomers-flag-stars.html
4/6/2022 4:00 PMFor the first time, a powerful NASA telescope aboard the International Space Station observed merging “hot spots” on a weird star, known as a magnetar.https://www.space.com/magnetar-hot-spots-merge-space-station-telescope
4/6/2022 6:00 PMNASA has extended flight operations of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter through September. In the months ahead, history’s first aircraft to operate from the surface of another world will support the Perseverance rover’s upcoming science campaign exploring the ancient river delta of Jezero Crater. Along the way, it will continue testing its own capabilities to support the design of future Mars air vehicles.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-nasa-ingenuity-mars-helicopter-mission.html
4/7/2022 8:00 AMFish rarely feed their young. An exception are certain species of snakeheads whose offspring feed on trophic eggs provided by their parent. A new study shows that this exceptional adaptation developed in snakehead fish around 12 million years ago. This behavior might have enabled the fish to conquer new environments and led to the high diversity of species seen in one particular group of snakeheads.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-rare-trophic-eggs-success-snakehead.html
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4/7/2022 12:00 PMQuantum physical experiments exploring the motion of macroscopic or heavy bodies under gravitational forces require protection from any environmental noise and highly efficient sensing.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-gravitational-mirror-evolve-quantum-entities.html
4/7/2022 2:00 PMElectrons are negatively charged subatomic particles found in the outermost regions of atoms. They are considered to be both partially particle-like and partially wave-like, depending on the scenario, according to West Texas A&M University. Electrons are essentially the reason atoms can interact with other atoms.https://www.space.com/electrons-negative-subatomic-particles
4/7/2022 4:00 PMNASA’s new space telescope has gazed into the distant universe and shown perfect vision: a spiky image of a faraway star photobombed by thousands of ancient galaxies.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-space-telescope-image-star-photobombed.html
4/7/2022 6:00 PMA challenge in materials design is that in both natural and manmade materials, volume sometimes decreases, or increases, with increasing temperature. While there are mechanical explanations for this phenomenon for some specific materials, a general understanding of why this sometimes happens remains lacking.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-theory-entropy-materials-issues.html
4/8/2022 8:00 AMA new Hubble Space Telescope clearly captures the heart of a distant galaxy structured much like our own. The new image shows the “eye” of a galaxy called NGC 1097, which is located 48 million light-years away from Earth. NGC 1097 is a barred spiral galaxy, which puts it in the same category as the Milky Way.https://www.space.com/hubble-space-telescope-image-galaxy-eye
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4/8/2022 12:00 PMA theorized huge, ninth planet beyond the orbit of Neptune once again wasn’t found in a new survey of the solar system’s outer reaches.https://www.space.com/planet-9-search-empty-millimeter-survey
4/8/2022 2:00 PMIn recent years, physicists have discovered materials that are able to switch their electrical character from a metal to an insulator, and even to a superconductor, which is a material in a friction-free state that allows electrons to flow with zero resistance. These materials, which include “magic-angle” graphene and other synthesized two-dimensional materials, can shift electrical states depending on the voltage, or current of electrons, that is applied.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-physicists-evidence-strong-electron-2d.html
4/8/2022 4:00 PMThe golden spiral arms of a distant galaxy sparkle in new images from the European Southern Observatory (ESO). The galaxy, known as NGC 4254 or Messier 99, is an example of a grand design spiral galaxy, which has prominent, well-defined spiral arms that wrap tightly around the galaxy’s center. Located 49 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Coma Berenices, NGC 4254 houses a stellar nursery shining with clouds of gas ionized by newly born stars, according to a statement from the ESO.https://www.space.com/galaxy-spiral-arms-hypnotizing-photo
4/8/2022 6:00 PMWhen Chilean scientist Osvaldo Ulloa led an expedition 8,000 meters under the sea to an area where no human had ever been, his team discovered microscopic organisms that generated more questions than answers.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-microscopic-deep-sea-trench-baffle.html
4/9/2022 8:00 AMMajor smashups between rocky bodies shaped our solar system. Observations of a similar crash give clues about how frequent these events are around other stars.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-nasa-giant-debris-cloud-clashing.html
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4/9/2022 12:00 PMResearchers may have solved Professor Stephen Hawking’s famous black hole paradox—a mystery that has puzzled scientists for almost half a century. According to two new studies, something called “quantum hair” is the answer to the problem.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-scientists-stephen-hawking-black-hole.html
4/9/2022 2:00 PMOn most days, the Earth Observatory presents our planet in close-up, filling the camera with its oceans and mountain ranges, clouds and rivers. But occasionally, NASA helps us all take a step back to see the big picture of our place in the solar system and universe. Such a view was recently beamed back by NASA’s Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft.https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/45710/earth-and-moon-from-mercury
4/9/2022 4:00 PMSoft and immobile, sea sponges may appear inert, but these simple animals are rich with chemistry. From them, scientists have uncovered plenty of biologically active compounds, some of which have gone on to become medications. All of these small molecules, however, actually originate from bacteria living within these animals. Now, new research has uncovered an exception. Today, scientists report that sponges themselves, not their resident microbes, produce at least one promising group of compounds.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-sponges-microbes-biologically-potent-compounds.html
4/9/2022 6:00 PMHolograms are three-dimensional (3D) images produced by interfering beams of light that reflect physical objects or photographs. In recent years, they were introduced in a variety of settings, for instance to enhance employee training or create more engaging art.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-holographic-lenses-based-plasma.html
4/10/2022 8:00 AMAn experiment that could confirm the fifth state of matter in the universe—and change physics as we know it—has been published in a new paper from the University of Portsmouth.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-state-universe.html
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4/10/2022 12:00 PMSocial mingling shapes and transforms the ‘vocabularies’ of apes, just like in humans, according to new research led by the University of Warwick. Researchers have proved that wild orangutans demonstrate distinct ‘vocal personalities’ that are molded depending on the social groups in which individuals live and communicate—as opposed to a fixed repertoire of instinctive, automated calls as traditionally presumed.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-ape-vocabularies-social-minglinglike-humans.html
4/10/2022 2:00 PMInspired by the bacteria-killing wings of insects like cicadas, scientists have developed a natural antibacterial texture for use on food packaging to improve shelf life and reduce waste. The lab-made nanotexture from an Australian-Japanese team of scientists kills up to 70% of bacteria and retains its effectiveness when transferred to plastic.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-bacteria-shredding-insect-wings-antibacterial-packaging.html
4/10/2022 4:00 PMMost living organisms have an internal clock which, among other things, controls the sleep-wake rhythm. The internal rhythm lasts approximately one day (circadian), i.e. about 24 hours, and is regulated by means of various clock genes. There is also permanent coordination with factors such as light and temperature for synchronizing the internal clock with the external day-night rhythm. A team led by neurobiologist Prof. Ralf Stanewsky from the University of Münster has now demonstrated in the Drosophila melanogaster fruit fly that a certain ion transport protein (KCC) plays a role in regulating circadian rhythms by means of light.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-internal-clock-fruit.html
4/10/2022 6:00 PMWhile the popular Netflix movie “Don’t Look Up” has raised public consciousness to the potential catastrophic effects of asteroid impact to planet Earth, new research sheds light on how the Chicxulub impact 66 million years ago resulted in extinction of 75 percent of animals on Earth, including the dinosaurs.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-stratospheric-sulfur-chicxulub-impact-climate.html
4/11/2022 8:00 AMThe nearest black hole to Earth isn’t a black hole at all. Instead, what scientists thought was a stellar triplet — two stars and a black hole — is actually a pair of stars caught in a unique stage of evolution.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/earth-nearest-black-hole-star-system-binary-space
4/11/2022 10:00 AMAstronomers have performed a comprehensive study of a peculiar “black widow” millisecond pulsar known as PSR J0610−2100. Results of this research, published March 11 on the arXiv pre-print repository, deliver essential information regarding the behavior and properties of this source.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-behavior-black-widow-millisecond-pulsar.html
4/11/2022 12:00 PMA team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in China and the U.S. has found that it is possible to track the sliding of grain boundaries in some metals at the atomic scale using an electron microscope and an automatic atom tracker. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their study of platinum using their new technique and the discovery they made in doing so.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-electron-microscopy-automatic-atom-tracking-grain.html
4/11/2022 2:00 PMCopper is an essential element of life from bacteria and fungi to plants and animals. In humans, it binds to enzymes to help blood clot, hormones mature, and cells process energy. But too much copper kills cells—and now scientists have figured out how.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-scientists-kind-cell-death-linked.html
4/11/2022 4:00 PMSo far, physicists have primarily studied topological phases in conservatively coupled systems. These are systems with dynamics that do not dissipate and a phase space that does not shrink over time. They are in stark contrast with dissipative systems, which are thermodynamically open systems (i.e., operating out of thermodynamic equilibrium) marked by dynamics that can dissipate over time.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-experimental-topological-dissipation-photonic-resonators.html
4/11/2022 6:00 PMArctic sea ice appeared to have hit its annual maximum extent on Feb. 25 after growing through the fall and winter. This year’s wintertime extent is the 10th-lowest in the satellite record maintained by the National Snow and Ice Data Center, one of NASA’s Distributed Active Archive Centers.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-arctic-winter-sea-ice-10th-lowest.html
4/12/2022 8:00 AMFirst predicted in Einstein’s theory of general relativity, gravitational waves are tiny ripples in spacetime generated by titanic and powerful cosmic events. The great physicist believed that no equipment would ever be sensitive to detect these faint cosmic ripples. Fortunately, Einstein was wrong, but that doesn’t mean that the detection of gravitational waves has been easy.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-documents-gravitational-wave-observatory-europe.html
4/12/2022 10:00 AMA team of researchers from the Royal Observatory of Belgium, Université Savoie Mont Blanc and Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris has identified nonaxisymmetric wavelike patterns in the equatorial region of the Earth’s core. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the group describes their study of geomagnetic data obtained from satellites and ground-based observatories over a twenty-year period and describes fluctuations they found beneath the equatorial part of the planet.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-nonaxisymmetric-wavelike-patterns-equatorial-region.html
4/12/2022 12:00 PMEver feel like there’s just not enough time in the day? Turns out, you might be onto something. Earth is rotating faster than it has in the last half-century, resulting in our days being ever-so-slightly shorter than we’re used to. And while it’s an infinitesimally small difference, it’s become a big headache for physicists, computer programmers and even stockbrokers.https://astronomy.com/news/2022/02/earth-is-spinning-faster-now-than-it-was-50-years-ago
4/12/2022 2:00 PMThe study, in which the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and the Universidad Estatal Paulista Júlio de Mesquita Filho (Júlio de Mesquita Filho Paulista State University) (UNESP) of Brazil are participating, analyzes the surface and dynamics of Apophis, an asteroid that will pass close to Earth in 2029.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-characteristics-apophis-asteroid-approach-earth.html
4/12/2022 4:00 PMComputers, smartphones, GPS: quantum physics has enabled many technological advances. It is now opening up new fields of research in cryptography (the art of coding messages) with the aim of developing ultra-secure telecommunications networks. There is one obstacle, however: after a few hundred kilometers within an optical fiber, the photons that carry the qubits or “quantum bits” (the information) disappear. They therefore need “repeaters,” a kind of “relay,” which are partly based on a quantum memory. By managing to store a qubit in a crystal (a “memory”) for 20 milliseconds, a team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) has set a world record and taken a major step towards the development of long-distance quantum telecommunications networks.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-quantum-bit-fora-record-breaking-milliseconds.html
4/12/2022 6:00 PMBlack holes with masses equivalent to millions of suns do put a brake on the birth of new stars, say astronomers. Using machine learning and three state-of-the-art simulations to back up results from a large sky survey, researchers from the University of Cambridge have resolved a 20-year long debate on the formation of stars.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-supermassive-black-holes-stellar-births.html
4/13/2022 8:00 AMA team of scientists has predicted the science return from one of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s groundbreaking planned surveys, which will analyze millions of galaxies strewn across space and time. The mission’s enormous, deep panoramas will provide the best opportunity yet to discern between the leading theories about what’s speeding up the universe’s expansion.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-nasa-roman-mission-cosmic-theories.html
4/13/2022 10:00 AMNASA is preparing to send humans to Mars sometime in the 2030s. The 3-year mission will expose astronauts to a long period of microgravity, which will cause them to lose bone mass. But now, scientists report transgenic lettuce that produces a bone-stimulating hormone. Someday, astronauts could grow the lettuce in space and help guard against bone loss—simply by eating a big bowl of salad. In addition, the lettuce might help stave off osteoporosis in resource-limited areas here on Earth, the researchers say.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-space-grown-lettuce-astronauts-bone-loss.html
4/13/2022 12:00 PMA new atomic nucleus of lutetium, 149Lu consisting of 71 protons and 78 neutrons, has been synthesized in an experiment performed in the Accelerator Laboratory of University of Jyväskylä, Finland.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-pumpkin-shaped-nucleus-protons-record-setting.html
4/13/2022 2:00 PMAn international team of researchers analyzing the sounds captured by the Perseverance rover has determined the speed of sound on Mars. Baptiste Chide, with Los Alamos National Laboratory, gave a presentation at this year’s 53rd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference outlining the findings by the team.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-analysis-captured-perseverance-rover-reveals.html
4/13/2022 4:00 PMAtomic clocks are the best sensors mankind has ever built. Today, they can be found in national standards institutes or satellites of navigation systems. Scientists all over the world are working to further optimize the precision of these clocks. Now, a research group led by Peter Zoller, a theorist from Innsbruck, Austria, has developed a new concept that can be used to operate sensors with even greater precision irrespective of which technical platform is used to make the sensor. “We answer the question of how precise a sensor can be with existing control capabilities, and give a recipe for how this can be achieved,” explain Denis Vasilyev and Raphael Kaubrügger from Peter Zoller’s group at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Innsbruck.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-physicists-programmable-quantum-sensor.html
4/13/2022 6:00 PMSalt water within the icy shell of Jupiter’s moon Europa could be transporting oxygen into an ice-covered ocean of liquid water where it could potentially help sustain alien life, according to a team of researchers led by The University of Texas at Austin.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-jupiter-moon-europa-chaos-terrains.html
4/14/2022 8:00 AMScientists have found a new way to “see” inside the simplest atomic nuclei to better understand the “glue” that holds the building blocks of matter together. The results, just published in Physical Review Letters, come from collisions of photons (particles of light) with deuterons, the simplest atomic nuclei (made of just one proton bound to one neutron).https://phys.org/news/2022-03-physicists-breakup-simple-nucleus.html
4/14/2022 10:00 AMThe double-slit experiment is one of the most famous experiments in physics and definitely one of the weirdest. It demonstrates that matter and energy (such as light) can exhibit both wave and particle characteristics — known as the particle-wave duality of matter — depending on the scenario, according to the scientific communication site Interesting Engineering. According to the University of Sussex, American physicist Richard Feynman referred to this paradox as the central mystery of quantum mechanics.https://www.space.com/double-slit-experiment-light-wave-or-particle
4/14/2022 12:00 PMThe number of sunspots on our sun typically ebbs and flows in a predictable 11-year cycle, but one unusual 70-year period when sunspots were incredibly rare has mystified scientists for 300 years. Now, a nearby sun-like star seems to have paused its own cycles and entered a similar period of rare starspots, according to a team of researchers at Penn State. Continuing to observe this star could help explain what happened to our own sun during this “Maunder minimum” as well as lend insight into the sun’s stellar magnetic activity, which can interfere with satellites and global communications and possibly even affect climate on Earth.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-nearby-star-sun-didnt-sunspots.html
4/14/2022 2:00 PMResearchers from NYU Abu Dhabi’s (NYUAD) Center for Space Science have discovered a new set of waves in the sun that, unexpectedly, appear to travel much faster than predicted by theory.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-mysterious-sun-unexplained.html
4/14/2022 4:00 PMLike most organisms, bacteria are preyed upon by viruses—and their go-to approach to destroying the invaders is to simply chop them up. As soon as it sees a virus, a bacterium may employ a host of immune strategies to slice up its genome using molecular cutters such as CRISPR-Cas, also the namesake of a popular laboratory tool.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-bacteria-self-vaccinate-viral-invaders.html
4/14/2022 6:00 PMResearchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have developed a novel strategy for identifying potent miniature antibodies, so-called nanobodies, against emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants. The approach led to the discovery of multiple nanobodies that in cell cultures and mice effectively blocked infection with different SARS-CoV-2 variants. The findings, which are described in the journals Nature Communications and Science Advances, could pave the way for new treatments against COVID-19.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-potent-alpaca-nanobodies-neutralize-sars-cov-.html
4/15/2022 8:00 AMScientists have discovered microplastics in human blood for the first time, warning that the ubiquitous particles could also be making their way into organs. The tiny pieces of mostly invisible plastic have already been found almost everywhere else on Earth, from the deepest oceans to the highest mountains as well as in the air, soil and food chain.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-scientists-microplastics-blood.html
4/15/2022 10:00 AMA wild new theory suggests there may be another “anti-universe,” running backward in time prior to the Big Bang. The idea assumes that the early universe was small, hot and dense — and so uniform that time looks symmetric going backward and forward.https://www.space.com/mirror-universe-explains-dark-matter
4/15/2022 12:00 PMThe inner nebula of the much-studied supernova Cassiopeia A is not moving smoothly outward. This has been discovered by astronomers from the University of Amsterdam and Harvard. The astronomers suspect that the remains have collided with something.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-ejection-nebula-supernova-cassiopeia-evenly.html
4/15/2022 2:00 PMScientists studying V Hydrae (V Hya) have witnessed the star’s mysterious death throes in unprecedented detail. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and data from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the team discovered six slowly-expanding rings and two hourglass-shaped structures caused by the high-speed ejection of matter out into space.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-hey-dude-mysterious-death-carbon.html
4/15/2022 4:00 PMA team of researchers from the Beijing Institute of Technology and the China Academy of Engineering Physics has developed a way to synthesize 1,3,5-trinitro-2,4,6-trinitroaminobenzene (TNTNB), marking a new energy peak for organic explosives. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes how they synthesized the powerful explosive and outline its heat detonation levels.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-synthesis-tntnb-energy-peak-explosives.html
4/15/2022 6:00 PMNew research artificially creating a rare form of matter known as spin glass could spark a new paradigm in artificial intelligence by allowing algorithms to be directly printed as physical hardware. The unusual properties of spin glass enable a form of AI that can recognize objects from partial images much like the brain does and show promise for low-power computing, among other intriguing capabilities.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-circuits-rare-nanomagnets.html
4/16/2022 8:00 AMSimilar to a light switch, RNA switches (called riboswitches) determine which genes turn “on” and “off.” Although this may seem like a simple process, the inner workings of these switches have confounded biologists for decades.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-unprecedented-videos-rna.html
4/16/2022 10:00 AMUnlike our Milky Way, some galaxies have an active black hole in their center driving powerful outflows of gas. But we know very little about their impact and origin. ESA’s future X-ray mission Athena will change this. In preparation for the launch in the 2030s, astronomers from SRON and UvA have now developed a new method to use Athena to study these outflows.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-method-outflows-galactic-centers-athena.html
4/16/2022 12:00 PMThe European Space Agency has released an extraordinary image obtained by its Solar Orbiter, a sophisticated spacecraft designed to observe the Sun from much closer than Earth — and spoiler alert, it’s pretty incredible.https://futurism.com/the-byte/stunning-picture-close-sun
4/16/2022 2:00 PMHelium-3, a rare isotope of helium gas, is leaking out of Earth’s core, a new study reports. Because almost all helium-3 is from the Big Bang, the gas leak adds evidence that Earth formed inside a solar nebula, which has long been debated.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-ancient-helium-leaking-core-clues.html
4/16/2022 4:00 PMIf life is abundant in the universe, atmospheric methane may be the first sign of life beyond Earth detectable by astronomers. Although nonbiological processes can generate methane, a new study by scientists at UC Santa Cruz establishes a set of circumstances in which a persuasive case could be made for biological activity as the source of methane in a rocky planet’s atmosphere.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-methane-indication-life-earth.html
4/16/2022 6:00 PMSilicon solar cells have proven to be a top photovoltaic technology, as they use earth abundant raw materials (i.e. Si) and perform with high efficiency. However, they are based on thick, rigid and heavy wafers and can therefore only be installed in a limited number of places. One of the ways to overcome this disadvantage is to use thin membranes instead. This will reduce the amount of Si by more than 99% (dramatically saving in raw materials) and also make the cells flexible and lightweight. As such, these cells can be easily integrated into buildings, urban architecture and even small everyday gadgets. The problem is that such thin Si membranes cannot absorb light as efficiently. In fact, only 25% of the sunlight is absorbed and you can even see through them.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-efficiencies-thin-photovoltaic-cells.html
4/17/2022 8:00 AMA team of scientists found a bizarre new celestial body out in our galaxy’s interstellar space that has them so baffled that they’ve nicknamed it “The Accident.” The Accident is reminiscent of a brown dwarf, which is a class of space object that weighs in between the largest planets and the tiniest stars but isn’t quite massive enough to trigger the fusion reactions that give the stars their intense brightness.https://futurism.com/the-byte/astronomers-discover-strange-space-object
4/17/2022 10:00 AMA research team led by Dr. Li Zhiheng and Dr. Thomas Stidham from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has discovered the amazingly well-preserved fossil skeleton of an extinct owl that lived more than six million years ago in China. Their detailed study of the skeleton’s fossilized eye bones shows the owl was active in the daytime, not the night.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-fossil-daytime-owl-edge-tibetan.html
4/17/2022 12:00 PMPhysicists know about the huge chasm between quantum physics and the theory of gravity. However, in recent decades, theoretical physics has provided some plausible conjecture to bridge this gap and to describe the behavior of complex quantum many-body systems, for example black holes and wormholes in the universe. Now, a theory group at Freie Universität Berlin and Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie (HZB), together with Harvard University, U.S., has proven a mathematical conjecture about the behavior of complexity in such systems, increasing the viability of this bridge.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-group-quantum-complexity-linearly-exponentially.html
4/17/2022 2:00 PMThere are multiple ways to create two- and three-dimensional models of atoms and molecules. With the advent of cutting-edge apparatus that can image samples at the atomic scale, scientists found that traditional molecular models did not fit the images they saw. Researchers have devised a better way to visualize molecules building on these traditional methods. Their models fit the imaging data they acquire well, and they hope the models can therefore help chemists with their intuition for interpreting molecular images.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-visualizing-invisible-aid-atomic-resolution.html
4/17/2022 4:00 PMStrange lumpy terrain on Pluto unlike anything previously observed in the solar system indicates that giant ice volcanoes were active relatively recently on the dwarf planet, scientists said on Tuesday.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-giant-ice-volcanoes-pluto.html
4/17/2022 6:00 PMEarthquakes do more than buckle streets and topple buildings. Seismic waves generated by earthquakes pass through the Earth, acting like a giant MRI machine and providing clues to what lies inside the planet.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-planet-scale-mri-high-resolution-illumination.html
4/18/2022 8:00 AMOn January 15, the volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai devastated the nation of Tonga. The eruption triggered tsunamis as far afield as the Caribbean and generated atmospheric waves that traveled around the globe several times. Meanwhile, the volcano’s plume shot gas and ash through the stratosphere into the lower mesosphere. Just two months after the eruption, geologists have put together a preliminary account of how it unfolded.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-geologists-preliminary-account-tonga-eruption.html
4/18/2022 10:00 AMA trio of researchers with the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, the University of Calgary and Carleton University, respectively, has found a snake-like fossil that may represent a creature in transition from four legs to none. In their paper published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, Arjan Mann, Jason Pardo and Hillary Maddin describe the fossil they found and why they believe it helps to explain how animals such as snakes lost their limbs.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-snake-like-fossil-lacking-forelimbs-hind.html
4/18/2022 12:00 PMFor reproduction to be successful, an egg cell must divide perfectly. Egg cell divisions are so error-prone, however, that they are the leading cause of miscarriages and birth defects in humans.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-roundworms-egg-cells-backup-division.html
4/18/2022 2:00 PMResearch conducted by Princeton University physicists is paving the way for the use of silicon-based technologies in quantum computing, especially as quantum bits—the basic units of quantum computers. This research promises to accelerate the use of silicon technology as a viable alternative to other quantum computing technologies, such as superconductors or trapped ions.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-quantum-hardware-silicon.html
4/18/2022 4:00 PMSuperconductors are materials that can enter a state of no electrical resistance, through which magnetic fields cannot penetrate. Due to their interesting properties, many material scientists and engineers have been exploring the potential of these materials for a wide range of electronics applications.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-superconductivity-superconductors.html
4/18/2022 6:00 PMDeserts may seem lifeless and inert, but they are very much alive. Sand dunes, in particular, grow and move—and according to a decades long research project, they also breathe humid air.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-vapor.html
4/19/2022 8:00 AMFrom hot volcanic springs where the water is nearly boiling acid, a University of Virginia researcher and his colleagues have discovered how lemon-shaped viruses got their form. And that discovery could lead to new and better ways to deliver drugs and vaccines.https://phys.org/news/2022-03-shape-shifting-volcano-virus-ways-drugs.html
4/19/2022 10:00 AMNASA’s airborne Lunar Spectral Irradiance, or air-LUSI, flew aboard NASA’s ER-2 aircraft from March 12 to 16 to accurately measure the amount of light reflected off the Moon. Reflected moonlight is a steady source of light that researchers are taking advantage of to improve the accuracy and consistency of measurements among Earth-observing satellites.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-nasa-moonlight-satellite-accuracy.html
4/19/2022 12:00 PMUsually when a geologist walks up to a sedimentary rock outcrop and starts scanning the layers of sand, mud and silt now turned to rock, they’re looking through millions of years of deep time to deduce what happened in that place in the world over many thousands of years to create that particular rock.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-exposed-sediments-reveal-decades-lake.html
4/19/2022 2:00 PMEvery 4 milliseconds, a dead star blasts a powerful beam of radiation toward our planet. Don’t worry — Earth will be fine. It’s the dead star’s tiny companion that’s in trouble.https://www.space.com/black-widow-pulsar-gravitational-waves
4/19/2022 4:00 PMNASA will soon take a unique launch system out for a spin. The agency has signed on to send a payload up using a suborbital, kinetic-energy based system developed by California-based company SpinLaunch. The test flight, which is expected later this year, will “provide valuable information to NASA for potential future commercial launch opportunities,” SpinLaunch representatives said in an emailed statement.https://www.space.com/spinlaunch-nasa-suborbital-test-flight-agreement
4/19/2022 6:00 PMOcean water samples collected around the world have yielded a treasure trove of new data about RNA viruses, expanding ecological research possibilities and reshaping our understanding of how these small but significant submicroscopic particles evolved.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-ocean-samples-yield-treasure-trove.html
4/20/2022 8:00 AMScientists have presented a stunningly preserved leg of a dinosaur. The limb, complete with skin, is just one of a series of remarkable finds emerging from the Tanis fossil site in the US State of North Dakota. But it’s not just their exquisite condition that’s turning heads – it’s what these ancient specimens are purported to represent.https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61013740
4/20/2022 10:00 AMThe face that the Moon shows to Earth looks far different from the one it hides on its far side. The nearside is dominated by the lunar mare—the vast, dark-colored remnants of ancient lava flows. The crater-pocked far side, on the other hand, is virtually devoid of large-scale mare features. Why the two sides are so different is one of the Moon’s most enduring mysteries.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-differences-moon-sides-linked-colossal.html
4/20/2022 12:00 PMFor all the recent advances in integrated lithium niobate photonic circuits—from frequency combs to frequency converters and modulators—one big component has remained frustratingly difficult to integrate: lasers.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-laser-lithium-niobate-chip.html
4/20/2022 2:00 PMThey might look like cells and act like cells. But a new potential COVID-19 treatment is actually a cleverly disguised trickster, which attracts viruses and binds them, rendering them inactive.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-decoy-particles-coronavirus-evolves.html
4/20/2022 4:00 PMA fireball that blazed through the skies over Papua New Guinea in 2014 was actually a fast-moving object from another star system, according to a recent memo released by the U.S. Space Command (USSC).https://www.space.com/first-interstellar-object-detected-classified-data
4/20/2022 6:00 PMRapid antigen tests can quickly and conveniently tell a person that they are positive for COVID-19. However, because antibody-based tests aren’t very sensitive, they can fail to detect early infections with low viral loads. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Sensors have developed a rapid test that uses molecularly imprinted polymer nanoparticles, rather than antibodies, to detect SARS-CoV-2. The new test is more sensitive and works under more extreme conditions than antibody-based tests.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-nanoparticles-enable-sensitive-durable-rapid.html
4/21/2022 8:00 AMA new entrant in the space tourism market promises customers views of the Earth’s curvature from the comfort of a luxury cabin, lifted to the upper atmosphere with a giant balloon.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-space-balloon-company-luxury-cabins.html
4/21/2022 10:00 AMA new model of the very early universe proposes that the graviton, the quantum mechanical force carrier of gravity, flooded the cosmos with dark matter before normal matter even had a chance to get started.https://www.space.com/dark-matter-origin-gravity-theory
4/21/2022 12:00 PMNASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will see the first galaxies to form after the Big Bang, but to do that, its instruments first need to get cold—really cold. On April 7, Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI)—a joint development by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency)—reached its final operating temperature below 7 kelvins (minus 447 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 266 degrees Celsius).https://phys.org/news/2022-04-james-webb-telescope-coldest-instrument.html
4/21/2022 2:00 PMIn the mosquito breeding rooms of British biotech company Oxitec, scientists line up fresh eggs, each the size of a grain of salt. Using microscopic needles, the white-coated researchers inject each egg with a dab of a proprietary synthetic DNA.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-genetically-mosquitoes-california.html
4/21/2022 4:00 PMA study published in Nature by an international team of scientists provides clear evidence for a link between astronomically-driven climate change and human evolution. By combining the most extensive database of well-dated fossil remains and archeological artifacts with an unprecedented new supercomputer model simulating earth’s climate history of the past 2 million years, the team of experts in climate modeling, anthropology and ecology was able to determine under which environmental conditions archaic humans likely lived.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-early-human-habitats-linked-climate.html
4/21/2022 6:00 PMNewton’s theory of gravity stated that gravity acted at a distance and instantaneously. Einstein showed that not to be the case. His general theory of relativity exorcised Newton’s mysterious action at a distance by having gravity traveling at the speed of light and acting locally in a curved space. To Einstein’s horror, quantum physics boasts a very “spooky action at a distance,” (his term) that he couldn’t exorcise. Current experiments have confirmed that nature is even spookier than Einstein ever would have accepted.https://bigthink.com/13-8/einstein-spooky-action-at-a-distance/
4/22/2022 8:00 AMSponges in coral reefs, less flashy than their coral neighbors but important to the overall health of reefs, are among the earliest animals on the planet. New research from UNH peers into coral reef ecosystems with a novel approach to understanding the complex evolution of sponges and the microbes that live in symbiosis with them. With this “genomic time machine,” researchers can predict aspects of reef and ocean ecosystems through hundreds of millions of years of dramatic evolutionary change.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-genomic-machine-sponge-microbiome-insights.html
4/22/2022 10:00 AMLawrence Berkeley National Laboratory physicists Christian Bauer, Marat Freytsis and Benjamin Nachman have leveraged an IBM Q quantum computer through the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s Quantum Computing User Program to capture part of a calculation of two protons colliding. The calculation can show the probability that an outgoing particle will emit additional particles.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-team-simulates-collider-physics-quantum.html
4/22/2022 12:00 PMFrom designing new biomaterials to novel photonic devices, new materials built through a process called bottom-up nanofabrication, or self-assembly, are opening up pathways to new technologies with properties tuned at the nanoscale. However, to fully unlock the potential of these new materials, researchers need to “see” into their tiny creations so that they can control the design and fabrication in order to enable the material’s desired properties.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-deeply-nanomaterials-3d-imaging-tool.html
4/22/2022 2:00 PMWhat’s the link between social life and brain structure? Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, the Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute at Inserm, and elsewhere are now one step closer to understanding this connection for rhesus macaques.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-social-brain-rhesus-macaques.html
4/22/2022 4:00 PMDiverse microbial life existed on Earth at least 3.75 billion years ago, suggests a new study led by UCL researchers that challenges the conventional view of when life began.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-diverse-life-evolved-earlier-previously.html
4/22/2022 6:00 PMFor the first time, researchers have successfully generated strongly nonclassical light using a modular waveguide-based light source. The achievement represents a crucial step toward creating faster and more practical optical quantum computers.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-high-quality-quantum-modular-waveguide-device.html
4/23/2022 8:00 AMDeuterium, the heavy brother of hydrogen, is considered a promising material of the future because of its wide range of applications—in science, for energy generation, or in the production of pharmaceuticals. However, the extraction of deuterium from its natural isotope mixture has so far been complex and expensive. With a porous material developed at the Technische Universität Dresden, this could soon be done more efficiently and cost-effectively.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-flexible-quantum-sieve-filters-fuel.html
4/23/2022 10:00 AMSome 2.7 billion miles from Earth, the south side of Neptune is in the midst of summer. But it isn’t the kind of summer we’re used to.https://www.cnet.com/science/space/neptune-is-getting-colder-and-scientists-arent-sure-why/
4/23/2022 12:00 PMA mysterious leaden sarcophagus discovered in the bowels of Paris’ Notre-Dame cathedral after it was devastated by a fire will soon be opened and its secrets revealed, French archaeologists said Thursday.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-mystery-sarcophagus-notre-dame.html
4/23/2022 2:00 PMOne of NASA’s intrepid Mars rovers unexpectedly changed its course to avoid hazardous “gator-back” terrain. The Curiosity rover, which is exploring Mount Sharp, was climbing the southern side of a gentle slope called “Greenheugh Pediment” for most of March, where it encountered mostly rubbly sandstone. On March 18, the rover’s team on Earth spotted unexpected terrain littered with wind-sharpened rocks, called ventifacts. In response, the drivers decided to turn the robotic explorer around, according to a statement from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, which leads the mission.https://www.space.com/curiosity-rover-dodging-gator-back-terrain-photo
4/23/2022 4:00 PMIf there was ever any doubt the 2011 discovery by a post-doctoral student was indeed the hottest rock on Earth, new findings from a Western-led research team are putting that uncertainty to rest.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-hottest.html
4/23/2022 6:00 PMIn a discovery that could speed research into next-generation electronics and LED devices, a University of Michigan research team has developed the first reliable, scalable method for growing single layers of hexagonal boron nitride on graphene.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-graphene-hbn-breakthrough-spur-quantum.html
4/24/2022 8:00 AMA collaboration with Harvard University has led to the development of a new-generation electro-optic modulator that could stamp out its bulky predecessor through the creation of a smaller, stronger, cooler, faster and cost-effective on-chip system.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-silicon-carbide-modulator-decades-block.html
4/24/2022 10:00 AMIf you think sunrises on Earth are amazing, wait until you see one on Mars. This stunning view comes from NASA’s InSight Mars lander, which snapped images of the Martian sunrise on April 10.https://www.space.com/mars-sunrise-photo-insight-lander
4/24/2022 12:00 PMThe European Space Agency will discontinue its cooperation on Russia’s Luna series of robotic moon missions, ESA officials announced April 13. The development is part of ESA’s effort to disentangle itself from a web of partnerships with Russia in the wake of the latter’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine.https://www.space.com/europe-moon-pertnership-russia-ukraine-rocket-engines
4/24/2022 2:00 PMAn international team of researchers who published a paper in the journal Science in 2016 describing their discovery of an exoplanet with three stars, has now retracted that paper.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-team-discovery-planet-stars-retracts.html
4/24/2022 4:00 PMA special form of light made using an ancient Namibian gemstone could be the key to new light-based quantum computers, which could solve long-held scientific mysteries, according to new research led by the University of St Andrews.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-ancient-namibian-stone-key-future.html
4/24/2022 6:00 PMUpwelling and downwelling play an important role in transporting the heat, carbon, and nutrients that affect Earth’s climate. Many studies have focused on these vertical motions in the ocean, including in eastern boundary currents, along the equator, and in the Southern Ocean.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-hidden-upwelling-overlooked-ocean-circulation.html
4/25/2022 8:00 AM“We have been interested in the romantic life of the parasite Cryptosporidium for some time,” says Boris Striepen, a scientist in Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine. Cryptosporidium is a leading cause of diarrheal disease in young children around the world. The intestinal parasite contributes to childhood mortality and causes malnutrition and stunting. How a parasite like this one reproduces and completes its life cycle has significant impact on child health.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-lifecycle-important-human-parasite.html
4/25/2022 10:00 AMA new UC Riverside study shows it’s not how much extra water you give your plants, but when you give it that counts.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-dwindling-rainfall.html
4/25/2022 12:00 PMSaturn’s small icy moon Enceladus captured the imaginations of people worldwide when NASA’s Cassini spacecraft saw it spewing plumes of water into space. This water comes from a global, liquid ocean concealed beneath Enceladus’ fissured crust. The water isn’t liquid because of the Sun’s heat but rather because of warming caused by friction between parts of the moon’s interior as it is tugged by Saturn’s gravity.https://www.planetary.org/articles/alien-life-enceladus
4/25/2022 2:00 PMDeep learning–based language models, such as BERT, T5, XLNet and GPT, are promising for analyzing speech and texts. In recent years, however, they have also been applied in the fields of biomedicine and biotechnology to study genetic codes and proteins.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-deep-decode-functional-properties-proteins.html
4/25/2022 4:00 PMBy investigating the response of bioluminescent bays to Hurricane Maria, scientists are finding light in dark places.https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/bioluminescent-bays-shine-light-on-puerto-ricos-resilience/
4/25/2022 6:00 PMA team of researchers at Tel Aviv University has found that Egyptian fruit bats use echolocation during daylight hours even though they have good eyesight. In their paper published in the journal Current Biology, the group describes their study of the bats and suggests explanations for their odd behavior.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-egyptian-fruit-echolocation-daylight-hours.html
4/26/2022 8:00 AMVaccines can be made over 25% more effective by adding left-handed chiral gold nanoparticles as adjuvants, according to a study by an international collaboration in which Brazilian researchers took part.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-chiral-gold-nanoparticles-vaccine-efficacy.html
4/26/2022 10:00 AMScientists at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) have recorded the first North American case of a harmful phytoplasma disease known for its threat to fruit, vegetable and ornamental crops in South America and the Middle East.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-scientists-case-bacteria-ubiquitous-weed.html
4/26/2022 12:00 PMTurmeric, a spice found in most kitchens, has an extract that could lead to safer, more efficient fuel cells.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-common-kitchen-spice-key-greener.html
4/26/2022 2:00 PMThe spiral galaxy M91 fills the frame of this Wide Field Camera 3 observation from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. M91 lies approximately 55 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices and—as is evident in this image—is a barred spiral galaxy. While M91’s prominent bar makes for a spectacular galactic portrait, it also hides an astronomical monstrosity. Like our own galaxy, M91 contains a supermassive black hole at its center. A 2009 study using archival Hubble data found that this central black hole weighs somewhere between 9.6 and 38 million times as much as the Sun.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-hubble-snaps-spiral-galaxy.html
4/26/2022 4:00 PMAstronomers are flummoxed by a mysterious celestial object that appears to be releasing massive bursts of energy at regular 18 minute intervals.https://futurism.com/celestial-object-radio-signals-18-minutes
4/26/2022 6:00 PMHave you ever wondered if bacteria make distinctive sounds? If we could listen to bacteria, we would be able to know whether they are alive or not. When bacteria are killed using an antibiotic, those sounds would stop—unless of course the bacteria are resistant to the antibiotic. This is exactly what a team of researchers from TU Delft , led by Dr. Farbod Alijani, now have managed to do: they captured low-level noise of a single bacterium using graphene.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-bacterial-soundtracks-revealed-graphene-membrane.html
4/27/2022 8:00 AMBefore being accidentally introduced to the New World by the 16th century slave trade, the yellow fever mosquito was a species native only to Africa. Highly adaptable, it has since become an invasive species in North America, but researchers at The Ohio State University may have found a way to squash the pesky population in its juvenile stages.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-nanoparticles-effective-yellow-fever-mosquito.html
4/27/2022 10:00 AMImagine the perfect way to eat an Oreo. Perhaps you twist the top layer, separating the cookie into two parts, and then eat them one by one. Alternatively, you could dunk the treat into milk to soften it just the right amount. Or maybe, if you’re a rheologist who studies complex fluids, you snack on the cookie while you test its mechanical properties in your lab.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-oreos-creme-side.html
4/27/2022 12:00 PMIt’s not science fiction: Hologram doctors beamed to space to visit astronauts. In 2021, a team of hologram doctors was “holoported” to space to visit astronauts living aboard the International Space Station, NASA has revealed in a new post. The hologram teams, led by NASA flight surgeon Dr. Josef Schmid and Fernando De La Peña Llaca, CEO of software provider Aexa Aerospace, were the first humans to ever be “holoported” from Earth to space.https://www.space.com/hologram-doctor-space-station-nasa-astronauts
4/27/2022 2:00 PMAfter decades in the shadow of the other planets, Uranus should become NASA’s focus of exploration, a panel of planetary scientists reported today in the field’s long-awaited “decadal survey,” a priority-setting report the agency will use to makes its case to congressional funders. If the scientists get their wishes, NASA in the early 2030s will launch a $4.2 billion orbiter and atmospheric probe to Uranus, seeking to understand the formation and composition of this ice giant. Intermediate between the rocky planets and gas giants in size, Uranus and its neighbor Neptune “represent a unique planetary type that we poorly understand,” says Ravit Helled, a planetary scientist at the University of Zürich, one of 130 scientists who contributed to the survey.https://www.science.org/content/article/uranus-should-be-nasa-s-top-planetary-target-influential-report-finds
4/27/2022 4:00 PMScientists have long wondered how Jupiter’s innermost moon, Io, has meandering ridges as grand as any that can be seen in movies like “Dune.” Now, a Rutgers research study has provided a new explanation of how dunes can form even on a surface as icy and roiling as Io’s.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-explanation-jupiter-moon-splendid-dunes.html
4/27/2022 6:00 PMA bright fireball was observed by a network of all-sky cameras across southern Ontario at 11:37pm on Sunday, April 17, 2022. Analysis of the video data suggests that fragments of the meteor are likely to have made it to the ground near the eastern shore of Lake Simcoe, just north of the town of Argyle.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-all-sky-cameras-capture-bright-fireball.html
4/28/2022 8:00 AMFive hundred million years ago, the oceans teemed with trillions of trilobites—creatures that were distant cousins of horseshoe crabs. All trilobites had a wide range of vision, thanks to compound eyes—single eyes composed of tens to thousands of tiny independent units, each with their own cornea, lens and light-sensitive cells. But one group, Dalmanitina socialis, was exceptionally farsighted. Their bifocal eyes, each mounted on stalks and composed of two lenses that bent light at different angles, enabled these sea creatures to simultaneously view prey floating nearby as well as distant enemies approaching from more than a kilometer away.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-prehistoric-creatures-record-setting-lenses.html
4/28/2022 10:00 AMA California-based business, NDB, claims to have built a self-powered battery made entirely of radioactive waste that has a life expectancy of 28,000 years.https://www.physics-astronomy.com/2022/04/scientists-turn-nuclear-waste-into.html
4/28/2022 12:00 PMEuropa is a prime candidate for life in our solar system, and its deep saltwater ocean has captivated scientists for decades. But it’s enclosed by an icy shell that could be miles to tens of miles thick, making sampling it a daunting prospect. Now, increasing evidence reveals the ice shell may be less of a barrier and more of a dynamic system—and site of potential habitability in its own right.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-explanation-formation-abundant-features-europa.html
4/28/2022 2:00 PMThe CMS collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has performed the most accurate ever measurement of the mass of the top quark—the heaviest known elementary particle. The latest CMS result estimates the value of the top-quark mass with an accuracy of about 0.22%. The substantial gain in accuracy comes from new analysis methods and improved procedures to consistently and simultaneously treat different uncertainties in the measurement.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-team-mass-quark-unparalleled-accuracy.html
4/28/2022 4:00 PMThe NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is celebrating its 32nd birthday with a stunning look at an unusual close-knit collection of five galaxies, called the Hickson Compact Group 40. This snapshot reflects a special moment in their lifetimes as they fall together before they merge.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-celebrating-hubble-32nd-birthday-galaxy.html
4/28/2022 6:00 PMExperts have developed new ways of visually representing ancient objects such as stone tools and fossils developing technologies currently only used in video games and computer graphics.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-ways-visualizing-ancient-small-combining.html
4/29/2022 8:00 AMAfter collecting eight rock-core samples from its first science campaign and completing a record-breaking, 31-Martian-day (or sol) dash across about 3 miles (5 kilometers) of Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover arrived at the doorstep of Jezero Crater’s ancient river delta April 13. Dubbed “Three Forks” by the Perseverance team (a reference to the spot where three route options to the delta merge), the location serves as the staging area for the rover’s second science expedition, the “Delta Front Campaign.”https://phys.org/news/2022-04-perseverance-rover-ancient-river-delta.html
4/29/2022 10:00 AMResearchers at Dartmouth College have built the world’s first superfluid circuit that uses pairs of ultracold electron-like atoms.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-lab-superfluid-circuit-fermions-electron.html
4/29/2022 12:00 PMPredators may keep prey populations healthy by acting as a selective force against genetic diseases. A new study found that wolves select adult moose based on age and osteoarthritis, a chronic disease that can be influenced by genetics. Wolves also showed a strong preference for elderly moose over prime-aged adults. The results indicate that wolves play an important role in keeping prey populations healthy and have considerable implications for the conservation management of predator and prey populations.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-moose-populations-healthy-wolves.html
4/29/2022 2:00 PMMercury harbors water ice in the shadows of the steepest craters around its poles. But it is unclear how those water molecules ended up on Mercury. Now a new simulation shows that incoming minor bodies such as asteroids, comets and dust particles carry enough water to account for all the ice sheets present. The study could form the basis for new research on water in exoplanetary systems.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-space-asteroids-comets-account-mercury.html
4/29/2022 4:00 PMWhile working on his doctorate in theoretical physics in the early 1970s, Saul Teukolsky solved a problem that seemed purely hypothetical. Imagine a black hole, the ghostly knot of gravity that forms when, say, a massive star burns out and collapses to an infinitesimal point. Suppose you perturb it, as you might strike a bell. How does the black hole respond?https://www.science.org/content/article/after-decades-effort-scientists-are-finally-seeing-black-holes-or-are-they
4/29/2022 6:00 PMThe deep-sea crown jelly Atolla is one of the most common residents of the ocean’s midnight zone. Its bell has a signature scarlet color and bears one tentacle much longer than the rest. So 15 years ago, when MBARI researchers spotted a jelly that looked like Atolla, but lacked the telltale trailing tentacle, their curiosity was piqued.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-scientists-species-deep-sea-crown-jelly.html
4/30/2022 8:00 AMIf not for the soupy, fast-moving atmosphere on Venus, Earth’s sister planet would likely not rotate. Instead, Venus would be locked in place, always facing the sun the way the same side of the moon always faces Earth.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-venus-rotates-slowly-sun-powerful.html
4/30/2022 10:00 AMFor the past couple of decades, NASA has been investing in spacecraft to conduct up-close examinations of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Now it’ll likely be Uranus’ turn.https://www.wired.com/story/planetary-decadal-survey-uranus-enceladus/
4/30/2022 12:00 PMA team of astronomers, with the help of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), have observed a new type of stellar explosion—a micronova. These outbursts happen on the surface of certain stars, and can each burn through around 3.5 billion Great Pyramids of Giza of stellar material in only a few hours.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-astronomers-micronovae-kind-stellar-explosion.html
4/30/2022 2:00 PMNASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has captured dramatic footage of Phobos, Mars’ potato-shaped moon, crossing the face of the Sun. These observations can help scientists better understand the moon’s orbit and how its gravity pulls on the Martian surface, ultimately shaping the Red Planet’s crust and mantle.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-nasa-perseverance-rover-captures-video.html
4/30/2022 4:00 PMA new analysis of archaeological sites in the Americas challenges relatively new theories that the earliest human inhabitants of North America arrived before the migration of people from Asia across the Bering Strait.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-theories-earlier-human-americas.html
4/30/2022 6:00 PMA beautiful sunset over the Atlantic off the Florida coast, or an orangey glow in the Texas sky at dusk may be caused by dust from West Africa, according to researchers who are looking at the paths of particulate matter in the skies over the Sahara desert and the semi-arid Sahel.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-african-atlantic.html
5/1/2022 8:00 AMTwo immense swarms of sunspots have popped into view on the surface of the sun, hinting at the increased possibilities of vivid auroras and potentially damaging solar flares over the months to come. Some of the sunspots are so gigantic that they could swallow Earth whole.https://www.space.com/swarms-of-giant-sunspots
5/1/2022 10:00 AM
5/1/2022 12:00 PMLong before the first birds flapped and fluttered, pterosaurs took to the skies. These leathery-winged reptiles, their bodies coated with wispy filaments paleontologists call pycnofibers, were the first vertebrates to truly fly. Now experts are beginning to think pterosaurs and birds had more in common than previously assumed: An exquisitely preserved fossil from Brazil not only hints that pterosaurs’ peculiar filaments may have been true feathers but also suggests that this plumage could possibly have been as riotously colored as that of any modern toucan or tanager.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pterosaurs-may-have-had-brightly-colored-feathers-exquisite-fossil-reveals/
5/1/2022 2:00 PMUsing the MeerKAT radio telescope, an international team of astronomers have detected radio flares on a nearby M dwarf star known as SCR 1746−3214. The finding, reported in a paper published April 7 on the pre-print server arXiv.org, could advance our understanding of flaring behavior of M dwarfs.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-radio-flares-nearby-dwarf-star.html
5/1/2022 4:00 PMAn international consortium of scientists has launched a new effort to create a reference genome that captures the genetic diversity of all the peoples of the world. The researchers describe the initiative, called the Human Pangenome Project, in a paper published April 20, in the journal Nature.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-scientists-world-genomic-diversity.html
5/1/2022 6:00 PMFuture moon crews will have an electric ride to the launchpad. Starting with Artemis 2, the mission NASA hopes to send around the moon in 2024, crews will take their last ride on Earth before launch using electric crew transportation vehicles provided by Canoo Technologies Inc.https://www.space.com/nasa-artemis-astronauts-electric-vans
5/2/2022 8:00 AMCrows and ravens are well known for their black color and the harsh “caw” sound they make. They are intelligent birds that use tools, solve complex abstract problems and speak a volume of words.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-brains-brawn-crows-ravens-world.html
5/2/2022 10:00 AM
5/2/2022 12:00 PMAn underground observatory that could detect gravitational waves from the far reaches of the universe is one step closer to reality. Last week, the Dutch government said it was prepared to foot about €900 million of the project’s roughly €1.9 billion construction cost if it is built near the border of the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. The pledge puts the Dutch proposal for Europe’s so-called Einstein Telescope ahead of rival bids, says Stan Bentvelsen, director of the Netherlands’s National Institute for Subatomic Physics and a leader of the Dutch proposal. “I think the Dutch government is sticking its neck out the farthest,” he says.https://www.science.org/content/article/dutch-pledge-nearly-billion-to-support-underground-wave-detector
5/2/2022 2:00 PMUsing atmospheric data collected in India during COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, an international team of scientists has found that black carbon in India regulates dust loadings in the entire country. The researchers also found black carbon-dust-climate interactions caused the Indian summer monsoon season to start later than usual during the 2020 lockdown.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-atmospheric-india-lockdown-reveals-black.html
5/2/2022 4:00 PMThe U-shaped relationship between diet and size in modern land mammals could also stand for “universal,” says a new study, which has found that the relationship spans at least 66 million years and a range of vertebrate animal groups.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-humans-disrupting-million-year-old-feature-ecosystems.html
5/2/2022 6:00 PMResearchers have discovered that light—in the form of a laser—can trigger a form of magnetism in a normally nonmagnetic material. This magnetism centers on the behavior of electrons. These subatomic particles have an electronic property called “spin,” which has a potential application in quantum computing. The researchers found that electrons within the material became oriented in the same direction when illuminated by photons from a laser.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-lasers-trigger-magnetism-atomically-thin.html
5/3/2022 8:00 AMUsing its web as a “tool” to store and release energy, the triangle weaver spider lunges at speeds equivalent to a human sprinting at 1,700 miles per hour.https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/hyptiotes-spider-web-catapult/
5/3/2022 10:00 AM
5/3/2022 12:00 PMNASA’s massive new space telescope just keeps getting colder. While the James Webb Space Telescope’s slow cooling process is nearing its end, NASA officials wrote in an update, there’s no firm timeline on when all the observatory components will meet their operating temperatures. That’s because much of this stage of the telescope’s months-long commissioning period comes down to physics, as mission managers wait for the mirrors to naturally cool to a temperature to allow alignment to continue.https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-mirrors-temperature
5/3/2022 2:00 PMAfter 10 years of careful analysis and scrutiny, scientists of the CDF collaboration at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced today that they have achieved the most precise measurement to date of the mass of the W boson, one of nature’s force-carrying particles. Using data collected by the Collider Detector at Fermilab, or CDF, scientists have now determined the particle’s mass with a precision of 0.01% — twice as precise as the previous best measurement. It corresponds to measuring the weight of an 800-pound gorilla to 1.5 ounces.https://news.fnal.gov/2022/04/cdf-collaboration-at-fermilab-announces-most-precise-ever-measurement-of-w-boson-mass/
5/3/2022 4:00 PMA small, dense star chowing down on its enormous dying neighbor caused a massive explosion that generated some of the highest-energy gamma-rays ever observed for a nova.https://www.space.com/rs-ophiuchi-nova-explosion-gamma-rays
5/3/2022 6:00 PMInside Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza lies a mysterious cavity, its void unseen by any living human, its surface untouched by modern hands. But luckily, scientists are no longer limited by human senses.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/muon-subatomic-particle-volcano-pyramid-physics
5/4/2022 8:00 AMExtremely fast cosmic explosions puzzling scientists may be outbursts arising from dying stars, new research suggests.https://www.space.com/fbot-mysteries-dying-stars-sudden-bright-blasts
5/4/2022 10:00 AM
5/4/2022 12:00 PMIt’s messy out there in the universe. In the latest example, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has found intermediate-mass black holes that are growing by ripping apart and consuming thousands of stars in over two dozen galaxies. The findings indicate that massive black holes can form at any time in the universe’s history.https://www.space.com/intermediate-black-holes-chandra-star-clusters
5/4/2022 2:00 PMhttps://www.physics-astronomy.com/2022/02/nasas-1-billion-jupiter-probe-just-sent.html
5/4/2022 4:00 PMA new and surprising duality has been discovered in theoretical particle physics. The duality exists between two types of scattering processes that can occur in the proton collisions made in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland and France. The fact that this connection can, surprisingly, be made points to the fact that there is something in the intricate details of the standard model of particle physics that is not fully understood. The standard model is the model of the world on sub-atomic scale that explains all particles and their interactions, so when surprises appear, there is cause for attention.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-duality-theoretical-particle-physics.html
5/4/2022 6:00 PMEgyptian archaeologists unearthed the ruins of a temple for the ancient Greek god Zeus in the Sinai Peninsula, antiquities authorities said. The Tourism and Antiquities Ministry said in a statement the temple ruins were found in the Tell el-Farma archaeological site in northwestern Sinai.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-egypt-ancient-temple-zeus-unearthed.html
5/5/2022 8:00 AMAfter males of the orb-weaving spider Philoponella prominens mate with a female, they quickly launch themselves away, researchers report on April 25 in the journal Current Biology. Using a mechanism that hadn’t been described before, the male spiders use a joint in their first pair of legs to immediately undertake a split-second catapult action, flinging themselves away from their partners at impressive speeds clocked at up to 88 centimeters per second (cm/s).https://phys.org/news/2022-04-male-spiders-catapult-eaten.html
5/5/2022 10:00 AM
5/5/2022 12:00 PMA new study found that when red tides began in early summer and continued into the fall, low oxygen areas—or dead zones— were more likely to also occur. This study by scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, and NOAA collaborators is the first study to link low oxygen—or hypoxia—to red tides across the west coast of Florida and offers new information to better understand the conditions favorable for combined events as they are expected to increase as Earth continues to warm.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-links-red-tides-dead-zones.html
5/5/2022 2:00 PMNew analysis into the residue inside ancient ceramic vessels from 11th–12th century Jerusalem has found that they were potentially used as hand grenades.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-ancient-grenades-explosive-weapons-medieval.html
5/5/2022 4:00 PMDuring the cooling of the early universe, bubbles formed in its hot plasma, triggering gravitational waves. These space ripples could be detectable even today, a new study suggests.https://www.space.com/universe-phase-transition-gravitational-wave-signals
5/5/2022 6:00 PMUsing new analyses, scientists have just found the last two of the five informational units of DNA and RNA that had yet to be discovered in samples from meteorites. While it is unlikely that DNA could be formed in a meteorite, this discovery demonstrates that these genetic parts are available for delivery and could have contributed to the development of the instructional molecules on early Earth. The discovery, by an international team with NASA researchers, gives more evidence that chemical reactions in asteroids can make some of life’s ingredients, which could have been delivered to ancient Earth by meteorite impacts or perhaps the infall of dust.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-blueprint-life-asteroids.html
5/6/2022 8:00 AMA unique rock formation in China holds clues that tectonic plates subducted, or went underneath other plates, during the Archean eon (4 billion to 2.5 billion years ago), just as they do nowadays, a new study finds.https://www.space.com/archean-eon-plate-tectonics-china
5/6/2022 10:00 AM
5/6/2022 12:00 PMIngredients for life have been found in meteorites.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/all-of-the-bases-in-dna-and-rna-have-now-been-found-in-meteorites
5/6/2022 2:00 PMNASA’s marsquake-hunting lander has detected its two largest seismic events to date — and on the far side of the planet, no less.https://www.space.com/largest-marsquakes-insight-lander-detection
5/6/2022 4:00 PMGiant Jupiter and the shadow of its biggest moon, Ganymede, dominate the view in this latest image from the system based on a NASA spacecraft’s data.https://www.space.com/juno-jupiter-image-ganymede-moon-shadow
5/6/2022 6:00 PMOn April 17, skywatching cameras in the Canadian province recorded a massive fireball that likely produced tens to hundreds of grams of meteorites. Astronomers predict they would have fallen on the eastern shore of Lake Simcoe, north of the town of Argyle.https://www.space.com/fireball-alert-meteorites-possible-ontario-canada
5/7/2022 8:00 AMProducing chocolate, one of the world’s most beloved sweets, is a multistep process beginning with freshly harvested cocoa beans. People have been experimenting with chocolate-making for millennia, and even today, new methods are still being introduced. Now, researchers reporting in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry have found that an alternative processing step called “moist incubation” results in a fruitier, more flowery-tasting dark chocolate than the conventional fermentation process.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-cocoa-method-fruitier-flowery-dark.html
5/7/2022 10:00 AM
5/7/2022 12:00 PMA team of researchers working on what has been named the “Secrets of the Ice” project has come into possession of a 1,500-year-old shoe that was found in a Norwegian alpine pass—one that resembles an ancient Roman sandal.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-year-old-resembling-roman-sandal-norwegian.html
5/7/2022 2:00 PMAn international group of astronomers led by Benjamin Thomas of The University of Texas at Austin has used observations from the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) at the university’s McDonald Observatory to unlock a puzzling mystery about a stellar explosion discovered several years ago and evolving even now. The results, published in The Astrophysical Journal, will help astronomers better understand the process of how massive stars live and die.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-supernova-reveals-secrets-team-astronomers.html
5/7/2022 4:00 PMScientists at the Babraham Institute have shown that two RNA binding proteins hold the key to a stronger immune response to influenza in mice. Their findings, published in Nature Communications, reveal that the absence of these proteins changes the potency of T cells that arise at the start on an infection. Further research could lead to implications for therapies that harness the immune system, and for vaccine design.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-rna-proteins-cells-weapons.html
5/7/2022 6:00 PMMichigan State University’s Seth Jacobson and colleagues in China and France have unveiled a new theory that could help solve a galactic mystery of how our solar system evolved. Specifically, how did the gas giants—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune—end up where they are, orbiting the sun like they do?https://phys.org/news/2022-04-instability-solar-portend-undiscovered-planet.html
5/8/2022 8:00 AMMIT research scientists Pablo Rodriguez-Fernandez and Nathan Howard have just completed one of the most demanding calculations in fusion science—predicting the temperature and density profiles of a magnetically confined plasma via first-principles simulation of plasma turbulence. Solving this problem by brute force is beyond the capabilities of even the most advanced supercomputers. Instead, the researchers used an optimization methodology developed for machine learning to dramatically reduce the CPU time required while maintaining the accuracy of the solution.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-machine-harnessed-extreme-aids-fusion.html
5/8/2022 10:00 AM
5/8/2022 12:00 PMIn physics, as in life, it’s always good to look at things from different perspectives. Since the beginning of quantum physics, how light moves and interacts with matter around it has mostly been described and understood mathematically through the lens of its energy. In 1900, Max Planck used energy to explain how light is emitted by heated objects, a seminal study in the foundation of quantum mechanics. In 1905, Albert Einstein used energy when he introduced the concept of photon.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-zero-index-metamaterials-insights-foundations-quantum.html
5/8/2022 2:00 PMThe nanoscopic equivalent of stacking a deck of cards—layering materials a mere few atoms thick atop one another—has emerged as a favorite pastime of material scientists and electrical engineers worldwide.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-team-rare-electricity-ultra-thin-material.html
5/8/2022 4:00 PMHydrogen and oxygen ions escaping from Earth’s upper atmosphere and combining on the moon could be one of the sources of the known lunar water and ice, according to new research by University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute scientists.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-earth-atmosphere-source-lunar.html
5/8/2022 6:00 PMBoeing is finally ready to test Starliner again in space. The commercial crew spacecraft is set for a test launch, dubbed OFT-2 (Orbital Flight Test-2) no earlier than May 19 as Boeing seeks to certify its Starliner vehicle for future NASA astronaut flights.https://www.space.com/boeing-starliner-oft-2-launch-date-may-2022
5/9/2022 8:00 AMIn just minutes, a flare on the Sun can release enough energy to power the whole world for 20,000 years. An explosive process called magnetic reconnection triggers these solar flares and scientists have spent the last half-century trying to understand how the process happens.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/sun/scientists-nasa-mms-mission-crack-60-year-mystery-fast-magnetic-explosions
5/9/2022 10:00 AM
5/9/2022 12:00 PMHarnessing the power that makes the sun and stars shine could be made easier by powerful magnets with straighter shapes than have been made before. Researchers linked to the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have found a way to create such magnets for fusion facilities known as stellarators.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-simpler-magnets-twisty-facilities-steady-state.html
5/9/2022 2:00 PMScientists have been studying the sediments within Mars’ Gale crater for many years using orbital data sets, but thanks to the Curiosity rover driving across these deposits we can also obtain up-close observations and detailed measurements of the rocks, similar to field work done by geologists on Earth.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-enigmatic-layer-mars-gale-crater.html
5/9/2022 4:00 PMAhead of its first UK launch this year, Virgin Orbit has announced its satellite will be tasked with tracking a host of illegal activities at sea. The Amber-1 satellite is set to become the first-ever orbital launch from the United Kingdom expected in summer 2022. The satellite will be sent skywards from Spaceport Cornwall based at Newquay Airport in south-west England — the country’s first operational spaceport.https://www.space.com/virgin-orbit-amber-1-satellite-track-illegal-activity
5/9/2022 6:00 PMAn international team of researchers has developed a computer system that can analyze a sample of chemical waste and create the routes to synthesize new, useful chemicals. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes the work that went into creating the system and how well it worked when they tested it by synthesizing chemicals from waste samples.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-chemical-ways-products.htmll
5/10/2022 8:00 AMThe United Arab Emirates announced it will send an astronaut on a six-month mission to space, as it seeks to become a major player in the industry.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-uae-astronaut-six-month-iss-mission.html
5/10/2022 10:00 AM
5/10/2022 12:00 PMThe Milky Way serves as a celestial pathway between two telescopes in a stunning image from Chile’s Atacama Desert.https://www.space.com/milky-way-image-two-telescopes-chile
5/10/2022 2:00 PMAssociate professor Mazhar Ali and his research group at TU Delft have discovered one-way superconductivity without magnetic fields, something that was thought to be impossible ever since its discovery in 1911—up until now. The discovery, published in Nature, makes use of 2D quantum materials and paves the way toward superconducting computing. Superconductors can make electronics hundreds of times faster, all with zero energy loss. Ali: “If the 20th century was the century of semiconductors, the 21st can become the century of the superconductor.”https://phys.org/news/2022-04-discovery-one-way-superconductor-thought-impossible.html
5/10/2022 4:00 PMScientists with the United Arab Emirates’ Mars mission have spotted a ‘worm-like’ aurora stretching halfway across the Red Planet.https://www.space.com/mars-new-aurora-massive-scale
5/10/2022 6:00 PMHoneybees join humans as the only known animals that can tell the difference between odd and even numbers.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-honeybees-humans-animals-difference-odd.html
5/11/2022 8:00 AMA team of researchers from the Institute of Scientific Instruments working with a colleague from Charles University, both in the Czech Republic, has shown that heat flows more efficiently when the temperature of the material through which it is flowing oscillates, as opposed to remaining steady. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the group describes experiments they conducted with heating and cooling helium in a container and its relevance to a theory proposed just two years ago.https://phys.org/news/2022-04-shown-efficient-temperature-oscillating-static.html
5/11/2022 10:00 AMThe final piece of an all-new detector has completed the first leg of its journey towards unlocking some of the most enduring mysteries of the universe.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-device-ultimate-existential.html
5/11/2022 12:00 PMIn the time since the first exoplanet was discovered in 1992, astronomers have detected more than 5,000 planets orbiting other stars. But when astronomers detect a new exoplanet, we don’t learn a lot about it: We know that it exists and a few features about it, but the rest is a mystery.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-scientists-gravity-telescope-image-exoplanets.html
5/11/2022 2:00 PMOn Christmas Day of 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope launched from Earth into space. With an expected 6-month deployment, the mission’s plan was to begin science operations afterwards and to have a 5-to-10 year science lifetime. At every turn, however, the Webb Telescope team has beaten expectations. After barely 4 months, it’s practically ready, with perhaps 20 years of science ahead of it.https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/james-webb-space-telescope-expectations/
5/11/2022 4:00 PMA huge fossilized tooth from an ancient marine reptile uncovered in the Swiss Alps may be the largest of its kind ever discovered, a new analysis found. The fossil — which is just a fragment of the full tooth — is part of a set of rare remains from extinct giant ichthyosaurs, carnivorous sea creatures that lived more than 200 million years ago.https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/tooth-marine-reptile-found-alps-may-largest-kind-rcna26464
5/11/2022 6:00 PMA dash of ruthenium atoms on a mesh of copper nanowires could be one step toward a revolution in the global ammonia industry that also helps the environment.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-aims-ammonia-wastewater.html
5/12/2022 8:00 AMThough chemical reactions may be very complex, they often follow a series of elementary steps as they progress. In their work, SFU chemistry Ph.D. student Miranda Louwerse and physics professor David Sivak found that information provided by a reaction coordinate about how a reaction is progressing precisely equals how dissipating that coordinate is.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-bridge-gap-disciplines-chemical-reactions.html
5/12/2022 10:00 AMThe blue whale is the largest animal that has ever existed, weighing as much as two thousand people together. This is why this cetacean was the most chased species in the world due to its size and economic yield when whaling started, around the mid-19th century. The first captures, in northern Norway, expanded to other marine areas, and in only a few decades, in the North Atlantic, more than 15,000 blue whales were caught. By the early 20th century, the populations of the blue whale, which were already small, decreased in many areas of the North Atlantic Ocean, and the species was replaced by the rorqual as the main whaling boats’ commercial target.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-exploring-murky-history-blue-whale.html
5/12/2022 12:00 PMWhen designing a next-generation quantum computer, a surprisingly large problem is bridging the communication gap between the classical and quantum worlds. Such computers need a specialized control and readout electronics to translate back and forth between the human operator and the quantum computer’s languages—but existing systems are cumbersome and expensive.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-electronics-quantum.html
5/12/2022 2:00 PMScattered across our Milky Way galaxy are tens of millions of black holes—immensely strong gravitational wells of spacetime, from which infalling matter, and even light, can never escape. Black holes are dark by definition, except on the rare occasions when they feed. As a black hole pulls in gas and dust from an orbiting star, it can give off spectacular bursts of X-ray light that bounce and echo off the inspiraling gas, briefly illuminating a black hole’s extreme surroundings.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-reveals-sources-black-hole-echoes.html
5/12/2022 4:00 PMAfter nearly 13.8 billion years of nonstop expansion, the universe could soon grind to a standstill, then slowly start to contract, new research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests.https://www.space.com/end-cosmic-expansion
5/12/2022 6:00 PMPhysicists have proved that a subatomic particle can switch into its antiparticle alter-ego and back again, in a new discovery revealed today.https://www.scientiststudy.com/2022/05/subatomic-particle-seen-changing-to.html
5/13/2022 8:00 AMA trio of astrophysicists, two from Princeton, the other from New York University, has calculated estimations on how soon the universe could collapse if theories regarding dark energy as having quintessence are correct. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Cosmin Andrei, Anna Ijjas, and Paul Steinhardt suggest it could be as soon as 100 million years from now.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-universe-collapse-dark-energy-quintessence.html
5/13/2022 10:00 AMNASA is asking the public to comment on an environmental assessment for its Mars sample return effort. The project, a collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), aims to bring to Earth samples gathered by the Perseverance Mars rover, perhaps as early as 2033. Once they’re here, scientists in labs around the world will scrutinize them for signs of Mars life and clues about the Red Planet’s evolutionary history.https://www.space.com/nasa-requests-public-comment-mars-sample-return
5/13/2022 12:00 PMTiny crystals unearthed in South Africa contain evidence of a sudden transition on the planet’s surface 3.8 billion years ago. These crystals, each no bigger than a grain of sand, show that around that time, Earth’s crust broke up and began moving — a precursor to the process known as plate tectonics.https://www.space.com/oldest-evidence-tectonic-plates
5/13/2022 2:00 PMScientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, recently received samples of the lunar surface that have been curated in a freezer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston since Apollo 17 astronauts returned them to Earth in December 1972.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-scientists-year-old-frozen-apollo-samples.html
5/13/2022 4:00 PMThe surface of Saturn’s moon Titan looks a bit like Earth and a new study finally explains why. Saturn’s largest moon Titan features some very Earth-like landscapes: lakes and rivers, labyrinthine canyons, and soft sand dunes. However, these geological formations on Titan are made of entirely different materials. Instead of water, it’s liquid methane that flows through rivers, and instead of sand, it’s hydrocarbons that blow into dunes.https://www.space.com/study-explains-why-titan-looks-like-earth
5/13/2022 6:00 PMA team of Harvard astronomers have a wild new theory: the Sun used to have a companion star, making our solar system a binary one during its ancient history.https://futurism.com/harvard-astronomers-star-system-binary
5/14/2022 8:00 AMOur active sun fired off a powerful X-class flare, the strongest our star experiences, on May 3, but not in the direction of Earth.https://www.space.com/sun-x-class-flare-first-of-may-2022-video
5/14/2022 10:00 AMAstronomers from the University of Texas have spotted a gigantic black hole at the heart of our galaxy’s many dwarf satellite galaxies — meaning that, in intergalactic terms, it’s just a stone’s throw away from our own Solar System.https://futurism.com/scientists-black-hole-near-galaxy
5/14/2022 12:00 PMResearchers from the University of Washington and the University of California, Berkeley have conducted experiments that measured the physical limits for the existence of liquid water in icy extraterrestrial worlds. This blend of geoscience and engineering was done to aid in the search for extraterrestrial life and the upcoming robotic exploration of oceans on moons of other planets.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-extraterrestrial-oceans-aid-life.html
5/14/2022 2:00 PMHuman beings are an extremely loquacious species that use speech as our most dominant form of communication … some of us MUCH more than others. While certain folks are prone to talk less and listen more, the instinct to verbalize emotions and thoughts is a natural mechanism.https://www.space.com/how-astronauts-communicate-without-speaking-video
5/14/2022 4:00 PMNASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter recently surveyed an intriguing ridgeline near the ancient river delta in Jezero Crater. The images—captured on April 23, during the tiny helicopter’s 27th flight—were taken at the request of the Perseverance Mars rover science team, which wanted a closer look at the sloping outcrop.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-nasa-mars-helicopter-scouts-ridgeline.html
5/14/2022 6:00 PMA monstrous black hole lies at the center of a distant galaxy photographed by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxy, called M91, is located approximately 55 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices. It is a barred spiral galaxy, boasting a prominent central bar-shaped structure composed of bright stars.https://www.space.com/behemoth-black-hole-spiral-galaxy-hubble-photo
5/15/2022 8:00 AMThe Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) near Geneva, Switzerland was just switched back on for the third time after a three-year hiatus planned to implement upgrades. In the 14 years since it was first turned on, the particle accelerator has explored some of the biggest mysteries in the universe, colliding countless particles at near the speed of light in a tunnel 328 feet (100 meters) underground.https://www.space.com/large-hadron-collider-biggest-mysteries-universe
5/15/2022 10:00 AMSquid, octopus, and cuttlefish—even to scientists who study them—are wonderfully weird creatures. Known as the soft-bodied or coleoid cephalopods, they have the largest nervous system of any invertebrate, complex behaviors such as instantaneous camouflage, arms studded with dexterous suckers, and other evolutionarily unique traits.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-squid-octopus-genome-reveal-cephalopods.html
5/15/2022 12:00 PMSince 2003, the black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster has been associated with sound. This is because astronomers discovered that pressure waves sent out by the black hole caused ripples in the cluster’s hot gas that could be translated into a note—one that humans cannot hear, some 57 octaves below middle C. Now a new sonification brings more notes to this black hole sound machine. This new sonification—that is, the translation of astronomical data into sound—is being released for NASA’s Black Hole Week this year.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-black-hole-sonifications-remix.html
5/15/2022 2:00 PMA fast-spinning pulsar hungrily feeding on a close companion star has been found 3,000 light-years from Earth in a rare type of cannibalistic system known as a black-widow binary.https://www.space.com/black-widow-pulsar-eats-companion-star
5/15/2022 4:00 PMThe molecules of life, DNA, replicate with astounding precision, yet this process is not immune to mistakes and can lead to mutations. Using sophisticated computer modeling, a team of physicists and chemists at the University of Surrey have shown that such errors in copying can arise due to the strange rules of the quantum world.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-quantum-mechanics-dna-spontaneously-mutate.html
5/15/2022 6:00 PMA trio of scientists, one with Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, another from Museo Historia Natural Noel Kempff Mercado and a third independent researcher, report evidence of several Bolivian river dolphins playing with a Beni anaconda in the Tijamuchi River in Bolivia. In their paper published in the journal Ecology, Omar Entiauspe-Neto, Steffen Reichle and Alejandro dos Rios describe photographs they took of the encounterhttps://phys.org/news/2022-05-bolivian-river-dolphins-anaconda.html
5/16/2022 8:00 AMAs a result of corrosion, copper and silver release positively charged ions into their environment, which are harmful to bacteria in several ways and prevent their growth or kill them completely. This effect has long been exploited, for example by coating implants with these metals to prevent bacterial infections. There are some tricks that can be employed to release even more ions and intensify this effect. For example, the team headed by materials researcher Professor Alfred Ludwig uses a so-called sputtering system with which the thinnest layers or tiny nanopatches of the metals can be applied to a carrier material. Depending on the sequence or quantity in which the individual metals are applied, different surface textures are created. If a precious metal such as platinum is also applied, silver corrodes even faster and releases more antibacterial ions.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-copper-silver-effective-sars-cov-surfaces.html
5/16/2022 10:00 AMMeteorites are turning up in Mississippi following a fireball over the state on April 27.https://www.space.com/meteorites-mississippi-fireball-space-rock-finds
5/16/2022 12:00 PMWhy does Earth support life, while Venus and Mars—and for all we know, any other planet in the universe—do not? The Endurance mission will attempt to measure Earth’s global electric potential, or how much Earth’s electric field “tugs” at electrically charged particles in our air. This electric potential is expected to be very weak, making it difficult to measure—and one reason Earth can support life. Endurance’s launch window from the small town of Ny-Ålesund in Svalbard, Norway, opens on May 9.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-nasa-rocket-earth-life-supporting-secret.html
5/16/2022 2:00 PMA new study using data from NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter may explain why Martian frost can be invisible to the naked eye and why dust avalanches appear on some slopes.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-mystery-frost-mars.html
5/16/2022 4:00 PMOn a good day, things exit through the anus. But in rodents and pigs in respiratory distress, oxygen can be absorbed by tissues in the rectum, helping the animals recover, a new study suggests. The scientists behind the research propose that flushing oxygen into the rectum could one day help save human lives if conventional ventilation methods are unavailable.https://www.science.org/content/article/mammals-can-breathe-through-their-intestines
5/16/2022 6:00 PMSomething strange is afoot in the galaxy known as 1ES 1927+654: In late 2017, and for reasons that scientists couldn’t explain, the supermassive black hole sitting at the heart of this galaxy underwent a massive identity crisis. Over a span of months, the already-bright object, which is so luminous that it belongs to a class of black holes known as active galactic nuclei (AGN), suddenly grew a lot brighter—glowing nearly 100 times more than normal in visible light.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-surging-distant-galaxy-black-holes.html
5/17/2022 8:00 AMSince 2003, the black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster has been associated with sound. This is because astronomers discovered that pressure waves sent out by the black hole caused ripples in the cluster’s hot gas that could be translated into a note – one that humans cannot hear some 57 octaves below middle C. Now a new sonification brings more notes to this black hole sound machine. This new sonification – that is, the translation of astronomical data into sound – is being released for NASA’s Black Hole Week this year.https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/new-nasa-black-hole-sonifications-with-a-remix.html
5/17/2022 10:00 AMCarbon dioxide glaciers on Mars are fast-flowing phenomena. A new study finds that dry ice flows closer to 100 times faster than water ice in the thin atmospheres on Mars, when on high slopes.https://www.space.com/mars-carbon-dioxide-glaciers-moving-south-pole
5/17/2022 12:00 PMA team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in France and Germany has conducted a DNA analysis of remains found at the Neolithic cemetery Fleury-sur-Orne near Caen and found that it likely represents evidence of a patrilineal community. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their analysis of tissue recovered from bones in the long barrow graves and what it showed them about the makeup of the people who once lived there.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-dna-analysis-norman-neolithic-monumental.html
5/17/2022 2:00 PMRecord-setting former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly is putting more of his digital space art up for auction, and the proceeds will again go to a very worthy cause.https://www.space.com/astronaut-scott-kelly-second-nft-space-artwork
5/17/2022 4:00 PMFor decades, researchers have toyed with antimatter while searching for new laws of physics. These laws would come in the form of forces or other phenomena that would strongly favor matter over antimatter, or vice versa. Yet physicists have found nothing amiss, no conclusive sign that antimatter particles — which are just the oppositely charged twins of familiar particles — obey different rules.https://www.quantamagazine.org/icy-antimatter-experiment-surprises-physicists-20220316/
5/17/2022 6:00 PMRice University photonics researchers have created a potentially disruptive technology for the ultraviolet optics market.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-metalens-disrupt-vacuum-uv.html
5/18/2022 8:00 AMResearchers have shown it is possible to perform artificial intelligence using tiny nanomagnets that interact like neurons in the brain.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-nanomagnetic-low-energy-ai.html
5/18/2022 10:00 AMScientists from Cardiff University have taken a step towards a greener, more sustainable way of creating a plastic material found in a range of items from toothbrushes and guitar strings to medical implants, construction materials and car parts.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-scientists-greener-route-widely-industrial.html
5/18/2022 12:00 PMA collaboration between Harvard University with scientists at QuEra Computing, MIT, University of Innsbruck and other institutions has demonstrated a breakthrough application of neutral-atom quantum processors to solve problems of practical use.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-collaborators-quantum-speed-up-optimization-problems.html
5/18/2022 2:00 PMIn a secluded laboratory buried under a mountain in Italy, physicists have re-created a nuclear reaction that happened between two and three minutes after the Big Bang.https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-pin-down-nuclear-reaction-from-moments-after-the-big-bang-20201111/
5/18/2022 4:00 PMPhysicists sometimes come up with crazy stories that sound like science fiction. Some turn out to be true, like how the curvature of space and time described by Einstein was eventually borne out by astronomical measurements. Others linger on as mere possibilities or mathematical curiosities.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-bilayer-graphene-two-universe-cosmological.html
5/18/2022 6:00 PMProfessional observatories in Earth and space caught a spectacular eclipse of the sun in between their usual duties checking out solar weather.https://www.space.com/satellites-solar-eclipse-2022-space
5/19/2022 8:00 AMCombining artificial intelligence with many keen human eyes, astronomers have found 1,701 new asteroid trails in archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, consisting of more than 37,000 images that span two decades. The project, published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, reflects both Hubble’s value to scientists as an asteroid hunter and how the public can effectively contribute to citizen science initiatives.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-global-citizen-science-asteroid-trails.html
5/19/2022 10:00 AMA satellite designed to test technologies that could one day help clean up Earth orbit has been busy the past few days zooming in on a simulated piece of debris using its onboard sensors. The experiment, by Japanese company Astroscale, however, stopped short of catching the target as engineers detected “anomalous spacecraft conditions.”https://www.space.com/astroscale-space-debris-capture-test-nearly-successful
5/19/2022 12:00 PMOne of the most powerful cameras in the world just photographed two distant galaxies entwined in what’s been described as a “galactic ballet.”https://www.space.com/dark-energy-camera-galaxies-ballet-photo
5/19/2022 2:00 PMData from the CHIME radio observatory are a milestone in the quest to discover the hidden origins of universal structure.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/canadian-telescope-delivers-deepest-ever-radio-view-of-cosmic-web/
5/19/2022 4:00 PMThe hellish planet Venus is known for its incredibly thick atmosphere, crushingly high air pressure and surface temperatures that are hot enough to melt lead. In other words, it has some of the most inhospitable surface conditions in the entire solar system.https://www.space.com/venus-zone-planet-habitability
5/19/2022 6:00 PMThe mystery of exactly how the SARS-CoV-2 virus infects human lung cells remains largely hidden to experimental scientists. Now, however, the devilish details of the mechanism by which the coronavirus fuses to host cells has been suggested through simulations by University of Chicago researchers using the Frontera supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC).https://phys.org/news/2022-05-supercomputer-simulations-reveal-coronavirus-fusion.html
5/20/2022 8:00 AMIn a landmark series of calculations, physicists have proved that black holes can shed information, which seems impossible by definition.https://www.wired.com/story/the-black-hole-information-paradox-comes-to-an-end/
5/20/2022 10:00 AMApproximately a month before it begins its research flight in the stratosphere, the balloon-borne solar observatory Sunrise III has looked at the Sun for the first time from its launch site at the Arctic Circle. In June, Sunrise III will take off from Esrange Space Center, the Swedish Space Agency’s (SSC) balloon and rocket base in Kiruna (Sweden), and will climb to an altitude of about 35 kilometers. During its flight of several days, it will then take unique measurements of the Sun. In this way, processes in the chromosphere, the highly dynamic layer between the visible surface and the outer atmosphere of the Sun, will become visible more precisely than ever before. In the remaining weeks until launch, the technical and scientific teams from Germany, Spain, Japan, and the U.S. will prepare all systems and the scientific instruments for their mission and rehearse flight procedures and operations.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-rays-sunlight-balloon-borne-solar-observatory.html
5/20/2022 12:00 PMA team from the Tulane University School of Science and Engineering has developed a new family of two-dimensional materials that researchers say has promising applications, including in advanced electronics and high-capacity batteries.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-scientists-powerful-family-2d-materials.html
5/20/2022 2:00 PMThe U.S. military is ready to take the next step in developing a nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) system for use in Earth-moon space.https://www.space.com/darpa-nuclear-rocket-earth-moon-space
5/20/2022 4:00 PMThree years ago, the first ever image of a black hole stunned the world. A black pit of nothingness enclosed by a fiery ring of light. That iconic image of the black hole at the center of galaxy Messier 87 came into focus thanks to the Event Horizon Telescope, a global network of synchronized radio dishes acting as one giant telescope.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-pair-merging-supermassive-black-holes.html
5/20/2022 6:00 PMIn 2018, an international research group bored for soil samples in three sites around the Isfjorden fjord in Svalbard, which is part of Norway. The same phenomenon was seen at each boring site: mineral soil covered by a thin layer of organic matter. In other words, this layer contains a lot of carbon extracted from the atmosphere through photosynthesis.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-carbon-arctic.html
5/21/2022 8:00 AMWhen cells reproduce, the internal mechanisms that copy DNA get it right nearly every time. Rice University bioscientists have uncovered a tiny detail that helps understand how the process could go wrong.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-crystal-dna-mystery.html
5/21/2022 10:00 AMUsing NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory, astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and elsewhere have investigated an active galaxy known as Markarian 78. They report that the source exhibits termination shocks and extended X-ray emission.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-reveals-termination-x-ray-emission-galaxy.html
5/21/2022 12:00 PMA black hole might have reversed its magnetic field right before our eyes. The story begins with a galaxy known as 1ES 1927+654, which briefly ceased X-ray emissions for a few months, then resumed and increased. So far, the potential black hole observations represent a unique situation visible from 236 million light-years away.https://www.space.com/monster-black-hole-magnetic-flip
5/21/2022 2:00 PMThe definition of a second, the most fundamental unit of time in our current measurement system, hasn’t been updated in more than 70 years (give or take some billionths of a second). But in the next decade or so, that could change: Ultraprecise atomic optical clocks that rely on visible light are on track to set the new definition of a second.https://www.space.com/official-second-changing
5/21/2022 4:00 PMWhen genes mutate, this can lead to severe diseases of the human nervous system. Researchers at Leipzig University and the University of Würzburg have now used fruit flies to demonstrate how, apart from the negative effect, the mutation of a neuronal gene can have a positive effect—namely higher IQ in humans.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-gene-mutation-higher-intelligence.html
5/21/2022 6:00 PMNestled 30 feet underground in Menlo Park, California, a half-mile-long stretch of tunnel is now colder than most of the universe. It houses a new superconducting particle accelerator, part of an upgrade project to the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray free-electron laser at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-superconducting-x-ray-laser-temperature-colder.html
5/22/2022 8:00 AMJules Verne could not even dream of this: A research team from the University of Bayreuth, together with international partners, has pushed the boundaries of high-pressure and high-temperature research into cosmic dimensions. For the first time, they have succeeded in generating and simultaneously analyzing materials under compression pressures of more than one terapascal (1,000 gigapascals). Such extremely high pressures prevail, for example, at the center of the planet Uranus; they are more than three times higher than the pressure at the center of the Earth.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-pressure-uranus-core-materials-synthesis.html
5/22/2022 10:00 AMIn our sun’s neighborhood of the Milky Way Galaxy is a relatively bright star, and in it, astronomers have been able to identify the widest range of elements in a star beyond our solar system yet.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-astronomers-gold-standard-star-milky.html
5/22/2022 12:00 PMA group of researchers from Pisa, Jyväskylä, San Sebastian and MIT have demonstrated how a heterostructure consisting of superconductors and magnets can be used to create unidirectional current like that found in semiconductor diodes.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-diodes-superconductors.html
5/22/2022 2:00 PMBiologist Xinnian Dong says her “best Christmas gift ever” arrived in the form of a phone call. The call was from her longtime friend and collaborator at Duke University, Pei Zhou, who rang with long-awaited news: they had finally solved the structure of the plant protein NPR1.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-gliding-bird-protein-crops.html
5/22/2022 4:00 PMA long-standing quest for science and technology has been to develop electronics and information processing that operate near the fastest timescales allowed by the laws of nature. A promising way to achieve this goal involves using laser light to guide the motion of electrons in matter, and then using this control to develop electronic circuit elements—a concept known as lightwave electronics.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-laser-fastest-ever-logic-gates.html
5/22/2022 6:00 PMHubble’s law explains that the reason most galaxies are moving away from one another is because the whole universe is expanding. Pick any two galaxies at random, and the chances are they’re moving away from each other.https://www.space.com/hubbles-law
5/23/2022 8:00 AMComputational detective work by U.S. and German physicists has confirmed that cerium zirconium pyrochlore is a 3D quantum spin liquid.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-sleuthing-3d-quantum-liquid.html
5/23/2022 10:00 AMScientists are keeping an eye on a sunspot that fired off an X-class flare while “having an identity crisis,” according to SpaceWeather.com. Amplified aurora displays are possible if a coronal mass ejection of charged particles emerges from the “mixed-up” sunspot AR3006, which pointed its flaring blast toward Earth on May 10.https://www.space.com/huge-solar-flare-mixed-up-sunspot-may-2022
5/23/2022 12:00 PMWhen stars like our sun use up all their fuel, they shrink to form white dwarfs. Sometimes such dead stars flare back to life in a super-hot explosion and produce a fireball of X-ray radiation. A research team from several German institutes including Tübingen University, and led by Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), has now been able to observe such an explosion of X-ray light for the very first time.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-x-ray-explosion-white-dwarf.html
5/23/2022 2:00 PMAs the search for life in the universe continues, scientists already know it’s not enough to find rocky planets in a star’s habitable zone, the region where a planet can host liquid water, a requirement for life as we know it.https://www.space.com/younger-exoplanets-increased-odds-support-life
5/23/2022 4:00 PMIt’s not every day that someone comes across a new state of matter in quantum physics, the scientific field devoted to describing the behavior of atomic and subatomic particles in order to elucidate their properties.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-unusual-quantum-state.html
5/23/2022 6:00 PMA team of international researchers has discovered a way to produce higher quality wheat. The scientists from the University of Adelaide and the UK’s John Innes Centre have identified a genetic driver that improves yield traits in wheat, which unexpectedly can also lead to increasing protein content by up to 25 percent.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-higher-wheat-yields-protein-content.html
5/24/2022 8:00 AMPrimary fluid inclusions in bedded halite from the 830-million-year-old Browne Formation of central Australia contain organic solids and liquids, as documented with transmitted light and UV-vis petrography. These objects are consistent in size, shape, and fluorescent response to cells of prokaryotes and algae, and aggregates of organic compounds. This discovery shows that microorganisms from saline depositional environments can remain well preserved in halite over hundreds of millions of years and can be detected in situ with optical methods alone. This study, published in Geology, has implications for the search for life in both terrestrial and extraterrestrial chemical sedimentary rocks.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-ancient-microorganisms-halite-implications-life.html
5/24/2022 10:00 AMA team of researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, working with a colleague from the University of Copenhagen, has found evidence that water was present on Mars more recently than has been thought. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their analysis of data from China’s Zhurong rover and what it showed them about ice in hydrated minerals.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-chinese-rover-evidence-mars-thought.html
5/24/2022 12:00 PMNASA’s most iconic space telescope has spotted a star that survived the violent death of its companion.https://www.space.com/hubble-space-telescope-supernova-companion-star
5/24/2022 2:00 PMOur solar system contains eight planets and more than 200 moons. The large majority of those moons have no chance of being habitable, but some of them—Europa and Enceladus, for example—are strong candidates in the search for life.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-habitable-exomoons.html
5/24/2022 4:00 PMThe inflationary epoch that caused our universe to rapidly expand in its earliest moments may be connected to the modern era of dark energy, thanks to a phantom component of the cosmos that changes the strength of gravity as the universe evolves, a physicist proposes in a new paper.https://www.space.com/stronger-gravity-early-universe
5/24/2022 6:00 PMA new study from North Carolina State University shows the behavioral mechanism behind a sweet cockroach mating ritual that takes a bitter turn, resulting in rejected males.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-sugar-aversion-hampers-cockroach-coupling.html
5/25/2022 8:00 AMAt first glance, a system consisting of 51 ions may appear easily manageable. But even if these charged atoms are only changed back and forth between two states, the result is more than two quadrillion different orderings that the system can take on.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-quantum-flight-bee.html
5/25/2022 10:00 AMLiquid water once shaped the rock inside a meteorite from Mars, but likely did not support any microbial life, a new study finds.https://www.space.com/mars-meteorite-water-not-from-life
5/25/2022 12:00 PMWater scarcity is a growing problem around the world. Desalination of seawater is an established method to produce drinkable water but comes with huge energy costs. For the first time, researchers use fluorine-based nanostructures to successfully filter salt from water. Compared to current desalination methods, these fluorous nanochannels work faster, require less pressure and less energy, and are a more effective filter.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-future-desalination-fast-efficient-membrane.html
5/25/2022 2:00 PMThe Chandrasekhar limit determines if a star dies as a white dwarf, or has the mass to exceed this, launching a supernova to create a black hole or neutron star.https://www.space.com/chandrasekhar-limit
5/25/2022 4:00 PMHow do our cells organize themselves to give their final shape to our organs? The answer lies in morphogenesis, the set of mechanisms that regulate their distribution in space during embryonic development. A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) has just made a surprising discovery in this field: when a tissue curves, the volume of the cells that compose it increases instead of decreasing. This discovery opens new avenues for in vitro organ culture, a partial alternative to animal experimentation. It also suggests new perspectives for the production of certain materials.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-tissue-volume-cells.html
5/25/2022 6:00 PMDespite the rapid melting of ice in many parts of Antarctica during the second half of the 20th century, researchers have found that the floating ice shelves which skirt the eastern Antarctic Peninsula have undergone sustained advance over the past 20 years.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-sea-ice-antarctic-sheet-stability.html
5/26/2022 8:00 AMDuring the first billion years of the universe, winds blown by supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies were much more frequent and more powerful than those observed in today’s galaxies, some 13 billion years later. Such winds were so mighty that they slowed down the growth of the supermassive black holes from which they originate.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-black-hole-longer.html
5/26/2022 10:00 AMThe moon Amalthea is one of Jupiter’s 53 named satellites; it was the first to be discovered after the four Galilean moons, and it is the fifth-largest overall. In terms of proximity to Jupiter, Amalthea is the planet’s third moon — it takes just 12 hours to make a full orbit.https://www.space.com/amalthea-jupiter-moon
5/26/2022 12:00 PMAlongside beta particles, gamma rays, and neutrons, alpha particles are a type of radiation, also called alpha radiation. As with most forms of radiation, alpha particles are emitted from radioactive elements.https://www.space.com/alpha-particles-alpha-radiation
5/26/2022 2:00 PMIf you thought the coldest place on Earth is Antarctica, well, you just might be wrong about that. One of the coldest places on Earth is actually in Menlo Park, California — or more specifically, 30 feet (9 meters) below it.https://www.space.com/coldest-x-ray-laser-particle-accelerator
5/26/2022 4:00 PMResearchers have used a widespread species of blue-green algae to power a microprocessor continuously for a year — and counting — using nothing but ambient light and water.https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/05/220512092135.htm
5/26/2022 6:00 PMHauling to Earth samples of Mars that might contain Red Planet life is deemed a low risk affair in terms of ecological and public safety — but that risk is not zero.https://www.space.com/mars-sample-return-contamination-concerns
5/27/2022 8:00 AMWith antibiotic-resistant infections on the rise and a continually morphing pandemic virus, it’s easy to see why researchers want to be able to design engineered nanoparticles that can shut down these infections.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-nanobiotics-machine-nanoparticles-interact-proteins.html
5/27/2022 10:00 AMA trio of researchers, two with Cornell University, the other with Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has discovered the means by which dragonflies are able to right themselves so quickly from an upside-down orientation. In their paper published in the journal Science, Z. Jane Wang, James Melfi and Anthony Leonardo describe experiments they conducted with flying dragonflies and what they learned about the insect’s flight mechanics.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-dragonflies-upside.html
5/27/2022 12:00 PMNew chemistry “forensics” indicate that the stone named Hypatia from the Egyptian desert could be the first tangible evidence found on Earth of a supernova type Ia explosion. These rare supernovas are some of the most energetic events in the universe.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-extraterrestrial-stone-supernova-clues-earth.html
5/27/2022 2:00 PMThe behavior of microscopic quantum magnets has long been a subject taught in lectures in theoretical physics. However, investigating the dynamics of systems that are far out of equilibrium and watching them “live” has been difficult so far. Now, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching have accomplished precisely this, using a quantum gas microscope. With this tool, quantum systems can be manipulated and then imaged with such high resolution that even individual atoms are visible. The results of the experiments on linear chains of spins show that the way their orientation propagates corresponds to the so-called Kardar-Parisi-Zhang superdiffusion. This confirms a conjecture that recently emerged from theoretical considerations.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-quantum-magnets-motion.html
5/27/2022 4:00 PMPolymer scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently announced in the journal Nature Communications that they have solved a longstanding mystery surrounding a nanoscale structure, formed by collections of molecules, called a double-gyroid. This shape is one of the most desirable for materials scientists, and has a wide range of applications; but until now, a predictable understanding of how these shapes form has eluded researchers.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-theory-reshape-polymer-superstructures.html
5/27/2022 6:00 PMLaser powder bed fusion, a 3D-printing technique, offers potential in the manufacturing industry, particularly when fabricating nickel-titanium shape memory alloys with complex geometries. Although this manufacturing technique is attractive for applications in the biomedical and aerospace fields, it has rarely showcased the superelasticity required for specific applications using nickel-titanium shape memory alloys. Defects generated and changes imposed onto the material during the 3D-printing process prevented the superelasticity from appearing in 3D-printed nickel-titanium.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-3d-printed-memory-alloy-superior-superelasticity.html
5/28/2022 8:00 AMBy analyzing the historical light curve of blazar PKS 0405-385 from NASA’s Fermi spacecraft, Chinese astronomers have detected quasi-periodic oscillation from this source. The discovery, presented in a paper published May 5 on arXiv.org, could shed more light on the nature and behavior of this blazar.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-quasi-periodic-oscillation-blazar-pks-.html
5/28/2022 10:00 AMGreen energy advocates may soon be turning blue. A new membrane could unlock the potential of “blue energy,” which uses chemical differences between fresh- and saltwater to generate electricity. If researchers can scale up the postage stamp–size membrane in an affordable fashion, it could provide carbon-free power to millions of people in coastal nations where freshwater rivers meet the sea.https://www.science.org/content/article/rivers-could-generate-thousands-nuclear-power-plants-worth-energy-thanks-new-blue
5/28/2022 12:00 PMAn international team of biologists has successfully used biologgers to reveal insights into the lifestyle and hunting behavior of the little-known species Sowerby’s beaked whale. The team’s first results show that these dolphins have a surprisingly different, much faster lifestyle than related species. The research was led by Fleur Visser of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ).https://phys.org/news/2022-05-unusually-fast-beaked-whale-special.html
5/28/2022 2:00 PMJust as it’s hard to understand a conversation without knowing its context, it can be difficult for biologists to grasp the significance of gene expression without knowing a cell’s environment. To solve that problem, researchers at Princeton Engineering have developed a method to elucidate a cell’s surroundings so that biologists can make more meaning of gene expression information.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-method-melds-d-cells.html
5/28/2022 4:00 PMImagine walking through a dense, hazy fog in the middle of the night, seeing patches of light from cars and towns shimmering in the distance. It’s nearly impossible to tell if the lights are deep in the fog or beyond it. Astronomers trying to find young stars face a similar problem: the light from stars they’re hunting is shimmering through great big regions of hazy gas and dust in space, called molecular clouds.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-fog-young-stars-protoplanetary-disks.html
5/28/2022 6:00 PMPhysicists at EPFL, within a large European collaboration, have revised one of the fundamental laws that has been foundational to plasma and fusion research for over three decades, even governing the design of megaprojects like ITER. The update shows that we can actually safely use more hydrogen fuel in fusion reactors, and therefore obtain more energy than previously thought.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-law-unchains-fusion-energy.html
5/29/2022 8:00 AMWhat does a modern combine harvester and a Diplodocus have in common? One answer, it seems, may be their big footprints on the soil. A new study led by researchers from Sweden and Switzerland has found that the weight of farming machinery today is approaching that of the largest animals to have ever roamed the Earth—the sauropods.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-farm-vehicles-heavier-dinosaurs-problem.html
5/29/2022 10:00 AMThe Hubble Space Telescope has imaged the most distant star ever seen, according to a study published today (March 30) in the journal Nature. Astronomers identified the supersized star — which almost certainly died in a fiery explosion nearly 13 billion years ago — thanks to a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing.https://astronomy.com/news/2022/03/hubble-spots-the-farthest-star-ever-seen
5/29/2022 12:00 PMEinstein’s theory of special relativity teaches us that time is relative. But what does it mean for time to be relative? How can we live in a universe where nobody can agree on when events start, when they end and how long they last? The infamous “twin paradox” showcases what living in a truly relativistic world is like.https://www.space.com/time-is-relative-twin-paradox
5/29/2022 2:00 PMScientists have demonstrated a new material that conducts heat 150% more efficiently than conventional materials used in advanced chip technologies.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-silicon-nanowires.html
5/29/2022 4:00 PMA small group of researchers including Dennis Kurzbach from the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Vienna just published in Nature Protocols an advanced NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) method to monitor fast and complicated biomolecular events such as protein folding.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-magnetic-resonance-invisible-visible.html
5/29/2022 6:00 PMSolar flares are large explosions from the surface of the sun that emit intense bursts of electromagnetic radiation. The intensity of the explosion determines what classification the flare belongs to. The most powerful are X-class flares, followed by M-, C- and B-class; A-class flares are the smallest.https://www.space.com/solar-flares-effects-classification-formation
5/30/2022 8:00 AMCompact and lightweight metasurfaces—which use specifically designed and patterned nanostructures on a flat surface to focus, shape and control light—are a promising technology for wearable applications, especially virtual and augmented reality systems. Today, research teams painstakingly design the specific pattern of nanostructures on the surface to achieve the desired function of the lens, whether that be resolving nanoscale features, simultaneously producing several depth-perceiving images or focusing light regardless of polarization.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-algorithm-approach-paves-larger-complex.html
5/30/2022 10:00 AMAstronomers used a perhaps unlikely tool to understand what they saw in their historic first image of the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole: a library of computer simulations that mimic the black hole with millions of variations.https://www.space.com/milky-way-black-hole-supercomputer-simulations
5/30/2022 12:00 PMPowerful flares, breathtaking views across the solar poles, and a curious solar ‘hedgehog’ are amongst the haul of spectacular images, movies and data returned by Solar Orbiter from its first close approach to the Sun. Although the analysis of the new dataset has only just started, it is already clear that the ESA-led mission is providing the most extraordinary insights into the Sun’s magnetic behaviour and the way this shapes space weather.https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Solar_Orbiter/The_Sun_as_you_ve_never_seen_it_before
5/30/2022 2:00 PMThe engineering team with NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is trying to solve a mystery: The interstellar explorer is operating normally, receiving and executing commands from Earth, along with gathering and returning science data. But readouts from the probe’s attitude articulation and control system (AACS) don’t reflect what’s actually happening onboard.https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/engineers-investigating-nasas-voyager-1-telemetry-data
5/30/2022 4:00 PMIn July 2020, a group of scientists from European universities were scanning the skies with the German eROSITA X-ray telescope, an instrument that specializes in soft X-rays and orbits a gravitationally stable point in space about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. The researchers happened to catch an extraordinarily bright explosion, which they have identified as a white dwarf explosion called a nova.https://www.space.com/white-dwarf-explosion-x-rays-erosita
5/30/2022 6:00 PMThe ALICE collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has made the first direct observation of the dead-cone effect—a fundamental feature of the theory of the strong force that binds quarks and gluons together into protons, neutrons and, ultimately, all atomic nuclei. In addition to confirming this effect, the observation, reported in a paper published today in Nature, provides direct experimental access to the mass of a single charm quark before it is confined inside hadrons.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-dead-cone-effect-particle-physics.html
5/31/2022 8:00 AMCave explorers in southern China may have found the modern-day equivalent of The Lost World. At the bottom of the newly discovered 630-foot deep sinkhole lies a hidden forest, lush with shoulder-high flora and tall trees.https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2022/05/18/china-sinkhole-ancient-forest/9822692002/
5/31/2022 10:00 AMChina wants to launch its first large space telescope in late 2023 to survey the skies, deliver new insights about distant galaxies, and unlock the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.https://www.space.com/china-space-station-telescope-plans
5/31/2022 12:00 PMThe Defense Innovation Unit announced May 17 it selected Ultra Safe Nuclear Corp. and Avalanche Energy to develop small nuclear-powered spacecraft for in-space demonstrations planned for 2027.https://spacenews.com/diu-selects-nuclear-powered-spacecraft-designs-for-2027-demonstrations/
5/31/2022 2:00 PMA critical goal in genetics and evolution is predicting the effects of mutations that may happen in the future and inferring the effects of those that happened in the past. To make these predictions, scientists generally assume that a mutation’s effects tested in the present apply to past and future versions of the same gene.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-genetic-steadily-erodes-evolution.html
5/31/2022 4:00 PMThe iconic Hubble Space Telescope has captured a glimmering new photo of a densely packed region of stars located in the constellation Sagittarius.https://www.space.com/hubble-space-telescope-glimmering-star-cluster-photo
5/31/2022 6:00 PMA new examination of the way different tissues read information from genes has discovered that the brain and testes appear to be extraordinarily open to the use of many different kinds of code to produce a given protein.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-layer-code-life.html
6/1/2022 8:00 AMArchaeological excavations led by Wyoming’s state archaeologist and involving University of Wyoming researchers have confirmed that an ancient mine in eastern Wyoming was used by humans to produce red ocher starting nearly 13,000 years ago.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-eastern-wyoming-paleoindian-site-americas.html
6/1/2022 10:00 AMT 10
6/1/2022 12:00 PMCompleting a nearly 30-year marathon, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has calibrated more than 40 “milepost markers” of space and time to help scientists precisely measure the expansion rate of the universe—a quest with a plot twist.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-decades-space-telescope-converge-precise.html
6/1/2022 2:00 PMAs physicists delve deeper into the quantum realm, they are discovering an infinitesimally small world composed of a strange and surprising array of links, knots and winding. Some quantum materials exhibit magnetic whirls called skyrmions—unique configurations described as “subatomic hurricanes.” Others host a form of superconductivity that twists into vortices.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-electrons-crystal-linked-quantum.html
6/1/2022 4:00 PMA space rock discovered more than two decades ago may be the first physical evidence of a rare type of powerful stellar explosion called a Type Ia supernova, according to a new study.https://www.space.com/hypatia-stone-from-space-evidence-supernova
6/1/2022 6:00 PMFor over a decade, scientists have attempted to synthesize a new form of carbon called graphyne with limited success. That endeavor is now at an end, though, thanks to new research from the University of Colorado Boulder.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-long-hypothesized-material.html
6/2/2022 8:00 AMTests are underway on a rocket technology that could vastly shorten the time it takes for humans to get to Mars, greatly reducing the risk of mechanical failures and other deadly space hazards on future Mars-bound astronauts.https://interestingengineering.com/a-123000-mph-nuclear-rocket-could-reach-mars-in-only-one-month
6/2/2022 10:00 AMT 10
6/2/2022 12:00 PMA fresh image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a deep view of the eye of a galactic needle. The spiral galaxy is nicknamed the “Needle’s Eye”, although more officially it is known as NGC 247 and Caldwell 62. NASA said May 10 the nickname is appropriate given this galaxy is a dwarf spiral, making it a relatively small group of stars compared to our own Milky Way.https://www.space.com/hubble-telescope-needles-eye-galaxy-photo
6/2/2022 2:00 PMMessier 87 (M87), is an elliptical galaxy about 55 million light-years from Earth. At its center is a black hole with a mass that’s 6.5 billion times that of our companion sun. This black hole was the first to ever be imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project, which three years ago released a portrait of the black hole’s shadow and a bright disk of matter that is being gravitationally pulled into the black hole’s center.https://www.space.com/black-hole-and-galaxy-sonification
6/2/2022 4:00 PMWhat do you do when a tried-and-true method for determining the sun’s chemical composition appears to be at odds with an innovative, precise technique for mapping the sun’s inner structure? That was the situation facing astronomers studying the sun—until new calculations that have now been published by Ekaterina Magg, Maria Bergemann and colleagues, and that resolve the apparent contradiction.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-solar-spectrum-decade-long-controversy-sun.html
6/2/2022 6:00 PMResearchers have discovered in two-dimensional conductive systems a new effect that promises improved performance of terahertz detectors.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-closer-terahertz-technology-usable-real.html
6/3/2022 8:00 AMA team of researchers from the UK and Japan has found that the tiny defects which limit the efficiency of perovskites—cheaper alternative materials for solar cells—are also responsible for structural changes in the material that lead to degradation.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-secret-achilles-heel-perovskite-alternatives.html
6/3/2022 10:00 AMT 10
6/3/2022 12:00 PMWhile volcanic eruptions and earthquakes serve as immediate reminders that Earth’s insides are anything but tranquil, there are also other, more elusive, dynamic processes happening deep down below the Earth. Using information from ESA’s Swarm satellite mission, scientists have discovered a completely new type of magnetic wave that sweeps across the outermost part of Earth’s outer core every seven years. This fascinating finding, presented at ESA’s Living Planet Symposium, opens a new window into a world we can never see.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-swarm-satellites-unveil-magnetic-outermost.html
6/3/2022 2:00 PMArtificial intelligence (AI) algorithms trained on real astronomical observations now outperform astronomers in sifting through massive amounts of data to find new exploding stars, identify new types of galaxies and detect the mergers of massive stars, accelerating the rate of new discovery in the world’s oldest science.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-ai-reveals-unsuspected-math-underlying.html
6/3/2022 4:00 PMIn modern computers, errors during processing and storage of information have become a rarity due to high-quality fabrication. However, for critical applications, where even single errors can have serious effects, error correction mechanisms based on redundancy of the processed data are still used.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-error-free-quantum-real.html
6/3/2022 6:00 PMThe Hubble Space Telescope has captured a stunning new view of a gigantic galaxy that is more than twice the size of the Milky Way. The elliptical galaxy, known as NGC 474, is located approximately 100 million light-years from Earth. The Hubble telescope captured an up-close view of the central region of the galaxy, revealing its enormous size.https://www.space.com/hubble-telescope-galaxy-strange-shell-layers-photo
6/4/2022 8:00 AMAstronomers from the University of Arizona (UA) and elsewhere report the discovery of a new ultra-faint dwarf galaxy. The newfound galaxy, designated Tucana B, is the first quenched and isolated object of this type identified in the extreme outskirts of the Local Group. The finding is reported in a paper published May 18 on the arXiv pre-print server.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-ultra-faint-dwarf-galaxy.html
6/4/2022 10:00 AMT 10
6/4/2022 12:00 PMMars once ran red with rivers. The telltale tracks of past rivers, streams and lakes are visible today all over the planet. But about three billion years ago, they all dried up—and no one knows why.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-mars-unusual.html
6/4/2022 2:00 PMWith its mirror segments beautifully aligned and its scientific instruments undergoing calibration, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is just weeks away from full operation. Soon after the first observations are revealed this summer, Webb’s in-depth science will begin.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/geology-from-50-light-years-webb-gets-ready-to-study-rocky-worlds
6/4/2022 4:00 PMCoronal mass ejections (CMEs) are large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the sun’s atmosphere — the corona.https://www.space.com/coronal-mass-ejections-cme
6/4/2022 6:00 PMIn a new study published today in the journal Science, the team from Cardiff University has been able to pinpoint exactly how the tilting and wobbling of the Earth as it orbits around the Sun has influenced the melting of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 2 million years or so.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-scientists-role-earth-orbit-fate.html
6/5/2022 8:00 AMOur species faces a pivotal moment in human history. Either we develop the technology to safely harness the energy needed to escape our planet, or we kill ourselves in some great cataclysm, a stark new study claims.https://www.space.com/humans-interplanetary-200-years
6/5/2022 10:00 AMT 10
6/5/2022 12:00 PMVolcanoes erupting on the moon billions of years ago may have created a layer of ice under the lunar surface, a new study suggests.https://www.space.com/moon-volcanoes-formed-underground-water-ice
6/5/2022 2:00 PMA new study attempts to find periods of more intense erosion on Mars in hopes of understanding when water flowed on the world’s surface. Water can carry larger pieces of rock into collisions, breaking the rocks faster, so accelerated erosion might be a signal of watery, and in turn potentially habitable, conditions.https://www.space.com/mars-erosion-water-history-study
6/5/2022 4:00 PMResearcher Laura Rossi and her group at TU Delft have found a new way to build synthetic materials out of tiny glass particles—so-called colloids. Together with their colleagues from Queen’s University and the University of Amsterdam, they showed that they can simply use the shape of these colloids to make interesting building blocks for new materials, regardless of other properties of the colloidal particles. “This is striking, because it opens up a completely new way to think about materials design,” Rossi says.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-route-materials-tiny-particles.html
6/5/2022 6:00 PMA sea of bluebells have suddenly flowered on a hillside on Exmoor for the first time in hundreds of years.https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-somerset-61583521
6/6/2022 8:00 AMResearchers in Delft have succeeded in teleporting quantum information across a rudimentary network. This first of its kind is an important step towards a future quantum internet. This breakthrough was made possible by a greatly improved quantum memory and enhanced quality of the quantum links between the three nodes of the network.https://techxplore.com/news/2022-05-teleport-quantum-rudimentary-network.html
6/6/2022 10:00 AMT 10
6/6/2022 12:00 PMGravitational wave scientists from The University of Western Australia have led the development of a new laser mode sensor with unprecedented precision that will be used to probe the interiors of neutron stars and test fundamental limits of general relativity.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-laser-breakthrough-gravitational.html
6/6/2022 2:00 PMAn international team led by a University of Sydney scientist has discovered an unusual radio signal emitting neutron star that rotates extremely slowly, completing one rotation every 76 seconds.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-unusual-neutron-star-seconds-stellar.html
6/6/2022 4:00 PMA treasure trove of data is set to answer some big questions about our galaxy. The data, compiled by the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, contains an unprecedented amount of information about more than 1 billion of the brightest objects in the sky. Astronomers hope the new data, which will be released June 13, will help solve some major mysteries about the birth and life of the Milky Way and the stars in it.https://www.space.com/milky-way-mysteries-for-gaia-to-solve
6/6/2022 6:00 PMObservations from Hubble Space Telescope, the NASA Infrared Telescope and the Gemini Observatory, reveal that excess haze on Uranus makes it paler than Neptune and that dark spots are caused by a darkening of a second deeper cloud/haze layer.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-scientists-uranus-neptune.html
6/7/2022 8:00 AMIt sounds like the premise of a bad sci-fi movie: There’s some mysterious entity, beyond the boundaries of our galaxy, that is pushing against us with incredible force. We don’t know exactly what it is, and we don’t know how long it’s been there. But we do know its name: the dipole repeller.https://www.space.com/dipole-repeller-mystery-beyond-galaxy
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6/7/2022 12:00 PMDuring radio continuum observations of a spiral galaxy known as NGC 2082, Australian astronomers have discovered a mysterious bright and compact radio source, which received designation J054149.24–641813.7. The origin and nature of this source is unknown and requires further investigation. The finding is reported in a paper published May 23 on the arXiv pre-print repository.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-astronomers-radio-source-unknown.html
6/7/2022 2:00 PMLike Earth, planetary bodies such as the moon, Mars, asteroids and comets contain substantial deposits of valuable resources. This has caught the attention of both researchers and industry, with hopes of one day mining them to support a space economy.https://www.space.com/mining-in-space-challenges
6/7/2022 4:00 PMAstronomers have uncovered the first solid evidence that merger events between black holes can deliver a “kick” powerful enough to send a black hole spinning out of its galaxy.https://www.space.com/black-hole-escaping-galaxy-from-collision
6/7/2022 6:00 PMWhile it might be a comfortable 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius) inside the International Space Station (ISS), there’s a small chamber onboard where things get much, much colder — colder than space itself.https://www.space.com/ultracold-bubbles-on-space-station
6/8/2022 8:00 AMA trio of researchers at The University of Tokyo has found that data from weather satellites can be used to study the stars. In their paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, Daisuke Taniguchi , Kazuya Yamazaki and Shinsuke Uno describe studying the dimming of Betelgeuse in 2019 by analyzing data from the Himawari-8 weather satellite.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-weather-satellite-theories-dimming-betelgeuse.html
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6/8/2022 12:00 PMCo-orbiting worlds, also known as Trojans, have not been found yet outside the solar system. That’s a strange thing, a new study suggests, given we see them constantly closer to home.https://www.space.com/do-trojan-exoplanets-exist-study
6/8/2022 2:00 PMTwo galaxies are intertwined in a turbulent gravitational dance in a stunning new view from the Hubble Space Telescope.https://www.space.com/hubble-telescope-galaxies-gravitation-dance-photo
6/8/2022 4:00 PMAstronomers have a new way to study stars: take advantage of meteorological satellites orbiting Earth.https://www.space.com/betelgeuse-dimming-himawari-8-observations
6/8/2022 6:00 PMNew research led by scientists at the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath suggests that determining evolutionary trees of organisms by comparing anatomy rather than gene sequences is misleading. The study shows that we often need to overturn centuries of scholarly work that classified living things according to how they look.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-evolutionary-trees-wrong.html
6/9/2022 8:00 AMA thorough understanding of galaxy evolution depends in part on an accurate measurement of the abundance of metals in the intergalactic medium—the space between stars—but dust can impede observations in optical wavelengths. An international team of astronomers at the University of California, Irvine, Oxford University in England, and other institutions uncovered evidence of heavier elements in local galaxies—found to be deficient in earlier studies—by analyzing infrared data gathered during a multiyear campaign.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-astronomy-team-evidence-galactic-metal.html
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6/9/2022 12:00 PMNASA’s sun-grazing spacecraft will make its 12th close flyby of our star on Wednesday (June 1), marking the halfway point of the mission.https://www.space.com/nasa-parker-solar-probe-12th-sun-flyby
6/9/2022 2:00 PMMankind’s first look at conditions on a “super-Earth” 50 light years away is expected in coming weeks via the James Webb Space Telescope, and NASA is bracing to see the stuff of nightmares.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-nasa-hell-scientists-brace-glimpse.html
6/9/2022 4:00 PMScientists have created the first “time-crystal” two-body system in an experiment that seems to bend the laws of physics. It comes after the same team recently witnessed the first interaction of the new phase of matter.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-crystals-impossible-quantum-physics.html
6/9/2022 6:00 PMVoyager 1 is the farthest human-made object from Earth. After sweeping by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, it is now almost 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth(opens in new tab) in interstellar space. Both Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, carry little pieces of humanity in the form of their Golden Records(opens in new tab). These messages in a bottle include spoken greetings in 55 languages, sounds and images from nature, an album of recordings and images from numerous cultures, and a written message of welcome from Jimmy Carter, who was U.S. president when the spacecraft left Earth in 1977(opens in new tab).https://www.space.com/voyager-space-probes-immortality-and-legacy
6/10/2022 8:00 AMAn investigation into the evolution of Salmonella bacteria infecting Brazilian poultry shows that the introduction of a Salmonella vaccine, combined with increasing antibiotic usage by Brazilian farmers, has led to the rise of strains that are more antibiotic-resistant, but less likely to cause disease in humans.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-salmonella-vaccine-poultry-contributed-antibiotic-resistant.html
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6/10/2022 12:00 PMA team of researchers from the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology and the University of Dayton has developed a way to bend light into a vortex ring using mirrors, lasers and lenses. In their study, published in the journal Nature Photonics, the group built on work done by other teams in which vortex rings were observed incidentally, and then mathematically designed a system that could generate them on demand.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-mirrors-lasers-lenses-vortex.html
6/10/2022 2:00 PMScientists at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution announced today that ribonucleic acid (RNA), an analog of DNA that was likely the first genetic material for life, spontaneously forms on basalt lava glass. Such glass was abundant on Earth 4.35 billion years ago. Similar basalts of this antiquity survive on Mars today.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-scientists-breakthrough-life-earthand-mars.html
6/10/2022 4:00 PMScientists who study the cosmos have a favorite philosophy known as the “mediocrity principle,” which, in essence, suggests that there’s really nothing special about Earth, the sun or the Milky Way galaxy compared to the rest of the universe.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-theory-special-relativity-galaxies.html
6/10/2022 6:00 PMWhat is it like to be on the surface of Mars or Venus? Or even further afield, such as on Pluto, or Saturn’s moon Titan? This curiosity has driven advances in space exploration since Sputnik 1 was launched 65 years(opens in new tab) ago. But we’re only beginning to scratch the surface of what is knowable about other planetary bodies in the solar system.https://www.space.com/sand-dunes-clues-venus-pluto-planet-surface-conditions
6/11/2022 8:00 AMThe second century Alexandrian astronomer and mathematician Claudius Ptolemy had a grand ambition. Hoping to make sense of the motion of stars and the paths of planets, he published a magisterial treatise on the subject, known as the Almagest. Ptolemy created a complex mathematical model of the universe that seemed to recapitulate the movements of the celestial objects he observed.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-explores-pitfalls-evolutionary-genomics.html
6/11/2022 10:00 AMCandida albicans is a yeast that often lives in the human digestive tract and mouth, as well as urinary and reproductive organs. Usually, it doesn’t cause disease in its host, but under certain conditions, it can switch to a harmful form. Most Candida infections are not lethal, but systemic Candida infection, which affects the blood, heart, and other parts of the body, can be life-threatening.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-molecules-mucus-thwart-fungal-infection.html
6/11/2022 12:00 PMA new study by Yale ichthyologists provides a clearer picture of species diversity among black basses—one of the most cherished and economically important lineages of freshwater gamefish. Their findings can help guide the conservation and management of bass species that are both prized by anglers across the globe and ranked among the world’s most invasive organisms.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-revelations-genetic-diversity-bass-species.html
6/11/2022 2:00 PMQuark-gluon plasma (QGP) is a state of matter existing at extremely temperatures and densities, such as those that occur in collisions of hadrons (protons, neutrons and mesons). Under so-called “normal” conditions, quarks and gluons are always confined in the structures that constitute hadrons, but when hadrons are accelerated to relativistic velocities and made to collide with each other, as they are in the experiments performed at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the confinement is interrupted and the quarks and gluons scatter, forming a plasma. The phenomenon lasts only a tiny fraction of a second, but observation of it has produced important discoveries about the nature of material reality.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-mathematical-tool-fractal-quark-gluon-plasma.html
6/11/2022 4:00 PMNew research transforms our understanding of the circumstances and timing of the domestication of chickens, their spread across Asia into the west, and reveals the changing way in which they were perceived in societies over the past 3,500 years.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-evidence-chickens-domesticated.html
6/11/2022 6:00 PMA combined defense of different chemical defense substances could result in a negative interaction and mutual detoxification, according to researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in a new study, appearing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, on the wild tobacco species Nicotiana attenuata and one of its specialized herbivores. Chemical analyses of frass revealed that larvae of the tobacco hawkmoth Manduca sexta are able to split off components of one defense substance and use them to detoxify another. However, tobacco plants have also developed a counter-strategy to minimize the mutual detoxification of their defenses: They avoid producing the two substances involved in detoxification simultaneously in high concentrations.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-antagonistic-interactions-defense-compounds.html
6/12/2022 8:00 AMHuman-caused wildfires in California are more ferocious than blazes sparked by lightning, a team led by scientists from the University of California, Irvine reported recently in the journal Nature Communications. The research could help scientists better understand fire severity and how likely a blaze is to kill trees and inflict long-term damage on an ecosystem in its path.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-human-triggered-california-wildfires-severe-natural.html
6/12/2022 10:00 AMAn international research team including the University of Göttingen has investigated the chances of survival of kombucha cultures under Mars-like conditions. Kombucha is known as a drink, sometimes called tea fungus or mushroom tea, which is produced by fermenting sugared tea using kombucha cultures—a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. Although the simulated Martian environment destroyed the microbial ecology of the kombucha cultures, surprisingly, a cellulose-producing bacterial species survived.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-bacterial-cellulose-kombucha-enables-microbial.html
6/12/2022 12:00 PMOperating observatories around the globe target sky regions characterized by low contamination from Galactic radiation, looking for the imprint of Cosmological Gravitational Waves (CGWs) produced during Inflation, the mysterious phase of quasi-exponential expansion of space in the very early Universe. A new study by the POLARBEAR collaboration, led by SISSA for the part concerning the interpretation for Cosmology and published in the Astrophysical Journal, provides a new correction algorithm that allows researchers to almost double the amount of reliable data acquired in such observatories, thus giving access to uncharted territory of the signal produced from CGWs and bringing us closer to the Big Bang.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-cosmological-gravitational-approach-big.html
6/12/2022 2:00 PMUsing the AstroSat spacecraft, Indian astronomers have inspected a galactic globular cluster known as NGC 5053. Results of the study provide important insights into the stellar population of this cluster.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-stellar-populations-ngc-astrosat.html
6/12/2022 4:00 PMAstronomers have uncovered the first solid evidence that merger events between black holes can deliver a “kick” powerful enough to send a black hole spinning out of its galaxy.https://www.space.com/black-hole-escaping-galaxy-from-collision
6/12/2022 6:00 PMA cohort of telescopes captured a special type of aurora strung across the night sky like a glowing jeweled necklace, helping astronomers better understand the mechanics behind these beautiful light shows.https://www.space.com/auroral-beads-earth-magnetosphere-vortices
6/13/2022 8:00 AMPlanned for launch in 2029, the DAVINCI mission (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) will send a spacecraft and a probe to Venus to investigate numerous unsolved mysteries of the planet. Prior to dropping its descent probe into the Venus atmosphere, the spacecraft will perform two flybys of the planet, taking measurements of clouds and ultraviolet absorption on the Venusian day side, and taking measurements of heat emanating from the planet’s surface on the night side. Two years after launch, the mission’s probe, called the Descent Sphere, will enter the Venus atmosphere, ingesting and analyzing atmospheric gases and collecting images as it descends to the surface of the planet at the Alpha Regio region.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/davinci-vfox
6/13/2022 10:00 AMScience writer Natalie Wolchover has received a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for her work at Quanta Magazine explaining the intricate story of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which launched in December.https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-pulitzer-natalie-wolchover-quanta
6/13/2022 12:00 PMIf NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex serves as a theme park for the space set, then its newest attraction is the agency’s own take on “Tomorrowland.”https://www.space.com/nasa-gateway-deep-space-complex-first-look
6/13/2022 2:00 PMResearchers using an innovative astrodynamics algorithm have uncovered over 100 asteroids that had gone undetected in archived images of the sky.https://www.space.com/algorithm-discovers-100-asteroids-hidden-historical-data
6/13/2022 4:00 PMCalled EMIT, the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation will analyze dust carried through the atmosphere from dry regions to see what effects it has on the planet.https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/5-things-to-know-about-nasas-new-mineral-dust-detector
6/13/2022 6:00 PMGJ 436 b is a Neptune-sized exoplanet that orbits a M-type star. Its mass is 22.1 Earths, it takes 2.6 days to complete one orbit of its star, is 0.0291 AU from its star, and made mostly of ice while also being on fire.https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/6534/gj-436-b/
6/14/2022 8:00 AMScientists are tracing the movement of dust over Martian eons using a high-definition camera from orbit.https://www.space.com/mars-dunes-formation-photo
6/14/2022 10:00 AMTwenty years after the retirement of the Concorde, several industrial and research projects want to make supersonic flight a reality again. However, supersonic planes produce sonic booms loud enough to warrant noise concerns and regulations, limiting their use over land.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-urban-canyons-prolong-sonic-booms.html
6/14/2022 12:00 PMThe Third Pole, which is centered on the Tibetan Plateau, stores most of the frozen water in the world after the Antarctic and Arctic. As a reliable water supply for almost 2 billion people, it has become known as the “Asian Water Tower.” However, according to a new study, the situation is changing.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-scientists-imbalance-asian-tower.html
6/14/2022 2:00 PMClouds of ultralight particles can form around rotating black holes. A team of physicists from the University of Amsterdam and Harvard University now show that these clouds would leave a characteristic imprint on the gravitational waves emitted by binary black holes.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-particles-black-holes-gravitational.html
6/14/2022 4:00 PMChilean environmental scientist Jonathan Barichivich has been making waves in the dendrochronology community of late due to his study and findings regarding an alerce tree in Alerce Costero National Park—he believes the tree may be the oldest in the world. Barichivich has not yet published a paper describing his study of the tree, which has been named Alerce Milenario, but plans to do so in the coming months. In the meantime, he has been presenting his findings at various meetings and conferences.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-alerce-tree-chile-oldest-world.html
6/14/2022 6:00 PMA research team led by Prof. Chen Chunying from the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNST) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has recently investigated the evolution of the nano-protein corona during endocytosis and its disturbance to protein homeostasis and cell metabolism.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-nano-protein-corona-perturbs-protein-homeostasis.html
6/15/2022 8:00 AMResearchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have developed a tiny sensor for detecting pesticides on fruit in just a few minutes. The technique, described as a proof-of-concept in a paper in the journal Advanced Science, uses flame-sprayed nanoparticles made from silver to increase the signal of chemicals. While still at an early stage, the researchers hope these nano-sensors could help uncover food pesticides before consumption.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-nano-sensor-pesticides-fruit-minutes.html
6/15/2022 10:00 AMMore areas of year-round unfrozen ground have begun dotting Interior and Northwest Alaska and will continue to increase in extent due to climate change, according to new research by University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute scientists.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-scientists-indicators-alaska-permafrost.html
6/15/2022 12:00 PMThe dust trail from the largest comet outburst ever seen will grace the skies this summer — and it’s going to look like a giant hourglass.https://www.space.com/comet-17p-holmes-dust-trail
6/15/2022 2:00 PMAn international team of astronomers, led by Yamila Miguel (SRON/Leiden Observatory), has found that Jupiter’s gaseous envelope doesn’t have a homogeneous distribution. The inner part has more metals than the outer parts, adding up to a total of between 11 and 30 earth masses, meaning 3–9% of Jupiter’s total mass. This is a high enough metallicity to conclude that kilometer-sized bodies—planetesimals—must have played a role in Jupiter’s formation.https://phys.org/news/2022-05-jupiter-inhomogeneous-metallicity-clues.html
6/15/2022 4:00 PMAstronomers have found only the second example of a highly active, repeating fast radio burst (FRB) with a compact source of weaker but persistent radio emission between bursts. The discovery raises new questions about the nature of these mysterious objects and also about their usefulness as tools for studying the nature of intergalactic space. The scientists used the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) and other telescopes to study the object, first discovered in 2019.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-strange-radio.html
6/15/2022 6:00 PMWhy does the moon look close some nights and far away on other nights?https://www.space.com/moon-apparent-distance-changes
6/16/2022 8:00 AMIngenuity, the small helicopter that accompanied NASA’s Perseverance rover to Mars, was designed to make just a handful of flight tests after the duo landed in the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater in February 2021. Since then, Ingenuity has far exceeded design expectations, with 28 flights under its belt. However, conditions in Jezero Crater have changed since the craft’s arrival.https://www.space.com/ingenuity-mars-helicopter-troubleshooting-dead-navigation-sensor
6/16/2022 10:00 AMA mirror on the James Webb Space Telescope was struck by a micrometeoroid last month but is expected to continue to function normally. “After initial assessments, the team found the telescope is still performing at a level that exceeds all mission requirements despite a marginally detectable effect in the data,” the US space agency said.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-james-webb-telescope-micrometeoroid-nasa.html
6/16/2022 12:00 PMThe spotted lanternfly, an invasive insect that can kill grapevines and damage other crops, has a chance of first reaching the wine-producing counties of California in five years, according to a new analysis from North Carolina State University researchers.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-invasive-insect-grapes-california-wine.html
6/16/2022 2:00 PMNASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is poised to revolutionize our understanding of exoplanets. In its first year, it’ll spend a significant chunk of time studying a mysterious single star system.https://www.planetary.org/articles/james-webb-space-telescope-trappist-1
6/16/2022 4:00 PMArchaeologists have found that a tool, dubbed the “stone Swiss Army knife” of prehistory, was made to look the same in enormous numbers across great distances and multiple biomes in southern Africa. This indicates early humans were sharing information and communicating with one another.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-prehistoric-swiss-army-knife-early.html
6/16/2022 6:00 PMAn international team of astronomers have discovered a second persistently active fast radio burst, posing questions about the nature of the mysterious phenomena.https://www.space.com/second-fast-radio-burst-discovered
6/17/2022 8:00 AMSince the first hot Jupiter was discovered in 1995, astronomers have been trying to figure out how the searing-hot exoplanets formed and arrived in their extreme orbits. Johns Hopkins University astronomers have found a way to determine the relative age of hot Jupiters using new measurements from the Gaia spacecraft, which is tracking over a billion stars.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-clues-hot-jupiters.html
6/17/2022 10:00 AMResearchers have discovered a new particle that is a magnetic relative of the Higgs boson. Whereas the discovery of the Higgs boson required the tremendous particle-accelerating power of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), this never-before-seen particle  —  dubbed the axial Higgs boson — was found using an experiment that would fit on a small kitchen countertop.https://www.space.com/magnetic-higgs-relative-discovered
6/17/2022 12:00 PMResearchers from the Institute of Laser Physics at Universität Hamburg have succeeded for the first time in realizing a time crystal that spontaneously breaks continuous time translation symmetry.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-crystal.html
6/17/2022 2:00 PMA team of scientists have used satellite data to detect methane plumes from an offshore platform in the Gulf of Mexico. This is the first time that individual methane plumes from offshore platforms have been mapped from space.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-methane-emissions-offshore-platform-gulf.html
6/17/2022 4:00 PMUSC scientists have found evidence that the Earth’s inner core oscillates, contradicting previously accepted models that suggested it consistently rotates at a faster rate than the planet’s surface.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-earth-feet-core-oscillates.html
6/17/2022 6:00 PMIf, as astronomers believe, the deaths of large stars leave behind black holes, there should be hundreds of millions of them scattered throughout the Milky Way galaxy. The problem is, isolated black holes are invisible.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-astronomers-dark-free-floating-black-hole.html
6/18/2022 8:00 AMCombining AlphaFold2 with experimental and computational techniques has helped scientists figure out the human nuclear pore complex’s architecture in greater detail than ever before.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-puzzling-molecular-giant.html
6/18/2022 10:00 AMAs the world’s appetite for carbon-based materials like graphite increases, Ohio University researchers presented evidence this week for a new carbon solid they named “amorphous graphite.”https://phys.org/news/2022-06-graphite-coal-carbon-solid.html
6/18/2022 12:00 PMFor the first time, the Hubble Space Telescope has detected a lone object drifting through our Milky Way galaxy — the invisible, ghostly remains of a once radiant star.https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/14/world/wandering-black-hole-milky-way-scn/index.html
6/18/2022 2:00 PMThe sun flexed its considerable magnetic muscles on June 13, and two solar spacecraft captured the show on video.https://www.space.com/long-solar-flare-cme-spacecraft-video-june-2022
6/18/2022 4:00 PMTwo giant galaxy clusters crashing into each other triggered enormous shock waves stretching 1.6 million light-years through space.https://www.space.com/galaxy-collision-shock-waves-solar-system
6/18/2022 6:00 PMChina’s lunar lander Chang’E-5 delivered the first real-time, on-site definitive confirmation of water signal in the basalt’s rocks and soil via on-board spectral analysis in 2020. The finding was validated through laboratory analysis of samples the lander returned in 2021. Now, the Chang’E-5 team has determined where the water came from.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-china-lunar-lander-evidence-native.html
6/19/2022 8:00 AMA UC Riverside genetic discovery could turn disease-carrying mosquitoes into insect Peter Pans, preventing them from ever maturing or multiplying.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-genetic-discovery-mosquitoes-death-knell.html
6/19/2022 10:00 AMSpaceX’s massive Starship vehicle may start taking to the skies in earnest this summer. Starship consists of a huge first-stage booster called Super Heavy and a 165-foot-tall (50 meters) upper-stage spacecraft known as Starship. SpaceX is developing the vehicle to take people and cargo to the moon, Mars and other destinations throughout the solar system.https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-ready-orbital-flight-july-elon-musk
6/19/2022 12:00 PMThe ancestors of some of the largest galaxy clusters have been hiding in plain sight. New work led by Carnegie’s Andrew Newman demonstrates a new technique for identifying the precursors of the most extreme galactic environments.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-previously-hidden-protoclusters-reveal-galaxy.html
6/19/2022 2:00 PMQubits are a basic building block for quantum computers, but they’re also notoriously fragile—tricky to observe without erasing their information in the process. Now, new research from the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) could be a leap forward for handling qubits with a light touch.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-physicists-qubits-laser.html
6/19/2022 4:00 PMAstronomers at MIT and elsewhere have discovered a new multiplanet system within our galactic neighborhood that lies just 10 parsecs, or about 33 light-years, from Earth, making it one of the closest known multiplanet systems to our own.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-astronomers-multiplanet-nearby.html
6/19/2022 6:00 PMAstronomers in the UK announce today that have established how galaxies like our own Milky Way formed over 10 billion years of cosmic time through an abundance of separate galaxies colliding together.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-astronomers-galaxies-mergers.html
6/20/2022 8:00 AMIn a new study, researchers led by the University of Iowa announced the discovery of two new species of crocodiles that roamed east Africa between 18 million and 15 million years ago before mysteriously disappearing. The species, called giant dwarf crocodiles, are related to dwarf crocodiles currently found in central and west Africa.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-crocodile-species-preyed-human-ancestors.html
6/20/2022 10:00 AMLike you and me, microbes need some metals in their diet to stay healthy. The metals help the microbes fully “digest” food. After a good meal, the microbes that gain energy by chemically reducing nitrate release a harmless byproduct: nitrogen, the gas that makes up 78% of Earth’s atmosphere.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-metal-microbes-greenhouse-gas.html
6/20/2022 12:00 PMVenus’ atmosphere bears no signs of microbes eating or pooping, suggesting that the odd chemical composition of the planet’s clouds cannot be explained by extraterrestrial life.https://www.space.com/life-cant-explain-chemistry-venus-atmosphere
6/20/2022 2:00 PMAstronomers observing the fastest nova ever recorded have discovered that it reverberates periodically like a struck bell, with the unusual energetic phenomenon driven by a white dwarf feeding from a companion star.https://www.space.com/fastest-nova-ever-feeding-white-dwarf
6/20/2022 4:00 PMAstronomers have developed a new model for simulating how clusters of baby stars form and evolve, helping to explain how bubbles of ionized gas are created away from the heart of a galaxy.https://www.space.com/young-stars-yo-yo-out-of-nurseries
6/20/2022 6:00 PMMilankovitch cycles are periodic changes in the orbital characteristics of a planet that control how much sunlight it receives, thus affecting its climate and habitability over hundreds of thousands of years.https://www.space.com/milankovitch-cycles
6/21/2022 8:00 AMNASA is scheduled to release the first images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope on July 12, 2022. They’ll mark the beginning of the next era in astronomy as Webb – the largest space telescope ever built – begins collecting scientific data that will help answer questions about the earliest moments of the universe and allow astronomers to study exoplanets in greater detail than ever before. But it has taken nearly eight months of travel, setup, testing and calibration to make sure this most valuable of telescopes is ready for prime time. Marcia Rieke, an astronomer at the University of Arizona and the scientist in charge of one of Webb’s four cameras, explains what she and her colleagues have been doing to get this telescope up and running.https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-james-webb-space-telescope-is-finally-ready-to-do-science-and-it-s-seeing-the-universe-more-clearly-than-even-its-own-engineers-hoped-for/ar-AAYuQdE
6/21/2022 10:00 AMA star’s death throes have so violently disrupted its planetary system that the dead star left behind, called a white dwarf, is siphoning off debris from both the system’s inner and outer reaches. This is the first time astronomers have observed a white dwarf star that is consuming both rocky-metallic and icy material, the ingredients of planets.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/hubble-dead-star-caught-ripping-up-planetary-system
6/21/2022 12:00 PMThe fastest-growing black hole ever seen is swallowing the mass equivalent of an entire Earth every second.https://www.space.com/fastest-growing-black-hole-powering-quasar
6/21/2022 2:00 PMDid China’s FAST telescope detect an alien transmission? Or did it detect terrestrial interference? There’s still a great deal of study and tests to determine what it found – so don’t get too excited just yet.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-giant-radio-telescope-china-aliens.html
6/21/2022 4:00 PMIf the stars hadn’t aligned, two of the most remarkable spacecraft ever launched never would have gotten off the ground. In this case, the stars were actually planets—the four largest in the solar system. Some 60 years ago they were slowly wheeling into an array that had last occurred during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson in the early years of the 19th century.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/record-breaking-voyager-spacecraft-begin-to-power-down/
6/21/2022 6:00 PMA new study of an old meteorite contradicts current thinking about how rocky planets like the Earth and Mars acquire volatile elements such as hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and noble gases as they form.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-martian-meteorite-planet-formation-theory.html
6/22/2022 8:00 AMScientists are starting to understand the precise workings of a type of gene that, unlike other genes, does not code for proteins—the building blocks of life.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-scientists-unravel-mystery-genes-key.html
6/22/2022 10:00 AMOur Milky Way galaxy is haunted. The vast gulf of space between the stars is plied by the dead, burned-out and crushed remnants of once glorious stars. These black holes cannot be directly seen because their intense gravity swallows light. Like legendary wandering ghosts, their presence can only be deduced by seeing how they affect the environment around them.https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2022/news-2022-001
6/22/2022 12:00 PMScientists have documented a previously unknown subpopulation of polar bears living in Southeast Greenland. The polar bears survive with limited access to sea ice by hunting from freshwater ice that pours into the ocean from Greenland’s glaciers. Because this isolated population is genetically distinct and uniquely adapted to its environment, studying it could shed light on the future of the species in a warming Arctic.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-newly-documented-population-polar-southeast.html
6/22/2022 2:00 PMLike thousands of multi-colored gems scattered across a black velvet backdrop, this eye-catching Hubble Space Telescope photo of the globular cluster Liller 1 is cause to pause and reflect upon the unimaginable beauty of the universe.https://www.space.com/nasa-star-cluster-hubble-telescope-photo
6/22/2022 4:00 PMThe Celera 500L is a truly remarkable design. Otto Aviation says its odd shape delivers an astonishing 59 percent reduction in drag, and a massive leap in efficiency and range compared to traditional plane geometries. Arguably, this thing should’ve been electric from the get-go, so it’s a no-brainer that Otto has teamed up with ZeroAvia to build a version with a hydrogen fuel cell powertrain.https://newatlas.com/aircraft/otto-zeroavia-celera-hydrogen/
6/22/2022 6:00 PMTo develop new drugs and vaccines, detailed knowledge about nature’s smallest biological building blocks—biomolecules—is required. Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, are now presenting a groundbreaking microscopy technique that allows proteins, DNA and other tiny biological particles to be studied in their natural state in a completely new way.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-nanochannels-medicine.html
6/23/2022 8:00 AMAn analysis of ancient DNA from a 100,000-year-old polar bear has revealed that extensive hybridization between polar bears and brown bears occurred during the last warm interglacial period in the Pleistocene, leaving a surprising amount of polar bear ancestry in the genomes of all living brown bears.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-year-old-polar-genome-reveals-ancient.html
6/23/2022 10:00 AMA team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in the U.S. and Brazil has found evidence that pumpkin toadlets (Brachycephalus) have poor jumping skills because their inner ear canals are too small. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their study of the inner-ear anatomy of nearly 150 frogs and toads. The researchers believe that the inner ear canals of pumpkin toadlets are too small to allow them to land gracefully.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-tiny-brazilian-frogs-poor-jumpers.html
6/23/2022 12:00 PMA quantum simulator at Rice University is giving physicists a clear look at spin-charge separation, the quantum world’s version of the magician’s illusion of sawing a person in half.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-quantum-simulator-electrons-1d.html
6/23/2022 2:00 PMUniversity of Arizona astronomers have identified five examples of a new class of stellar system. They’re not quite galaxies and only exist in isolation. The new stellar systems contain only young, blue stars, which are distributed in an irregular pattern and seem to exist in surprising isolation from any potential parent galaxy.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-mysterious-blue-blobs-galactic-belly.html
6/23/2022 4:00 PMMuch remains to be discovered on how the HIV-1 virus infects our cells. Scientists know that it slips past the defenses of our immune system, entering white blood cells to deliver its genetic payload and hijack the cell’s transcription machinery that in turn cranks out copies of viral RNA and new HIV-1 viruses. But many of the details remain hazy.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-supercomputing-reveal-weaknesses-hiv-virus.html
6/23/2022 6:00 PMWhy do some people seem to never get sick while others consistently fall prey to viruses and bacteria? How can the spouse of a sick person avoid catching their partner’s bug despite sleeping next to them every night? Questions like these have become top-of-mind for many people during the COVID-19 pandemic, and scientists are now a big step closer to answering them thanks to some aquatic helpers: tadpoles.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-tolerate-pathogens.html
6/24/2022 8:00 AMResearchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a new photonic device that could get scientists closer to the “holy grail” of finding the global minimum of mathematical formulations at room temperature. Finding that illusive mathematical value would be a major advancement in opening new options for simulations involving quantum materials.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-device-scientists-closer-quantum-materials.html
6/24/2022 10:00 AMThe human middle ear—which houses three tiny, vibrating bones—is key to transporting sound vibrations into the inner ear, where they become nerve impulses that allow us to hear.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-chinese-fossils-human-middle-ear.html
6/24/2022 12:00 PMA research team led by Prof. Gan Jianping, director of the Center for Ocean Research Hong Kong and Macau (CORE) at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), carried out field observations and conducted numerical simulations in the South China Sea (SCS) and revealed never-before-seen characteristics of the three-dimensional ocean motion in the SCS through geophysical fluid dynamic theory.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-hotspots-three-layered-alternatively-rotating-circulation.html
6/24/2022 2:00 PMA young pulsar is blazing through the Milky Way at a speed of over a million miles per hour. This stellar speedster, witnessed by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, is one of the fastest objects of its kind ever seen. This result teaches astronomers more about how some of the bigger stars end their lives.https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/images/nasa-s-chandra-catches-pulsar-in-x-ray-speed-trap.html
6/24/2022 4:00 PMThe planet is shaped by forces deep within its interior. These push the plates of the Earth’s crust against each other, causing mountains and volcanoes to form along the collision zones. But when reconstructing what exactly is happening inside the Earth, we are limited to indirect observation; for example, by conducting pressure experiments on rocks from the Earth’s mantle or by analyzing seismic waves triggered by earthquakes.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-grain-size-earth-mantle-affects.html
6/24/2022 6:00 PMScientists at Kyoto University’s Institute for Cell-Material Sciences have discovered a novel cluster compound that could prove useful as a catalyst. Compounds, called polyoxometalates, that contain a large metal-oxide cluster carry a negative charge. They are found everywhere, from anti-viral medicines to rechargeable batteries and flash memory devices.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-scientists-serendipitously-rare-cluster-compound.html
6/25/2022 8:00 AMA fast-burning wildfire shut down all operations at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, home to one of the largest collections of astronomical instruments in the United States. The National Science Foundation, which runs the observatory, made the announcement June 16 as the Contreras Fire approached observatory buildings, as visible in images NSF released in its blog post(opens in new tab).https://www.space.com/fire-evacuation-kitt-peak-observatory-arizona
6/25/2022 10:00 AMDue to high hole mobility, pentacene and its derivatives have been the representative organic semiconductor and have been the subject of much research, both basic and applied. In particular, they are expected to be applied to semiconductor devices, such as field-effect transistors. In addition, organic semiconductors have the advantage of being inexpensive to produce through inkjet printing, and they have low environmental impacts because they do not use metals. However, the backbone of organic semiconductors, such as pentacene, easily reacts with oxygen molecules under visible light, resulting in the loss of useful properties.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-pentacene-derivative-durability-conventional-products.html
6/25/2022 12:00 PMResearchers have published the most detailed map of Antarctica’s frigid Southern Ocean to date, including the ocean’s new deepest point, the “Factorian Deep,” which sits nearly 24,400 feet (7,437 meters) below the sea surface.https://www.space.com/antarctica-southern-ocean-factorian-deep
6/25/2022 2:00 PMAntarctica’s so-called Doomsday Glacier is losing ice at its fastest rate in 5,500 years, raising concerns about the ice sheet’s future and the possibility of catastrophic sea level rise caused by the frozen continent’s melting ice.https://www.space.com/penguin-bones-reveal-secrets-of-doomsday-glacier
6/25/2022 4:00 PMCurrent disinfection strategies have major drawbacks, which is why the World Health Organization does not advise routine spraying or fogging of biocidal agents, or UV light sterilization, in occupied areas. One possible alternative is nano-sized electrostatic atomized water particles generated by an electrospray device developed by Panasonic Corporation. The water particles contain reactive oxygen species (ROS) that damage lipid, protein, and DNA and are reported to disinfect several bacterial and viral species.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-disinfectant-mechanism-nano-sized-electrostatic-atomized.html
6/25/2022 6:00 PMSerotonin (5-HT) is one of the main neurotransmitters in the human central nervous system and peripheral nervous system. It helps regulate appetite, memory, cognition and mood through serotonin receptors (5-HTR).https://phys.org/news/2022-06-scientists-breakthrough-serotonin-receptors.html
6/26/2022 8:00 AMIf mechanoluminescent materials are subjected to external mechanical stress, they emit visible or invisible light. Such excitation can occur due to bending or gentle pressure, for example, but also completely contact-free through ultrasound. In this way, the effect can be triggered remotely and light can be brought to places that normally tend to be in the dark, for example in the human body. If the ultrasound treatment is to be used at the same time to generate local heat, it is important in such a sensitive environment to observe closely the temperatures that occur. Material scientists at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany have now developed a mechanoluminescent material that can not only be used to generate a local heat input by means of ultrasound, but also provides feedback on the local temperature at the same time.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-emission-temperature-ultrasound.html
6/26/2022 10:00 AMA pair of researchers at Michigan State University has conducted an experiment with Escherichia coli bacteria meant to help settle a long-time debate in the evolutionary community.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-debate-evolutionin-coli.html
6/26/2022 12:00 PMWhile examining a stellar nursery, astronomers found something peculiar: a binary star system that may have formed when a wandering star fell into the gravity of its partner.https://www.space.com/star-wandering-to-form-binary
6/26/2022 2:00 PMNASA’s Perseverance rover snapped a photo of a shiny silver object wedged between two rocks on the floor of the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater, which the car-sized robot has been exploring since its February 2021 touchdown.https://www.space.com/mars-rover-perseverance-landing-litter-photo
6/26/2022 4:00 PMAstronomers have developed a new model for simulating how clusters of baby stars form and evolve, helping to explain how bubbles of ionized gas are created away from the heart of a galaxy.https://www.space.com/young-stars-yo-yo-out-of-nurseries
6/26/2022 6:00 PMPaleontologists in the U.K. and China have shown that the natural world bounced back vigorously following the End-Permian Extinction. In a review, scientists reveal that predators became meaner and prey animals adapted rapidly to find new ways to survive. On land, the ancestors of mammals and birds became warm-blooded and could move around faster.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-triassic-revolution-animals-grew-faster.html
6/27/2022 8:00 AMNuclear fission may have to overcome a public perception hurdle here on Earth in order to get the funding and development it needs to advance sufficiently to help our with our de-carbonization efforts, but the mostly empty lunar surface sidesteps a lot of nuclear’s image problem. NASA announced on Tuesday that it’s contracting three suppliers to provide concept designs for nuclear fission energy systems designed for use on the moon.https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/21/nasa-taps-three-companies-to-design-nuclear-power-plants-for-the-moon/
6/27/2022 10:00 AMA new map of one of the most massive stars in our galaxy is shedding light on what happens in the final stages of a giant star’s death.https://www.space.com/rare-hypergiant-star-death
6/27/2022 12:00 PMThe James Webb Space Telescope is halfway through getting its instrument modes checked out for science operations, which are expected to begin in mid-July.https://www.space.com/webb-halfway-instrument-checks
6/27/2022 2:00 PMJupiter’s innards are full of the remains of baby planets that the gas giant gobbled up as it expanded to become the behemoth we see today, scientists have found. The findings come from the first clear view of the chemistry beneath the planet’s cloudy outer atmosphere.https://www.space.com/jupiter-ate-baby-planets-while-growing
6/27/2022 4:00 PMAn international team led by The University of Vienna and the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in collaboration with the National Museum of Korea has successfully sequenced and studied the whole genome of eight 1,700-year-old individuals dated to the Three Kingdoms period of Korea (approx. 57 BC–668 AD). The first published genomes from this period in Korea bring key information for the understanding of Korean population history.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-year-old-korean-genomes-genetic-heterogeneity.html
6/27/2022 6:00 PMA celestial workhorse and its dedicated team of astronomers are at it again by delivering a hypnotic new image of a globular cluster and its infinite depth of stars.https://www.space.com/hubble-space-telescope-starstruck-cluster-photo
6/28/2022 8:00 AMA Native American tribe in what’s now California has named a unique asteroid at the request of scientists who discovered it.https://www.space.com/asteroid-venus-girl-indigenous-pauma-name
6/28/2022 10:00 AMThe moon floats just above Earth’s life-giving atmosphere in a gorgeous photo snapped from the International Space Station (ISS) by NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins.https://www.space.com/moon-photo-space-station-jessica-watkins
6/28/2022 12:00 PMA sunspot nearly triple the size of Earth is within firing range of our planet, and may send out medium-class flares in the near future.https://www.space.com/giant-sunspot-size-3-earths-our-direction
6/28/2022 2:00 PMFour retired telescope missions are helping astronomers uncover new insights about how dust behaves in galaxies. Astronomers say that the fresh survey of gas and dust surrounding four galaxies, all near our own Milky Way, will provide new information about star formation.https://www.space.com/retired-telescopes-hidden-features-galaxies-images
6/28/2022 4:00 PMNASA is scheduled to release the first images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope on July 12, 2022.https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-science-ready-astronomer-explains
6/28/2022 6:00 PMA New Zealand resident spotted a “bizarre but very cool” blue spiral above her house following a SpaceX launch on June 19.https://www.space.com/spacex-rocket-launch-blue-spiral-photo
6/29/2022 8:00 AMChina plans to haul Mars samples to Earth in 2031, two years before NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) aim to do so, according to media reports.https://www.space.com/china-return-mars-samples-earth-2031
6/29/2022 10:00 AMAs if cracking open a cosmic Russian nesting doll, astronomers have peered into the center of the Milky Way and discovered what appears to be a miniature spiral galaxy, swirling daintily around a single large star.https://www.space.com/spiral-disk-milky-way-galactic-center
6/29/2022 12:00 PMThe most recent Artemis 1 “wet dress rehearsal” wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough to keep the NASA moon mission on course for liftoff a few months from now.https://www.space.com/artemis-1-moon-mission-wet-dress-rehearsal-success
6/29/2022 2:00 PMOn June 21, 2022, a near complete, mummified baby woolly mammoth was found in the Klondike gold fields within Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin Traditional Territory. Miners working on Eureka Creek uncovered the frozen woolly mammoth while excavating through the permafrost. This is a significant discovery for Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin and the Government of Yukon. Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin Elders named the mammoth calf Nun cho ga, meaning “big baby animal” in the Hän language.https://yukon.ca/en/news/mummified-baby-woolly-mammoth-found-gold-miner-klondike
6/29/2022 4:00 PMScientists have spotted a long hypothesized, never-seen-before state of matter in the laboratory for the first time. By firing lasers at an ultracold lattice of rubidium atoms, scientists have prodded the atoms into a messy soup of quantum uncertainty known as a quantum spin liquid.https://www.scientiststudy.com/2021/12/physicists-create-new-state-of-matter.html
6/29/2022 6:00 PMThe Hubble Space Telescope has spotted evidence of a white dwarf star devouring rocky and icy material from its own system, suggesting that water and other volatiles might be common in the outer reaches of planetary systems.https://www.space.com/cannibal-star-white-dwarf-water
6/30/2022 8:00 AMThe world’s largest liquid mirror telescope is ready to gaze at the stars. Located at the Devasthal Observatory in India’s Himalayas, at an elevation of 8,038 feet (2,450 meters), the four-meter International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT) is the first liquid telescope to be built specifically for astronomy.https://www.space.com/largest-liquid-mirror-telescope-opens-india
6/30/2022 10:00 AMThe octopus is an exceptional organism with an extremely complex brain and cognitive abilities that are unique among invertebrates. So much so that in some ways it has more in common with vertebrates than with invertebrates. The neural and cognitive complexity of these animals could originate from a molecular analogy with the human brain, as discovered by a research paper recently published in BMC Biology and coordinated by Remo Sanges from SISSA of Trieste and by Graziano Fiorito from Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn of Naples.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-octopus-brain-human-genes.html
6/30/2022 12:00 PMThe European Space Agency (ESA) is upgrading software on its venerable Mars Express orbiter to enable it to see beneath the surface of Mars and its moon Phobos in greater detail than before.https://www.space.com/mars-orbiter-instrument-software-upgrade
6/30/2022 2:00 PMJames Vary has been waiting for nuclear physics experiments to confirm the reality of a “tetraneutron” that he and his colleagues theorized, predicted and first announced during a presentation in the summer of 2014, followed by a research paper in the fall of 2016.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-theoretical-now-confirmed-tetraneutron-exotic-state.html
6/30/2022 4:00 PMNorth Carolina is in hog heaven. Well, in a manner of speaking: It’s one of the largest producers of swine in the U.S., with pigs nearly outnumbering the state’s human population. All of this pork production results in millions of tons of pig manure that needs to be collected, stored and treated in massive outdoor waste lagoons.https://www.space.com/pig-poop-lagoons-landsat-5-satellite
6/30/2022 6:00 PMA very small trial of rectal cancer patients has produced unprecedented results: remission in 100 percent of its participants.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/small-cancer-trial-resulted-in-complete-remission-for-all-participants-180980221/
7/1/2022 8:00 AMThe grave of a rocket body that slammed into the moon more than three months ago has been found. Early this year, astronomers determined that a mysterious rocket body was on course to crash into the lunar surface on March 4. Their calculations suggested that the impact would occur inside Hertzsprung Crater, a 354-mile-wide (570 kilometers) feature on the far side of the moon.https://www.space.com/rocket-moon-crash-site-spotted-photos
7/1/2022 10:00 AMT10
7/1/2022 12:00 PMNASA’s TESS mission has found two rocky worlds orbiting the relatively bright, red dwarf star HD 260655, only 33 light-years away. The new planets, HD 260655 b and HD 260655 c, are among the closest-known rocky planets yet found outside our solar system that astronomers can observe crossing the faces of their stars.https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/news/1706/discovery-alert-two-new-rocky-planets-in-the-solar-neighborhood/
7/1/2022 2:00 PMGRADAR — gravitational wave “radar” — a potential future technology that could use reflections of gravitational waves to map the unseen universe, say researchers in a paper accepted to Physical Review Letters. By looking for these signals, scientists may be able to find dark matter or dim, exotic stars and learn about their deep insides.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/gravitational-wave-radar-map-invisible-universe-spacetime-dark-matter
7/1/2022 4:00 PMA team of researchers at the Institute of Biochemistry at Münster University discovered that by using so-called FlashCaps they were able to control the translation of mRNA by means of light.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-biochemists-tool-mrna.html
7/1/2022 6:00 PMA new analysis of a Martian meteorite is challenging current thinking about how terrestrial planets acquired volatile elements, including the elemental ingredients of life, early in their formation. Researchers analyzed the Chassigny meteorite, which fell to Earth in 1815 and is thought to be a sample from the deep interior of Mars and thus providing a window into the early days of the solar system.https://www.space.com/mars-meteorite-krypton-formation-mystery
7/2/2022 8:00 AMA heat dome occurs when a persistent region of high pressure traps heat over an area. The heat dome can stretch over several states and linger for days to weeks, leaving the people, crops and animals below to suffer through stagnant, hot air that can feel like an oven.https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-heat-dome-an-atmospheric-scientist-explains-the-weather-phenomenon-baking-large-parts-of-the-country-185569
7/2/2022 10:00 AMT10
7/2/2022 12:00 PMOver the next month, NASA will launch three rockets(opens in new tab) from the Arnhem Space Centre in the Northern Territory on the Dhupuma Plateau, near Nhulunbuy. The rockets are 13 meter “sounding” rockets that will not reach orbit but will take scientific observations.https://www.space.com/nasa-sounding-rocket-launches-australia
7/2/2022 2:00 PMResearchers have found a new way to detect some of the most cataclysmic mergers in the universe before they happen. Neutron stars, the extremely dense cores of massive dead stars, spiraling toward each other or into a black hole can raise tidal waves in the oceans of heavy charged particles surrounding the neutron stars. Those tidal waves reveal themselves through regular flashes of electromagnetic radiation, which can serve as an early warning system for impending mergers, the researchers found.https://www.space.com/neutron-star-mergers-tidal-waves
7/2/2022 4:00 PMIt’s springtime on Mars and the mysterious polygons are in bloom, a new image from the orbiting High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HIRISE) camera shows.https://www.space.com/mars-polygons-ice-sublimation-photo
7/2/2022 6:00 PMSpaceX’s massive Starship project was on the move last week, as its “Booster 7” Super Heavy rocket prototype moved to its South Texas test pad June 23.https://www.space.com/starship-super-heavy-rocket-launch-pad-move-june-2022-photos
7/3/2022 8:00 AMAlien rocky worlds cocooned in hydrogen and helium could prove habitable to life as we know it for billions of years, with key features such as temperate conditions and liquid water, a new study finds.https://www.space.com/habitability-super-earth-hydrogen-atmosphere
7/3/2022 10:00 AMT10
7/3/2022 12:00 PMThe BirdNET app, a free machine-learning powered tool that can identify over 3,000 birds by sound alone, generates reliable scientific data and makes it easier for people to contribute citizen-science data on birds by simply recording sounds.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-bird-species-app-avenues-citizen.html
7/3/2022 2:00 PMA team of Florida State University researchers has uncovered a way to use low-energy light to manipulate photopolymers or plastic films—a finding that has implications for a wide range of technologies that use light as an energy source to create shape-shifting structures.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-low-energy-plastic.html
7/3/2022 4:00 PMA research team lead by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Biology, Tübingen, Germany, has now made substantial progress in understanding how gut bacteria succeed in their human hosts on a molecular level. They investigated how bacteria produce inositol lipids, substances vital for many cellular processes in humans and other eukaryotes but hitherto rarely observed in bacteria. The results, now published in the journal Nature Microbiology, indicate that inositol lipids have implications for the symbiosis between the bacteria and their hosts.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-microbiota-human-hosts.html
7/3/2022 6:00 PMA traditional paper crane is a feat of artistry. Every fold in origami leads to the transformation of a single square sheet of paper into a bird, a dragon, or a flower. Origami discourages gluing, marking or cutting the paper, but in the art of kirigami, strategically placed cuts can transform the shape of the paper even further, creating complex structures from simple slits. A well-known example of this is a pop-up book, where depending on how the flat paper is cut, a different set of shapes—a heart, a frog, a set of skyscrapers—will emerge when the book is opened.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-kirigami-inspired-metamaterials.html
7/4/2022 8:00 AMTo solve a long-standing puzzle about how long a neutron can “live” outside an atomic nucleus, physicists entertained a wild but testable theory positing the existence of a right-handed version of our left-handed universe. They designed a mind-bending experiment at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to try to detect a particle that has been speculated but not spotted. If found, the theorized “mirror neutron”—a dark-matter twin to the neutron—could explain a discrepancy between answers from two types of neutron lifetime experiments and provide the first observation of dark matter.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-physicists-neutron-lifetime-puzzle.html
7/4/2022 10:00 AMT10
7/4/2022 12:00 PMHigh-energy neutrinos are highly fascinating subatomic particles produced when very fast charged particles collide with other particles or photons. IceCube, a renowned neutrino detector located at the South Pole, has been detecting extragalactic high-energy neutrinos for almost a decade.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-tidal-disruption-event-coincides-production.html
7/4/2022 2:00 PMBerkeley engineers have created a new type of semiconductor laser that accomplishes an elusive goal in the field of optics: the ability to maintain a single mode of emitted light while maintaining the ability to scale up in size and power. It is an achievement that means size does not have to come at the expense of coherence, enabling lasers to be more powerful and to cover longer distances for many applications.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-single-mode-semiconductor-laser-power-scalability.html
7/4/2022 4:00 PMProprietary space-grade cameras are expensive, limited, and a pain to develop. Smallsat manufacturer NanoAvionics recently sidestepped any development issues and opted for something off the shelf instead. The company used a GoPro Hero 7 mounted to a custom-built selfie stick to take a selfie that’s truly out of this world.https://gizmodo.com/gopro-selfie-nanoavionics-small-satellite-selfie-1849119441
7/4/2022 6:00 PMThe development of an embryo is a well-orchestrated string of processes, ensuring correct formation and positioning of vital organs of the growing organism. At the molecular level, these processes are controlled in a precise manner by switching on or off specific factors such as genes or proteins. Any errors in these processes could result in physical defects or disease in the newborn organism.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-highlights-role-genes-inherited-mothers.html
7/5/2022 8:00 AMA new video released by the European Space Agency (ESA) on Monday (June 27) shows the crater-riddled surface of the solar system’s smallest planet Mercury as captured during a super close flyby of the BepiColombo spacecraft.https://www.space.com/mercury-2nd-flyby-video-bepicolombo-reveals-craters
7/5/2022 10:00 AMT10
7/5/2022 12:00 PMA massive galaxy cluster shines in a new telescope image, distorting the view of more distant galaxies in the background. The galaxy cluster, named Abell 1351, is located some 4 billion light-years away in the northern constellation Ursa Major. The recent image from the Hubble Space Telescope captures a striking view of thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity.https://www.space.com/hubble-space-telescope-massive-galaxy-cluster-photo
7/5/2022 2:00 PMSolar cycle 25 kicked off last year. Forecasters thought it would be a mild one, but it’s turning out to be quite the opposite. From its onset, this solar cycle has been steadily outpacing predictions, producing more sunspots and spewing way more solar wind, flares and eruptions than the world’s leading experts predicted.https://www.space.com/why-solar-weather-forecast-doesnt-work
7/5/2022 4:00 PMCharon is the largest of Pluto’s five moons. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft first saw this intriguing world up close, when it flew past Pluto in 2015. The moon has craters, deep valleys and a bizarre isolated mountain that looks like it is sitting inside a moat. And there’s another odd feature on Charon: a large red “cap” at the moon’s North Pole. It’s reminiscent of an ice cap, except it’s, well, red. On June 21, 2022, scientists at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, Texas, said they think they know how it formed.https://earthsky.org/space/charons-red-cap-atmospheric-surges-methane/
7/5/2022 6:00 PMDeep-space missions are usually one-way trips, and that’s certainly true of NASA’s upcoming Europa Clipper mission, which, after investigating the potential habitability of the icy Jovian moon, will end in an intentional crash. But rather than plunging into Jupiter as had previously been planned, the spacecraft may now crash into Ganymede or Callisto, two of Jupiter’s Galilean moons.https://www.space.com/europa-clipper-might-crash-into-ganymede
7/6/2022 8:00 AMNASA is scheduled to release the first images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope on July 12, 2022. They’ll mark the beginning of the next era in astronomy as Webb – the largest space telescope ever built – begins collecting scientific data that will help answer questions about the earliest moments of the universe and allow astronomers to study exoplanets in greater detail than ever before.https://astronomy.com/news/2022/06/jwst-prepares-for-science-work
7/6/2022 10:00 AMT10
7/6/2022 12:00 PMEnvironmental sensors are a step closer to simultaneously sniffing out multiple gases that could indicate disease or pollution, thanks to a Penn State collaboration. Huanyu “Larry” Cheng, assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics in the College of Engineering, and Lauren Zarzar, assistant professor of chemistry in Eberly College of Science, and their teams combined laser writing and responsive sensor technologies to fabricate the first highly customizable microscale gas sensing devices.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-laser-enable-electronic-nose-multi-gas.html
7/6/2022 2:00 PMChinese planetary scientists and engineers are setting their sights on the outer Solar System and developing new ways to get there, a proposal for a Neptune orbiter reveals.https://www.planetary.org/articles/china-nuclear-neptune-orbiter
7/6/2022 4:00 PMResearchers studying ancient sea bed burrows and trails have discovered that bottom burrowing animals were among the first to bounce back after the end-Permian mass extinction.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-shrimps-worms-animals-recover-largest.html
7/6/2022 6:00 PMUsing NASA’s Swift spacecraft, astronomers have discovered a new cataclysmic variable (CV) through its ultraviolet (UV) bursting activity. The newfound CV, designated TUVO-21acq, was detected as part of the Transient UV Objects Project (TUVO).https://phys.org/news/2022-06-astronomers-cataclysmic-variable.html
7/7/2022 8:00 AMA recent publication from researchers at the University of Kentucky explains the importance of identifying and understanding how differences between tissues and cells alter gene expression without changing the underlying genetic code.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-online-portal-biases-rna-sequences.html
7/7/2022 10:00 AMT10
7/7/2022 12:00 PMIn the world of electricity, copper is king—for now. That could change with new research from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) that is serving up a recipe to increase the conductivity of aluminum, making it economically competitive with copper. This research opens the door to experiments that—if fully realized—could lead to an ultra-conductive aluminum alternative to copper that would be useful in markets beyond transmission lines, revolutionizing vehicles, electronics, and the power grid.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-cooking-alternative-copper-aluminum.html
7/7/2022 2:00 PMOn a drizzly day in July 1920, a Colorado scientist named Junius Henderson was hiking around the Dakota Hogback, a sandstone ridge north of Boulder. There, he spotted a group of Rocky Mountain snails (Oreohelix strigosa) oozing across the ground. Henderson scooped up the mollusks and brought them back to his lab at what is now called the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, carefully preserving his finds.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-microbes-year-old-snail-guts.html
7/7/2022 4:00 PMTwo levels underground, Chicago’s Field Museum has a secret bunker. The sub-basement Collections Resource Center houses millions of biological specimens for scientists around the world to use in their research, including countless bottles and jars containing pickled fish, lizards, and snakes, arranged like a library. Many of these specimens are decades or even centuries old, near-perfectly preserved by a combination of formalin and alcohol. But the process that preserves tissues often destroys or at least makes acquiring DNA for modern studies very difficult, which is bad news for scientists who study genetic relationships between organisms. A new study in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, however, reveals new approaches for getting and maximizing usable DNA from decades-old pickled specimens, and uses these techniques to solve a long-standing mystery about a small snake from the island of Borneo.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-art-dna-decades-old-pickled-snakes.html
7/7/2022 6:00 PMHow many ice ages has the Earth had, and could humans live through one?https://www.space.com/ice-ages-on-earth-could-humans-survive
7/8/2022 8:00 AMAircrafts transport people, ship goods, and perform military operations, but the petroleum-based fuels that power them are in short supply. In research publishing on June 30 in the journal Joule, researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab have found a way to generate an alternative jet fuel by harvesting an unusual carbon molecule produced by the metabolic process of bacteria commonly found in soil.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-bacteria-unusual-triangular-molecule-jet.html
7/8/2022 10:00 AMT10
7/8/2022 12:00 PMAn international team of researchers, led by scientists at the University of Manchester, has developed a fast and economical method of converting methane, or natural gas, into liquid methanol at ambient temperature and pressure. The method takes place under continuous flow over a photo-catalytic material using visible light to drive the conversion.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-holy-grail-catalysisturning-methane-methanol.html
7/8/2022 2:00 PMNASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has awarded $600,000 of additional funding towards a concept that would see swarms of diminutive swimming robots sent to explore oceans on moons or planets throughout the solar system.https://www.space.com/tiny-robot-swarms-may-explore-alien-oceans
7/8/2022 4:00 PMThe eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai submarine volcano in January 2022 was one of the most explosive volcanic events of the modern era, a new study has confirmed.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-tonga-volcano-eruption-powerful-triggering.html
7/8/2022 6:00 PMUniversity of California, Irvine-led researchers have discovered that a signaling molecule called SCUBE3 potently stimulates hair growth and may offer a therapeutic treatment for androgenetic alopecia, a common form of hair loss in both women and men.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-team-molecule-potently-hair-growth.html
7/9/2022 8:00 AMNew genetic research from remote islands in the Pacific offers fresh insights into the ancestry and culture of the world’s earliest seafarers, including family structure, social customs, and the ancestral populations of the people living there today.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-ancient-dna-yields-world-earliest.html
7/9/2022 10:00 AMT10
7/9/2022 12:00 PMUsing new analyses, scientists have just found the last two of the five informational units of DNA and RNA that had yet to be discovered in samples from meteorites. While it is unlikely that DNA could be formed in a meteorite, this discovery demonstrates that these genetic parts are available for delivery and could have contributed to the development of the instructional molecules on early Earth. The discovery, by an international team with NASA researchers, gives more evidence that chemical reactions in asteroids can make some of life’s ingredients, which could have been delivered to ancient Earth by meteorite impacts or perhaps the infall of dust.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/life-blueprint-in-asteroids
7/9/2022 2:00 PMWhen is a thumb not a thumb? When it’s an elongated wrist bone of the giant panda used to grasp bamboo. Through its long evolutionary history, the panda’s hand has never developed a truly opposable thumb and instead evolved a thumb-like digit from a wrist bone, the radial sesamoid. This unique adaptation helps these bears subsist entirely on bamboo despite being bears (members of the order Carnivora, or meat-eaters). In a new paper published in Scientific Reports, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County’s Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology Xiaoming Wang and colleagues report on the discovery of the earliest bamboo-eating ancestral panda to have this “thumb.” Surprisingly, it’s longer than its modern descendants.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-pandas-gave-bamboo-thumbs-million.html
7/9/2022 4:00 PMSome 280 million years ago, before the rise of the Rocky Mountains—or even the dinosaurs—a 2.5-kilometer-wide asteroid smashed into the supercontinent of Pangaea, near the eastern border of present-day Wyoming. The impact’s heat and shock wave would have killed anything within 400 kilometers, making it one of the largest asteroid strikes in North American history.https://www.science.org/content/article/evidence-giant-asteroid-strike-may-be-buried-under-wyoming
7/9/2022 6:00 PMResearchers at North Carolina State University show that an important gene in maize called HPC1 modulates certain chemical processes that contribute to flowering time, and has its origins in “teosinte mexicana,” a precursor to modern-day corn that grows wild in the highlands of Mexico. The findings provide insight into plant evolution and trait selection, and could have implications for corn and other crops’ adaptation to low temperatures.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-gene-maize-high-elevations-cold.html
7/10/2022 8:00 AMBlack holes and galaxies have a complicated relationship. Astronomers think nearly every galaxy hosts a giant black hole in its core. And while those black holes truly are massive — weighing millions, or even billions, of solar masses — they are tiny compared with their home galaxies, reaching less than 1% of the mass of a typical galaxy and a volume a billion times smaller. Despite the huge discrepancy, these massive black holes are capable of exerting an outsize influence, controlling the rate of star formation for billions of years.https://www.space.com/black-holes-and-galaxies-relationship
7/10/2022 10:00 AMT10
7/10/2022 12:00 PMUkrainian mathematician Maryna Viazovska was named last week as one of four recipients of the prestigious Fields Medal, which is often described a the Nobel Prize in mathematics.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-ukrainian-mathematician-awarded-prestigious-fields.html
7/10/2022 2:00 PMThe early 1900s were an exciting time across the world, with rapid advances in the steel, electric and automobile industries. The industrial changes also mark an inflection point in our climate. According to an international team of researchers led by the University of South Florida (USF), the sea level has risen 18 centimeters since the start of the 20th century.https://phys.org/news/2022-06-hidden-caves-mineral-overgrowths-reveal.html
7/10/2022 4:00 PMMany of us know the conventional theory of how the dinosaurs died 66 million years ago: in Earth’s fiery collision with a meteorite, and a following global winter as dust and debris choked the atmosphere. But there was a previous extinction, far more mysterious and less discussed: the one 202 million years ago, which killed off the big reptiles who up until then ruled the planet, and apparently cleared the way for dinosaurs to take over. What caused the so-called Triassic-Jurassic Extinction, and why did dinosaurs thrive when other creatures died?https://phys.org/news/2022-07-dinosaurs-ice-warmth-ancient-mass.html
7/10/2022 6:00 PMAn amateur astronomer found a fossilized surprise in the well-studied sky near the bright Andromeda Galaxy. Skywatcher Giuseppe Donatiello spotted an ultra-faint dwarf galaxy, now dubbed Pegasus V, in archival data from a U.S. Department of Energy camera designed to hunt for dark energy. Intrigued astronomers who heard about his observations then studied the region using a bigger Hawaiian telescope, called Gemini North. Scientists now think that Pegasus V might be a “fossil” of the first galaxies, packed with very old stars.https://www.space.com/fossil-dwarf-galaxy-near-andromeda
7/11/2022 8:00 AMChina’s first successful interplanetary mission has completed mapping the Red Planet more than a year after its arrival.https://www.space.com/china-mars-tianwen-1-mission-complete-map
7/11/2022 10:00 AMWith wires and soda cans, a 12-year-old Malick Ndiaye built a telescope that allows him to see the surface of the Moon.https://www.thespaceacademy.org/2022/07/with-wires-and-soda-cans-12-year-old.html
7/11/2022 12:00 PMA stubborn solar array on the NASA Lucy mission might yield enough to allow the mission to continue its asteroid-hunting mandate with few issues, NASA reports.https://www.space.com/lucy-asteroid-mission-progress-solar-array
7/11/2022 2:00 PMA “peculiar” cloud, as NASA terms it, was found over the Caspian Sea on May 28. The cloud offers an interesting case study of how satellites can detect such phenomena in Earth’s atmosphere.https://www.space.com/peculiar-caspian-sea-cloud-terra
7/11/2022 4:00 PMThe Voyager probes are not fully powering down.https://astronomy.com/news/2022/06/voyager-spacecrafts-powering-down
7/11/2022 6:00 PMResearchers have discovered never-before-seen types of crystal hidden in tiny grains of perfectly preserved meteorite dust. The dust was left behind by a massive space rock that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, nine years ago.https://www.livescience.com/new-crystals-found-in-meteorite-dust
7/12/2022 8:00 AMResearchers using the Green Bank Telescope recently discovered a star dubbed J0740+6620, a neutron star that’s about as massive as they get. Neutron stars are unique, leftover cores of more massive stars. They’re so dense that they’re almost entirely composed of neutrons, which makes for some very strange physics. In J0740+6620’s case, the astronomers were quite lucky: This star exhibited two phenomena that made it easier to spot and study. Examining stars such as this one bring us that much closer to understanding some of the most extreme physics in our universe.https://bigthink.com/hard-science/massive-neutron-star/
7/12/2022 10:00 AMIt’s the ultimate chicken-and-egg conundrum. Life doesn’t work without tiny molecular machines called ribosomes, whose job is to translate genes into proteins. But ribosomes themselves are made of proteins. So how did the first life arise?https://www.science.org/content/article/how-life-could-have-arisen-rna-world
7/12/2022 12:00 PMThe international LHCb collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has observed three never-before-seen particles: a new kind of pentaquark and the first-ever pair of tetraquarks, which includes a new type of tetraquark. The findings, presented today at a CERN seminar, add three new exotic members to the growing list of new hadrons found at the LHC. They will help physicists better understand how quarks bind together into these composite particles.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-lhcb-exotic-particles-pentaquark-first-ever.html
7/12/2022 2:00 PMRare, elliptical craters spotted on two of Saturn’s moons reveal new clues about the satellites’ age and formation, a new study shows.https://www.space.com/saturn-moons-rare-elliptical-craters
7/12/2022 4:00 PMTen years ago, jubilant physicists working on the world’s most powerful science experiment, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, announced the discovery of the Higgs boson — a particle that scientists had been searching for since 1964, when its existence was first predicted.https://www.space.com/higgs-boson-discovery-10th-anniversary
7/12/2022 6:00 PMPowerful radio pulses originating deep in the cosmos can be used to study hidden pools of gas cocooning nearby galaxies, according to a new study.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-cosmic-radio-pulses-probe-hidden.html
7/13/2022 8:00 AMResearchers at the University of Cologne and Masaryk University in Brno (Czech Republic) have discovered the fastest known star, which travels around a black hole in record time. The star, S4716, orbits Sagittarius A*, the black hole in the center of our Milky Way, in four years and reaches a speed of around 8,000 kilometers per second. S4716 comes as close as 100 AU (astronomical unit) to the black hole—a small distance by astronomical standards. One AU corresponds to 149,597,870 kilometers.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-kilometers-star-shortest-orbital-period.html
7/13/2022 10:00 AMA lot of heat gets lost during the conversion of energy. Estimates even put it at more than 70%. However, in thermoelectric materials, such as those being studied at the Institute of Solid State Physics at TU Wien, heat can be converted directly into electrical energy. This effect (the Seebeck effect) can be used in numerous applications in industry but also in everyday life.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-thermoelectrics-electricity.html
7/13/2022 12:00 PMResearchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have definitively linked the function of a specific domain of proteins important in plant-microbe biology to a cancer trigger in humans, knowledge that had eluded scientists for decades.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-scientists-cancer-trigger-spur-drug.html
7/13/2022 2:00 PMScientists from the Institute for Open and Transdisciplinary Research Initiatives at Osaka University discovered a new feature of solar cells made from antimony sulfiodide:sulfide composite, which they termed the wavelength-dependent photovoltaic effect (WDPE). The team determined that changing the color of incident light from visible to ultraviolet induced a reversible change in the output voltage, while leaving the current generated unchanged. This work may lead to new functional light-sensing and imaging devices.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-voltage-wavelength-incident.html
7/13/2022 4:00 PMA team of physicists at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Physics and Astronomy has used mathematical calculations to show that quantum communications across interstellar space should be possible. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review D, the group describes their calculations and also the possibility of extraterrestrial beings attempting to communicate with us using such signaling.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-mathematical-quantum-interstellar-space.html
7/13/2022 6:00 PMThough they are discrete particles, water molecules flow collectively as liquids, producing streams, waves, whirlpools, and other classic fluid phenomena.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-physicists-electron-whirlpools.html
7/14/2022 8:00 AMThe mystery of how the first quasars in the universe formed—something that has baffled scientists for nearly 20 years—has now been solved by a team of astrophysicists whose findings are published in Nature.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-scientists-quasars-universe.html
7/14/2022 10:00 AMA new study of ancient ocean temperatures, published today in Science, shows that the deep North Atlantic Ocean was once 20°C (68 °F)—warmer than the surface of the modern Mediterranean.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-depths-north-atlantic-ocean-mediterranean.html
7/14/2022 12:00 PMA newly released Hubble Space Telescope image shows the rim of a galactic “sombrero” shining in the dark. This galaxy is nicknamed the “Little Sombrero” for its hat-like appearance; its more official name is NGC 7814 or Caldwell 43, depending on the catalog you use.https://www.space.com/little-sombrero-hubble-image-cap
7/14/2022 2:00 PMKen Muneoka is no stranger to disrupting the field of regeneration; for example, in a 2019 ground-breaking publication in Nature, the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (CVMBS) professor proved for the first time that joint regeneration in mammals was possible.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-long-held-beliefs-limb-regeneration.html
7/14/2022 4:00 PMAn international team of researchers has discovered 1.2-billion-year-old groundwater deep in a gold- and uranium-producing mine in Moab Khotsong, South Africa, shedding more light on how life is sustained below the Earth’s surface and how it may thrive on other planets.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-uncover-life-power-earth-oldest.html
7/14/2022 6:00 PMA trio of researchers, two from Queen Mary University of London, the other from the University of Tehran, has found evidence that suggests insects might be able to feel pain. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Matilda Gibbons, Lars Chittka and Sajedeh Sarlak, describe issues they encountered in attempting to find out whether insects feel pain, and the logic they used in showing its possibility.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-evidence-insects-possibly-pain.html
7/15/2022 8:00 AMIf you switch a bit in the memory of a computer and then switch it back again, you have restored the original state. There are only two states that can be called “0 and 1.” However, an amazing effect has now been discovered at TU Wien (Vienna): In a crystal based on oxides of gadolinium and manganese, an atomic switch was found that has to be switched back and forth not just once, but twice, until the original state is reached again. During this double switching-on and switching-off process, the spin of gadolinium atoms performs one full rotation. This is reminiscent of a crankshaft, in which an up-and-down movement is converted into a circular movement.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-four-stroke-atoms.html
7/15/2022 10:00 AMAn international team of scientists featuring Florida State University researchers has developed a model that predicts the spread of vortices in so-called superfluids, work that provides new insight into the physics that govern turbulence in quantum fluid systems such as superfluid neutron stars.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-vortex-superfluids.html
7/15/2022 12:00 PMJune Huh wasn’t interested in mathematics until a chance encounter during his sixth year of college. Now his profound insights connecting combinatorics and geometry have led to math’s highest honor.https://www.quantamagazine.org/june-huh-high-school-dropout-wins-the-fields-medal-20220705/
7/15/2022 2:00 PMThe motion of a tiny number of charged particles may solve a longstanding mystery about thin gas disks rotating around young stars, according to a new study from Caltech.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-solar-faster-mystery-solution.html
7/15/2022 4:00 PMUniversity of Chicago physicists have invented a “quantum flute” that, like the Pied Piper, can coerce particles of light to move together in a way that’s never been seen before.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-scientists-quantum-flute-particles.html
7/15/2022 6:00 PMResearchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Perimeter Institute recently set new constraints on dark photons, which are hypothetical particles and renowned dark matter candidates. Their findings, presented in a paper published in Physical Review Letters, were attained using a new superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) they developed.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-constraints-dark-photons-dielectric-optical.html
7/16/2022 8:00 AMArchaeologically excavated stone tools—some as much as 2.6 million years old—have been hailed as evidence for an early cultural heritage in human evolution. But are these tools proof that our ancestors were already becoming human, both mentally and culturally?https://phys.org/news/2022-07-early-stone-tools-rocket-science.html
7/16/2022 10:00 AMSome say the world is your oyster, but the world—especially human impacts on the environment—can actually be found inside an oyster, according to a new study.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-florida-oysters-toxic-chemicals.html
7/16/2022 12:00 PMAstrophysicists have discovered the fastest known star which is racing around the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The star, designated S4716, completes an orbit around the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) in just around four years. This means that the star is traveling at blisteringly fast speeds of around 18 million mph (29 million kph).https://www.space.com/fastest-star-milky-way-black-hole
7/16/2022 2:00 PMAn early-stage Martian sailplane soared aloft, tethered to a balloon, as engineers ponder the possibilities to expand Red Planet flight.https://www.space.com/mars-sailplane-prototype-soars-flight-test
7/16/2022 4:00 PMUCLA materials scientists and colleagues at the nonprofit scientific research institute SRI International have developed a new material and manufacturing process for creating artificial muscles that are stronger and more flexible than their biological counterparts.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-scientists-durable-material-flexible-artificial.html
7/16/2022 6:00 PMIn a former gold mine a mile underground, inside a titanium tank filled with a rare liquified gas, scientists have begun the search for what so far has been unfindable: dark matter.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-huge-underground-mysterious-dark.html
7/17/2022 8:00 AMOur love affair with chocolate is much older than we thought, and newly discovered traces of cocoa on ancient pots suggest it started in the rainforests of what is now Ecuador some 5300 years ago. That’s nearly 1500 years older than earlier evidence, and it shifts the nexus of cocoa production from Central America to the upper Amazon.https://www.science.org/content/article/world-s-oldest-chocolate-was-made-5300-years-ago-south-american-rainforest
7/17/2022 10:00 AMScientists have long puzzled over the gap in the fossil record that would explain the evolution from invertebrates to vertebrates. Vertebrates, including fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, and humans, share unique features, such as a backbone and a skull. Invertebrates are animals without backbones.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-reveals-yunnanozoans-oldest-stem-vertebrates.html
7/17/2022 12:00 PMOur solar system’s innermost planet is pretty weird.https://www.space.com/27013-strange-mercury-facts-photos.html
7/17/2022 2:00 PMA citizen scientist has searched NSF’s NOIRLab’s catalog of 4 billion celestial objects, known as NOIRLab Source Catalog DR2, to reveal brown dwarfs with companions. His intensive investigation led to the discovery of 34 ultracool dwarf binary systems, nearly doubling previously known samples.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-citizen-scientist-discovery-ultracool-dwarf.html
7/17/2022 4:00 PMThe ability to turn superconductivity off and on with a literal flip of a switch in so-called “magic-angle twisted graphene” has allowed engineers at Caltech to observe an unusual phenomenon that may shed new light on superconductivity in general.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-unusual-superconductivity-trilayer-graphene.html
7/17/2022 6:00 PMFarmers and city managers across the Midwest need to know how heavy summer rains will be to plan planting, fertilizer application and floodwater management, but predicting extreme rain events is difficult, especially months to a season in advance. A new study, published today in AGU’s Geophysical Research Letters, reports how saltier ocean surface thousands of miles away are surprisingly good indicators of heavy summer rains.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-saltier-seas-heavy-summer-midwest.html
7/18/2022 8:00 AMWe can model the motions of planets in the Solar System quite accurately using Newton’s laws of physics. But in the early 1970s, scientists noticed that this didn’t work for disk galaxies—stars at their outer edges, far from the gravitational force of all the matter at their center—were moving much faster than Newton’s theory predicted.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-dark-ditch-favor-theory-gravity.html
7/18/2022 10:00 AMAlthough the Earth has long been studied in detail, some fundamental questions still have to be answered. One of them concerns the formation of our planet, about whose beginnings researchers are still unclear. An international research team led by ETH Zurich and the National Center of Competence in Research PlanetS is now proposing a new answer to this question based on laboratory experiments and computer simulations.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-insights-earth-formation.html
7/18/2022 12:00 PMResearchers in Germany have demonstrated quantum entanglement of two atoms separated by 33 km (20.5 miles) of fiber optics. This is a record distance for this kind of communication and marks a breakthrough towards a fast and secure quantum internet.https://newatlas.com/telecommunications/quantum-entanglement-atoms-distance-record/
7/18/2022 2:00 PMWater is certainly the best-known liquid in the world. It plays a crucial role in all biological and many chemical processes. The water molecules themselves hardly hold any secrets. In school we learn that water consists of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms. We even know the typical obtuse angle that the two O-H legs form with each other. In addition, we know when water boils or freezes and how these phase transitions are related to pressure.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-potential-energy-surfaces.html
7/18/2022 4:00 PMRoyal Ontario Museum revealed new research based on a cache of fossils that contains the brain and nervous system of a half-billion-year-old marine predator from the Burgess Shale called Stanleycaris. Stanleycaris belonged to an ancient, extinct offshoot of the arthropod evolutionary tree called Radiodonta, distantly related to modern insects and spiders. These findings shed light on the evolution of the arthropod brain, vision, and head structure.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-million-year-old-fossilized-brains-stanleycaris-prompt.html
7/18/2022 6:00 PMWhen it comes to graphene, it appears that superconductivity runs in the family.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-physicists-family-robust-superconducting-graphene.html
7/19/2022 8:00 AMA jawbone fragment discovered in northern Spain last month could be the oldest known fossil of a human ancestor found to date in Europe.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-oldest-european-human-fossil-possibly.html
7/19/2022 10:00 AMNASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission scientists expected the surface of aseroid Bennu to be at least as rigid as a gravel pile, but were stunned that after touchdown the surface just came apart.https://www.space.com/dramatic-osiris-rex-touchdown-reveals-surprises-bennu
7/19/2022 12:00 PMStochastic thermodynamics is an emerging area of physics aimed at better understanding and interpreting thermodynamic concepts away from equilibrium. Over the past few years, findings in these fields have revolutionized the general understanding of different thermodynamic processes operating in finite time.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-thermodynamic-geometry-optimize-microscopic-finite-time.html
7/19/2022 2:00 PMMost clouds on Earth are made of water, but beyond our planet they come in many chemical varieties. The top of Jupiter’s atmosphere, for example, is blanketed in yellow-hued clouds made of ammonia and ammonium hydrosulfide. And on worlds outside our solar system, there are clouds composed of silicates, the family of rock-forming minerals that make up over 90% of Earth’s crust. But researchers haven’t been able to observe the conditions under which these clouds of small dust grains form.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-nasa-decipher-distant-planets-clouds.html
7/19/2022 4:00 PMAzure pools rich in magnesium and calcium carbonate but low in phosphorus provide an ideal habitat for ancient bacterial reefs at Cuatro Ciénegas, in the Chihuahuan Desert of Mexico.https://www.science.org/content/article/pools-mexican-desert-are-window-earth-s-early-life
7/19/2022 6:00 PMA team of researchers from University College London, Columbia University and Oxford University has developed a new approach to conducting transcriptomics and has used it to reveal the properties of 35 neuron subtypes in mice. The group has published their research in the journal Nature. Hongkui Zeng and Saskia E. J. de Vries with the Allen Institute for Brain Sciences have published a News & Views piece in the same journal issue outlining the work done by the team.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-approach-transcriptomics-reveals-properties-neuron.html
7/20/2022 8:00 AMOur entire cosmic history is theoretically well-understood, but only because we understand the theory of gravitation that underlies it, and because we know the Universe’s present expansion rate and energy composition. Light will always continue to propagate through this expanding Universe, and we will continue to receive that light arbitrarily far into the future, but it will be limited in time as far as what reaches us. A single equation, the Friedmann equations, can tell us what our past and future history was so long as there are no abrupt, discontinuous changes in what types of energy are present in our Universe.https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/big-bang-beginning-universe/
7/20/2022 10:00 AMPhysicists just took the most detailed image of atoms to date with a device that magnifies images 100 million times.https://www.science.org/content/article/physicists-take-most-detailed-image-atoms-date
7/20/2022 12:00 PMData centers—dedicated spaces for storing, processing and disseminating data—enable everything from cloud computing to video streaming. In the process, they consume a large amount of energy transferring data back and forth inside the center. With demand for data growing exponentially, there is increasing pressure for data centers to become more energy efficient.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-next-generation-centers-energy-efficient.html
7/20/2022 2:00 PMThe first ever exoplanets were discovered 30 years ago around a rapidly rotating star, called a pulsar. Now, astronomers have revealed that these planets may be incredibly rare.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-undead-planets-unusual-conditions-exoplanet.html
7/20/2022 4:00 PMUsing ESA’s XMM-Newton satellite, astronomers from the Columbia University in New York have inspected a peculiar cataclysmic variable system known as Swift J0503.7−2819. Results of the study, presented June 29 on arXiv.org, provide important hints regarding the properties and nature of this variable.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-astronomers-peculiar-cataclysmic-variable.html
7/20/2022 6:00 PMNASA’s next-generation space telescope has a blue-eyed special among its solar system observations. The James Webb Space Telescope will soon turn its attention to two intriguing “ice giants” — Uranus and Neptune — after releasing its first operational images on July 12. Webb’s sharp eyes and deep-space location will be especially valuable in ferreting out details about these two worlds, given only a single spacecraft (Voyager 2) cruised by them briefly in the 1980s.https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-ice-giant-preview
7/21/2022 8:00 AMA next-generation dark matter detector has started operations, already delivering its first results, which show it to be the most sensitive machine of this type on Earth. The machine could help unlock one of the biggest mysteries in physics  —  the nature of dark matter  —  by directly detecting its constituent particles for the first time.https://www.space.com/dark-matter-most-sensitive-detector-first-results
7/21/2022 10:00 AMThere’s far too much dust in the universe, compared with what our calculations predict. This major problem for astronomy, called the “dust budget crisis,” needs to be solved to better predict dust’s crucial role in sheltering stars, birthing planets and hosting molecules key to life as we know it.https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-cosmic-dust-crisis
7/21/2022 12:00 PMThe “most comprehensive studies” of the Higgs boson conducted to date reveal that the particle behaves just as expected and could help unlock some of the greatest mysteries of physics, including the nature of dark matter, scientists say.https://www.space.com/higgs-boson-studies-confirm-standard-model
7/21/2022 2:00 PMAlthough you’ll probably never see them, you can spot them by the tell-tale mounds of sandy soil dotting a field: pocket gophers. Beneath your feet, the gophers continuously create and remold a labyrinth of winding tunnels hundreds of feet long. And, perhaps, tend the world’s most recently discovered farms. Root farms, that is.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-root-farming-gophers-closest-agricultural-relatives.html
7/21/2022 4:00 PMUsing multiple radio telescopes across the world, a team of astronomers from the Cosmic Dawn Center, Copenhagen, have discovered several galaxies in the early universe that, due to massive amounts of dust, were hidden from our sight. The observations allowed the team to measure the temperature and thickness of the dust, demonstrating that this type of galaxies contributed significantly to the total star formation when the universe was only 1/10 of its current age.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-radio-microwaves-reveal-true-nature.html
7/21/2022 6:00 PMIn 2019, astronomers observed the nearest example to date of a star that was shredded, or “spaghettified,” after approaching too close to a massive black hole. That tidal disruption of a sun-like star by a black hole 1 million times more massive than itself took place 215 million light years from Earth. Luckily, this was the first such event bright enough that astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley, could study the optical light from the stellar death, specifically the light’s polarization, to learn more about what happened after the star was torn apart.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-ultimate-fate-star-shredded-black.html
7/22/2022 8:00 AMIn roughly 5 billion years, the Sun will run out of energy and drastically alter the solar system. Oceans will be baked dry. Entire planets will be consumed. And long-icy worlds will finally enjoy their day in the Sun.https://astronomy.com/news/2020/02/the-suns-death-could-mean-new-life-in-the-outer-solar-system
7/22/2022 10:00 AMThe gravitational constant G determines the strength of gravity—the force that makes apples fall to the ground or pulls the Earth in its orbit around the sun. It is part of Isaac Newton’s law of universal gravitation, which he first formulated more than 300 years ago. The constant cannot be derived mathematically; it has to be determined through experiment.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-remeasure-gravitational-constant.html
7/22/2022 12:00 PMProducing biomaterials that match the performance of cartilage and tendons has been an elusive goal for scientists, but a new material created at Cornell demonstrates a promising new approach to mimicking natural tissue.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-soft-tough-biohybrid-material-cartilage.html
7/22/2022 2:00 PMThe same four factors that explain how people change their beliefs on a variety of issues can account for the recent rise in anti-science attitudes, a new review suggests. But politics in modern society have amplified how those factors work, making them a potent force in the growing rejection of science.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-bases-anti-science-beliefsand.html
7/22/2022 4:00 PMResearchers at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science recently discovered rare deep-sea brine pools in the Gulf of Aqaba, a northern extension to the Red Sea. These salty underwater lakes hold secrets into the way oceans on Earth formed millions of years ago, and offer clues to life on other planets.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-rare-deep-sea-brine-pools-red.html
7/22/2022 6:00 PMAn international team of astronomers reports the detection of a new supergiant fast X-ray transient with the Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI) instrument. The newfound transient, designated MAXI J0709−159, was identified in the constellation Canis Majoris and lasted about three hours. The finding was detailed in a paper published July 5 on the arXiv pre-print server.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-supergiant-fast-x-ray-transient.html
7/23/2022 8:00 AMThe evolution of the brain and nervous system in animals has been wound back more than 400 million years, thanks to the examination of fossil remains of ancient lungfish providing a missing link in the emergence of land-living, four-legged animals on Earth.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-ancient-fish-brain-space-yields.html
7/23/2022 10:00 AMAn international team of astronomers has identified only the second and third examples of a rare type of star system comprising two central stars orbiting each other, encompassed by a remarkable disk of gas and dust.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-international-team-astronomers-rare-binary.html
7/23/2022 12:00 PMNeutron stars have the strongest magnetic fields in the universe, and the only way to measure their surface magnetic field directly is to observe the cyclotron absorption lines in their X-ray energy spectra. The Insight-HXMT team has recently discovered a cyclotron absorption line with an energy of 146 keV in the neutron star X-ray binary Swift J0243.6+6124, corresponding to a surface magnetic field of more than 1.6 billion Tesla. After direct measurement of the strongest magnetic field in the universe at about 1 billion Tesla in 2020, the world records for the highest energy cyclotron absorption line and direct measurement of the strongest magnetic field in the universe have been broken.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-strongest-magnetic-field-universe.html
7/23/2022 2:00 PMScientists have figured out why Pluto’s moon Charon wears a red cap. New laboratory work shows that the color results when ultraviolet light and the solar wind interact with hydrocarbons and turn them into a soup of organic compounds dubbed tholins.https://www.space.com/pluto-moon-charon-red-cap-tholins
7/23/2022 4:00 PMAstronomers at the University of Toronto have spotted some of the most elusive stuff in our universe by taking a deep look at the cosmic web, the network of filaments and knots that trace the large-scale distribution of galaxies.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-astronomers-elusive-atoms-universe.html
7/23/2022 6:00 PMPurple sea urchins are munching their way through California’s kelp forests at a speed and scale that have stunned scientists, fishermen and divers alike. But the kelp forests have long been home to red and purple urchins, so it’s clear the three species can get along. Researchers at UC Santa Barbara sought to determine what factors disrupt this harmony.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-scientists-uncover-urchins-california-kelp.html
7/24/2022 8:00 AMWith rising global temperatures and dwindling pollinator populations, food production has become increasingly difficult for the world’s growers.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-scientists-mechanism-responsible-fruit-seed.html
7/24/2022 10:00 AMAstronomers at MIT and elsewhere have detected a strange and persistent radio signal from a far-off galaxy that appears to be flashing with surprising regularity.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-astronomers-radio-heartbeat-billions-light-years.html
7/24/2022 12:00 PMWe can model the motions of planets in the solar system quite accurately using Newton’s laws of physics. But in the early 1970s, scientists noticed that this didn’t work for disk galaxies — stars at their outer edges, far from the gravitational force of all the matter at their center — were moving much faster than Newton’s theory predicted.https://www.space.com/ditch-dark-matter-new-theory-gravity
7/24/2022 2:00 PMScientists can finally explain why some massive stars appear to dance around in the sky even though they are not actually moving: The stars have unusually bubbly guts that cause their surfaces to wobble, thus changing the amount of light they give off, according to a new study.https://www.space.com/dancing-red-supergiant-stars
7/24/2022 4:00 PMThe birthplace of the oldest known Martian meteorite may have been pinpointed on the Red Planet. The findings may reveal clues about the origins of Mars, Earth and the solar system’s other terrestrial planets. In a new study, scientists analyzed the 11-ounce (320 grams) meteorite NWA 7034, nicknamed “Black Beauty,” which was discovered in Morocco in 2011. Like more than 300 other rocks that have fallen to Earth from space, NWA 7034 came from Mars, blasted off the Red Planet by cosmic impacts.https://www.space.com/mars-meteorite-origin-identified
7/24/2022 6:00 PMResearchers at Simon Fraser University have made a crucial breakthrough in the development of quantum technology.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-photonic-link-enable-all-silicon-quantum.html
7/25/2022 8:00 AMAstronomers have discovered a repeating fast radio burst lasting 1,000 times longer than similar events that may come from a distant neutron star “on steroids.”https://www.space.com/fast-radio-burst-cosmic-heartbeat-chime
7/25/2022 10:00 AMThere is a galaxy spinning like a record in the early universe — far earlier than any others have been seen twirling around. Astronomers have spotted signs of rotation in the galaxy MACS1149-JD1, JD1 for short, which sits so far away that its light takes 13.3 billion years to reach Earth. “The galaxy we analyzed, JD1, is the most distant example of a rotational galaxy,” says astronomer Akio Inoue of Waseda University in Tokyo.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/galaxy-most-distant-rotating-light-13-billion-years-ago-big-bang
7/25/2022 12:00 PMSometime around 400 million years after the birth of our universe, the first stars began to form. The universe’s so-called dark ages came to an end and a new light-filled era began. More and more galaxies began to take shape and served as factories for churning out new stars, a process that reached a peak about 4 billion years after the Big Bang.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-ocean-galaxies-awaits-comap-radio.html
7/25/2022 2:00 PMNASA’s Mars rover Perseverance has collected its 10th tiny rock sample as it continues exploring the Red Planet looking for fragments of Martian soil that might harbor traces of past life, which a future mission might deliver to Earth.https://www.space.com/perseverance-mars-sample-ten-collected
7/25/2022 4:00 PMComet K2, one of the most distant ‘active’ comets ever discovered, is swinging past our planet this week as it makes its first ever journey from the outermost reaches of the solar system toward the sun. Astronomers are watching the mysterious ice ball in awe, making new and frequently surprising discoveries every step of the way.https://www.space.com/comet-k2-surprising-scientists-since-discovery
7/25/2022 6:00 PMAn international team of physicists has developed a new technique that allows researchers to study the interactions between neutrons inside of an atom. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describe their laser spectroscopy measurement technique and how it can be used.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-technique-physicists-interactions-neutrons-atom.html
7/26/2022 8:00 AMAs our devices become smaller, faster, more energy efficient, and capable of holding larger amounts of data, spintronics may continue that trajectory. Whereas electronics is based on the flow of electrons, spintronics is based on the spin of electrons.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-electron-room-temperature-devices-efficient.html
7/26/2022 10:00 AMNew findings show that Earth-size planets may be even less likely to survive the violent conditions at the end of some stars’ lives than previously believed. This means that the first exoplanet discovered outside the solar system 30 years ago may be far weirder than we realized.https://www.space.com/earth-like-planets-cosmic-graveyards-pulsars
7/26/2022 12:00 PMHuman and machine intelligence worked together to find 40,000 ring galaxies, scientists at the National Astronomy Meeting will announce this week. Dr. Mike Walmsley of the University of Manchester and the Galaxy Zoo collaboration will present the new work, describing how this “cyborg” approach measured the shapes of millions of galaxies.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-human-machine-intelligence-galaxies.html
7/26/2022 2:00 PMHighly energetic and difficult to detect, neutrinos travel billions of light years before reaching our planet. Although it is known that these elementary particles come from the depths of our universe, their precise origin is still unknown. An international research team, led by the University of Würzburg and the University of Geneva (UNIGE), is shedding light on one aspect of this mystery: neutrinos are thought to be born in blazars, galactic nuclei fed by supermassive black holes.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-discovery-extragalactic-neutrino-factories.html
7/26/2022 4:00 PMMore details are emerging about China’s potential mission to Venus as part of the country’s expanding space exploration program. The proposed mission, called the Venus Volcano Imaging and Climate Explorer (VOICE), would launch in 2026 and arrive in orbit around the hottest and brightest planet in the solar system in 2027, according to details from a July 9 meeting to discuss the mission.https://www.space.com/china-venus-mission-details
7/26/2022 6:00 PMAn international team of astronomers has conducted an astrometric and photometric wide-field study of the open cluster Messier 37. As a result, the researchers completed a comprehensive catalog of more than 200,000 sources in the field of Messier 37 and identified the hottest white dwarf candidate members of this cluster.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-astronomers-cluster-messier.html
7/27/2022 8:00 AMThe past is a foreign galaxy, and NASA’s brand-new observatory will be our tour guide. On July 11, President Joe Biden released the first official image from the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb or JWST): a stunningly sharp deep field view into a distant past. But there’s more time-traveling to come, as scientists hope the observatory will allow us to see some of the universe’s first galaxies.https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-earliest-galaxies
7/27/2022 10:00 AMThe James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or Webb) is already confounding expectations with a surprising new discovery: It detected evidence for clouds on an exoplanet that was thought to have completely clear skies.https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-alien-planet-clouds
7/27/2022 12:00 PMEntomophthora muscae is a widespread, pathogenic fungus that survives by infecting common houseflies with deadly spores. Now, research shows that the fungus has a unique tactic to ensure its survival. The fungus “bewitches” male houseflies and drives them to necrophilia with the fungal-infected corpses of dead females.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-zombie-fungus-lures-healthy-male.html
7/27/2022 2:00 PMRed lightning, also known as a “sprite”, is an intriguing weather phenomenon associated with certain very intense thunderstorms. While an ordinary lightning flash extends downward from the clouds to the ground, a sprite shoots way up into the upper reaches of the atmosphere.https://www.space.com/red-lightning
7/27/2022 4:00 PMAt the University of California, Berkeley, a mission to decode an unknown form of communication is underway. Linguist Gasper Begus and computer scientist Shafi Goldwasser are part of an international team of researchers attempting interspecies communication with sperm whales by deciphering their deafening, 200-plus decibel clicking sounds, or codas.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-converse-ocean-brainiest-eco-predators.html
7/27/2022 6:00 PMJohns Hopkins Medicine scientists report they have probed the atomic structure of proteins to add to evidence that the wobbles, shakes and quivers of proteins play a critical role in their ability to function. The findings of the research may help scientists design new drugs that can modify or disrupt the intricate “dances” of proteins to alter their functions.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-protein-wiggle-jiggle.html
7/28/2022 8:00 AMWhen continental plates smashed together about 12 million years ago, they didn’t just raise new mountains in central Europe—they created the largest lake the world has ever known. This vast body of water—the Paratethys Sea—came to host species found nowhere else, including the world’s smallest whales. Two new studies reveal how the ancient body of water took shape and how surrounding changes helped give rise to elephants, giraffes, and other large mammals that wander the planet today.https://www.science.org/content/article/rise-and-fall-world-s-largest-lake
7/28/2022 10:00 AMThe quantum vibrations in atoms hold a miniature world of information. If scientists can accurately measure these atomic oscillations, and how they evolve over time, they can hone the precision of atomic clocks as well as quantum sensors, which are systems of atoms whose fluctuations can indicate the presence of dark matter, a passing gravitational wave, or even new, unexpected phenomena.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-physicists-harness-quantum-reversal-vibrating.html
7/28/2022 12:00 PMUsing NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has detected two new extrasolar planets. The newfound alien worlds, designated TOI-5152 b and TOI-5153 b, are the size of Jupiter but about three times more massive than the solar system’s biggest planet. The finding is reported July 8 on the arXiv pre-print repository.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-massive-jupiter-sized-exoplanets-tess.html
7/28/2022 2:00 PMA team of international experts who are known for debunking black hole discoveries have found a dormant stellar-mass black hole in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy that neighbors the Milky Way. The team includes Kareem El-Badry—nicknamed by fellow astronomers as the “black hole destroyer”—of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA).https://phys.org/news/2022-07-black-hole-police-dormant-milky.html
7/28/2022 4:00 PMA small space rock has proven to have a big effect on NASA’s newly operational deep-space telescope.https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-micrometeoroid-damage
7/28/2022 6:00 PMSince they were first discovered in the 1980s, retrons have puzzled researchers who simply wanted to know what these bacterial DNA sequences actually did. Now, EMBL scientists have identified that some retrons encode toxin proteins, which they keep inactive with the help of a small DNA fragment. When a bacterial virus (phage) attacks bacteria, the small DNA can sense the attack and unleash the toxin.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-flips-retron-toxins-viral.html
7/29/2022 8:00 AMResearchers may have found a new way to detect signals from advanced alien civilizations. Einstein’s theory of general relativity tells us that the gravitational pull of massive celestial objects can bend light. When it does so, it focuses and magnifies light like a telescope in an effect called gravitational lensing. But visible light might not be the only thing that is affected by this process.https://www.space.com/interstellar-eavesdropping-via-gravitational-lensing
7/29/2022 10:00 AMFinding a new, high-temperature, off-axis hydrothermal vent field on the floor of the Pacific Ocean at 2,550 meters depth could change scientists’ understanding of the impact that such ocean-floor vent systems have on the life and chemistry of Earth’s oceans.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-off-axis-high-temperature-hydrothermal-field-east.html
7/29/2022 12:00 PMEvolution has long been viewed as a rather random process, with the traits of species shaped by chance mutations and environmental events—and therefore largely unpredictable.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-hints-evolution.html
7/29/2022 2:00 PMThe oldest fossils of animals resembling a fish date back between 518 million and 530 million years ago. Discovered in China and called Haikouichthys, these animals were about an inch long (2.5 cm) and had a head with seven to eight slits at its base that looked like gills. They also had a distinct spine surrounded by muscles.https://theconversation.com/when-did-the-first-fish-live-on-earth-and-how-do-scientists-figure-out-the-timing-185828
7/29/2022 4:00 PMShockwaves caused by asteroids colliding with Earth create materials with a range of complex carbon structures, which could be used for advancing future engineering applications, according to an international study led by UCL and Hungarian scientists.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-asteroid-impacts-diamond-materials-exceptionally.html
7/29/2022 6:00 PMChinese launch services company CAS Space has signed a cooperation agreement with a giant state-owned travel company in an apparent boost for fledgling space tourism efforts in China.https://www.space.com/china-space-tourism-launch-startup
7/30/2022 8:00 AMA team of researchers with affiliations to multiple institutions in the U.S. has found that the metal content of Fermi bubble high-velocity clouds does not match with material in the Milky Way’s galactic center, suggesting that at least some of the material comes from somewhere else. In their paper, the group describes their analysis of the makeup of the clouds and their conclusions.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-analysis-milky-fermi-high-velocity-clouds.html
7/30/2022 10:00 AMMetamaterial interface waveguides can confine and guide electromagnetic (EM) waves, which has attractive potential in integrated photonics physics and wireless devices, from radio frequencies to optical bands. The energy flow in waveguides can be fully controlled by sorting the near-field light waves according to their handedness (chirality), which determines the direction of energy transmission. Chirality sorting is an important process to develop in the field of chiral photonics. In the future, chiral-sorting metadevices may be fully digitized and programmable, so that reconfigurable unidirectional transmission routes and scattering performance of the artificial structures can be controlled simultaneously.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-chiral-sources-metamaterial-interface-waveguides.html
7/30/2022 12:00 PMAstronomers have reconstructed the final fate of stellar material that was destroyed and partially consumed by a massive black hole.https://www.space.com/black-hole-star-death-gas-cloud-clues
7/30/2022 2:00 PMJust like honey slowly dripping from a spoon, parts of the rocky outermost layer of Earth’s shell are continuously sinking into the more fluid layer of the planet’s mantle over the course of millions of years. Known as lithospheric dripping—named for the fragmenting of rocky material that makes up Earth’s crust and upper mantle—the process results in significant deformations at the surface such as basins, folding of the crust and irregular elevations.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-earth-crust-beneath-andes-mountains.html
7/30/2022 4:00 PMBy shining a laser pulse sequence inspired by the Fibonacci numbers at atoms inside a quantum computer, physicists have created a remarkable, never-before-seen phase of matter. The phase has the benefits of two time dimensions despite there still being only one singular flow of time.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-strange-phase-quantum-dimensions.html
7/30/2022 6:00 PMNASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have new details to share on how they will bring pieces of Mars to Earth, and they’ll share their plans next week. The milestone project aims to bring Martian samples gathered by the Perseverance rover to Earth as early as 2033. The goal is to allow scientists to scrutinize the samples for any signs of ancient Martian life, as well as information about how the Red Planet evolved over the eons.https://www.space.com/mars-sample-return-mission-briefing-webcast-july-2022
7/31/2022 8:00 AMResearchers have designed a fuel production system that uses water, carbon dioxide (CO2), and sunlight to produce aviation fuel.https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-all-in-one-solar-powered-tower-carbon-neutral-jet.html
7/31/2022 10:00 AMWhen it comes to looking for asteroids, we have a blind spot. It may seem counterintuitive, but the most important asteroid discoveries are now being made in twilight, when astronomers are able to look close to the horizon — and close to the sun — for little-known asteroids that orbit inside the orbits of Earth, Venus and even Mercury.https://www.space.com/asteroid-hunting-twilight-surveys
7/31/2022 12:00 PMAstronomers think that a new observation technique relying on the detection of faint radio signals will allow them to see the first stars that formed in the middle of thick hydrogen clouds shortly after the birth of the universe.https://www.space.com/oldest-stars-in-universe-radio-astronomy-technique
7/31/2022 2:00 PMThere are many in Mars exploration circles that see Valles Marineris as a “tell all” place, ripe for human exploration that can uncover the planet’s history and its capacity to sustain microbial life.https://www.space.com/mars-grand-canyon-valles-marineris-exploration
7/31/2022 4:00 PMAstronomers have detected a triple star system that is unlike any that has been seen before. The unusual trio of stars is much more massive and closely squeezed together than a typical triple system, which may be because the stellar triplets used to have a fourth sibling before one of the others gobbled it up.https://www.space.com/massive-triple-star-system
7/31/2022 6:00 PMA fresh image based on brand-new deep-space data appears to show a wormhole spinning before our very eyes. The appropriately named “Phantom Galaxy” glows eerily in a new image by Judy Schmidt based on James Webb Space Telescope data collected nearly a million miles away from our planet using the observatory’s mid-infrared instrument (MIRI).https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-phantom-galaxy-image
8/1/2022 8:00 AMA team of researchers with the Warsaw Mummy Project, has announced on their webpage that a mummy in their collection that has come to be known as the Mysterious Lady may have had nasopharyngeal cancer. The mummy, which made headlines last year when researchers discovered she had been pregnant at the time of her death, was found in Thebes (now called Luxor) in Egypt sometime in the early part of the 19th century and was subsequently donated to the University of Warsaw in 1826. The sarcophagus holding the mummy was only recently opened for study.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-mummy-mysterious-lady-nose-throat.html
8/1/2022 10:00 AMT 10
8/1/2022 12:00 PMA small international team of researchers has developed a way to synthesize tetrodotoxin (TTX) using far fewer steps than prior methods. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their process and the steps they took to improve its efficiency.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-concise-tetrodotoxin.html
8/1/2022 2:00 PMA European team of astronomers led by Professor Kalliopi Dasyra of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, under participation of Dr. Thomas Bisbas, University of Cologne modeled several emission lines in Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and Very Large Telescope (VLT) observations to measure the gas pressure in both jet-impacted clouds and ambient clouds. With these unprecedented measurements, published recently in Nature Astronomy, they discovered that the jets significantly change the internal and external pressure of molecular clouds in their path.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-supermassive-black-hole-star-formation.html
8/1/2022 4:00 PMA professor emeritus at Tohoku University has unearthed evidence pointing to a strong relationship between the magnitude of mass extinctions and global temperature changes in geologic times.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-bigger-temperature-larger-extinction-event.html
8/1/2022 6:00 PMAs early as 7,400 years ago, Siberian dogs had evolved to be far smaller than wolves, making them more dependent on humans for food including sea mammals and fish trapped below the ice.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-ancient-siberian-dogs-humans-seafood.html
8/2/2022 8:00 AMA new study refutes a provocative claim made earlier this year that fossils classified as the dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex represent three separate species. The rebuttal, published today in the journal Evolutionary Biology and led by paleontologists at the American Museum of Natural History and Carthage College, finds that the earlier proposal lacks sufficient evidence to split up the iconic species.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-refutes-rex-species.html
8/2/2022 10:00 AMT 10
8/2/2022 12:00 PMA University of Massachusetts Amherst undergraduate student has contributed significant work regarding the growth of stars and black holes, providing key insight into how they are linked. This new information will allow the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to more efficiently untangle how, exactly, galaxies work.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-galaxies-evolve-college-student-link.html
8/2/2022 2:00 PMA pair of researchers at Virginia Tech is suggesting that it should be possible to use a low-energy antineutrino reactor-off method set between submarine patrols to by-pass the need for onboard access by inspectors. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, Bernadette Cogswell and Patrick Huber describe a means for safeguarding nuclear fuel used for naval propulsion systems on vessels around the world.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-antineutrino-reactor-off-method-submarine-patrols.html
8/2/2022 4:00 PMWhen studying a complex system, scientists identify smaller pieces called subsystems that they can make sense of. By studying subsystems and the correlations between them, they reconstruct an understanding of the whole.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-theory-quantum-subsystems.html
8/2/2022 6:00 PMThere is promising new work underway to pursue a deep space robotic interstellar mission. Called Interstellar Probe, this venture could capture a unified view of our heliosphere, out into nearby interstellar space. All of that sounds exceedingly lofty, ambitious, and tough-to-do.https://www.space.com/interstellar-probe-johns-hopkins-apl-nasa-sls
8/3/2022 8:00 AMPlanetary scientists from Rice University, NASA’s Johnson Space Center and the California Institute of Technology have an answer to a mystery that’s puzzled the Mars research community since NASA’s Curiosity rover discovered a mineral called tridymite in Gale Crater in 2016.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-explosive-volcanic-eruption-rare-mineral.html
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8/3/2022 12:00 PMRice University chemical engineers have improved their design for a light-powered catalyst that rapidly breaks down PFOA, one of the world’s most problematic “forever chemical” pollutants. Michael Wong and his students made the surprising discovery in 2020 that boron nitride, a commercially available powder that’s commonly used in cosmetics, could destroy 99% of PFOA, or perfluorooctanoic acid, in water samples within just a few hours when it was exposed to ultraviolet light with a wavelength of 254 nanometers.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-catalyst-chemicals-sunlight.html
8/3/2022 2:00 PMA new study shows that nickel oxide superconductors, which conduct electricity with no loss at higher temperatures than conventional superconductors do, contain a type of quantum matter called charge density waves, or CDWs, that can accompany superconductivity.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-nickel-oxide-superconductors.html
8/3/2022 4:00 PMBright turquoise plumes ripple through the Milky Way’s companion galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, like waves in the ocean in a spellbinding new view shared by NASA.https://www.space.com/hubble-space-telescope-image-large-magellanic-cloud
8/3/2022 6:00 PMIt turns out your life might actually flash before your eyes when you die — or at least that’s what some researchers are suggesting in a new first-of-a-kind paper that revealed the brain activity of a dying person.https://futurism.com/neoscope/brain-activity-dying-person
8/4/2022 8:00 AMYou can find the molecule phosphine in some interesting places: insecticides, penguin tummies, and possibly the clouds of Venus.https://www.planetary.org/articles/life-on-venus-new-updates
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8/4/2022 12:00 PMEven NASA’s next-generation space observatory can’t manage to see supermassive black holes directly, but that doesn’t mean astronomers can’t use its data to better understand the mysterious behemoths.https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-first-supermassive-black-holes
8/4/2022 2:00 PMQuantum computers, devices that exploit quantum phenomena to perform computations, could eventually help tackle complex computational problems faster and more efficiently than classical computers. These devices are commonly based on basic units of information known as quantum bits, or qubits.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-alternative-superconducting-qubit-high-quantum.html
8/4/2022 4:00 PMThe Moon isn’t necessarily there if you don’t look at it. So says quantum mechanics, which states that what exists depends on what you measure. Proving reality is like that usually involves the comparison of arcane probabilities, but physicists in China have made the point in a clearer way. They performed a matching game in which two players leverage quantum effects to win every time—which they can’t if measurements merely reveal reality as it already exists.https://www.science.org/content/article/reality-doesn-t-exist-until-you-measure-it-quantum-parlor-trick-confirms
8/4/2022 6:00 PMGraphene scientists from The University of Manchester have created a novel “nano-petri dish” using two-dimensional (2D) materials to create a new method of observing how atoms move in liquid.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-graphene-scientists-capture-images-atoms.html
8/5/2022 8:00 AMNASA is launching two more mini helicopters to Mars in its effort to return Martian rocks and soil samples to Earth. Under the plan announced Wednesday, NASA’s Perseverance rover will do double duty and transport the cache to the rocket that will launch them off the red planet a decade from now.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-nasa-choppers-mars.html
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8/5/2022 12:00 PMPrehistoric people in Europe were consuming milk thousands of years before humans evolved the genetic trait allowing us to digest the milk sugar lactose as adults, finds a new study. The research, published in Nature, mapped pre-historic patterns of milk use over the last 9,000 years, offering new insights into milk consumption and the evolution of lactose tolerance.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-famine-disease-drove-evolution-lactose.html
8/5/2022 2:00 PMGeologists have found the fossil of the earliest known animal predator. The 560-million-year-old specimen is the first of its kind, but it is related to the group that includes corals, jellyfish and anemones living on the planet today.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-million-year-old-fossil-earliest-animal-predator.html
8/5/2022 4:00 PMBlack holes with varying light signatures but that were thought to be the same objects being viewed from different angles are actually in different stages of the life cycle, according to a study led by Dartmouth researchers.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-space-clearest-life-supermassive-black.html
8/5/2022 6:00 PMThe James Webb Space Telescope’s spectacular image of the deep infrared universe has uncovered 42 new, lensed images of galaxies and revealed in unprecedented depth the shape of the lens, which may eventually help us to see the very first galaxies.https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-deep-field-science
8/6/2022 8:00 AMAncient genomes from the herpes virus that commonly causes lip sores—and currently infects some 3.7 billion people globally—have been uncovered and sequenced for the first time by an international team of scientists led by the University of Cambridge.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-prehistoric-roots-cold-sore-virus.html
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8/6/2022 12:00 PMAn ancient metal used for its microbial properties is the basis for a materials-based solution to disinfection. A team of scientists from Ames National Laboratory, Iowa State University, and University at Buffalo developed an antimicrobial spray that deposits a layer of copper nanowires onto high-touch surfaces in public spaces. The spray contains copper nanowires (CuNWs) or copper-zinc nanowires (CuZnNWs) and can form an antimicrobial coating on a variety of surfaces. This research was initiated by the COVID-19 pandemic, but the findings have wider-reaching applications.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-scientists-copper-nanowires-combat-diseases.html
8/6/2022 2:00 PMA team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Australia working with one colleague from Sweden and another from Spain, has obtained recorded evidence of rays generating sound. In their paper published in the journal Ecology, the researchers describe the noises and how the recordings were made.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-evidence-stingrays-noise.html
8/6/2022 4:00 PMNew research has revealed that high-energy neutrinos and cosmic rays that bombard the Earth from deep space originate in blazars  —  actively galactic nuclei (AGN) that lurk at the center of galaxies and are powered by supermassive black holes.https://www.space.com/neutrino-factories-blazars-cosmic-rays
8/6/2022 6:00 PMSupermassive black holes can produce powerful jets when shredding nearby stars. Now, astronomers are seeing secondary bursts months or years after the fact.https://www.science.org/content/article/radio-bursts-zombie-black-holes-excite-astronomers
8/7/2022 8:00 AMScientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory used neutron scattering to determine whether a specific material’s atomic structure could host a novel state of matter called a spiral spin liquid. By tracking tiny magnetic moments known as “spins” on the honeycomb lattice of a layered iron trichloride magnet, the team found the first 2D system to host a spiral spin liquid.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-magnetic-quantum-material-broadens-platform.html
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8/7/2022 12:00 PMUsing the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), European astronomers have investigated a peculiar star cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), known as KMHK 1762.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-astronomers-star-cluster-kmhk-large.html
8/7/2022 2:00 PMAstronomers are now discovering record-breaking distant galaxies by the dozen while sifting through the treasure trove of data now being collected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or Webb). Among them are several galaxies dating back to just over 200 million years after the Big Bang.https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-new-most-distant-galaxies
8/7/2022 4:00 PMEvery moment in our bodies’ cells, countless activities vital to life occur thanks to enzymes. These special proteins act as catalysts by accelerating the pace and improving the selectivity of chemical reactions without undergoing permanent changes themselves. Beyond their indispensable role in biology, enzymes are also critical for myriad processes in the food, pharmaceutical, agriculture, and cosmetics industries.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-electric-fields-unravel-enzymes.html
8/7/2022 6:00 PMIs there now at long last some plausible theoretical basis for the molecular origins and carriers of at least some of the most prominent unidentified infrared emission (UIE) bands that have mystified astronomers for decades?https://phys.org/news/2022-07-infrared-spectra-highly-positively-c60.html
8/8/2022 8:00 AMFour billion years ago, the Earth looked very different than it does today, devoid of life and covered by a vast ocean. Over the course of millions of years, in that primordial soup, life emerged. Researchers have long theorized how molecules came together to spark this transition. Now, scientists at Scripps Research have discovered a new set of chemical reactions that use cyanide, ammonia and carbon dioxide—all thought to be common on the early earth—to generate amino acids and nucleic acids, the building blocks of proteins and DNA.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-scientists-life-chemical-reactions.html
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8/8/2022 12:00 PMQuantum computing, a field that relies on the principles of quantum mechanics to calculate outcomes, has the potential to perform tasks too complex for traditional computers and to do so at high speeds, making it in some ways the new frontier for science and engineering. To get to the point where quantum computers can meet their expected performance potential, the development of large-scale quantum processors and quantum memories is needed. Precise control of qubits—or quantum bits, the basic building blocks of quantum computers—is critical to do this, but methods of controlling qubits have limitations for massive high-density wiring with high precision.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-method-qubits-advance-quantum.html
8/8/2022 2:00 PMPowerful storms around the north pole of Jupiter swirl in stunning new images captured by NASA’s Juno probe during its close approach to the giant planet on July 5. The storms reach depths of over 30 miles (50 kilometers) in the turbulent atmosphere of Jupiter and are hundreds of miles wide, NASA said in a statement(opens in new tab). Scientists are studying these storms to understand what drives their formation and gives them their striking and unique features.https://www.space.com/jupiter-mesmerizing-storms-north-pole-juno-images
8/8/2022 4:00 PMResearchers have discovered a significant and previously unknown mechanism that many bacteria use to resist antibiotics. Using a combination of computation and physical observation in the laboratory, the researchers have unraveled a sophisticated process that some commonly occurring bacteria use to save themselves from the rifamycin class of antibiotics, which occur naturally and are also manufactured to treat infectious diseases.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-sophisticated-mechanism-bacteria-resist-antibiotics.html
8/8/2022 6:00 PMA new copper coating that kills bacteria quicker and in greater amounts than current formulations could soon be available for hospitals and other high-traffic facilities. Although current formulations made of pure copper are antibacterial and self-sanitizing, they kill certain types of bacteria with a thicker cell wall (Gram-positive bacteria), more slowly than bacteria with a thinner cell wall (Gram-negative).https://phys.org/news/2022-07-copper-coating-superbug-fighter.html
8/9/2022 8:00 AMNew evidence from Antarctica shows that toxic ‘fluorinated forever chemicals’ have increased markedly in the remote environment in recent decades and scientists believe CFC-replacements could be among likely sources.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-chemicals-antarctica.html
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8/9/2022 12:00 PMThe moon’s surface is pockmarked with hundreds of little pits, each about the size of a large building, and it may not be just the pits’ size that would feel familiar to an astronaut. Now, scientists have measured the temperature inside one of those pits at a temperate 63 degrees Fahrenheit (17 degrees Celsius). The mild conditions are a sign that such pits, which can be up to 490 feet (150 meters) across, could offer future astronauts and moon-dwellers shelter from the extreme conditions on the moon’s surface.https://www.space.com/moon-exploration-lunar-pits-stably-temperate
8/9/2022 2:00 PMThe discovery of an exceptional prehistoric site containing the remains of animals that lived in a tropical sea has been made in a farmer’s field in Gloucestershire. Discovered beneath a field grazed by an ancient breed of English Longhorn cattle, the roughly 183-million-year-old fossils are stunningly well preserved like they were frozen in time.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-jurassic-marine-world-unearthed-farmer.html
8/9/2022 4:00 PMNeanderthals are the closest relatives to modern humans. Comparisons with them can therefore provide fascinating insights into what makes present-day humans unique, for example regarding the development of the brain. The neocortex, the largest part of the outer layer of the brain, is unique to mammals and crucial for many cognitive capacities. It expanded dramatically during human evolution in species ancestral to both Neanderthals and modern humans, resulting that both Neanderthals and modern humans having brains of similar sizes. However, almost nothing is known about how modern human and Neanderthal brains may have differed in terms of their development and function.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-difference-brain-differs-neanderthals-modern.html
8/9/2022 6:00 PMOn August 20, 1977, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft launched to space. Its twin, Voyager 1, launched 16 days later. Today, they are not only the most distant man-made objects — at 12 billion and 14.5 billion miles (19.3 billion and 23.3 billion kilometers) away from Earth, respectively — but also NASA’s longest-operating mission, continuing to send back data from their interstellar journeys toward the edge of the solar system as they approach their 45th birthdays.https://www.space.com/voyager-spacecraft-power-update-july-2022
8/10/2022 8:00 AMA roadmap for the future direction of quantum simulation has been set out in a paper co-authored at the University of Strathclyde. Quantum computers are hugely powerful devices with a capacity for speed and calculation which is well beyond the reach of classical, or binary, computing. Instead of a binary system of zeroes and ones, it operates through superpositions, which may be zeroes, ones or both at the same time.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-roadmap-future-quantum-simulation.html
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8/10/2022 12:00 PMA parsec is a unit of distance that is often used by astronomers as an alternative to the light-year, just as kilometers can be used as an alternative to miles. Sci-fi franchises such as “Star Wars” have been known to misuse the word “parsec”, mistakenly describing it as a measurement of time or speed.https://www.space.com/parsec
8/10/2022 2:00 PMAfter being installed on the exterior of the International Space Station, NASA’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) mission has provided its first view of Earth. The milestone, called “first light,” took place at 7:51 p.m. PDT (10:51 p.m. EDT) on July 27 as the space station passed over Western Australia.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-nasa-mineral-detector.html
8/10/2022 4:00 PMAstronomers have created the largest ever 3D map of 1 million distant galaxies otherwise obscured by the Milky Way’s dwarf galaxy neighbors, the Magellanic Clouds.https://www.space.com/map-galaxies-hidden-by-magellanic-clouds
8/10/2022 6:00 PMMore than 1,000 years after his death in what is now Poland, a European king whose nickname lives on through wireless technology is at the center of an archaeological dispute. Chronicles from the Middle Ages say King Harald “Bluetooth” Gormsson of Denmark acquired his nickname courtesy of a tooth, probably dead, that looked bluish. One chronicle from the time also says the Viking king was buried in Roskilde, in Denmark, in the late 10th century.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-danish-king-gave-bluetooth-poland.html
8/11/2022 8:00 AMAbout three years ago, Wolfgang “Wolfi” Mittig and Yassid Ayyad went looking for the universe’s missing mass, better known as dark matter, in the heart of an atom. Their expedition didn’t lead them to dark matter, but they still found something that had never been seen before, something that defied explanation. Well, at least an explanation that everyone could agree on.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-halos-dark-recipe-discovery.html
8/11/2022 10:00 AMThe development of high-speed strobe-flash photography in the 1960s by the late MIT professor Harold “Doc” Edgerton allowed us to visualize events too fast for the eye—a bullet piercing an apple, or a droplet hitting a pool of milk.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-scientists-capture-first-ever-view-hidden.html
8/11/2022 12:00 PMEnergy, mass, velocity. These three variables make up Einstein’s iconic equation E=MC2. But how did Einstein know about these concepts in the first place? A precursor step to understanding physics is identifying relevant variables. Without the concept of energy, mass, and velocity, not even Einstein could discover relativity. But can such variables be discovered automatically? Doing so could greatly accelerate scientific discovery.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-roboticists-alternative-physics.html
8/11/2022 2:00 PMMiners in Angola have unearthed a rare pure pink diamond that is believed to be the largest found in 300 years, the Australian site operator announced Wednesday. A 170 carat pink diamond—dubbed The Lulo Rose—was discovered at Lulo mine in the country’s diamond-rich northeast and is among the largest pink diamonds ever found, the Lucapa Diamond Company said in a statement to investors.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-miners-unearth-pink-diamond-believed.html
8/11/2022 4:00 PMFossils of small plesiosaurs, long-necked marine reptiles from the age of dinosaurs, have been found in a 100-million year old river system that is now Morocco’s Sahara Desert. This discovery suggests some species of plesiosaur, traditionally thought to be sea creatures, may have lived in freshwater.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-plesiosaur-fossils-sahara-werent-marine.html
8/11/2022 6:00 PMResearch drawing on the quantum “anti-butterfly effect” solves a longstanding experimental problem in physics and establishes a method for benchmarking the performance of quantum computers.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-anti-butterfly-effect-enables-benchmarking-quantum.html
8/12/2022 8:00 AMThe European Space Agency’s (ESA) experimental moon satnav mission Lunar Pathfinder will fly a NASA-built instrument that will explore the shape and structure of Earth’s celestial companion in greater detail than before.https://www.space.com/nasa-moon-lunar-pathfinder-satnav-mission
8/12/2022 10:00 AMRussia has its eyes on a space station of its own. The nation announced this week that it intends to pull out of the International Space Station (ISS) consortium after 2024. The timing of that move is uncertain, but Russia wants it to dovetail with the readiness of the planned Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS).https://www.space.com/russian-space-station-ross-2028-timeline
8/12/2022 12:00 PMThe North Pacific Blob, a marine heatwave that began in late 2013 and continued through 2015, was the largest and longest-lasting marine heatwave on record. A new study using data collected by elephant seals reveals that in addition to the well documented surface warming, deeper warm-water anomalies associated with the Blob were much more extensive than previously reported.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-elephant-reveal-features-blob-marine.html
8/12/2022 2:00 PMFatty acids and their derivatives are promising raw materials for manufacturing advanced biofuels, detergents, lubricants, surfactants and so on. The current supply of fatty acids is mainly through extraction from plants, which requires large amounts of arable land.https://phys.org/news/2022-07-methanol-biotransformation-enables-efficient-production.html
8/12/2022 4:00 PMStephanie Kwolek’s invention of Kevlar has saved countless lives over the past 40 years. Kevlar is a fiber five times stronger than steel that is now used in numerous products ranging from boots for firefighters to spacecraft — and most famously, in bulletproof vests. It’s estimated that since Kevlar’s introduction to body armor in the 1970s, the lives of over 3,000 police officers have been saved, as well as those of innumerable soldiers and others in conflict zones. On the day that the pioneering chemist passed away in June 2014 at the age of 90, DuPont announced that the one-millionth protective vest made using Kwolek’s lifesaving invention was sold.https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=19905
8/12/2022 6:00 PMAn atom is best visualized as a tight, dense nucleus surrounded by buzzing, orbiting electrons. This picture immediately leads to a question: How do electrons keep whirling around the nucleus without ever slowing down? This was a burning question in the early 20th century, and a search for the answer ultimately led to the development of quantum mechanics(opens in new tab) itself.https://www.space.com/where-do-electrons-get-energy-to-spin
8/13/2022 8:00 AMEngineers at Caltech have developed a switch—one of the most fundamental components of computing—using optical, rather than electronic, components. The development could aid efforts to achieve ultrafast all-optical signal processing and computing.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-optical-ultrafast-all-optical.html
8/13/2022 10:00 AMAbout 37,000 years ago, a mother mammoth and her calf met their end at the hands of human beings. Bones from the butchering site record how humans shaped pieces of their long bones into disposable blades to break down their carcasses, and rendered their fat over a fire. But a key detail sets this site apart from others from this era. It’s in New Mexico—a place where most archaeological evidence does not place humans until tens of thousands of years later.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-mexico-mammoths-evidence-early-humans.html
8/13/2022 12:00 PMExplorers have discovered a series of mysterious, “perfectly aligned” holes punched into the seafloor roughly 1.6 miles (2.6 kilometers) beneath the ocean surface, and they have no idea who or what made them.https://www.space.com/perfectly-aligned-holes-seafloor
8/13/2022 2:00 PMLumbering through the forested wetlands of Bulgaria around six million years ago, a new species of panda has been uncovered by scientists who state it is currently the last known and “most evolved” European giant panda.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-discovery-panda-species-europe.html
8/13/2022 4:00 PMAn international team of researchers has observed part of the formation of a dwarf galaxy, helping to explain how they evolve from a dwarf state to maturity. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes finding evidence of maturation in such galaxies.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-formation-dwarf-galaxy-india-astrosat.html
8/13/2022 6:00 PMImagine stretching a piece of film to reveal a hidden message. Or checking an arm band’s color to gauge muscle mass. Or sporting a swimsuit that changes hue as you do laps. Such chameleon-like, color-shifting materials could be on the horizon, thanks to a photographic technique that’s been resurrected and repurposed by MIT engineers.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-repurpose-19th-century-photography-technique-stretchy.html
8/14/2022 8:00 AMOn the heels of the first James Webb Space Telescope images shared last week, the Hubble Space Telescope has released yet another stunning view of the cosmos.https://www.space.com/hubble-space-telescope-stellar-cluster-photo
8/14/2022 10:00 AMElectrons find each other repulsive. Nothing personal—it’s just that their negative charges repel each other. So getting them to pair up and travel together, like they do in superconducting materials, requires a little nudge.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-nickelate-superconductors-intrinsically-magnetic.html
8/14/2022 12:00 PMAtoms are notoriously difficult to control. They zigzag like fireflies, tunnel out of the strongest containers and jitter even at temperatures near absolute zero. Nonetheless, scientists need to trap and manipulate single atoms in order for quantum devices, such as atomic clocks or quantum computers, to operate properly. If individual atoms can be corralled and controlled in large arrays, they can serve as quantum bits, or qubits—tiny discrete units of information whose state or orientation may eventually be used to carry out calculations at speeds far greater than the fastest supercomputer.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-miniature-lens-atoms.html
8/14/2022 2:00 PMA team led by biologists at The University of Texas at Arlington has published a study supporting the theory that species that reproduce asexually have more harmful genetic mutations than those utilizing sexual reproduction.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-asexual-reproduction-genetic-mutations.html
8/14/2022 4:00 PMThe first exoplanet has been discovered by Subaru Strategic Program using the infrared spectrograph IRD on the Subaru Telescope (IRD-SSP). This planet, Ross 508b, is a super-Earth with about four times the mass of the Earth and is located near the habitable zone. Such a planet may be able to retain water on its surface, and will be an important target for future observations to verify the possibility of life around low-mass stars.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-super-earth-ross-508b-skims-habitable.html
8/14/2022 6:00 PMMany crustaceans, including lobster, crabs, and barnacles, have a cape-like shell protruding from the head that can serve various roles, such as a little cave for storing eggs, or a protective shield to keep gills moist.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-sun-alternate-view-evolve.html
8/15/2022 8:00 AMRussian astronomers report the detection of five new rotating radio transients (RRATs) using the Big Scanning Antenna (BSA) of the Pushchino Radio Astronomy Observatory (PRAO). The discovery was detailed in a paper published July 22 on the arXiv pre-print repository.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-rotating-radio-transients.html
8/15/2022 10:00 AMBirmingham scientists have revealed a new method to increase efficiency in biocatalysis. Biocatalysis uses enzymes, cells or microbes to catalyze chemical reactions, and is used in settings such as the food and chemical industries to make products that are not accessible by chemical synthesis. It can produce pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals, or food ingredients on an industrial scale.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-method-biofilm-formation-efficiency-biocatalysis.html
8/15/2022 12:00 PMTwo decades after it disappeared in nature, the stunning blue Spix’s macaw will be reintroduced to its forest home.https://www.science.org/content/article/two-decades-vanished-stunning-spixs-macaw-returns-forest-home
8/15/2022 2:00 PMAustralian scientists are making strides towards solving one of the greatest mysteries of the universe: the nature of invisible “dark matter”.https://www.space.com/this-australian-experiment-is-on-the-hunt-for-an-elusive-particle-that-could-help-unlock-the-mystery-of-dark-matter
8/15/2022 4:00 PMAccording to several new studies published today in the journal Nature, Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, likely holds massive reservoirs of sea water underneath its surface. Yes: An ocean planet.https://futurism.com/dwarf-planet-ceres-ocean-world
8/15/2022 6:00 PMScientists at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and their collaborators have used DNA to overcome a nearly insurmountable obstacle to engineer materials that would revolutionize electronics.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-dna-scientists-solution-superconductor-technology.html
8/16/2022 8:00 AMThe Voyager probes raised perplexing questions as they exited the Solar System. Now, scientists have conceived new missions to interstellar space.https://www.science.org/content/article/voyager-steroids-mission-probe-mysterious-region-beyond-solar-system
8/16/2022 10:00 AMScientists have discovered dark matter around galaxies that existed about 12 billion years ago, the earliest detection yet of this mysterious substance that dominates the universe.https://www.space.com/dark-matter-ancient-galaxy-detection
8/16/2022 12:00 PMResearchers at the University of Würzburg have developed “photoswitching fingerprint analysis”—a unique technology that for the first time allows the analysis of molecular processes and the regulation of individual proteins in living cells with sub-10 nm spatial resolution. Its application ranges from biological to medical research.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-analysis-molecular-cells-sub-nm.html
8/16/2022 2:00 PMChemists at the University of Münster have developed a novel and straightforward way to produce complex organic molecules. Mild reaction conditions, simple operation, scalability and the use of an inexpensive and commercially available photosensitizer make the method interesting for industrial applications.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-tool-synthesis-complex-molecules.html
8/16/2022 4:00 PMNew research from the University of Cincinnati shows early indications that light can be used as a treatment for certain diseases, including cancer.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-cell-function.html
8/16/2022 6:00 PMUsing single calcite crystals with varying surface roughness allows engineers to simplify the complex physics that describes fault movement. In a new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, researchers show how this simplification may lead to better earthquake prediction.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-nanoscale-scientists-earthquake-movement.html
8/17/2022 8:00 AMFor the first time, plant biologists have defined the high-efficiency “hacks” that cannabis cells use to make cannabinoids (THC/CBD). Although many biotechnology companies are currently trying to engineer THC/CBD outside the plant in yeast or cell cultures, it is largely unknown how the plant does it naturally.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-high-efficiency-hacks-cannabis-cells-cannabinoids.html
8/17/2022 10:00 AMThe James Webb Space Telescope has peered through time and huge amounts of dust to capture a new image of the Cartwheel Galaxy, revealing the spinning ring of color in unprecedented clarity, NASA and the European Space Agency said.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-webb-telescope-captures-cartwheel-galaxy.html
8/17/2022 12:00 PMA group of researchers has succeeded in converting methane into methanol using light and dispersed transition metals such as copper in a process known as photo-oxidation. According to an article reporting the study published in Chemical Communications, the reaction was the best obtained to date for conversion of methane gas into liquid fuel under ambient conditions of temperature and pressure (25 °C and 1 bar respectively).https://phys.org/news/2022-08-scientists-reveal-method-methane-gas.html
8/17/2022 2:00 PMProjections previously indicated that the vaquita could be extinct by now but, while they remain the world’s most endangered marine mammal, the new research shows the few survivors are reproducing, and may have developed ways to avoid the gillnets that have otherwise decimated the species.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-vaquita-porpoises-extinction-longer.html
8/17/2022 4:00 PMSignals buried deep in data from gravitational wave observatories imply a collision of two black holes that were clearly born in different places.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/black-hole-merge-distant-spin-gravitational-wave
8/17/2022 6:00 PMLandslides are one striking example of erosion. When the bonds that hold particles of dirt and rock together are overwhelmed by a force—often in the form of water—sufficient to pull the rock and soil apart, that same force breaks the bonds with other rock and soil that hold them in place. Another type of erosion involves using a small air jet to remove dust from a surface. When the force of the turbulent air is strong enough to break the bonds that hold the individual dust particles, or grains, together and cause them to stick to the surface, that’s erosion, too.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-particles-deep-relationship-cohesion-erosion.html
8/18/2022 8:00 AMLess than two years after shocking the science world with the discovery of a material capable of room-temperature superconductivity, a team of UNLV physicists has upped the ante once again by reproducing the feat at the lowest pressure ever recorded.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-pressure-high-stakes-physicists-major.html
8/18/2022 10:00 AMAs satellites crawl across the sky, they reflect light from the sun back down to Earth, especially during the first few hours after sunset and the first few hours before sunrise. As more companies launch networks of satellites into low-Earth orbit, a clear view of the night sky is becoming rarer. Astronomers, in particular, are trying to find ways to adapt.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-satellites-students-astronomers.html
8/18/2022 12:00 PMPhysicists have been trying to determine the ground states of 2D electron systems at extremely low densities and temperatures for many decades now. The first theoretical predictions for these ground states were put forward by physicists Felix Bloch in 1929 and Eugene Wigner in 1934, both of whom suggested that interactions between electrons could lead to ground states that had never been observed before.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-evidence-disordered-quantum-wigner-solid.html
8/18/2022 2:00 PMTwo new images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope show what may be among the earliest galaxies ever observed. Both images include objects from more than 13 billion years ago, and one offers a much wider field of view than Webb’s First Deep Field image, which was released amid great fanfare July 12. The images represent some of the first out of a major collaboration of astronomers and other academic researchers teaming with NASA and global partners to uncover new insights about the universe.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-wide-view-early-universe-hints.html
8/18/2022 4:00 PMTiny crystals, known as quantum dots, have enabled an international team to achieve a quantum efficiency exceeding 100 percent in the photocurrent generated in a hybrid inorganic-organic semiconductor.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-exceeding-percent-quantum-efficiency-photocurrent.html
8/18/2022 6:00 PMInside an old oak barrel, Ecuadoran bioengineer Javier Carvajal found the fungus of fortune: a 400-year-old yeast specimen that he has since managed to resurrect and use to reproduce what is believed to be Latin America’s oldest beer.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-year-old-ecuadoran-beer-resurrected-yeast.html
8/19/2022 8:00 AMUsing an ineUsing an inexpensive polymer called melamine—the main component of Formica—chemists have created a cheap, easy and energy-efficient way to capture carbon dioxide from smokestacks, a key goal for the United States and other nations as they seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.xpensive polymer called melamine—the main component of Formica—chemists have created a cheap, easy and energy-efficient way to capture carbon dioxide from smokestacks, a key goal for the United States and other nations as they seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-simple-cheap-material-carbon-capture.html
8/19/2022 10:00 AMAll baby birds have a moment prior to hatching when their hip bone is a tiny replica of a dinosaur’s pelvis. That’s one of the findings in a new, Yale-led study in the journal Nature that explores the evolutionary underpinnings of the avian hip bone. It is also a modern-day nod to the dramatic transformation that led from dinosaurs to birds over tens of millions of years.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-bird-pelvis-ancestral-dinosaurian-conditions.html
8/19/2022 12:00 PMAccording to the standard model of cosmology, the vast majority of galaxies are surrounded by a halo of dark matter particles. This halo is invisible, but its mass exerts a strong gravitational pull on galaxies in the vicinity. A new study led by the University of Bonn (Germany) and the University of Saint Andrews (Scotland) challenges this view of the Universe. The results suggest that the dwarf galaxies of Earth’s second closest galaxy cluster—known as the Fornax Cluster—are free of such dark matter halos.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-dark-halos.html
8/19/2022 2:00 PMA pair of researchers, one with the University of California, Davis, the other Drew University, believe they may have solved the mystery of why people living during the time of the Roman Empire used lopsided dice in their games. In their paper published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, Jelmer Eerkens and Alex de Voogt, describe their study of dice used during the days of the Roman Empire.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-early-romans-lopsided-dice.html
8/19/2022 4:00 PMIn the beginning, there was boredom. Following the emergence of cellular life on earth, some 3.5 billion years ago, simple cells lacking a nucleus and other detailed internal structure dominated the planet. Matters would remain largely unchanged in terms of evolutionary development in these so-called prokaryotic cells—the bacteria and archaea—for another billion and a half years.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-emergence-complex-cells-orthodoxy.html
8/19/2022 6:00 PMA common weed harbors important clues about how to create drought resistant crops in a world beset by climate change.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-common-weed-super-key-drought-resistant.html
8/20/2022 8:00 AMWe have recently witnessed the stunning images of distant galaxies revealed by the James Webb telescope, which were previously visible only as blurry spots. Washington University in St. Louis researchers have developed a novel method for visualizing the proteins secreted by cells with stunning resolution, making it the James Webb version for visualizing single cell protein secretion.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-simple-powerful-cell-secretion.html
8/20/2022 10:00 AMGiant bubbles of expanding gas that surround the Milky Way have been seen in visible light for the first time.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/milky-way-giant-gas-fermi-bubbles-seen-visible-light-first-time
8/20/2022 12:00 PMResearchers at the University of California, Davis, have found a way to reduce the amount of nitrogen fertilizers needed to grow cereal crops. The discovery could save farmers in the United States billions of dollars annually in fertilizer costs while also benefiting the environment.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-cereal-crops-fertilizer.html
8/20/2022 2:00 PMOn September 13, 2021, an impact on Jupiter was observed by multiple astronomers around the world. Images and a video of the impact were captured by members of Société Lorraine d’Astronomie (SLA) in France.https://phys.org/news/2021-09-big-jupiter.html
8/20/2022 4:00 PMAstronomers have discovered a ‘super-Earth’ orbiting a red dwarf star just 37 light-years from our solar system. The exoplanet Ross 508 b skims the so-called habitable zone of its parent star, the area in which surface temperatures are suitable to allow for the existence of liquid water, a key ingredient of life. The newly discovered exoplanet has about four times the mass of Earth and was discovered using a new infrared monitoring technique. The proximity of this super-Earth to our planet means it is ripe for atmospheric investigation, which could help researchers determine whether life could exist around low-mass stars.https://www.space.com/super-earth-planet-around-red-dwarf
8/20/2022 6:00 PMEngineers at the University of Vienna have developed a new composite material that makes an efficient filter for removing organic pollutants from water. The system uses super-porous “nano-sponges” embedded on a sheet of graphene.https://newatlas.com/materials/nano-sponge-graphene-water-filter/
8/21/2022 8:00 AMA detailed 3D study of a massive electrical discharge that rose 50 miles into space above an Oklahoma thunderstorm has provided new information about an elusive atmospheric phenomenon known as gigantic jets. The Oklahoma discharge was the most powerful gigantic jet studied so far, carrying 100 times as much electrical charge as a typical thunderstorm lightning bolt.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-gigantic-jet-lightning-space.html
8/21/2022 10:00 AMOn Mars, there’s a unique kind of “tumbleweed” rolling across the Martian plains. These tumbleweeds aren’t plants – they are pieces of debris from the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) hardware from NASA’s Perseverance rover. Percy has been coming across many of these remnants, photographing them so that engineers can study them.https://www.space.com/perseverance-mars-rover-photographs-entry-descent-landing-debris
8/21/2022 12:00 PMYou may not be a fan of dark matter, the hypothetical particle that makes up the bulk of the mass in the universe. And it’s true that the dark matter hypothesis has its shortcomings — and, of course, we haven’t found any dark matter particles yet. But the truth is that the alternatives are much worse.https://www.space.com/dark-matter-hypothesis-bad-alternatives-worse
8/21/2022 2:00 PMMore than 85m beneath the famous fairy chimneys of Cappadocia lies a massive subterranean city that was in near-constant use for thousands of years.https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220810-derinkuyu-turkeys-underground-city-of-20000-people
8/21/2022 4:00 PMBiotechnologist Pascale Daran-Lapujade and her group at Delft University of Technology managed to build human muscle genes in the DNA of baker’s yeast. This is the first time researchers have successfully placed such a vital human feature into a yeast cell.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-human-muscle-genes-dna-baker.htmll
8/21/2022 6:00 PMWhen humans, animals, and machines move throughout the world, they always push against something, whether it’s the ground, air, or water. Until recently, physicists believed this to be a constant, following the law of conservation momentum. Now, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have proven the opposite—when bodies exist in curved spaces, it turns out that they can in fact move without pushing against something.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-robotic-motion-space-defies-standard.html
8/22/2022 8:00 AMThe graphite-diamond phase transition is of particular interest for fundamental reasons and a wide range of applications. On very fast compression time scales, material kinetics hinder the transition from graphite to the equilibrium cubic diamond crystal structure that we commonly know as diamond. Shock wave compression of graphite typically requires pressures above 50 GPa (500,000 atmospheres) to observe the phase transition on the time scale of shock compression experiments. Further, the hexagonal polytype of diamond called Lonsdaleite has been observed in shock compressed material subsequent to meteorite impact events, suggesting that the time scale of compression plays a strong role in the phase transition.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-graphite-hexagonal-diamond-picoseconds.html
8/22/2022 10:00 AMNewly developed artificial intelligence (AI) programs have accurately predicted the role of DNA’s regulatory elements and three-dimensional (3D) structure based solely on its raw sequence, according to two recent studies in Nature Genetics. These tools could eventually shed new light on how genetic mutations lead to disease and could lead to new understanding of how genetic sequence influences the spatial organization and function of chromosomal DNA in the nucleus.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-artificial-intelligence-tools-dna-regulatory.html
8/22/2022 12:00 PMWhen a small asteroid enters Earth’s atmosphere from space, its surface is brutally heated, causing melting and fragmenting. Therefore, why the rocks near the surface survive to the ground as meteorites has been somewhat of a mystery. That mystery is solved in a new study of the fiery entry of asteroid 2008 TC3.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-space-survives-ground.html
8/22/2022 2:00 PMA team based at Princeton University has accurately simulated the initial steps of ice formation by applying artificial intelligence (AI) to solving equations that govern the quantum behavior of individual atoms and molecules.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-simulation-artificial-intelligence-ice.html
8/22/2022 4:00 PMJumping spiders have REM-like twitches when they sleep, suggesting dreams may be much more widespread in the animal kingdom than previously realized.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spiders-seem-to-have-rem-like-sleep-and-may-even-dream1/
8/22/2022 6:00 PMLast year, a team of astrophysicists including key members from Northwestern University launched STARFORGE, a project that produces the most realistic, highest-resolution 3D simulations of star formation to date. Now, the scientists have used the highly detailed simulations to uncover what determines the masses of stars, a mystery that has captivated astrophysicists for decades.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-exploring-stars-masses.html
8/23/2022 8:00 AMMineral-rich waters originating from the Apennine Mountains of Italy flowed through ancient Rome’s Anio Novus aqueduct and left behind a detailed rock record of past hydraulic conditions, researchers have said. Two studies characterizing layered limestone—called travertine—deposits within the Anio Novus are the first to document the occurrence of anti-gravity growth ripples and establish that these features lend clues to the history of ancient water conveyance and storage systems.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-layered-limestone-deposits-unique-insight.html
8/23/2022 10:00 AMSmall amounts of highly weathered oil residues from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster were still present in the surroundings ten years later, shows a new report. Crude oil is a complex mixture with many components that undergo chemical reactions in the environment. These transformed chemicals, as well as longer persisting oil products, can impact local ecosystems and a better understanding of the fates of these molecules can help future cleanup efforts.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-deepwater-horizon-oil.html
8/23/2022 12:00 PMThe hardy rotifer can live through all manner of conditions, but this is a historic feat even for this tiny creature.https://www.wired.com/story/scientists-find-24000-years-in-siberian-permafrost-still-didnt-kill-the-ancient-rotifer/
8/23/2022 2:00 PMLizards with bigger, grippier toe pads are more likely to survive after their islands are hit by hurricanes. Big toe pads may help the lizards that have them hang on for dear life and survive the high winds of a hurricane. These sticky-toed survivors will then be the ones to successfully reproduce and pass on their genes, giving rise to a new generation of lizards with a vice-like grip.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hurricanes-make-lizards-evolve-bigger-toe-pads-180974772/
8/23/2022 4:00 PMScientists have developed a small robot to understand how ants teach one another. The team built the robot to mimic the behavior of rock ants that use one-to-one tuition, in which an ant that has discovered a much better new nest can teach the route there to another individual.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-robot-reveal-ants-knowledge.html
8/23/2022 6:00 PMPotato cyst nematodes are a clever pest. These microscopic worms wriggle through the soil, homing in the roots of young potato plants and cutting harvests by up to 70%. They are challenging to get rid of, too: The eggs are protected inside the mother’s body, which toughens after death into a cyst that can survive in the soil for years.https://www.science.org/content/article/potato-farmers-conquer-devastating-worm-paper-made-bananas
8/24/2022 8:00 AMUsing the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers have detected a new faint, distant, and cold brown dwarf. The newly found object, designated GLASS-JWST-BD1, turns out to be about 31 times more massive than Jupiter.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-faint-distant-cold-brown-dwarf.html
8/24/2022 10:00 AMAfter decades of inertial confinement fusion research, a yield of more than 1.3 megajoules (MJ) was achieved at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL’s) National Ignition Facility (NIF) for the first time on Aug. 8, 2021, putting researchers at the threshold of fusion gain and achieving scientific ignition.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-papers-highlight-results-megajoule-yield.html
8/24/2022 12:00 PMScientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and partners at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) have made the first-ever detection of gas in an circumplanetary disk. What’s more, the detection also suggests the presence of a very young exoplanet.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-first-ever-gas-circumplanetary-disk.html
8/24/2022 2:00 PMThe most common bat in the United States, the big brown bat, boasts an unusually long lifespan of up to 19 years. A new study led by University of Maryland researchers identifies one of the secrets to this bat’s exceptional longevity: hibernation.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-hibernation-biological-aging.html
8/24/2022 4:00 PMResearchers have identified a new species of Bathonymus, the famed genera of deep-sea isopods whose viral internet fame has made them the most famous aquatic crustaceans since Sebastian of “The Little Mermaid.”https://phys.org/news/2022-08-giant-deep-sea-isopod-gulf-mexico.html
8/24/2022 6:00 PMNew Curtin research has provided the strongest evidence yet that Earth’s continents were formed by giant meteorite impacts that were particularly prevalent during the first billion years or so of our planet’s four-and-a-half-billion year history.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-evidence-giant-meteorite-impacts-continents.html
8/25/2022 8:00 AMEver since humans could first observe sunspots about 400 years ago, we’ve been using them to try to define the solar cycle. Approximately every 11 years, solar activity such as sunspots and solar flares ebbs and flows, causing changes to weather patterns on Earth and occasionally threatening telecommunications. Predicting these changes reliably could help everyone from farmers to the military.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-newly-solar-clock-precisely-events.html
8/25/2022 10:00 AMThe James Webb Space Telescope has only been watching the sky for a few weeks, and it has already delivered a startling finding: tens, hundreds, maybe even 1000 times more bright galaxies in the early universe than astronomers anticipated.https://www.science.org/content/article/webb-telescope-reveals-unpredicted-bounty-bright-galaxies-early-universe
8/25/2022 12:00 PMA medium-sized sauropod dinosaur inhabited the tropical lowland forested area of the Serranía del Perijá in northern Colombia approximately 175 million years ago, according to a new study by an international team of researchers.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-long-necked-dinosaur-rewrite-evolutionary-history.html
8/25/2022 2:00 PMIn 2019, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft sent back images of a geological phenomenon no one had ever seen before: pebbles were flying off the surface of the asteroid Bennu. The asteroid appeared to be shooting off swarms of marble-sized rocks. Scientists had never seen this behavior from an asteroid before, and it’s a mystery exactly why it happens. But in a new paper in Nature Astronomy, researchers show the first evidence of this process in a meteorite.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-meteorite-asteroids-pebbles.html
8/25/2022 4:00 PMIn a video taken by ecologist Shinji Sugiura, a tiny aquatic beetle known as Regimbartia attenuata pulls off a death-defying feat to rival Houdini. First, a frog snags the beetle and gulps it down whole. For a tense 115 minutes, nothing happens. Then, the great reveal: the same shiny insect wiggles its way out of the amphibian’s anus, leaving both frog and beetle alive and seemingly no worse for the wear.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/when-beetle-gets-eaten-frog-it-forces-its-way-out-back-door-180975484/
8/25/2022 6:00 PMAnalyzing data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and several other observatories, astronomers have concluded that the bright red supergiant star Betelgeuse quite literally blew its top in 2019, losing a substantial part of its visible surface and producing a gigantic Surface Mass Ejection (SME). This is something never before seen in a normal star’s behavior.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/hubble-sees-red-supergiant-star-betelgeuse-slowly-recovering-after-blowing-its-top
8/26/2022 8:00 AMA new analysis of seismic data from NASA’s Mars InSight mission has revealed a couple of surprises.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-subsurface-mars-defy-physics-seismic.html
8/26/2022 10:00 AMOn Sunday morning, August 7th, 2022, a massive chunk of comet was spotted crashing into our fiery Sun — and unsurprisingly, video of the incident looks catastrophic for the ill-fated snowball.https://futurism.com/the-byte/giant-comet-smash-into-sun
8/26/2022 12:00 PMAccording to the general theory of relativity, gravity results from massive objects warping spacetime. A quantum effect reveals that subatomic particles can feel the influence of this warping even if they aren’t subject to gravitational forces.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/quantum-particles-gravity-spacetime-aharonov-bohm-effect
8/26/2022 2:00 PMSymbiotic relationships between legumes and the bacteria that grow in their roots are critical for plant survival. Without those bacteria, the plants would have no source of nitrogen, an element that is essential for building proteins and other biomolecules, and they would be dependent on nitrogen fertilizer in the soil.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-scientists-molecule-sops-iron-rich-heme.html
8/26/2022 4:00 PMTopology and entanglement are two powerful principles for characterizing the structure of complex quantum states. In a new paper, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania establish a relationship between the two.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-explore-topology-quantum-entanglement.html
8/26/2022 6:00 PMLarge dinosaur predators, such as Tyrannosaurus rex, evolved different shapes of eye sockets to better deal with high bite forces, new research has shown.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-dinosaurs-evolved-eye-socket-stronger.html
8/27/2022 8:00 AMElectrolysis might be a familiar concept from chemistry lessons in school: Two electrodes are immersed in water and put under voltage. This voltage causes water molecules to break down into their components, and gas bubbles rise at the electrodes: Oxygen gas forms at the anode, while hydrogen bubbles form at the cathode. Electrolysis could produce hydrogen in a CO2-neutral way—as long as the required electricity is generated by fossil free energy forms such as sun or wind.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-green-hydrogen-nanostructured-nickel-silicide.html
8/27/2022 10:00 AMIn most cases, paleontologists are at least 66 million years too late to give dinosaurs medical exams. The living animals perished long, long ago. But every now and then, fossil hunters uncover a bone with signs of injury or disease–what experts call pathologies. And in the case of a particular bone found in the roughly 75 million-year-old rock of Alberta, a medical examination has revealed that dinosaurs suffered from a cancer that afflicts humans today.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dinosaurs-suffered-cancer-too-180975467/
8/27/2022 12:00 PMOver the last 25 years, astronomers have found thousands of exoplanets around stars in our galaxy, but more than 99% of them orbit smaller stars—from red dwarfs to stars slightly more massive than our sun, which is considered an average-sized star.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-brightest-stars-night-sky-neptune-sized.html
8/27/2022 2:00 PMA team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in the U.S. has successfully pulled an ice core from Antarctica’s Ong Valley that contains samples of Earth’s atmosphere from up to 5 million years ago. In their paper, the researchers explain why they chose to drill in the Ong Valley and what they hope to learn from their study of the ice core.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-ice-core-antarctica-sample-atmosphere.html
8/27/2022 4:00 PMScientists have discovered that by microwaving fish waste, they can quickly and efficiently create carbon nano-onions (CNOs)—a unique nanoform of carbon that has applications in energy storage and medicine. This method could be used to make cheaper and more sustainable LEDs in the future.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-create-more-sustainable-led-from-fish-scales-180980551/
8/27/2022 6:00 PMThough Johannes Gutenberg often receives credit as the inventor of the printing press, sometime earlier, roughly 5,000 miles away, Koreans had already developed a movable-type printing press.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-x-ray-elemental-analysis-15th-century-methods.html
8/28/2022 8:00 AMBy using photons and electron spin qubits to control nuclear spins in a two-dimensional material, researchers at Purdue University have opened a new frontier in quantum science and technology, enabling applications like atomic-scale nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and to read and write quantum information with nuclear spins in 2D materials.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-2d-array-electron-nuclear-qubits.html
8/28/2022 10:00 AMFive hundred meters below the ice covering Antarctica’s Weddell Sea sits the world’s largest known colony of breeding fish, a new study finds.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ice-fish-nest-antarctica-breeding-colony-largest-group
8/28/2022 12:00 PMA loud boom that shattered the morning quiet in Utah may have been a Perseid meteor.https://www.livescience.com/utah-boom-meteor
8/28/2022 2:00 PMScientists from the University of Queensland have used photons to simulate quantum particles traveling through time.https://sky.toancanh24h.com/2022/08/australian-physicists-have-proved-that-time-travel-is-possible/
8/28/2022 4:00 PMHundreds of animals eat fruit, from toucans to fruit bats to maned wolves to humans. But most fruit-bearing plants evolved relatively recently in Earth’s history, showing up for the first time in the Cretaceous, the final period of the dinosaurs. In a new paper in eLife, scientists have tracked down the first fossil evidence of fruit consumption by comparing the skull shapes and stomach contents of fossil birds. The verdict: the earliest-known fruit-eater was an early bird called Jeholornis that lived 120 million years ago, and it may have helped contribute to the spread of the plants that dominate the world today.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-early-bird-fruit-fossil-earliest.html
8/28/2022 6:00 PMWhen scientists unveiled humanity’s historic first image of a black hole in 2019—depicting a dark core encircled by a fiery aura of material falling toward it—they believed even richer imagery and insights were waiting to be teased out of the data.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-photon-black-hole-ready-close-up.html
8/29/2022 8:00 AMThe scientists who want to bring back mammoths now hope to revive the marsupial carnivore thylacine – the Tasmanian tiger.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/de-extinction-company-aims-to-resurrect-the-tasmanian-tiger/
8/29/2022 10:00 AMA black hole is usually where information goes to disappear—but scientists may have found a trick to use its last moments to tell us about the history of the universe.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-black-hole-collisions-fast-universe.html
8/29/2022 12:00 PMA Chinese X-ray telescope has detected the strongest-ever magnetic field recorded by making observations of a rapidly-spinning neutron star, or magnetar. Insight, also known as the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HMXT), launched in 2017 and is able to observe a broad range of x-ray energy photons.https://www.space.com/china-magnetic-field-strongest-ever
8/29/2022 2:00 PMSuperconductors are the key to lossless current flow. However, the realization of superconducting diodes has only recently become an important topic of fundamental research. An international research team involving the theoretical physicist Mathias Scheurer from the University of Innsbruck have now succeeded in reaching a milestone: the realization of a superconducting diode effect without an external magnetic field, thus proving the assumption that superconductivity and magnetism coexist.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-superconducting-diode-external-magnetic-field.html
8/29/2022 4:00 PMScientists have developed a computational technique that can track whales in real time – and potentially prevent ship collisions.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/a-new-detection-system-could-save-sperm-whales-from-ship-strikes-180980584/
8/29/2022 6:00 PMAn international team of researchers have discovered that a mysterious microscopic creature from which humans were thought to descend is part of a different family tree.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-scientists-relieved-curious-creature-anus.html
8/30/2022 8:00 AMTrapped ion computers are quantum computers in which the qubits (quantum units of information) are ions trapped by electric fields and manipulated with lasers. To avoid crosstalk between nearby qubits, physicists and engineers design these computers using two different types of qubits.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-coherently-qubit-ion-species.html
8/30/2022 10:00 AMScientists have made the first ever accurate measurements of the properties of antihydrogen – an atom comprising of an antiproton and positron. The explanations match those of an ordinary hydrogen atom. Even though this was what theorists had expected, it leaves unresolved one of physics’ greatest mysteries, which we’d have been on the way to answering if the results had been different.https://www.sciandnature.com/2021/12/antihydrogen-transitions-measured-for.html
8/30/2022 12:00 PMProtons are subatomic particles – a mash-up of three lighter particles called quarks: two of the type known as up quarks and one down quark. But physicists have speculated for decades that protons may also host more massive quarks, called “intrinsic” charm quarks.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/proton-charm-quark-up-down-particle-physics
8/30/2022 2:00 PMFor the first time, RIPE researchers have proven that multigene bioengineering of photosynthesis increases the yield of a major food crop in field trials. After more than a decade of working toward this goal, a collaborative team led by the University of Illinois has transgenically altered soybean plants to increase the efficiency of photosynthesis, resulting in greater yields without loss of quality.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-bioengineering-photosynthesis-yields-food-crops.html
8/30/2022 4:00 PMFor many processes important for life such as cell division, cell migration, and the development of organs, the spatially and temporally correct formation of biological patterns is essential. To understand these processes, the principal task consists not in explaining how patterns form out of a homogeneous initial condition, but in explaining how simple patterns change into increasingly complex ones. Illuminating the mechanisms of this complex self-organization on various spatial and temporal scales is a key challenge for science.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-complex-patterns-bridge-large-small.html
8/30/2022 6:00 PMA huge megalithic complex of more than 500 standing stones has been discovered in southern Spain which could be one of the largest in Europe.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-huge-complex-stones-spain.html
8/31/2022 8:00 AMFour astrophysics mission proposals to study stars, galaxies and some of the most violent explosions in the universe have been selected for further study by NASA.https://www.space.com/nasa-selects-low-cost-science-mission-candidates
8/31/2022 10:00 AMUsing sophisticated electronic tags, scientists have assembled a large biologging dataset to garner comparative insights on how sharks, rays, and skates—also known as “elasmobranchs”—use the ocean depths. While some species spend their entire lives in shallow waters close to our shores on the continental shelf, others plunge hundreds of meters or more off the slope waters into the twilight zone, beyond where sunlight penetrates. This new understanding of how elasmobranchs use the ocean will enable policymakers and resource managers the opportunity to examine the threats these animals face, and guide future management and conservation plans.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-scientists-deep-sharks-ocean.html
8/31/2022 12:00 PMBy firing a Fibonacci laser pulse at atoms inside a quantum computer, physicists have created a completely new, strange phase of matter that behaves as if it has two dimensions of time.https://www.livescience.com/fibonacci-material-with-two-dimensions-of-time
8/31/2022 2:00 PMUnlike the contents of a suitcase, the way in which microscopic particles are packed together can be used to engineer the characteristics of the materials they form; for instance, how light or electricity travel through. Materials scientists have long studied how assembling particles in a confined space can be used as a tool to give materials new abilities, but how particles with unique shapes interact with a barrier remains poorly understood.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-materials-confinement.html
8/31/2022 4:00 PMScientists have discovered the remarkable impact of reversing a standard method for combatting a key obstacle to producing fusion energy on Earth. Theorists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have proposed doing precisely the opposite of the prescribed procedure to sharply improve future results.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-hurdle-safe-carbon-free-energy.html
8/31/2022 6:00 PMThe universe’s most massive known star just got its best ever close-up, and it reveals the star might be smaller than astronomers previously thought.https://www.space.com/most-massive-known-star-universe-image
9/1/2022 8:00 AMMonash University scientists have challenged the conventional wisdom that biological patterns are explained by physical constraints. The researchers present their mathematical model of animal growth which describes how animals devote energy to growth and reproduction as they age and increase in size.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-mathematical-animal-growth-life-biology.html
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9/1/2022 12:00 PMLawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers have designed a compact multi-petawatt laser that uses plasma transmission gratings to overcome the power limitations of conventional solid-state optical gratings. The design could enable construction of an ultrafast laser up to 1,000 times more powerful than existing lasers of the same size.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-compact-high-power-laser-plasma-optics.html
9/1/2022 2:00 PMHow do different materials react to the impact of ions? This is a question that plays an important role in many areas of research—for example, in nuclear fusion research, when the walls of the fusion reactor are bombarded by high-energy ions, but also in semiconductor technology, when semiconductors are bombarded with ion beams to produce tiny structures.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-electron-motion-ion-physics-femtosecond.html
9/1/2022 4:00 PMIt’s frustrating when a stranger photobombs your family photo when you’re on vacation. But when an exoplanet photobombs a space telescope’s image of another exoplanet, it could actually ruin a scientist’s research.https://www.space.com/photobombing-exoplanets-might-thwart-search-for-life
9/1/2022 6:00 PMTaste matters to fruit flies, just as it does to humans: like people, the flies tend to seek out and consume sweet-tasting foods and reject foods that taste bitter. However, little is known about how sweet and bitter tastes are represented by the brain circuits that link sensation to behavior.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-technique-discoveries-flies-brains.html
9/2/2022 8:00 AMChina is building the world’s largest array of telescopes dedicated to studying the sun with the aim to improve the understanding of coronal mass ejections which can cause chaos on and above Earth. The Daocheng Solar Radio Telescope (DSRT) is under construction on a plateau in Sichuan province, southwest China. When completed, it will consist of 313 dishes, each with a diameter of 19.7 feet (6 meters), forming a circle with a circumference of 1.95 miles (3.14 kilometers).https://www.space.com/china-world-largest-solar-research-array
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9/2/2022 12:00 PMAstronomers frequently observe carbon monoxide in planetary nurseries. The compound is ultra-bright and extremely common in protoplanetary disks—regions of dust and gas where planets form around young stars—making it a prime target for scientists.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-astronomers-case-carbon-monoxide-protoplanetary.html
9/2/2022 2:00 PMLikely to survive in the oral cavity, bacteria have evolved to divide along their longitudinal axis without parting from one another. A research team co-led by environmental cell biologist Silvia Bulgheresi from the University of Vienna and microbial geneticist Frédéric Veyrier from the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) has just published their new insights in Nature Communications. In their work, they described the division mode of these caterpillar-like bacteria and their evolution from a rod-shaped ancestor. They propose to establish Neisseriaceae oral bacteria as new model organisms that could help pinpoint new antimicrobial targets.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-team-caterpillar-like-bacteria-mouths.html
9/2/2022 4:00 PMProtons may have more “charm” than we thought, new research suggests. A proton is one of the subatomic particles that make up the nucleus of an atom. As small as protons are, they are composed of even tinier elementary particles(opens in new tab) known as quarks, which come in a variety of “flavors,” or types: up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top. Typically, a proton is thought to be made of two up quarks and one down quark.https://www.space.com/protons-charm-quark
9/2/2022 6:00 PMBy firing a Fibonacci laser pulse at atoms inside a quantum computer, physicists have created a completely new, strange phase of matter that behaves as if it has two dimensions of time.https://www.space.com/fibonacci-material-with-two-dimensions-of-time
9/3/2022 8:00 AMWooden objects are usually made by sawing, carving, bending or pressing. That’s so old school! Today, scientists will describe how flat wooden shapes extruded by a 3D printer can be programmed to self-morph into complex 3D shapes. In the future, this technique could be used to make furniture or other wooden products that could be shipped flat to a destination and then dried to form the desired final shape.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-wooden-chair-flat-3d.html
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9/3/2022 12:00 PMA team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Italy, working with a colleague from the U.S., has found that sea urchin spine joiners have bone formations that conform to a Voronoi pattern. In their paper published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface, the group describes their close-up study of the echinoids and what they learned about their spine structure.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-sea-urchin-tubercules-voronoi-pattern.html
9/3/2022 2:00 PMWe all learned Newton’s laws in high school: Objects in motion tend to stay in motion, force equals mass times acceleration, and for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. From those laws of motion, Isaac Newton discovered a universal theory of gravity that applied equally well to apples falling from trees and planets moving in their orbits.https://www.space.com/planet-motion-explained-principle-least-action
9/3/2022 4:00 PMNASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the world’s first mission to test technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards, will impact its target asteroid—which poses no threat to Earth—at 7:14 p.m. EDT on Monday, Sept. 26.https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-invites-media-to-witness-world-s-first-planetary-defense-test
9/3/2022 6:00 PMA study published in Nature Communications shows how hunting hawks solve the problem of intercepting a single bat within a dense swarm. The findings increase our understanding of how predators select and track a target among thousands of potential prey.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-reveals-hawks-home-prey-chaotic.html
9/4/2022 8:00 AMAn international team of researchers led by Charles Cadieux, a Ph.D. student at the Université de Montréal and member of the Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx), has announced the discovery of TOI-1452 b, an exoplanet orbiting one of two small stars in a binary system located in the Draco constellation about 100 light-years from Earth.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-extrasolar-world.html
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9/4/2022 12:00 PMDespite loads of circumstantial evidence for the existence of dark matter — the mysterious form of matter that dominates galaxies and clusters — astronomers have yet to make direct observations of it.https://www.space.com/dark-matter-theory-self-interacting
9/4/2022 2:00 PMNASA shared an audio clip on social media that allows you to “hear” a black hole. No surprise, it sounds terrifying.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-black-hole-nasa.html
9/4/2022 4:00 PMOn a Hawaiian mountaintop in the summer of 1992, a pair of scientists spotted a pinprick of light inching through the constellation Pisces. That unassuming object — located over a billion kilometers beyond Neptune — would rewrite our understanding of the solar system.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/kuiper-belt-discovery-solar-system-planets-space
9/4/2022 6:00 PMNASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the first clear evidence for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet outside the solar system. This observation of a gas giant planet orbiting a Sun-like star 700 light-years away provides important insights into the composition and formation of the planet. The finding, accepted for publication in Nature, offers evidence that in the future Webb may be able to detect and measure carbon dioxide in the thinner atmospheres of smaller rocky planets.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-detects-carbon-dioxide-in-exoplanet-atmosphere
9/5/2022 8:00 AMOn Aug. 25, 2012, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft was 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun and scientists determined that the venerable spacecraft had crossed the boundary between the sun’s influence and the interstellar medium. Now, still going and still sending back data, Voyager 1 and its twin Voyager 2 — which joined it in interstellar space in 2018 — continue to conduct ground-breaking science.https://www.space.com/voyager-1-marks-10-years-interstellar-space
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9/5/2022 12:00 PMEvolutionary chromosomal changes may take a million years in nature, but researchers are now reporting a novel technique enabling programmable chromosome fusion that has successfully produced mice with genetic changes that occur on a million-year evolutionary scale in the laboratory. The result may provide critical insights into how rearrangements of chromosomes—the tidy packages of organized genes, provided in equal number from each parent, which align and trade or blend traits to produce offspring—influence evolution.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-sustainable-chromosome-mice.html
9/5/2022 2:00 PMThe potential science from future lunar missions stretches far beyond the moon. A new radio telescope on the far side of the moon could capitalize on NASA’s new Artemis era of lunar exploration, say scientists who hope to one day use such a telescope to potentially probe deeper into the universe than even the newly-operational James Webb Space Telescope can.https://www.space.com/moon-far-side-radio-science-opportunity
9/5/2022 4:00 PMWhether in photosynthesis or in a photovoltaic system: if you want to use light efficiently, you have to absorb it as completely as possible. However, this is difficult if the absorption is to take place in a thin layer of material that normally lets a large part of the light pass through.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-physicists.html
9/5/2022 6:00 PMPhysicists from TU Delft, ETH Zürich and the University of Tübingen have built a quantum scale heat pump made from particles of light. This device brings scientists closer to the quantum limit of measuring radio frequency signals, which may be useful in the hunt for dark matter.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-quantum-tool-physicists.html
9/6/2022 8:00 AMClosure of the Neo-Tethys Ocean and the subsequent formation of the Tibetan Plateau is one of the most significant tectonic events on Earth. How the Indian subcontinent drifted northward anomalously fast and collided with Asia is an essential question in describing global changes in tectonics, climate and ecosystems.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-crucial-evidence-anomalously-fast-convergence.html
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9/6/2022 12:00 PMEvery Monday, New Horizons sends back a little signal called a “Green Beacon”, signaling that it’s doing fine and hasn’t whacked into anything yet. To save money and fuel, though, the spacecraft entered hibernation mode and has been sleeping since June 1st, 2022. It’s going to stay that way until March 1, 2023. But, it’s not entirely asleep. Two of its instruments are still collecting data. The Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter is working, along with the charged-particle spectrometers called PEPSSI and SWAP. Their job is to collect information about the environment of space New Horizons is passing through.https://www.universetoday.com/157298/new-horizons-could-still-have-more-adventures-ahead/
9/6/2022 2:00 PMAstronomers have reconstructed the history of star formation at the center of the Milky Way for the first time, finding that starbirth radiated outwards from the galaxy’s heart.https://www.space.com/star-factories-discovered-milky-way-center
9/6/2022 4:00 PMScientists can make some pretty accurate forecasts about the future. But predicting what the Earth will be like 500 years from now is a difficult task because there are many factors at play.https://www.space.com/what-will-earth-be-like-in-500-years
9/6/2022 6:00 PMWhen astronomers use radio telescopes to gaze into the night sky, they typically see elliptical-shaped galaxies, with twin jets blasting from either side of their central supermassive black hole. But every once in a while—less than 10% of the time—astronomers might spot something special and rare: An X-shaped radio galaxy, with four jets extending far into space.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-x-shaped-radio-galaxies-simply.html
9/7/2022 8:00 AMThe huge, bowl-shaped Meteor Crater in Arizona that was formed some 50,000 years ago continues to yield new information, and surprisingly so.https://www.space.com/meteor-crater-hole-from-space-lunar-surface
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9/7/2022 12:00 PMThe world’s biggest offshore wind farm is now fully operational, with its 165 turbines set to help power in excess of 1.4 million U.K. homes. Situated roughly 89 kilometers (approximately 55 miles) off the coast of Yorkshire, England, the scale of Hornsea 2 is considerable – it has a capacity of more than 1.3 gigawatts and stretches across an area of 462 square kilometers. One revolution of one turbine can power one U.K. home for 24 hours.https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/01/huge-offshore-wind-farm-hornsea-2-is-fully-operational-orsted-says.html
9/7/2022 2:00 PMChemical reactions often produce messy mixtures of different products. Hence, chemists spend a lot of time coaxing their reactions to be more selective to make particular target molecules. Now, an international team of researchers has achieved that kind of selectivity by delivering voltage pulses to a single molecule through an incredibly sharp tip.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-pulses-atom-sharp-enable-chemical-bonds.html
9/7/2022 4:00 PMPaleontologists in Portugal have unearthed the fossilized skeleton of what could be the largest dinosaur ever found in Europe. The remains are thought to be those of a sauropod, a herbivorous dinosaur 12 meters (39 feet) tall and 25 meters long that roamed the Earth around 150https://phys.org/news/2022-08-skeleton-huge-dinosaur-unearthed-portugal.html
9/7/2022 6:00 PMKnowing exact melting temperatures is critical for building any high-performance material. The building and safety of bridges, gas turbines, jet engines and heat shields on aircraft are dependent on knowing the performance limits of materials. Materials are often synthesized or processed employing the molten or liquid state, so knowing melting is critical to making new materials.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-ancient-minerals-materials-temperature-graph.html
9/8/2022 8:00 AMBeetles of the genus Lagria need a little help from their bacterial friends throughout their immature life stages. But keeping them in the same spot throughout life isn’t feasible. This is because beetles are holometabolous insects, which undergo an overall bodily reorganization (metamorphosis) as pupae.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-beetles-unique-pockets-bacterial-symbionts.html
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9/8/2022 12:00 PMSpanning more than a million light years from end to end, the jet shoots away from a black hole with enormous energy, and at almost the speed of light. But in the vast expanses of space between galaxies, it doesn’t always get its own way.https://www.space.com/massive-black-hole-jet-discovered
9/8/2022 2:00 PMUsing NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), astronomers from South Korea and China have detected a mid-infrared flare in an active spiral galaxy known as NGC 3786. The researchers assume that this peculiar flare may have originated from a tidal disruption event (TDE). The discovery was detailed in a paper published August 17 on the arXiv pre-print server.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-mid-infrared-flare-galaxy-ngc.html
9/8/2022 4:00 PMThe James Webb space telescope has revealed dazzling new detail of a previously known slice of the cosmos 32 million light-years away, in a new picture released by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).https://phys.org/news/2022-08-webb-telescope-captures-phantom-galaxy.html
9/8/2022 6:00 PMWhy has humanity never been visited by aliens (that we know of)? The question has confounded scientists for decades, but two researchers have come up with a possible — and disturbing — explanation: Advanced civilizations could be doomed to either stagnate or die before they get the chance.https://www.space.com/alien-civilizations-doomed-to-collapse
9/9/2022 8:00 AMThe Earth’s core is the largest carbon storage on Earth—roughly 90% is buried there. Scientists have shown that the oceanic crust that sits on top of tectonic plates and falls into the interior, through subduction, contains hydrous minerals and can sometimes descend all the way to the core-mantle boundary. The temperature at the core-mantle boundary is at least twice as hot as lava, and high enough that water can be released from the hydrous minerals. Therefore, a chemical reaction similar to rusting steel could occur at Earth’s core-mantle boundary.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-diamonds-rust-earth-core-mantle-boundary.html
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9/9/2022 12:00 PMOn the red and dusty surface of Mars, nearly 100 million miles from Earth, an instrument the size of a lunchbox is proving it can reliably do the work of a small tree. The MIT-led Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or MOXIE, has been successfully making oxygen from the Red Planet’s carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere since February 2021, when it touched down on the Martian surface as part of NASA’s Perseverance rover mission.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-moxie-reliably-oxygen-mars.html
9/9/2022 2:00 PMSome 240 million years ago, the patch of land that would one day become the National Mall was part of an enormous supercontinent known as Pangea. Encompassing nearly all of Earth’s extant land mass, Pangea bore little resemblance to our contemporary planet. Thanks to a recently released interactive map, however, interested parties can now superimpose the political boundaries of today onto the geographic formations of yesteryear—at least dating back to 750 million years ago.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/map-lets-you-plug-your-address-see-how-neighborhood-has-changed-over-past-750-million-years-180971507/
9/9/2022 4:00 PMNuclear physicists studying particle collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC)—a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science user facility at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory—have new evidence that particles called gluons reach a steady “saturated” state inside the speeding ions. The evidence is suppression of back-to-back pairs of particles emerging from collisions between protons and heavier ions (the nuclei of atoms), as tracked by RHIC’s STAR detector. In a paper just published in Physical Review Letters, the STAR collaboration shows that the bigger the nucleus the proton collides with, the larger the suppression in this key signature, as predicted by theoretical models of gluon saturation.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-saturation-emerge-particle-collisions-rhic.html
9/9/2022 6:00 PMScientists studying mice from the Andes Mountains in Patagonia noticed something they couldn’t explain: the mice from the western side of the mountains were bigger than the ones from the east, but DNA said that they were all from the same species. The researchers examined the skulls of 450 mice from the southern tip of South America, and found that existing biological laws didn’t explain the size differences. Instead the scientists put forth a new hypothesis: the mice on the western slopes were bigger because that side of the mountain range gets more rain, which means there’s more plentiful food for the mice to eat.https://phys.org/news/2022-08-mice-bigger-rainier-sides-mountains.html
9/10/2022 8:00 AMJapanese and U.S. physicists have used atoms about 3 billion times colder than interstellar space to open a portal to an unexplored realm of quantum magnetism.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-sun-billion-colder-deep-space.html
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9/10/2022 12:00 PMThe James Webb Space Telescope took its first direct image of a planet orbiting a distant star, proving its potential to revolutionize exoplanet research.https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-exoplanet-image
9/10/2022 2:00 PMWhen eight-year-old Hugo Deans discovered a handful of BB-sized objects lying near an ant nest beneath a log in his backyard, he thought they were a type of seed. His father, Andrew Deans, professor of entomology at Penn State, however, knew immediately what they were—oak galls, or plant growths triggered by insects. What he didn’t realize right away was that the galls were part of an elaborate relationship among ants, wasps and oak trees, the discovery of which would turn a century of knowledge about plant-insect interactions on its head.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-boy-discovery-reveals-highly-complex.html
9/10/2022 4:00 PMArchaeologists at the University of Oxford’s School of Archaeology have used satellite imagery to identify and map more than 350 monumental hunting structures known as “kites” across northern Saudi Arabia and southern Iraq—most of which had never been previously documented.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-archaeologists-monumental-evidence-prehistoric-arabian.html
9/10/2022 6:00 PMAn exotic form of precipitation called ‘diamond rain’  —  long thought to occur deep within ice giant planets  —  could be more common than previously thought.https://www.space.com/diamond-rain-ice-giant-planets-uranus-neptune
9/11/2022 8:00 AMResearchers at McMaster University have discovered a previously unknown bacteria-killing toxin that could pave the way for a new generation of antibiotics. The study, led by John Whitney at the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research, shows that the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, known to cause hospital-acquired infections such as pneumonia, secretes a toxin that has evolved to kill other species of bacteria.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-toxin-bacteria-unprecedented-ways.html
9/11/2022 10:00 AMNorth America’s rarest snake, Tantilla oolitica (rim rock crowned snake), was recently spotted in a park in the Florida Keys after a four-year hiatus. While this would normally be cause for celebration among conservationists, the snake sighting was more a source of incredulous awe than anything else. The snake was found dead, locked in lifeless combat with a giant centipede it had managed to swallow halfway.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-north-america-rarest-snake.html
9/11/2022 12:00 PMA sequence of images reveals how Europe dried up over July and August when complete lack of rain caused what has been described as the worst drought hitting the continent in 500 years.https://www.space.com/satellite-video-europe-dries-up-summer-2022
9/11/2022 2:00 PMWhen two metal surfaces slide against each other, a variety of complicated phenomena occur that lead to friction and wear: Small crystalline regions, of which metals are typically composed, can be deformed, twisted or broken, or even fuse together. It is important for industry to understand such effects. After all, wear can destroy machinery and cost a lot of money.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-counterintuitive-friction-effect.html
9/11/2022 4:00 PMKey studies in the last decade have shown that the gut microbiome, the collection of hundreds of bacterial species that live in the human digestive system, influences neural development, response to cancer immunotherapies, and other aspects of health. But these communities are complex and without systematic ways to study the constituents, the exact cells and molecules linked with certain diseases remain a mystery.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-complex-synthetic-microbiome.html
9/11/2022 6:00 PMThe James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) captured images of a brown dwarf with silicate particles in its atmosphere. In their paper posted on the arXiv preprint server, astronomers describe their analysis of the brown dwarf and its unique atmosphere.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-webb-telescope-brown-dwarf-clouds.html
9/12/2022 8:00 AMIn a first, scientists have captured on video all the steps a virus follows as it enters and infects a living cell in real time and in three dimensions.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-capture-footage-virus-infecting-cell.html
9/12/2022 10:00 AMA team of scientists, led by the University of Bristol, has uncovered intriguing new insights into the diet of people living in Neolithic Britain and found evidence that cereals, including wheat, were cooked in pots.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-neolithic-culinary-traditions-uncovered.html
9/12/2022 12:00 PMThousands of never-before-seen young stars are spotted in a stellar nursery called 30 Doradus, captured by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Nicknamed the Tarantula Nebula for the appearance of its dusty filaments in previous telescope images, the nebula has long been a favorite for astronomers studying star formation. In addition to young stars, Webb reveals distant background galaxies, as well as the detailed structure and composition of the nebula’s gas and dust.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-webb-captures-cosmic-tarantula.html
9/12/2022 2:00 PMRisk management has reduced the vulnerability to floods and droughts around the world, but their impact is still increasing worldwide, according to a study published in the journal Nature, which includes the participation of the researcher María del Carmen Llasat, professor of Atmospheric Physics at the Faculty of Physics and member of the Water Research Institute (IdRA) of the University of Barcelona.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-impacts-droughts-worldwide.html
9/12/2022 4:00 PMUnprecedented and societally disruptive extreme weather events, including heat waves, droughts, dust storms and torrential rains, will soon become a reality unless immediate, ambitious, and transboundary climate action is taken, warns the latest scientific assessment of state-of-climate in the region.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-5c-century-eastern-mediterranean-middle.html
9/12/2022 6:00 PMSome species of tardigrades, or water bears as the tiny aquatic creatures are also known, can survive in different environments often hostile or even fatal to most forms of life. For the first time, researchers describe a new mechanism that explains how some tardigrades can endure extreme dehydration without dying. They explored proteins that form a gel during cellular dehydration. This gel stiffens to support and protect the cells from mechanical stress that would otherwise kill them. These proteins have also been shown to work in insect cells and even show limited functionality in human cultured cells.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-tardigrades-survive-dehydration.html
9/13/2022 8:00 AMA study could one day help health workers determine whether bacteria of the species Streptococcus pneumoniae, which cause meningitis—an inflammation of the membranes that envelop the brain and spinal cord—are resistant to antibiotics.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-technique-bacteria-meningitis-resistant-antibiotics.html
9/13/2022 10:00 AMThe European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft captured impressive images of the Holden Basin on Mars, part of an area key for the ongoing search for life on the Red Planet. The images and further investigation of the region  could help reveal how water once flowed across the Martian surface.https://www.space.com/photos-mars-holden-basin-past-water
9/13/2022 12:00 PMA groundbreaking mathematical equation that could transform medical procedures, natural gas extraction, and plastic packaging production in the future has been discovered.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-mathematical-formula-paves-advances-health.html
9/13/2022 2:00 PMThe James Webb Space Telescope has found a strange alien world shrouded in clouds of sand-like silicate grains.https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-exoplanet-sand-clouds
9/13/2022 4:00 PMOur theoretical understanding of the way in which metals conduct electricity is incomplete. The current taxonomy appears to be too blurry and contains too many exceptions to be convincing. This is the conclusion that materials scientists from the University of Groningen reached after thoroughly examining the recent literature on metals. They analyzed more than 30 metals and show that a simple formula can provide a classification of metals in a more systematic manner.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-fresh-metals-reveals-strange-similarity.html
9/13/2022 6:00 PMEuropean moles can ride out harsh winters by becoming up to 11% smaller.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-european-moles-tenth-winter-energy.html
9/14/2022 8:00 AMThe design of efficient solar cells, which harness energy to generate electricity or produce hydrogen by splitting water, has received much attention globally. Another route to harnessing abundant, free solar energy: using it as a pumping source for lasers. High-power lasers are earmarked for several applications, including deep space communication, atmospheric sensing, high-temperature material processing, and hydrogen production. But, they are often expensive and suffer from performance setbacks arising from thermal stress effects.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-solar-powered-lasers-heights-four-mirror.html
9/14/2022 10:00 AMCurtin University researchers and international collaborators using advanced satellite imagery have discovered an ancient reef-like landform “hidden” in plain view on the Nullarbor Plain, which has been preserved for millions of years since it first formed when the Plain was underwater.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-unearths-ancient-reef-high-nullarbor.html
9/14/2022 12:00 PMAll magnets—from the simple souvenirs hanging on your refrigerator to the disks that give your computer memory to the powerful versions used in research labs—contain spinning quasiparticles called magnons. The direction one magnon spins can influence that of its neighbor, which affects the spin of its neighbor, and so on, yielding what are known as spin waves. Information can potentially be transmitted via spin waves more efficiently than with electricity, and magnons can serve as “quantum interconnects” that “glue” quantum bits together into powerful computers.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-scientists-2d-magnet.html
9/14/2022 2:00 PMJupiter-sized planets can be stolen or captured by massive stars in the densely populated stellar nurseries where most stars are born, a new study has found.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-planetary-heist-astronomers-massive-stars.html
9/14/2022 4:00 PMThe natural world possesses its own intrinsic electrical grid composed of a global web of tiny bacteria-generated nanowires in the soil and oceans that “breathe” by exhaling excess electrons.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-nature-electric-grid.html
9/14/2022 6:00 PMUsing historical depictions and descriptions of Betelgeuse throughout the ages, scientists have been able to pinpoint roughly when the supergiant star got its red coloration. The team found that the star, located in the Orion constellation in the Milky Way around 640 light-years from Earth, changed from a yellow-orange color to red approximately 2,000 years ago. Betelgeuse is a red giant star, a stage that stellar bodies go through when they finish burning hydrogen in their cores, resulting in the core collapsing and the outer layers of the star puffing out.https://www.space.com/betelgeuse-red-supergiant-was-yellow
9/15/2022 8:00 AMOn Wednesday, September 7th, a powerful European rocket launched a communications satellite of record-setting size from South America – the Eutelsat Konnect VHTS is 29 feet tall and weighs 6.4 tons.https://www.space.com/ariane-5-rocket-eutelsat-konnect-vhts-launch
9/15/2022 10:00 AMAn analog astronaut swiftly solved a Rubik’s Cube puzzle while floating in microgravity. Aerospace engineer Bailey Burns, 26, completed the famous Rubik’s Cube in just 19 seconds during a “Vomit Comet” parabolic flight sponsored by the gaming company Rubik’s this past April.https://www.space.com/rubiks-cube-solved-zero-gravity-flight
9/15/2022 12:00 PMLet’s pretend it’s the Late Cretaceous, roughly 66 to 100 million years ago. We’ve got dinosaurs roaming the land and odd-looking early species of birds, although the shark as we know it is already swimming in the prehistoric oceans—which cover 82% of Earth. Redwood trees and other conifers are making their debut, as are roses and flowering plants, and with them come bees, termites and ants. Most of all, it’s warm, volcanically active and humid all over the place with nary an ice sheet in sight.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-team-icy-conditions-south-pole.html
9/15/2022 2:00 PMResearchers have developed a camera that uses a thin microlens array and new image processing algorithms to capture 3D information about objects in a scene with a single exposure. The camera could be useful for a variety of applications such as industrial part inspection, gesture recognition and collecting data for 3D display systems.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-lensless-camera-3d-images-exposure.html
9/15/2022 4:00 PMThe U.S. Postal Service will issue a stamp celebrating NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, the largest, most powerful, and most complex science telescope ever put in space. The stamp, which features an illustration of the observatory, will be dedicated in a ceremony Thursday, Sept. 8, at the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum in Washington.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/us-postal-service-celebrates-nasa-s-webb-telescope-with-new-stamp
9/15/2022 6:00 PMEvery day, about one quadrillion gallons of water are silently pumped from the ground to the treetops. Earth’s plant life accomplishes this staggering feat using only sunlight. It takes energy to lift all this liquid, but just how much was an open question until this year.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-soil-sky-quantify-amount-energy.html
9/16/2022 8:00 AMUniversity of Texas at Dallas physicists and their collaborators at Yale University have demonstrated an atomically thin, intelligent quantum sensor that can simultaneously detect all the fundamental properties of an incoming light wave.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-physicists-intelligent-quantum-sensor.html
9/16/2022 10:00 AMBirds have impressive cognitive abilities and show a high level of intelligence. Compared to mammals of about the same size, the brains of birds also contain many more neurons. Now a new study reported in Current Biology on September 8 helps to explain how birds can afford to maintain more brain cells: their neurons get by on less fuel in the form of glucose.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-bird-neurons-glucose-mammalian.html
9/16/2022 12:00 PMA team of researchers has cooled matter to within a billionth of a degree of absolute zero, colder than even the deepest depths of space ,  far away from any stars.https://www.space.com/coldest-matter-in-universe-created-in-lab
9/16/2022 2:00 PMThe question of what makes modern humans unique has long been a driving force for researchers. Comparisons with our closest relatives, the Neandertals, therefore provide fascinating insights. The increase in brain size, and in neuron production during brain development, are considered to be major factors for the increased cognitive abilities that occurred during human evolution. However, while both Neandertals and modern humans develop brains of similar size, very little is known about whether modern human and Neandertal brains may have differed in terms of their neuron production during development.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-modern-humans-brain-neurons-neandertals.html
9/16/2022 4:00 PMBosons are particles that carry energy and forces throughout the universe. The standard model of particle physics  —  the most robust theory we have of the sub-atomic world  —  divides every particle in the universe and even the larger composite particles fit into two broad categories; fermions and bosons.https://www.space.com/what-are-bosons
9/16/2022 6:00 PMNASA is looking at September 23 and September 27 as possible dates for its next attempt at launching its Artemis 1 mission to the Moon.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-nasa-moon-september.html
9/17/2022 8:00 AMEarly in its history, shortly after the Big Bang, the universe was filled with equal amounts of matter and “antimatter”—particles that are matter counterparts but with opposite charge. But then, as space expanded, the universe cooled. Today’s universe is full of galaxies and stars that are made of matter. Where did the antimatter go, and how did matter come to dominate the universe? This cosmic origin of matter continues to puzzle scientists.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-unraveling-mystery-cosmic.html
9/17/2022 10:00 AMA team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in South Korea working with two colleagues from Princeton University and one from Columbia University has achieved a new milestone in the development of fusion as an energy source—they generated a reaction that produced temperatures of 100 million Kelvin and lasted for 20 seconds. In their paper published in journal Nature, the group describes their work and where they plan to take it in the next few years.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-fusion-million-kelvin-seconds.html
9/17/2022 12:00 PMThe brain is arguably one of the most complex structures in the known universe. Continued advances in our understanding of the brain and our ability to effectively treat a host of neurological diseases rely on probing the brain’s neural micro-circuitry with ever-increasing detail.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-diamonds-reveal-neural-secrets.html
9/17/2022 2:00 PMWe may soon be able to test one of Stephen Hawking’s most controversial theories, new research suggests. In the 1970s, Hawking proposed that dark matter, the invisible substance that makes up most matter in the cosmos, may be made of black holes formed in the earliest moments of the Big Bang.https://www.space.com/testable-primordial-black-holes-theory
9/17/2022 4:00 PMEntanglement is a strange phenomenon in quantum physics where two particles are inherently connected to each other no matter the distance between them. When one is measured, the other measurement is instantly a given. Researchers from Purdue University have proposed a novel, unconventional approach to generate a special light source made up of entangled photons.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-source-entangled-photons.html
9/17/2022 6:00 PMA series of experiments led by researchers at Stanford Medicine that included fish hookups, CRISPR and lake hopping has confirmed a long-standing, yet unproven, assumption about natural evolution. It also debunks a talking point favored by proponents of intelligent design, who have argued that naturally occurring mutations will only damage or destroy an animal and can’t lead to useful new traits and body structures.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-wild-fish-hopeless-monster-mutations.html
9/18/2022 8:00 AMBlack holes are astronomical objects with extremely strong gravitational pulls from which not even light can escape. While the idea of bodies that would trap light has been around since the 18th century, the first direct observation of black holes took place in 2015.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-theoretical-physicists-black-holes-vortex.html
9/18/2022 10:00 AMAlthough they have not been around for long, microplastics have found their way to almost every ecosystem on the planet. They have been discovered in the soil, in rivers, in our food and bottled water, and even in the human body. Recently, a team of researchers found, for the first time, microplastics in water trapped in plant leaf axils.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-discovery-microplastics.html
9/18/2022 12:00 PMScientists have shed new light on the timing and likely cause of major volcanic events that occurred millions of years ago and caused such climatic and biological upheaval that they drove some of the most devastating extinction events in Earth’s history.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-continental-plate-movement-earth-largest.html
9/18/2022 2:00 PMMars was doomed to desiccation by its small size, a new study suggests.https://www.space.com/mars-too-small-ocean-rivers-lakes
9/18/2022 4:00 PMThe James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has not disproved the Big Bang, despite an article about a pseudoscientific theory that went viral in August, and which mischaracterized quotes from an astrophysicist to create a false narrative that the Big Bang didn’t happen.https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-science-denial
9/18/2022 6:00 PMDeveloping a lightweight material that is both strong and highly ductile has been regarded as a long-desired goal in the field of structural materials, but these properties are generally mutually exclusive. However, researchers at City University of Hong Kong (CityU) have recently discovered a low-cost, direct method to turn commonly used 3D printable polymers into lightweight, ultra-tough, biocompatible hybrid carbon microlattices, which can be in any shape or size, and are 100 times stronger than the original polymers. The research team believes that this innovative approach can be used to create sophisticated 3D parts with tailored mechanical properties for a wide range of applications, including coronary stents and bio-implants.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-team-3d-printed-polymer-stronger-ductile.html
9/19/2022 8:00 AMThe orbit of an exoplanet around a star in a binary star system has been portrayed in three dimensions for the first time. The planet orbits its star at a different angle to the plane of the orbit of the two stars, and the misalignment could offer clues as to how planets form in binary systems.https://www.space.com/exoplanet-surprise-tilted-orbit-binary-star
9/19/2022 10:00 AMAstronomers have found the biggest black hole ever measured — it’s 40 billion times the sun’s mass, or roughly two-thirds the mass of all stars in the Milky Way. The gargantuan black hole lurks in a galaxy that’s supermassive itself and probably formed from the collisions of at least eight smaller galaxies.https://astronomy.com/news/2019/12/this-huge-galaxy-has-the-biggest-black-hole-ever-measured
9/19/2022 12:00 PMIn the known universe, there is nothing quite like a neutron star. Born from supernovas, these objects contain a star-size mass in a city-size space. This unique trait has led scientists to believe that some extreme physics might take place in their innards — perhaps even the dissolution of neutrons themselves into a softer goo known as quark matter.https://www.quantamagazine.org/squishy-neutron-star-setback-dampens-hopes-of-exotic-matter-20210526/
9/19/2022 2:00 PMTopological materials that possess certain atomic-level symmetries, including topological insulators and topological semi-metals, have elicited fascination among many condensed matter scientists because of their complex electronic properties. Now, researchers in Japan have demonstrated that a normal semiconductor can be transformed into a topological semi-metal by light irradiation. Further, they showed how spin-dependent responses could appear when illuminated with circularly-polarized laser light. Published in Physical Review B, this work explores the possibility of creating topological semi-metals and manifesting new physical properties by light control, which may open up a rich physical frontier for topological properties.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-theoretical-description-light-induced-topological-states.html
9/19/2022 4:00 PMWhen NASA’s DART spacecraft smashes into asteroid Dimorphos on Sept. 26, it will have a silent witness: An Italian cubesat called LICIACube will watch the ground-breaking experiment in real time for eager scientists on Earth.https://www.space.com/liciacube-readies-to-observe-dart-hit-asteroid
9/19/2022 6:00 PMAstronomers report the detection of a new brown dwarf as part of the Ophiuchus Disk Survey Employing ALMA (ODISEA) program. The newfound object, designated SSTc2d J163134.1-24006, appears to be experiencing a quasi-spherical mass loss. The discovery was detailed in a paper published September 2 on the arXiv pre-print repository.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-astronomers-brown-dwarf-quasi-spherical-mass.html
9/20/2022 8:00 AMWe haven’t found life on Mars yet, but one researcher believes we might be able to detect evidence of it on planets outside of the solar system within the next quarter of a century.https://www.space.com/finding-life-outside-solar-system-in-25-years
9/20/2022 10:00 AMPulsars are the lighthouses of the universe. These tiny, compact objects are neutron stars — the remnants of once-massive stars — that spin rapidly, beaming radiation into space. Now, for the first time, astronomers have mapped the surface of a 16-mile-wide pulsar in exquisite detail. The result challenges astronomers’ textbook picture of a pulsar’s appearance and opens the door to learning more about these extreme objects.https://astronomy.com/news/2019/12/astronomers-map-a-neutron-stars-surface-for-the-first-time
9/20/2022 12:00 PMA pair of researchers at the University of Granada has solved the mystery of the purple stains on the ceilings of the famous Alhambra palace in Spain. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, Carolina Cardell and Isabel Guerra describe their study of the ceiling of the famous medieval fortress and what they learned about its mysterious purple stains.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-electron-microscopy-reveals-purple-alhambra.html
9/20/2022 2:00 PMUsing the Very Large Telescope and the radio telescope ALMA in Chile, a team of astronomers including researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute has discovered a swarm of galaxies orbiting the surroundings of a hyper-luminous and vigorously star-forming galaxy in the early universe. The observation provides important clues to how exceptionally bright galaxies grow, and to how they evolve into energetic quasars, beaming light across most of the observable universe.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-astronomers-swarm-galaxies-orbiting-hyper-luminous.html
9/20/2022 4:00 PMThe wall of dense gas and dust resembles a massive winged creature, its glowing maw lit by a bright star as it soars through cosmic filaments. An international research team on Monday revealed the first images of the Orion Nebula captured with the James Webb Space Telescope, leaving astronomers “blown away.”https://phys.org/news/2022-09-webb-telescope-captures-breathtaking-images.html
9/20/2022 6:00 PMNanomolding of topological nanowires could speed the discovery of new materials for applications such as quantum computing, microelectronics and clean-energy catalysts, according to an article co-authored by Judy Cha, professor of materials science and engineering at Cornell.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-nanomolding-discovery-topological-materials.html
9/21/2022 8:00 AMDetermining what killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period has long been the topic of debate, as scientists set out to determine what caused the five mass extinction events that reshaped life on planet Earth in a geological instant.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-dinosaurs-depth.html
9/21/2022 10:00 AMJupiter-size planets may be snatched from their home planetary systems by massive young stars in a bold ‘planetary heist.’ The findings could explain the existence of huge gas giant exoplanets — or “super-Jovian planets” — around massive, hot, young stars, which has been a mystery until now. The two recently discovered B-star Exoplanet Abundance Study (BEAST) planets are Jupiter-like planets that orbit their massive stars at great distances, hundreds of times the separation between Earth and the sun.https://www.space.com/planetary-heist-massive-stars-steal-exoplanets
9/21/2022 12:00 PMA provocative paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy argues that the universe may curve around and close in on itself like a sphere, rather than lying flat like a sheet of paper as the standard theory of cosmology predicts. The authors reanalyzed a major cosmological data set and concluded that the data favors a closed universe with 99% certainty — even as other evidence suggests the universe is flat.https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-shape-is-the-universe-closed-or-flat-20191104/
9/21/2022 2:00 PMChinese scientists have found a new lunar mineral in the form of a crystal lurking inside samples collected from the moon in 2020. Changesite–(Y), named for the mythological Chinese goddess of the moon, Chang’e, is a phosphate mineral and columnar crystal. It was found in lunar basalt particles being examined in laboratories in China.https://www.space.com/china-new-lunar-mineral-chang-e
9/21/2022 4:00 PMNuclear fission is the process of breaking large atomic nuclei into smaller atomic nuclei to release a large amount of energy. This process is usually done by forcing the nuclei to absorb neutrons  —  the particle usually found in the atomic nucleus with protons. The phenomenon has been harnessed by humanity to both provide energy via nuclear power plants, but also to power nuclear weapons.https://www.space.com/what-is-nuclear-fission
9/21/2022 6:00 PMA new paper based on exploration by the NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover—and reviewed by an astronaut while she was on the International Space Station (ISS), in what may be a first for peer-reviewed science literature—describes how dramatically different geology on Mars works from that on Earth.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-geology-mars-days.html
9/22/2022 8:00 AMWhile astronomers have seen the debris from scores of exploded stars in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, it is often difficult to determine the timeline of the star’s demise. By studying the spectacular remains of a supernova in a neighboring galaxy using NASA telescopes, a team of astronomers has found enough clues to help wind back the clock.https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/images/setting-the-clock-on-a-stellar-explosion.html
9/22/2022 10:00 AMA camera designed to decode the secrets of dark energy has captured a stunning new image that reveals the insides of a distant star-forming region. The Dark Energy Camera, an instrument mounted on the 13-foot (4 meters) Víctor M. Blanco Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, is a part of the Dark Energy Survey project that searches for evidence of dark energy, the invisible force that astronomers think accelerates the expansion of the universe.https://www.space.com/dark-energy-camera-lobster-nebula-photo
9/22/2022 12:00 PMUsually, a defect in a diamond is a bad thing. But for engineers, miniscule blips in a diamond’s otherwise stiff crystal structure are paving the way for ultrasensitive quantum sensors that push the limits of today’s technologies. Now, researchers at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) have developed a method to optimize these quantum sensors, which can detect tiny perturbations in magnetic or electric fields, among other things.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-quantum-sensors.html
9/22/2022 2:00 PMA shift in Jupiter’s orbit could make Earth’s surface even more hospitable to life than it already is, new research suggests.https://www.space.com/jupiter-orbit-earth-more-habitable
9/22/2022 4:00 PMResearchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have designed a new method to deliver a vaccine candidate for tuberculosis (TB). It involves using spherical vesicles secreted by bacteria coated on gold nanoparticles which can then be delivered to immune cells. This can potentially trigger an immune response and offer protection against the disease.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-bacterial-vesicles-coated-gold-nanoparticles.html
9/22/2022 6:00 PMIn new studies a team of researchers present the most precise test yet of the Weak Equivalence Principle, a key component of the theory of general relativity. The report describes the final results from the MICROSCOPE mission, which tested the principle by measuring accelerations of free-falling objects in a satellite orbiting Earth. The team found that the accelerations of pairs of objects differed by no more than about one part in 1015 ruling out any violations of the Weak Equivalence Principle or deviations from the current understanding of general relativity at that level.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-microscope-mission-precise-relativity-weak.html
9/23/2022 8:00 AMScientists at the University of Cambridge have discovered that water in a one-molecule layer acts like neither a liquid nor a solid, and that it becomes highly conductive at high pressures.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-phases.html
9/23/2022 10:00 AMAn emerging field explores how groups of molecules condense together inside cells, the way oil droplets assemble and separate from water in a vinaigrette.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-dense-liquid-droplets-cellular.html
9/23/2022 12:00 PMChina’s government has officially approved three robotic moon missions that will lay groundwork for a permanent lunar base.https://www.space.com/china-moon-exploration-chang-e-missions-approved
9/23/2022 2:00 PMThis story begins several billion years ago. There’s only chemistry, no biology—that is, plenty of chemical compounds exist on Earth, but life hasn’t yet emerged. Then, among myriads of randomly self-assembled chemical structures, one tiny RNA molecular machine reveals itself as perfectly suitable for creating bonds between activated amino acids, the building blocks of future proteins.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-life-rna-pocket.html
9/23/2022 4:00 PMThere are all sorts of conservation laws in the Universe: for energy, momentum, charge, and more. Many properties of all physical systems are conserved: where things cannot be created or destroyed. We’ve learned how to create matter under specific, explicit conditions: by colliding two quanta together at high enough energies so that equal amounts of matter and antimatter can emerge, so long as E = mc² allows it to happen. For the first time, we’ve managed to create particles without any collisions or precursor particles at all: through strong electromagnetic fields and the Schwinger effect. Here’s how.https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/something-from-nothing/
9/23/2022 6:00 PMAstronomers agree that planets are born in protoplanetary disks—rings of dust and gas that surround young, newborn stars. While hundreds of these disks have been spotted throughout the universe, observations of actual planetary birth and formation have proved difficult within these environments.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-planet-evidence-baby.html
9/24/2022 8:00 AMAstronomers from the University of Texas have spotted a gigantic black hole at the heart of our galaxy’s many dwarf satellite galaxies — meaning that, in intergalactic terms, it’s just a stone’s throw away from our own Solar System. The newly discovered black hole, dubbed Leo I, is roughly the same size as the suspected black hole at the center of the Milky Way.https://futurism.com/scientists-black-hole-near-galaxy
9/24/2022 10:00 AMImagine you have 20 new compounds that have shown some effectiveness in treating a disease like tuberculosis (TB), which affects 10 million people worldwide and kills 1.5 million each year. For effective treatment, patients will need to take a combination of three or four drugs for months or even years because the TB bacteria behave differently in different environments in cells—and in some cases evolve to become drug-resistant. Twenty compounds in three- and four-drug combinations offer nearly 6,000 possible combinations. How do you decide which drugs to test together?https://phys.org/news/2022-09-artificial-intelligence-tuberculosis-treatments.html
9/24/2022 12:00 PMDiatoms are microscopic unicellular algae occurring in natural waters worldwide. During photosynthesis, they take up large quantities of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas emitted through human activities, and convert it into biomass. The carotenoid fucoxanthin enables diatoms to efficiently harvest the blue-green part of the sunlight for photosynthesis.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-path-brown-diatoms.html
9/24/2022 2:00 PMFor the first time, astronomers have captured solid evidence of a rare double cosmic cannibalism — a star swallowing a compact object such as a black hole or neutron star. In turn, that object gobbled the star’s core, causing it to explode and leave behind only a black hole.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/astronomy-star-swallow-black-hole-supernova-cosmology
9/24/2022 4:00 PMWith the aid of physics and a minuscule magnet, researchers have discovered a new structure of telomeric DNA. Telomeres are sometimes seen as the key to living longer. They protect genes from damage but get a bit shorter each time a cell divides. If they become too short, the cell dies. The new discovery will help us understand aging and disease.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-longer-physicist-discovery-telomeres.html
9/24/2022 6:00 PMWhether looking out into space or peering deep into the microscopic realm, there is always more to see. In the case of solids, there is a world of atoms and particles teeming with activity that ultimately leads to useful properties like electrical conduction, magnetism, and insulation.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-scientists-nanowire-exotic-currents-probe.html
9/25/2022 8:00 AMOver the past few decades, physicists and engineers have been trying to create increasingly compact laser-plasma accelerators, a technology to study matter and particle interactions produced by interactions between ultrafast laser beams and plasma. These systems are a promising alternative to existing large-scale machines based on radio-frequency signals, as they can be far more efficient in accelerating charged particles.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-highly-nonlinear-plasma.html
9/25/2022 10:00 AMNASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is revealing the universe with spectacular, unprecedented clarity. The observatory’s ultrasharp infrared vision has cut through the cosmic dust to illuminate some of the earliest structures in the universe, along with previously obscured stellar nurseries and spinning galaxies lying hundreds of millions of light years away.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-astronomers-misinterpreting-planetary-james-webb.html
9/25/2022 12:00 PMStrong alternating magnetic fields can be used to generate a new type of spin wave that was previously just theoretically predicted. This was achieved for the first time by a team of physicists from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU).https://phys.org/news/2022-09-physicists-nanoscale.html
9/25/2022 2:00 PMIf we wish to colonize another world, finding a planet with a gravitational field that humans can survive and thrive under will be crucial. If its gravity is too strong our blood will be pulled down into our legs, our bones might break, and we could even be pinned helplessly to the ground.https://astronomy.com/news/2018/09/gravity-to-the-max
9/25/2022 4:00 PMSwirling around the planet’s equator, the rings of Saturn are a dead giveaway that the planet is spinning at a tilt. The belted giant rotates at a 26.7-degree angle relative to the plane in which it orbits the sun. Astronomers have long suspected that this tilt comes from gravitational interactions with its neighbor Neptune, as Saturn’s tilt precesses, like a spinning top, at nearly the same rate as the orbit of Neptune.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-saturn-tilt-product-ancient-moon.html
9/25/2022 6:00 PMResearchers have discovered a 380-million-year-old heart—the oldest ever found—alongside a separate fossilized stomach, intestine and liver in an ancient jawed fish, shedding new light on the evolution of our own bodies.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-million-year-old-heart-illuminates-evolutionary-history.html
9/26/2022 8:00 AMOn July 12th, 2022, NASA released the first images acquired by the James Webb Space Telescope, which were taken during its first six months of operation. Among its many scientific objectives, Webb will search for smaller, rocky planets that orbit closer to their suns – especially dimmer M-type (red dwarf) stars, the most common in the Universe. This will help astronomers complete the census of exoplanets and gain a better understanding of the types of worlds that exist out there. In particular, astronomers are curious about how many terrestrial planets in our galaxy are actually “water worlds.”https://www.universetoday.com/157595/there-could-be-as-many-water-worlds-as-earths-in-the-milky-way/
9/26/2022 10:00 AMAs a part of our immune defenses, cytotoxic T cells—or killer T cells—seek out and destroy cells that are infected or cancerous. This process is essential for the body’s defense against diseases.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-cells-cancer.html
9/26/2022 12:00 PMOver the past two years, machine learning has revolutionized protein structure prediction. Now, three papers in Science describe a similar revolution in protein design. In the new papers, biologists at the University of Washington School of Medicine show that machine learning can be used to create protein molecules much more accurately and quickly than previously possible. The scientists hope this advance will lead to many new vaccines, treatments, tools for carbon capture, and sustainable biomaterials.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-alphafold-ai-excels-proteins.html
9/26/2022 2:00 PMA quartet of researchers from Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Básicas, Universidade de São Paulo, and São Bernardo do Campo, all in Brazil, has conducted a study of the effectiveness of different types of camouflage strategies in animals. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, João Vitor de Alcantara Viana, Camila Vieira, Rafael Campos Duarte and Gustavo Quevedo Romero describe their study and which strategy they found to be the most effective.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-effectiveness-camouflage-animals.html
9/26/2022 4:00 PMLakes are bodies of water fed by rainfall, snowmelt, rivers and groundwater, through which, Earth is teeming with life. Lakes also contain critical geologic records of past climates. Though Mars is a frozen desert today, scientists have shown that Mars contains evidence of ancient lakes that existed billions of years ago, which could contain evidence for ancient life and climate conditions on the red planet. Through a meta-analysis of years of satellite data that shows evidence for lakes on Mars, Dr. Joseph MICHALSKI, a geologist in the Department of Earth Sciences, The University of Hong Kong (HKU) proposed that scientists might have dramatically underestimated the number of ancient Martian lakes that once existed.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-ancient-martian-lakes-underestimated-scientists.html
9/26/2022 6:00 PMAn active sunspot that is just about to exit the visible disk of the sun shot its parting flare at Earth, causing a radio blackout in Africa and the Middle East the morning of September 16. The solar flare, classified as M8 in the second-most energetic category of flares, departed from the sun, disrupting shortwave radio communications in the sun-facing parts of the world. According to Spaceweather.com(opens in new tab), amateur radio operators in Africa and the Middle East could have experienced signal distortion for up to one hour after the flare.https://www.space.com/solar-flare-radio-blackouts-september-2022
9/27/2022 8:00 AMThe universe may contain extremely dense and exotic hypothetical cosmic objects known as strange quark stars. While astrophysicists continue to debate quark stars’ existence, a team of physicists has found that the remnant of a neutron star merger observed in 2019 has just the right mass to be one of these strange quark stars.https://www.space.com/strange-quark-stars-from-neutron-star-mergers
9/27/2022 10:00 AMA team of Israeli archaeologists discovered a burial cave from the time of Pharaoh Ramses II – thought to possibly be the pharaoh from the story of the Exodus from Egypt – containing dozens of intact objects. The cave was uncovered in the Palmachim National Park near one of Israel’s most popular beaches.https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/article-717442
9/27/2022 12:00 PMRarely observed circling behaviors of endangered basking sharks have now been explained as “shark speed dating” courtship displays, thanks to a new study.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-mysterious-circling-behavior-basking-sharks.html
9/27/2022 2:00 PMEnceladus, the sixth moon of Saturn, is roughly the size of the United Kingdom and covered in miles-thick ice. Underneath is a liquid ocean, which bursts out of the surface through a series of cracks at the southern pole, sending a constant geyser spraying out into space. That geyser contains traces of undersea vents, saltwater, and even methane, a sign that the pitch-black sea could contain life.https://www.popsci.com/space/saturn-moon-enceladus-tiger-stripes-explained/
9/27/2022 4:00 PMThis icy labyrinth looks like a piece of Martian cake. The image of ice and dust layers on Mars from an orbiting NASA spacecraft may provide a window into the complex, water-filled history of the Red Planet, a new study suggests. The puzzling ripples in this image are called transverse aeolian ridges (TAR). They are somewhat in between the size of dust particles and dust dunes, University of Arizona officials said.https://www.space.com/martian-ice-fossil-wind-blown-dust
9/27/2022 6:00 PMWe now know what spaceflight looks like from Boeing’s new astronaut taxi. Fresh footage from Boeing’s uncrewed test flight of Starliner in May show several views of the spacecraft coming in for a landing at the end of Orbital Test Flight-2, which flew to the International Space Station and back.https://www.space.com/boeing-starliner-earth-return-ride-along-video
9/28/2022 8:00 AMScientists harnessing precise control of ultrafast lasers have accelerated electrons over a 20-centimeter stretch to speeds usually reserved for particle accelerators the size of 10 football fields.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-compact-electron.html
9/28/2022 10:00 AMNASA’s InSight Mars lander has detected seismic waves from four space rocks that crashed on Mars in 2020 and 2021.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-nasa-insight-meteoroid-impacts-mars.html
9/28/2022 12:00 PMIf everything is to run smoothly in living cells, the genetic information must be correct. But unfortunately, errors in the DNA accumulate over time due to mutations. Land plants have developed a peculiar correction mode: They do not directly improve the errors in the genome, but rather elaborately in each individual transcript. Researchers at the University of Bonn have transplanted this correction machinery from the moss Physcomitrium patens into human cells. Surprisingly, the corrector started working there too, but according to its own rules.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-transplant-rna-machine-moss-human.html
9/28/2022 2:00 PMUsing various radio telescopes, an international team of astronomers has performed deep low-frequency radio observations of a merging galaxy cluster Abell 2256. The observational campaign delivered more insights into the properties of the cluster’s radio halo.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-radio-halo-galaxy-cluster-abell.html
9/28/2022 4:00 PMHow many stars are there in our galaxy? How many grains of sand in the Sahara? How many ants live on Earth? These are all questions that seem impossible to answer. However, through intensive and extensive data analysis, science is coming amazingly close to finding the solutions. When it comes to ants, a team led by Würzburg biologists Sabine Nooten and Patrick Schultheiss has done just that.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-ants-earth.html
9/28/2022 6:00 PMThe search for extraterrestrial life has just become more interesting as a team of scientists, including Southwest Research Institute’s Dr. Christopher Glein, has discovered new evidence for a key building block for life in the subsurface ocean of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. New modeling indicates that Enceladus’s ocean should be relatively rich in dissolved phosphorus, an essential ingredient for life.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-evidence-habitability-ocean-saturn-moon.html
9/29/2022 8:00 AMAn international team of scientists has uncovered a new method for advancing the development of fusion energy through increased understanding of the properties of warm dense matter, an extreme state of matter similar to that found at the heart of giant planets like Jupiter.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-method-high-energy-density-plasmas.html
9/29/2022 10:00 AMIn space, nobody can hear you scream, but with the right equipment, it is possible to detect a roar. That’s what scientists discovered back in 2006 when they began to look for distant signals in the universe using a complex instrument fixed to a huge balloon that was sent to space. The instrument was able to pick up radio waves from the heat of distant stars, but what came through that year was nothing short of astounding.https://www.space.com/space-roar-loudest-sound-in-the-universe.html
9/29/2022 12:00 PMInvestigating how solid matter behaves at enormous pressures, such as those found in the deep interiors of giant planets, is a great experimental challenge. To help address that challenge, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers and collaborators took a deep dive in understanding these extreme pressures.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-pressure-solid-behavior.html
9/29/2022 2:00 PMThe moon’s craters preserve billions of years of history. Scientists have learned about the conditions of our early solar system by studying the composition, size, and distribution of these holes in the moon’s surface, created long ago by collisions with asteroids.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-small-craters-poles-moon-nasa.html
9/29/2022 4:00 PMIn mythologies and origin stories around the world, various cultures and religions point to clay as the vessel of life, the primordial material that creator gods imbued with a self-sustaining existence. Nowadays we have biology to explain how life comes to be, but could these tales of old hit closer to the mark than we think?https://phys.org/news/2022-09-life-micaceous-clay.html
9/29/2022 6:00 PMAn international research team has found that the first continents were not stable and were recycled in the interior of the Earth, in the mantle.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-geologists-continents.html
9/30/2022 8:00 AMOne of the largest volcanic eruptions in the Holocene epoch—as measured by the volume of material ejected—occurred on the Greek island of Santorini, traditionally known as Thera. It is considered a pivotal event in the prehistory of the Aegean and East Mediterranean region, with the city of Akrotiri, buried some 1,600 years before Pompeii, becoming one of the key archaeological sites of the second millennium BCE. That much is uncontested.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-statistical-analysis-aims-greek-volcano.html
9/30/2022 10:00 AMToward the end of the last Ice Age, prehistoric artists painted tens of thousands of images—including depictions of mastodons, giant sloths and other now-extinct animals—on cliff walls in the Amazon rainforest.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/tens-thousands-12000-year-old-rock-paintings-found-colombia-180976427/
9/30/2022 12:00 PMPaleontologists have identified a new genus and species of algae called Protocodium sinense that predates the origin of land plants and modern animals and provides new insight into the early diversification of the plant kingdom.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-three-dimensional-fossil-algae-million-years.html
9/30/2022 2:00 PMThe brain is an extremely complex organ whose exact functioning remains difficult to understand. On average, the human brain contains 100 billion neurons that fire upon receiving input signals from multiple sensory organs. But, what is truly remarkable about our brain is the synchronization of this neural firing when triggered by a common input. Put simply, common inputs can generate a collective response in neurons that are not only spatially separated but also have different firing characteristics.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-reverse-engineering-brain-decode-output-neuron.html
9/30/2022 4:00 PMUsing India’s AstroSat spacecraft, astronomers have investigated a central field of a cluster of galaxies known as the Coma cluster. Results of the study, presented in a paper published September 13 on arXiv.org, deliver important insights into the properties and nature of this galaxy cluster.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-center-coma-cluster-explored-astrosat.html
9/30/2022 6:00 PMNew research suggests that Mars was born wet, with a dense atmosphere allowing warm-to-hot oceans for millions of years. To reach this conclusion, researchers developed the first model of the evolution of the Martian atmosphere that links the high temperatures associated with Mars’s formation in a molten state through to the formation of the first oceans and atmosphere.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-clues-early-atmosphere-mars-planet.html
10/1/2022 8:00 AMNeutrinos are tiny subatomic particles, often called ‘ghost particles’ because they barely interact with anything else. Neutrinos are, however, the most common particle in the universe. Believe it or not, approximately 100 trillion neutrinos pass completely harmlessly through your body every second!https://www.space.com/what-are-neutrinos
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10/1/2022 12:00 PMFast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-long cosmic explosions that each produce the energy equivalent to the sun’s annual output. More than 15 years after the deep-space pulses of electromagnetic radio waves were first discovered, their perplexing nature continues to surprise scientists—and newly published research only deepens the mystery surrounding them.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-astronomers-unveil-newand-puzzlingfeatures-mysterious.html
10/1/2022 2:00 PMAn unexpected “heat wave” of 700 degrees Celsius, extending 130,000 kilometers (10 Earth diameters) in Jupiter’s atmosphere, has been discovered. James O’Donoghue, of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), has presented the results this week at the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) 2022 in Granada.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-planetary-scale-jupiter-atmosphere.html
10/1/2022 4:00 PMVenus, the second planet from the sun and Earth’s nearest planetary neighbor is an oddity in many ways. The hot, hellish planet spins backward and might even host life in its impenetrable clouds.https://www.space.com/15988-venus-planet-weird-facts.html
10/1/2022 6:00 PMUsing data from the Gaia space telescope, a team led by researchers at Lund University in Sweden has shown that large parts of the Milky Way’s outer disk vibrate. The ripples are caused by a dwarf galaxy, now seen in the constellation Sagittarius, that shook our galaxy as it passed by hundreds of millions of years ago.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-mysterious-ripples-milky-dwarf-galaxy.html
10/2/2022 8:00 AMThere has been a lot of buzz about quantum computers and for good reason. The futuristic computers are designed to mimic what happens in nature at microscopic scales, which means they have the power to better understand the quantum realm and speed up the discovery of new materials, including pharmaceuticals, environmentally friendly chemicals, and more. However, experts say viable quantum computers are still a decade away or more. What are researchers to do in the meantime?https://phys.org/news/2022-09-traditional-quantum-problems.html
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10/2/2022 12:00 PMAt the poles of Jupiter, enormous cyclones swirl in neat geometric patterns that stay stable for years at a time, a phenomenon that remains unexplained and that scientists have said hints at the need for new physics.https://www.vice.com/en/article/88qmjb/scientists-baffled-by-perfectly-geometric-polygons-of-cyclones-on-jupiter
10/2/2022 2:00 PMMysterious ultrabright gamma-ray emissions in the giant bubbles blown out by our galaxy may finally have an explanation.https://www.space.com/gamma-ray-cocoon-sagittarius-dwarf-galaxy
10/2/2022 4:00 PMUsing artificial intelligence, physicists have compressed a daunting quantum problem that until now required 100,000 equations into a bite-size task of as few as four equations—all without sacrificing accuracy. The work could revolutionize how scientists investigate systems containing many interacting electrons. Moreover, if scalable to other problems, the approach could potentially aid in the design of materials with sought-after properties such as superconductivity or utility for clean energy generation.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-artificial-intelligence-equation-quantum-physics.html
10/2/2022 6:00 PMDoes the existence of life on Earth tell us anything about the probability of abiogenesis—the origin of life from inorganic substances—arising elsewhere? That’s a question that has confounded scientists, and anyone else inclined to ponder it, for some time.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-theory-life-earth-like-planets.html
10/3/2022 8:00 AMIn a discovery with wide-ranging implications, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently announced that uniformly charged macromolecules—or molecules, such as proteins or DNA, that contain a large number of atoms all with the same electrical charge—can self-assemble into very large structures. This finding upends our understanding of how some of life’s basic structures are built.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-theory-upends-macromolecules-self-assemble.html
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10/3/2022 12:00 PMAbout 2 billion years ago, an impactor hurtled toward Earth, crashing into the planet in an area near present-day Johannesburg, South Africa. The impactor—most likely an asteroid—formed what is today the biggest crater on our planet. Scientists have widely accepted, based on previous research, that the impact structure, known as the Vredefort crater, was formed by an object about 15 kilometers (approximately 9.3 miles) in diameter that was traveling at a velocity of 15 kilometers per second.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-asteroid-vredefort-crater-bigger-previously.html
10/3/2022 2:00 PMTheorists at the University of Pittsburgh and Swansea University have shown that recent experimental results from the CERN collider give strong evidence for a new form of matter.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-team-physicists-pentaquark-states.html
10/3/2022 4:00 PMThe exploration era for the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is getting hot—volcanically hot. A multidisciplinary group of Cornell researchers has modeled and synthesized lava in the laboratory as the kinds of rock that may form on far-away exoplanets. They developed 16 types of surface compositions as a starter catalog for finding volcanic worlds that feature fiery landscapes and oceans of magma.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-synthetic-lava-lab-aids-exoplanet.html
10/3/2022 6:00 PMEvery modern mammal, from a platypus to a blue whale, is descended from a common ancestor that lived about 180 million years ago. We don’t know a great deal about this animal, but the organization of its genome has now been computationally reconstructed by an international team of researchers.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-reconstruct-genome-common-ancestor-mammals.html
10/4/2022 8:00 AMA new study by a research team from Arizona State University has found that climate change will dramatically increase the intensity of locust swarms, resulting in even more crops lost to insect pests and threatening food security.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-climate-intense-locust-outbreaks-threaten.html
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10/4/2022 12:00 PMSouth Australia’s Naracoorte Caves is one of the world’s best fossil sites, containing a record spanning more than half a million years. Among the remains preserved in layers of sand are the bones of many iconic Australian megafauna species that became extinct between 48,000 and 37,000 years ago.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-australian-caves-years-older-thought.html
10/4/2022 2:00 PMEvery summer, weather forecasters blast news about African dust plumes crossing the southern United States. And to most people, it’s just dust, but to researchers at Texas A&M University, it’s much more.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-african-isotopes.html
10/4/2022 4:00 PMA new space station artificial gravity startup is in the field. A cryptocurrency-backed company, called Vast Space, announced plans to pursue artificial gravity space stations to improve “human productivity” in orbit, as the company termed it. Vast Space is founded by Jed McCaleb, a billionaire behind the launch of three large crypto firms, such as bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox.https://www.space.com/vast-artificial-gravity-space-station-cryptocurrency
10/4/2022 6:00 PMPhysicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have proposed the source of the sudden and puzzling collapse of heat that precedes disruptions that can damage doughnut-shaped tokamak fusion facilities. Coping with the source could overcome one of the most critical challenges that future fusion facilities will face and bring closer to reality the production on Earth of the fusion energy that drives the sun and stars.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-scientists-fusion-energy-sun-stars.html
10/5/2022 8:00 AMBlack holes are cosmic vacuum cleaners — massive objects so large that not even light can escape them. Most people imagine black holes do nothing but sit there and devour wandering pieces of gas or dust. But could black holes actually have more interesting interior lives? Could they, for instance, explode? If an “explosion” is “a sudden, brief release of tremendous amounts of energy” then the answer is unequivocally yes. And the best part is that they can explode in several interesting ways, either by detonating themselves or their nearby environments.https://www.space.com/can-a-black-hole-explode
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10/5/2022 12:00 PMOne of the deep sea’s most elusive and spectacular creatures, the giant squid (Architeuthis dux), recently astonished a group of tourists after it washed up as a half-eaten corpse on a New Zealand beach. A tour guide who was leading the group at the time described the chance finding as a “once-in-a-lifetime” experience.https://www.livescience.com/giant-squid-new-zealand-beach
10/5/2022 2:00 PMMore frequent and longer-lasting droughts caused by rising global temperatures pose significant risks to people and ecosystems around the world, according to new research from the University of East Anglia (UEA).https://phys.org/news/2022-09-global-temperatures-future-widespread-droughts.html
10/5/2022 4:00 PMCells are constantly making decisions that lead to differentiation. For instance, cells in an embryo make a series of decisions that determine whether they will become neurons in some cases and muscle cells in others. How do cells make these decisions?https://phys.org/news/2022-09-cells-decisions.html
10/5/2022 6:00 PMAstronomers simulated what humans will see on Earth when the star Betelgeuse explodes as a supernova sometime in the next 100,000 years.https://astronomy.com/news/2020/02/when-betelgeuse-goes-supernova-what-will-it-look-like-from-earth
10/6/2022 8:00 AMBy analyzing the data from ESA’s Gaia satellite, astronomers from the China West Normal University have detected 1,656 new star clusters in our Milky Way galaxy. The discovery was presented in a research paper published September 18 on the arXiv pre-print repository.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-chinese-astronomers-star-clusters.html
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10/6/2022 12:00 PMLagria beetles have developed unusual physical traits to protect their progeny: Small invaginations on the backs of the larvae are inhabited by defensive bacteria.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-symbiotic-bacteria-beetle-larvae-pathogens.html
10/6/2022 2:00 PMPeople have been exploring the surface of Mars for over 50 years(opens in new tab). According to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs(opens in new tab), nations have sent 18 human-made objects to Mars(opens in new tab) over 14 separate missions. Many of these missions are still ongoing, but over the decades of Martian exploration, humankind has left behind many pieces of debris on the planet’s surface.https://www.space.com/mars-littered-with-human-trash
10/6/2022 4:00 PMScientists have discovered how a chemical in the cells of marine organisms enables them to survive the high pressures found in the deep oceans.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-chemical-cells-marine-enables-survive.html
10/6/2022 6:00 PMResearchers at QuTech—a collaboration between the Delft University of Technology and TNO—have engineered a record number of six, silicon-based, spin qubits in a fully interoperable array. Importantly, the qubits can be operated with a low error-rate that is achieved with a new chip design, an automated calibration procedure, and new methods for qubit initialization and readout. These advances will contribute to a scalable quantum computer based on silicon.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-full-six-qubit-quantum-processor-silicon.html
10/7/2022 8:00 AMImagine a future where, despite efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions quickly, parts of the world have become unbearably hot. Some governments might decide to “geoengineer” the planet by spraying substances into the upper atmosphere to form fine reflective aerosols—a process known as stratospheric aerosol injection.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-solar-geoengineering-local-temperatures-years.html
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10/7/2022 12:00 PMThe very first stars likely formed when the universe was only 100 million years old, less than one percent its current age. These first stars—known as Population III—were so titanically massive that when they ended their lives as supernovae they tore themselves apart, seeding interstellar space with a distinctive blend of heavy elements. Despite decades of diligent searching by astronomers, however, there has been no direct evidence of these primordial stars, until now.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-potential-universe-earliest-stars.html
10/7/2022 2:00 PMAs anyone who has recently tried out an augmented reality headset knows, the technology is not yet ready to be part of our everyday lives. Researchers have been working to perfect high-performing augmented reality (AR) glasses, but there are a number of challenges. One major problem with conventional AR glasses is that there is a tradeoff in terms of quality and brightness between the external scene you actually see and the contextual information you also want to visualize.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-optical-magic-flat-glass-enables.html
10/7/2022 4:00 PMLiving sharks are often portrayed as the apex predators of the marine realm. Paleontologists have been able to identify fossils of their extinct ancestors that date back hundreds of millions of years to a time known as the Palaeozoic period. These early “sharks,” known as acanthodians, bristled with spines. In contrast to modern sharks, they developed bony “armor” around their paired fins.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-ancient-shark-china-humans-oldest.html
10/7/2022 6:00 PMFor billions of years, the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxies—the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds—have followed a perilous journey. Orbiting one another as they are pulled in toward our home galaxy, they have begun to unravel, leaving behind trails of gaseous debris. And yet—to the puzzlement of astronomers—these dwarf galaxies remain intact, with ongoing vigorous star formation.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-hubble-shield-defending-pair-dwarf.html
10/8/2022 8:00 AMA Curtin-led research team has found asteroid impacts on the moon millions of years ago coincided precisely with some of the largest meteorite impacts on Earth, such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-lunar-glass-moon-asteroid-impacts.html
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10/8/2022 12:00 PMWhen we look out at the solar system, we see objects of all sizes — from tiny grains of dust, to giant planets and the sun. A common theme among those objects is the big ones are (more or less) round, while the small ones are irregular. But why?https://www.space.com/why-are-stars-planets-moons-round
10/8/2022 2:00 PMHow does a proton move through water? In 1806, Theodor Grotthuss proposed his theory, which became known as the Grotthuss Mechanism. Over the years, many others attempted an updated solution realizing that, strictly speaking, Grotthuss was incorrect, but it remained the standard text-book answer. Until now.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-scientist-holy-grails-physical-chemistry.html
10/8/2022 4:00 PMThe European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hera mission will arrive at the binary asteroid system Didymos more than four years after NASA’s DART probe slammed into one of its two space rocks.https://www.space.com/dart-asteroid-crash-requires-follow-up-mission
10/8/2022 6:00 PMThe first map of the “galactic underworld”—a chart of the corpses of once massive suns that have since collapsed into black holes and neutron stars—has revealed a graveyard that stretches three times the height of the Milky Way, and that almost a third of the objects have been flung out from the galaxy altogether.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-milky-graveyard-dead-stars.html
10/9/2022 8:00 AMThe accident at reactor four of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986 generated the largest release of radioactive material into the environment in human history. The impact of the acute exposure to high doses of radiation was severe for the environment and the human population. But more than three decades after the accident, Chernobyl has become one of the largest nature reserves in Europe. A diverse range of endangered species finds refuge there today, including bears, wolves, and lynxes.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-chernobyl-black-frogs-reveal-evolution.html
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10/9/2022 12:00 PMWhen ice sheets melt, something strange and highly counterintuitive happens to sea levels.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-definitive-proof-elusive-sea-fingerprints.html
10/9/2022 2:00 PMSpaceX and NASA are studying how to bump Hubble into higher orbit, and if successful, the lifetime of the space telescope could be extended several years.https://www.popsci.com/science/spacex-hubble-space-telescope-nasa/
10/9/2022 4:00 PMThe neurohormone oxytocin is well-known for promoting social bonds and generating pleasurable feelings, for example from art, exercise, or sex. But the hormone has many other functions, such as the regulation of lactation and uterine contractions in females, and the regulation of ejaculation, sperm transport, and testosterone production in males.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-hormone-revealed-heart-properties.html
10/9/2022 6:00 PMRecent exoplanet exploration has focused on the discovery of temperate rocky planets like the Earth, which are often called habitable planets. Most of the recent missions are targeting stars cooler than the sun. Such stars are known as red dwarfs or M-type stars, which are numerous in the solar neighborhood.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-theory-earth-like-watery-planets-red.html
10/10/2022 8:00 AMThe dead cores of two stars collided 130 million years ago in a galaxy somewhat far away. The collision was so extreme that it caused a wrinkle in space-time — a gravitational wave. That gravitational wave and the light from the stellar explosion traveled together across the cosmos. They arrived at Earth simultaneously at 6:41 a.m. Eastern on August 17.https://blog.scientiststudy.com/2021/10/why-does-gravity-travel-at-speed-of.html
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10/10/2022 12:00 PMWith a high energy density, Li-O2 batteries have become a state-of-the-art battery technology. Inside the Li-O2 battery, the generation and disintegration of the discharged product solid lithium peroxide (Li2O2) have a significant effect on the battery’s performance. Previous research has shed little light on Li2O2 ‘s form and distribution inside, leaving questions regarding the trend and contributing factor of internal Li2O2 ‘s change in form and size unanswered.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-unveil-mystery-lithium-oxygen-batteries.html
10/10/2022 2:00 PMTwo milliseconds—or two thousandths of a second—is an extraordinarily long time in the world of quantum computing. On these timescales the blink of an eye—at one 10th of a second—is like an eternity.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-longest-quantum-standard-silicon-chip.html
10/10/2022 4:00 PMAn extinct reptile’s oddly shaped chompers, fingers, and ear bones may tell us quite a bit about the resilience of life on Earth, according to a new study.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-reptile-bones-earth-perilous.html
10/10/2022 6:00 PMQuark stars, if they exist, would be smaller and denser than neutron stars.https://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2013/04/quark-star
10/11/2022 8:00 AMUranus and Neptune are called ice giants because they are smaller and compositionally different from Jupiter and Saturn, the gas giants. Jupiter and Saturn are composed of mostly hydrogen and helium, with large mantles of metallic hydrogen (which acts like a metal, due to the pressure and temperature within these planets) and only small cores of rock and ice. This is why they are called gas giants: They are mostly gaseous, with very little rock and ice.https://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2019/06/why-do-astronomers-call-uranus-and-neptune-ice-giants
10/11/2022 10:00 AMFor billions of years, the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxies—the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds—have followed a perilous journey. Orbiting one another as they are pulled in toward our home galaxy, they have begun to unravel, leaving behind trails of gaseous debris. And yet—to the puzzlement of astronomers—these dwarf galaxies remain intact, with ongoing vigorous star formation.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-hubble-shield-defending-pair-dwarf.html
10/11/2022 12:00 PMGalaxies, including our Milky Way, host supermassive black holes in their centers, and their masses are millions to billions of times larger than the sun. Some supermassive black holes launch fast-moving plasma outflows which emit strong radio signals, known as radio jets.https://phys.org/news/2022-09-exploring-plasma-mechanism-radio-jets.html
10/11/2022 2:00 PMThe Earth-Sun system has five Lagrangian points, each with an extended region where spacecraft can orbit with little fuel. Scientists place probes that monitor the Sun at the L1 point and craft that survey the infrared and microwave sky at the L2 point.https://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2013/10/lagrangian-points
10/11/2022 4:00 PMRecords of eclipses observed around 1,500 years ago have revealed the history of Earth’s rotation and how our planet’s movement has changed through recent human history.https://www.space.com/ancient-eclipse-records-earth-rotation-history
10/11/2022 6:00 PMUsing data from various space telescopes, astronomers have investigated a variable X-ray source known as SWIFT J0503.7-2819. Results of the study suggest that this source is an intermediate polar. The finding was detailed in a paper published September 22 on the arXiv pre-print server.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-swift-j05037-intermediate-polar.html
10/12/2022 8:00 AMThe new cell-free protein crystallization (CFPC) method developed by Tokyo Tech includes direct protein crystallization and is a major advancement in the field of structural biology. This technique will enable the analysis of unstable proteins that could not be studied using conventional methods. Analyzing these will increase our knowledge of cellular processes and functions.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-cell-free-protein-crystallization-method-advance.html
10/12/2022 10:00 AMAstronomers now routinely discover planets orbiting stars outside of the solar system — they’re called exoplanets. But in summer 2022, teams working on NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite found a few particularly interesting planets orbiting in the habitable zones of their parent stars.https://www.space.com/super-earths-more-habitable-finding-more
10/12/2022 12:00 PMCosmic rays constitute high-energy protons and atomic nuclei that originate from stars (both within our galaxy and from other galaxies) and are accelerated by supernovae and other high-energy astrophysical objects.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-cosmic-ray-protons-reveal-spectral.html
10/12/2022 2:00 PMEstablishing a new field of science to answer the question of what makes humans unique from our extinct relatives has earned Svante Pääbo the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/nobel-prize-physiology-medicine-svante-paabo-human-evolution-neandertal-genetics
10/12/2022 4:00 PMPurdue University chemists have uncovered a mechanism for peptide-forming reactions to occur in water—something that has puzzled scientists for decades.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-fountain-life-droplets-secret-ingredient.html
10/12/2022 6:00 PMA phytoplankton almost as old as Earth—about 3 billion years compared to the planet’s 4.5 billion years—still holds secrets, including how it can survive starvation in the most nutrient-deficient oceans. Synechococcus is the most geographically diverse of three phytoplankton species, contributing to a quarter of the oceans’ primary production and appearing in both frigid polar waters and warm tropical seas.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-marine-phytoplankton-bacteria-friends.html
10/13/2022 8:00 AMPhonetic convergence, or phonetic imitation, is a form of speech production in which a talker’s speech becomes similar to that of the person with whom they are speaking. In a recent article, researchers studied whether and how people working together begin to sound more like each other as they work.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-speaker-specific-acoustics.html
10/13/2022 10:00 AMThe world’s whitest paint—seen in this year’s edition of Guinness World Records and “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert”—keeps surfaces so cool that it could reduce the need for air conditioning. Now the Purdue University researchers who created the paint have developed a new formulation that is thinner and lighter—ideal for radiating heat away from cars, trains and airplanes.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-world-whitest-thinner-ideal-vehicles.html
10/13/2022 12:00 PMSubtropical gyres are enormous rotating ocean currents that generate sustained circulations in the Earth’s subtropical regions just to the north and south of the equator. These gyres are slow-moving whirlpools that circulate within massive basins around the world, gathering up nutrients, organisms, and sometimes trash, as the currents rotate from coast to coast.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-small-eddies-big-role-ocean.html
10/13/2022 2:00 PMAfter NASA’s DART spacecraft slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos, the debris from the collision was blown into an enormous tail stretching behind the asteroid.https://blog.scientiststudy.com/2022/10/asteroid-smacked-by-nasas-dart-now-has.html
10/13/2022 4:00 PMAstronomers hope to explain how galaxies like this one can grow magnetic fields that stretch for thousands of light-years — and what affect they have on galactic evolution.https://astronomy.com/news/2019/12/astronomers-find-surprisingly-complex-magnetic-fields-in-a-galaxys-halo
10/13/2022 6:00 PMEarth-like worlds with similar land-to-ocean ratios to our planet’s may be exceedingly rare. According to a new study, Earth-like planets with about 30% of their surface covered by exposed continental land may make up only 1% of rocky worlds in stars’ habitable zones, the areas around stars where liquid water can exist on a planet’s surface. Instead, roughly 80% of potentially habitable worlds are completely dominated by land, and about 20% are purely ocean worlds, the study found.https://www.space.com/habitable-rocky-planets-dominated-by-land
10/14/2022 8:00 AMScientists from Durham University’s Institute for Computational Cosmology used the most detailed supercomputer simulations yet to reveal an alternative explanation for the Moon’s origin, with a giant impact immediately placing a Moon-like body into orbit around Earth.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-giant-impact-moon-rapidly-scientists.html
10/14/2022 10:00 AMA simple two-carbon compound may have been a crucial player in the evolution of metabolism before the advent of cells, according to a new study. The finding potentially sheds light on the earliest stages of prebiotic biochemistry, and suggests how ATP came to be the universal energy carrier of all cellular life today.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-ancient-chemistry-atp-universal-energy.html
10/14/2022 12:00 PMExperiments on a bizarre feature of quantum physics known as entanglement (illustrated here as two objects entangled into one) have netted the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics. When two particles are entangled, what happens to one determines what happens to the other — even if the particles are far apart.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/physics-nobel-prize-2022-quantum-entanglement-tech
10/14/2022 2:00 PMUsing the powerful 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera (DECam) in Chile, astronomers discovered an asteroid with the shortest orbital period of any known asteroid in the Solar System. The orbit of the approximately 1-kilometer-diameter asteroid takes it as close as 20 million kilometers (12 million miles or 0.13 au), from the Sun every 113 days. Asteroid 2021 PH27, revealed in images acquired during twilight, also has the smallest mean distance (semi-major axis) of any known asteroid in our Solar System—only Mercury has a shorter period and smaller semi-major axis. The asteroid is so close to the Sun’s massive gravitational field, it experiences the largest general relativistic effects of any known Solar System object.https://blog.scientiststudy.com/2021/08/mercury-is-no-longer-closest-world-to.html
10/14/2022 4:00 PMScientists at UC Riverside are suggesting something is missing from the typical roster of chemicals that astrobiologists use to search for life on planets around other stars—laughing gas.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-gas-space-life.html
10/14/2022 6:00 PMThe alignment between galaxy spins and the large-scale structure of the universe reveals the processes by which different components of galaxies form.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-flips-galaxies-cosmic-web.html
10/15/2022 8:00 AMAn international team of astronomers has performed multiwavelength photometric observations of a galaxy triplet known as SIT 45. Results of the study, published September 26 on arXiv.org, provide important information regarding the properties and dynamics of this object.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-galaxy-triplet.html
10/15/2022 10:00 AMAcross-kingdom partnership between bacteria and fungi can result in the two joining to form a “superorganism” with unusual strength and resilience. It may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but these microbial groupings are very much part of the here and now.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-microbes-cavities-superorganisms-teeth.html
10/15/2022 12:00 PMNearly half the stars in our galaxy are solitary like the sun. The other half comprises stars that circle other stars, in pairs and multiples, with orbits so tight that some stellar systems could fit between Earth and the moon.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-astronomers-cataclysmic-pair-stars-shortest.html
10/15/2022 2:00 PMWhat are wormholes and do they exist? Imagine two towns on two opposite sides of a mountain. People from these towns would probably have to travel all the way around the mountain to visit one another. But, if they wanted to get there faster, they could dig a tunnel straight through the mountain to create a shortcut. That’s the idea behind a wormhole.https://www.space.com/what-are-wormholes-astrophysicist-explains
10/15/2022 4:00 PMJuno gets highest-resolution close-up of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Observations from the spacecraft’s pass of the moon provided the first close-up in over two decades of this ocean world, resulting in remarkable imagery and unique science.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-juno-highest-resolution-close-up-jupiter-moon.html
10/15/2022 6:00 PMOne of the more unsettling discoveries in the past half century is that the universe is not locally real. “Real,” meaning that objects have definite properties independent of observation—an apple can be red even when no one is looking; “local” means objects can only be influenced by their surroundings, and that any influence cannot travel faster than light. Investigations at the frontiers of quantum physics have found that these things cannot both be true. Instead, the evidence shows objects are not influenced solely by their surroundings and they may also lack definite properties prior to measurement. As Albert Einstein famously bemoaned to a friend, “Do you really believe the moon is not there when you are not looking at it?”https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-universe-is-not-locally-real-and-the-physics-nobel-prize-winners-proved-it/
10/16/2022 8:00 AMTiny particles are interconnected despite sometimes being thousands of kilometers apart—Albert Einstein called this “spooky action at a distance.” Something that would be inexplicable by the laws of classical physics is a fundamental part of quantum physics. Entanglement like this can occur between multiple quantum particles, meaning that certain properties of the particles are intimately linked with each other.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-milestones-path-quantum-technologies.html
10/16/2022 10:00 AMAre we alone in the universe? An answer to that age-old question has seemed tantalizingly within reach since the discovery of ice-encrusted moons in our solar system with potentially habitable subsurface oceans. But looking for evidence of life in a frigid sea hundreds of millions of miles away poses tremendous challenges. The science equipment used must be exquisitely complex yet capable of withstanding intense radiation and cryogenic temperatures. What’s more, the instruments must be able to take diverse, independent, complementary measurements that together could produce scientifically defensible proof of life.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-team-tools-life-deep-space.html
10/16/2022 12:00 PMAustralian Space Agency and NASA signed a deal to send an Australian-made rover to the moon under the Artemis program, with a goal to collect lunar rocks that could ultimately provide breathable oxygen on the moon.https://www.space.com/moon-surface-oxygen-8-billion-people
10/16/2022 2:00 PMEach year, the solid-iron inner core at the heart of our planet expands by about a millimeter as the Earth’s nether regions cool and solidify. According to a recent study, one side appears to be growing faster — but scientists don’t know why.https://astronomy.com/news/2021/08/earths-inner-core-is-growing-lopsided
10/16/2022 4:00 PMA team of researchers at the California Institute of Technology, working with one colleague from The Francis Crick Institute and another from the University of Cambridge, both in the U.K., has developed a way to grow mouse embryos without using mouse eggs or sperm to learn more about early mammalian development. In their paper, the group describes using several types of stem cells to grow mouse embryos.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-mouse-embryo-stem-cells-mammalian.html
10/16/2022 6:00 PMEngineers from UNSW Sydney have successfully converted a diesel engine to run as a hydrogen-diesel hybrid engine—reducing CO2 emissions by more than 85% in the process.https://techxplore.com/news/2022-10-retrofits-diesel-hydrogen.html
10/17/2022 8:00 AMThe controversial idea that quantum effects in the brain can explain consciousness has passed a key test. Experiments show that anaesthetic drugs reduce how long tiny structures found in brain cells can sustain suspected quantum excitations. As anaesthetic switches consciousness on and off, the results may implicate these structures, called microtubules, as a nexus of our conscious experience.https://blog.scientiststudy.com/2022/04/quantum-experiments-add-weight-to.html
10/17/2022 10:00 AMAstronomers have detected a strange radio source coming from somewhere near the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The signal repeats seemingly at random, and can’t be neatly attributed to any known astronomical object, leading the team to consider that it might be something brand new.https://blog.scientiststudy.com/2021/09/something-mysterious-near-galactic.html
10/17/2022 12:00 PMFor 50 years, researchers have struggled to explain one of Jupiter’s enduring mysteries: Why is its upper atmosphere so hot? Based on the intensity of sunlight Jupiter receives, its highest reaches should be a brisk −100 degrees Fahrenheit (−73 degrees Celsius). Instead, they sizzle at about 800 F (426 C).https://astronomy.com/news/2021/09/jupiters-aurorae-trigger-heat-waves
10/17/2022 2:00 PMScientists revisiting a mysterious signal from the south pole of Mars have suggested a new potential explanation, and it doesn’t bode well for hopes of finding liquid water on the Red Planet.https://www.space.com/mars-lake-reflection-rock-layering-alternative
10/17/2022 4:00 PMNASA’s Lucy spacecraft still has five years of trekking through space before it sees its first Trojan asteroid, but mission scientists are already getting a sense of what these rocks look like.https://www.space.com/lucy-trojan-asteroid-targets-weird-shapes
10/17/2022 6:00 PMhttps://phys.org/news/2022-10-shrine-egyptian-temple-evidence-previously.html
10/18/2022 8:00 AMBefore its flight demonstration in fall 2022, an inflatable heat shield technology that could one day land humans on Mars was put through its paces at multiple NASA facilities.https://www.nasa.gov/feature/journey-to-launch-nasa-s-inflatable-heat-shield-ready-for-demonstration
10/18/2022 10:00 AMPhysicists have just caught light acting the part of ‘glue’ between atoms, in a kind of loosely bonded molecule.https://blog.scientiststudy.com/2022/08/physicists-finally-measure-long.html
10/18/2022 12:00 PMThanks to an international research collaboration involving the University of Granada (UGR), a hitherto undescribed species of insect has been discovered: Calliarcys antiquus, which belongs to the Ephemeroptera (mayfly) order.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-discovery-unknown-insect-genus-amber.html
10/18/2022 2:00 PMAncient Mars may have had an environment capable of harboring an underground world teeming with microscopic organisms, French scientists reported Monday.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-underground-microbes-swarmed-ancient-mars.html
10/18/2022 4:00 PMThe cocktail of chemicals that make up the frozen surfaces on two of Jupiter’s largest moons are revealed in the most detailed images ever taken of them by a telescope on Earth.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-sharpest-earth-based-images-europa-ganymede.html
10/18/2022 6:00 PMQuantum computers have the potential to outperform classical computers on several complex tasks, yet many challenges will need to be overcome before they reach their full potential. In the meantime, physicists and computer scientists have been trying to realistically estimate the capabilities that quantum computing technologies will exhibit in the near future.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-coherent-simulation-quantum-phase-transition.html
10/19/2022 8:00 AMQuantum calculations performed by researchers from the University of Surrey have allowed scientists to discover new “phases” of two-dimensional (2D) material that could be used to develop the next generation of fuel-cells devices.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-2d-materials-quantum.html
10/19/2022 10:00 AMLooking up at the moon in the night sky, you would never imagine that it is slowly moving away from Earth. But we know otherwise. In 1969, NASA’s Apollo missions installed reflective panels on the moon. These have shown that the moon is currently moving 3.8 cm away from the Earth every year.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-moon-slowly-drifting-earth-billion.html
10/19/2022 12:00 PMFabulous portraits of Jupiter’s mysterious icy moon Europa captured by NASA’s Juno mission during its close flyby last week reveals the moon, which may possibly harbor extraterrestrial life, in unexpected colors.https://www.space.com/juno-europa-flyby-image-gallery
10/19/2022 2:00 PMMost animals require brains to run, jump or hop. The single-celled protozoan Euplotes eurystomus, however, achieves a scurrying walk using a simple, mechanical computer to coordinate its microscopic legs, UC San Francisco researchers reported.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-single-celled-internal.html
10/19/2022 4:00 PMA team of researchers with members from Princeton University, the University of Texas at San Antonio, the University of Waikato, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Southwest Research Institute has discovered rippled structures in the part of space at the boundary of the solar system. In their paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the group describes analyzing data from Voyagers 1 and 2 and also from NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), which circles the Earth, to learn more about the nature of space at the boundary of the solar system.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-rippled-boundary-solar.html
10/19/2022 6:00 PMResearchers at a Scottish university have found a way to use tiny particles of gold to measure the maturity of whisky, which could help distillers with one of the key challenges in the production process.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-aging-gold-standard-whisky.html
10/20/2022 8:00 AMA newly discovered crescent of galaxies spanning 3.3 billion light-years is among the largest known structures in the universe and challenges some of astronomers’ most basic assumptions about the cosmos.https://blog.scientiststudy.com/2021/06/arc-stretching-33-billion-light-years.html
10/20/2022 10:00 AMA scaled-down version of the aerobot that could one day take to the Venusian skies successfully completed two Nevada test flights, marking a milestone for the project.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-jpl-venus-aerial-robotic-balloon.html
10/20/2022 12:00 PMIn the search for life beyond Earth, subsurface bodies of water in our outer solar system are some of the most important targets. That’s why NASA is sending the Europa Clipper spacecraft to Jupiter’s moon Europa: There is strong evidence that under a thick crust of ice, the moon harbors a global ocean that could potentially be habitable.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-shallow-lakes-icy-crust-jupiter.html
10/20/2022 2:00 PMResearchers have identified a metal that conducts electricity without conducting heat – an incredibly useful property that defies our current understanding of how conductors work.https://blog.sci-nature.com/2022/10/physicists-have-identified-metal-that.html
10/20/2022 4:00 PMScientists have discovered that a planet outside of the solar system may have a complex atmosphere made of metal gases that operate like Earth’s atmosphere.https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2022/01/31/Sweden-exoplanet-earth-like-layered-atmosphere/2611643652632/
10/20/2022 6:00 PMResearchers have grown 800,000 brain cells in a lab that have learned to play the 1970s tennis-like video game, Pong – albeit badly.https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63195653
10/21/2022 8:00 AMThe night sky may look deceptively still, but the universe is constantly expanding, which means everything keeps trekking through the void. Now, a new map of the distances of tens of thousands of galaxies is helping researchers calculate the universe’s age and expansion rate with unprecedented precision.https://www.space.com/massive-galaxy-map-universe-expansion-mystery
10/21/2022 10:00 AMA team of researchers at Peking University, the First Institute of Oceanography and the University of Bristol has identified a well-preserved fossilized Markuelia hunanensis embryo of the Cambrian period. In their paper the group describes the condition and attributes of the fossil, including muscle tissue and brain matter.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-exceptionally-fossilized-worm-embryo-cambrian.html
10/21/2022 12:00 PMPotassium (K+) channels are small, highly specialized conduits within every living cell that are responsible for the extremely selective and rapid transport of K+ ions across cell membranes. Voltage-gated potassium (Kv) channels are potassium-specific transmembrane channels that also are sensitive to voltage changes within the cell’s membrane where a selectivity filter chooses K+ ions over sodium (Na+).https://phys.org/news/2022-10-shaker-channel-mutation-differs-human.html
10/21/2022 2:00 PMPlutonium is radioactive, but it doesn’t seem that harmful at first glance. It looks like any other metal, with a silvery sheen that turns dull in contact with the air. Queen Elizabeth II held a piece during a visit to Britain’s Atomic Energy Research facility at Harwell in 1957. It was warm to the touch, but it didn’t hurt.https://www.space.com/what-is-plutonium
10/21/2022 4:00 PMThe amazing survival strategies of polar marine creatures might help to explain how the first animals on Earth could have evolved earlier than the oldest fossils suggest, according to new research. These first simple and now extinct animals might have lived through some of the most extreme, cold and icy periods the world has ever seen.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-animals-earth-life-poles.html
10/21/2022 6:00 PMOne of the world’s biggest wind turbines has recorded a remarkable renewable energy production total, reining in a massive 359 megawatt-hours within 24 hours – enough energy to drive 1.12 million miles (1.8 million km) in a mid-sized electric car.https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/offshore-wind-turbine-prototype-breaks-record
10/22/2022 8:00 AMAstronomers have observed directly for the first time how intense light from stars can ‘push’ matter. Researchers from the universities of Cambridge and Sydney made the observation when tracking a giant plume of dust generated by the violent interactions between two massive stars.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-plumes-interstellar-space-intense-starlight.html
10/22/2022 10:00 AMMassive neutron stars colliding in space are thought to be able to create precious metals such as gold and platinum. The properties of these stars are still an enigma, but the answer may lie beneath the skin of one of the smallest building blocks on Earth—an atomic nucleus of lead. Getting the nucleus of the atom to reveal the secrets of the strong force that governs the interior of neutron stars has proven difficult. Now a new computer model from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, can provide answers.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-revealing-mysteries-universe-skin-atomic.html
10/22/2022 12:00 PMAn astrophotographer has captured a hauntingly beautiful image of a massive plume of plasma shooting out of the sun. The fiery filament, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), extended into space to a distance of more than 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from the solar surface.https://www.space.com/sun-plume-million-mile-long-cme-image
10/22/2022 2:00 PMFrom experience, driving through the city center takes longer than covering the same distance on an open country road. After all, you will encounter a lot of other road users, red lights, road works and traffic jams in the city center. Conversely, if you want to find out how busy a road is without having to join the traffic, you can measure the time it takes cars to travel a certain distance. This is precisely how traffic obstructions are identified by modern navigation systems. In the microcosm, this concept is maintained. When electrons (the smallest possible charge carriers) move through solids, they can interact with other electrons, changing their dynamics. However, due to the tiny mass of the electrons, the relevant processes take place unimaginably fast and they follow the intriguing laws of quantum physics rather than classical mechanics.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-crystalline-attoclock-ultrafast-motion-free.html
10/22/2022 4:00 PMA new analysis of old data suggests that the endangered erect-crested penguin’s bizarre nesting habits—rejecting the first egg they lay—is because they can’t feed two chicks, and the second, larger egg has a better chance of success.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-erect-crested-penguins-egg.html
10/22/2022 6:00 PMScientists have modeled the molten surfaces of 16 different types of lava worlds in the laboratory, creating a catalog of basic types of rocky exoplanet that astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope can reference to characterize alien worlds.https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-lava-worlds
10/23/2022 8:00 AMAstronomers from Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Montpellier have devised an ‘early warning’ system to sound the alert when a massive star is about to end its life in a supernova explosion.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-red-massive-stars-supernova.html
10/23/2022 10:00 AMQuantum science has not only deepened human understanding of the structure of matter and its microscopic interactions, but also introduced a new paradigm of computing and information science—quantum computing and quantum simulation. Quantum informatics research has won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-physicists-entangled-states-programmable-quantum.html
10/23/2022 12:00 PMUsing existing experimental and computational resources, a multi-institutional team has developed an effective method for measuring high-dimensional qudits encoded in quantum frequency combs, which are a type of photon source, on a single optical chip.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-quantifying-qudits-glimpse-quantum-future.html
10/23/2022 2:00 PMWhen astronomers around the world watched the epic collision between two neutron stars in 2017, the main event was just the beginning. The after-effects, both immediate and longer-term, of such a massive, never-before-seen merger were bound to be exciting, interesting, and deeply informative.https://blog.scientiststudy.com/2022/10/matter-ejected-from-crashing-neutron.html
10/23/2022 4:00 PMASA has set a new date for the next launch attempt of its Artemis 1 moon mission. Artemis 1 will have a 69-minute launch window that opens at 12:07 a.m. EST (1707 GMT) on Nov. 14, during which it will attempt to send the Orion crew capsule to lunar orbit.https://www.space.com/nasa-artemis-1-moon-launch-november-14
10/23/2022 6:00 PMAstronomers around the world are captivated by an unusually bright and long-lasting pulse of high-energy radiation that swept over Earth on Sunday, Oct. 9. The emission came from a gamma-ray burst (GRB)—the most powerful class of explosions in the universe—that ranks among the most luminous events known.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-nasa-swift-fermi-missions-exceptional.html
10/24/2022 8:00 AMScientists have begun turning to new tools offered by machine learning to help save time and money. In the past several years, nuclear physics has seen a flurry of machine learning projects come online, with many papers published on the subject. Now, 18 authors from 11 institutions summarize this explosion of artificial intelligence-aided work in “Machine Learning in Nuclear Physics,” a paper recently published in Reviews of Modern Physics.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-machine-nuclear-physics.html
10/24/2022 10:00 AMResearchers at Cardiff University have identified a peculiar twisting motion in the orbits of two colliding black holes, an exotic phenomenon predicted by Einstein’s theory of gravity.https://blog.scientiststudy.com/2022/10/black-holes-wobbling-three-times-second.html
10/24/2022 12:00 PMA new imaging technique captures the structure of the human genome at unprecedented resolution, revealing how individual genes fold at the nucleosome level—the fundamental units constituting the genome’s three-dimensional architecture.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-capture-genes-unprecedented-resolution.html
10/24/2022 2:00 PMIn a new study, a research team at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, shows that both catnip and pea aphids produce the substance nepetalactone, even though the plant and the insect evolved the biosynthesis of this iridoid independently.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-catnip-pea-aphids-ways-molecule.html
10/24/2022 4:00 PMUsing the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), astronomers have discovered the heaviest element ever found in an exoplanet atmosphere—barium. They were surprised to discover barium at high altitudes in the atmospheres of the ultra-hot gas giants WASP-76 b and WASP-121 b—two exoplanets, planets which orbit stars outside our solar system. This unexpected discovery raises questions about what these exotic atmospheres may be like.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-heaviest-element-exoplanet-atmosphere.html
10/24/2022 6:00 PMResearchers at Cardiff University have identified a peculiar twisting motion in the orbits of two colliding black holes, an exotic phenomenon predicted by Einstein’s theory of gravity.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-black-hole-extreme.html
10/25/2022 8:00 AMAn international research team led by the Department of Microstructured Quantum Matter at the MPSD reports the first observation of switchable chiral transport in a structurally achiral crystal, the Kagome superconductor CsV3Sb5.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-team-switchable-electronic-chirality-achiral.html
10/25/2022 10:00 AMMars’ water is being skimmed off the top. NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft found water lofted into Mars’ upper atmosphere, where its hydrogen and oxygen atoms are ripped apart, scientists report.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/mars-water-molecules-upper-atmosphere-chemical-reactions
10/25/2022 12:00 PMA team of researchers at the University of Oxford has found via experimentation that goldfish use markings on the floor below them to measure how far they have traveled.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-goldfish-distance-memory.html
10/25/2022 2:00 PMBuried deep in Uranus data from NASA’s iconic Voyager 2 mission have uncovered a new mystery.https://www.space.com/uranus-voyager-hidden-data-ring-mystery
10/25/2022 4:00 PMThree years after a black hole shredded and devoured a small star, the cosmic titan is lighting up the night sky with violent emissions as it burps out material from its messy stellar meal.https://www.space.com/black-hole-spews-star-devoured-years-ago
10/25/2022 6:00 PMA man diving off the coast of northern Israel, not far from his home, recently stumbled onto a 900-year-old sword dated to the time of the Crusades. Shlomi Katzin, a resident of the town of Atlit, spotted the sword and other centuries-old artifacts on the sea bed off the Carmel coast, where shifting sands had apparently made them suddenly visible.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/diver-finds-crusader-sword-off-israels-coast-180978884/
10/26/2022 8:00 AMThe central biocatalyst in photosynthesis, Rubisco, is the most abundant enzyme on earth. By reconstructing billion-year-old enzymes, a team of Max Planck Researchers has deciphered one of the key adaptations of early photosynthesis. Their results, now published in Science, not only provide insights into the evolution of modern photosynthesis but also offer new impulses for improving it.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-resurrecting-billion-year-old-enzymes-reveals-photosynthesis.html
10/26/2022 10:00 AMThe James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has detected carbon-bearing molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the centers of three active galaxies, where scientists had expected these molecules couldn’t survive. Intriguingly, the observations also suggest that the radiation in the vicinity of the supermassive black holes in these galaxies has altered the overall properties of the PAHs, which could complicate a key technique astronomers use to evaluate star formation, and could also affect their usefulness as biological building blocks.https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-active-galaxy-pah
10/26/2022 12:00 PMAstronomers just detected what may be the most powerful flash of light ever seen. The so-called gamma-ray burst, the most energetic type of electromagnetic explosion known to exist in the universe, was first spotted by telescopes Sunday, October 9.https://www.space.com/most-powerful-gamma-ray-burst-ever-seen
10/26/2022 2:00 PMAccording to the Giant Impact Hypothesis, 4.5 billion years ago, a planetesimal the size of Mars, dubbed Theia, slammed into Earth. The debris ejected by the impact entered orbit around our planet, eventually forming the Moon.https://astronomy.com/magazine/news/2022/09/earths-greatest-hits-a-history-of-impacts
10/26/2022 4:00 PMThis photograph shows us the other side of the Moon, which we usually do not see. It was captured by the Chinese Chang’e 5-T1 spacecraft in 2014. Credit: Chinese Space Agency.https://www.facebook.com/AmazingUniverseOfficial/posts/pfbid0xmqcUG5MKZbEZGTFvZTnzmNfEevrDtG9fb911rig6cftxTc2yZ58wRWfeuP9fSzGl
10/26/2022 6:00 PMIn roughly 5 billion years, the Sun will run out of energy and drastically alter the solar system. Oceans will be baked dry. Entire planets will be consumed. And long-icy worlds will finally enjoy their day in the Sun.https://astronomy.com/news/2020/02/the-suns-death-could-mean-new-life-in-the-outer-solar-system
10/27/2022 8:00 AMA mere century ago, astronomers believed the Milky Way comprised the entire universe. It wasn’t until 1925, when Edwin Hubble was able to measure the distance to a star in what became the Andromeda galaxy, that humanity discovered that our “universe” was only one galaxy in a cosmic ocean.https://astronomy.com/news/2022/03/astronomys-exoplanet-boom-crests-5000-confirmed-worlds
10/27/2022 10:00 AMIn the early-morning hours of today, 14 October 2022, astronomers using the Gemini South telescope in Chile operated by NSF’s NOIRLab observed the unprecedented aftermath of one of the most powerful explosions ever recorded, Gamma-Ray Burst GRB221009A. This record-shattering event, which was first detected on 9 October 2022 by orbiting X-ray and gamma-ray telescopes, occurred 2.4 billion light-years from Earth and was likely triggered by a supernova explosion giving birth to a black hole.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-record-breaking-gamma-ray-possibly-powerful-explosion.html
10/27/2022 12:00 PMRotifers are microscopic freshwater-dwelling multicellular organisms. They’re already known to withstand freezing (even in liquid nitrogen), boiling, desiccation, and radiation, and the group has persisted for millions of years without having sex. The humble yet remarkably hardy bdelloid rotifer has now surprised researchers yet again—a recent study unearthed 24,000-year-old Siberian permafrost and found living (or at least revivable) rotifers there. Surviving 24,000 years in a deep freeze is a new record for the species.https://www.wired.com/story/scientists-find-24000-years-in-siberian-permafrost-still-didnt-kill-the-ancient-rotifer/
10/27/2022 2:00 PMSalty water lakes throughout the crust of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa might burst from the surface as plumes of vapor or flows of slushy ice “lava”, new research suggests.https://www.space.com/europa-plume-eruptions-from-shallow-lakes?fbclid=IwAR3h96dFXEyHCUyhrXYw-hsE1K3vKX6e35AovOBvF-pWMqYsE7CrepYnosU
10/27/2022 4:00 PMA Chinese spacecraft has taken flight to study the sun and improve space-weather predictions. The ASO-S spacecraft — nicknamed Kuafu-1, after a giant in Chinese mythology who chased the sun — was deployed successfully into its target orbit, a sun-synchronous path about 450 miles (720 kilometers) above Earth, according to the state-run media outlet Xinhua(opens in new tab).https://www.space.com/china-launches-advanced-space-based-solar-observatory?fbclid=IwAR2025Fx5ZPpZl2opXbl6jVMuoqpTzJ_3ccW3u4gyyoF3A5Ibi-Ecu4S1cE
10/27/2022 6:00 PMA young, massive planet is orbiting in an unusual place in its star system, and it’s leading researchers to revive a long-debated view of how giant planets can form. The protoplanet, nine times the mass of Jupiter, is too far away from its star to have formed by accreting matter piece by piece, images suggest. Instead, the massive world probably formed all at once in a violent implosion of gas and dust, researchers report.https://www.sciencenews.org/article/giant-planet-newly-discovered-gas-dust-formation?fbclid=IwAR1vi3kvA0u0JKrbuXf07UdQByIgvlmCPUhkisFC9Lpi340Eji2JXtUVngU
10/28/2022 8:00 AMA recent discovery based on observations by the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, SOHO, shows that the gaseous layer that wraps around Earth reaches up to 630 000 km away, or 50 times the diameter of our planet.https://blog.scientiststudy.com/2022/10/earths-atmosphere-stretches-out-to-moon.html?fbclid=IwAR3s3vG4lPPlPVLBWt2jGgVKgeAKs19Z7J7lTHVAJMsiuqWrS6fcpx6o8DQ
10/28/2022 10:00 AMThrough the clever use of two types of telescopes, a team of researchers has produced stunning images of clusters of galaxies. This not only produces beautiful images, but also provides more information about the enormous amounts of energy released around supermassive black holes in clusters.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-clusters-galaxies-easier-view-radio.html?fbclid=IwAR0jz-TztfxoQ6_ZJBkMz19ErxbGYbAnSnc8qRsPHd8ubtzUP3Or4xAxbF8
10/28/2022 12:00 PMThe Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency intends to launch its DESTINY+ mission to the near-Earth asteroid Phaethon in 2024, with the aim of flying by the space rock in 2028, so this “potentially hazardous” asteroid has been studied intensely in the lead-up to the mission.https://www.space.com/phaethon-asteroid-spin-speeding-up?fbclid=IwAR0IsomDq0jbf7qnSUk0XXabu_KSltsBTDEVy5bwD0GR4GBCLo43L_lPgO4
10/28/2022 2:00 PMA black hole at the heart of a distant galaxy is blasting a neighboring galaxy with a jet of plasma moving at near light speed. The unique black hole is located in the galaxy RAD12, and its plasma stream is bombarding the neighboring galaxy RAD12-B. Located around 1 billion light-years from Earth, the two galaxies are in the midst of a collision and merger.https://www.space.com/black-hole-shooting-jet-neighboring-galaxy?fbclid=IwAR0BK7eyJNbopNvfmzHU4hJqDNG0i5ILLdBwgUA0hQj5Y2ploJ8mcJsRcvs
10/28/2022 4:00 PMOmnipose, a deep learning software, is helping to solve the challenge of identifying varied and miniscule bacteria in microscopy images. It has gone beyond this initial goal to identify several other types of tiny objects in micrographs.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-deep-tool-bacteria-micrographs.html?fbclid=IwAR2kLQdi6s7qTLEMtwb2p9rXdzYss7bConlc5VcbiG4TS0y9O9iqhMV5Wco
10/28/2022 6:00 PMImagine taking a star twice the mass of the sun and crushing it to the size of Manhattan. The result would be a neutron star—one of the densest objects found anywhere in the universe, exceeding the density of any material found naturally on Earth by a factor of tens of trillions. Neutron stars are extraordinary astrophysical objects in their own right, but their extreme densities might also allow them to function as laboratories for studying fundamental questions of nuclear physics, under conditions that could never be reproduced on Earth.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-tool-scientists-peer-neutron-stars.html?fbclid=IwAR0jOyN2kcwM93ePVOiJwkjoZTOKnDO38IdeKUM2PCCSDzqsvHHxZBZOqAQ
10/29/2022 8:00 AMNASA engineers are firing micro-bullets at squares of anti-meteoroid shield material that will protect a Mars sample return orbiter during its journey back to Earth.https://www.space.com/nasa-testing-mars-spacecraft-meteoroid-shield?fbclid=IwAR03-SGiCFgGEvPlSW54GQ6BqAwyh5ZCkXN9X7NouWVO1-xjtrfLcm_Dwws
10/29/2022 10:00 AMA new study led by a CNRS researcher, has for the first time used zinc isotope analysis to determine the position of Neanderthals in the food chain. Their findings suggest that they were in fact carnivores.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-neanderthals-carnivores.html?fbclid=IwAR2kLQdi6s7qTLEMtwb2p9rXdzYss7bConlc5VcbiG4TS0y9O9iqhMV5Wco
10/29/2022 12:00 PMA “non-essential” amino acid—so-called because the body can make it from other nutrients—can act as a nutritional cue to guide the body’s responses to a low-protein diet, a RIKEN-led team has found in a study on fruit fly larvae. If a similar control mechanism operates in mammals, it may be possible to use it to control appetite.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-non-essential-block-vital-healthy-protein.html?fbclid=IwAR2TWLIfXRCLSHQdkwlOpK2PSJYI0REpQvlI-cMYiKKIdrA_64NkcYj_1nw
10/29/2022 2:00 PMIt’s impossible to hide from a female mosquito—she will hunt down any member of the human species by tracking our CO2 exhalations, body heat, and body odor. But some of us are distinct “mosquito magnets” who get more than our fair share of bites. Blood type, blood sugar level, consuming garlic or bananas, being a woman, and being a child are all popular theories for why someone might be a preferred snack. Yet for most of them, there is little credible data, says Leslie Vosshall, head of Rockefeller’s Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-mosquito-magnet.html?fbclid=IwAR3Xt9-FhwBYEHkRwi0tZ-KoAQ_6blnOhodIfYMobG5eKhzpv0DcG4Ie_sY
10/29/2022 4:00 PMSouthwest Research Institute scientists have compiled 41 solar occultation observations of Saturn’s rings from the Cassini mission. The compilation, published recently in the journal Icarus, will inform future investigations of the particle size distribution and composition of Saturn’s rings, key elements to understanding their formation and evolution.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-scientists-cassini-unique-saturn.html?fbclid=IwAR1-n72Gfz7tM7xkqVhnmGM9NQWTba8lex9Zmx6tVITclSXoNzddJnus5fY
10/29/2022 6:00 PMA small team of researchers with members from the University of Toulouse, the University of Lausanne and the University of Padova has found evidence that honeybees have a mental number line in their tiny brains.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-honeybees-mental-line-track.html?fbclid=IwAR2ppXHs24CTl-PwTj1lxleh9p5cOGfxqm6j4mo_Gnvuvl-OvrxudoaWPdQ
10/30/2022 8:00 AMMeteors may help astronomers devise a new way to locate dark matter—mysterious and invisible particles that have so far only been discerned by the effect they have on the natural world.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-astronomers-technique-dark.html?fbclid=IwAR0K8paUPGlk7aO1cBs6BRTuuU5b5hqZChgjjdwMT3Uh55kG-Vsmw7L2D5o
10/30/2022 10:00 AMA new study has shown milk was used by the first farmers from Central Europe in the early Neolithic era around 7,400 years ago, advancing humans’ ability to gain sustenance from milk and establishing the early foundations of the dairy industry.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-dates-earliest-prehistoric-europe.html?fbclid=IwAR3M5FdpXuJav0hwKHBYm2hJCqcdXNLwn_ABnNOxJbOpIKw5VZqXYf_PHqw
10/30/2022 12:00 PMReplete with tunneling particles, electron wells, charmed quarks and zombie cats, quantum mechanics takes everything Sir Isaac Newton taught about physics and throws it out the window.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-laboratory-explore-quantum-mysteries-nuclear.html?fbclid=IwAR0YNbapVXj9Yu2yzupJZWyRyJ2-qFEdFxB9vv7qvA6sGNDpu9Wr8rye0Vo
10/30/2022 2:00 PMHigh up in a tree sits a bright red vermilion flycatcher. The males of this songbird species use their red feathers to attract females. Meanwhile, an Arizona mountain kingsnake slithers among the rocks below. Its vivid red, yellow and black coloring mimics that of the venomous coral snake to keep predators away. But why did these two species evolve similar colors to send completely different messages?https://phys.org/news/2022-10-bright-animal-kingdom-intimidate.html?fbclid=IwAR3h96dFXEyHCUyhrXYw-hsE1K3vKX6e35AovOBvF-pWMqYsE7CrepYnosU
10/30/2022 4:00 PMIn quantum physics, Fermi’s golden rule, also known as the golden rule of time-dependent perturbation theory, is a formula that can be used to calculate the rate at which an initial quantum state transitions into a final state, which is composed of a continuum of states (a so-called “bath”). This valuable equation has been applied to numerous physics problems, particularly those for which it is important to consider how systems respond to imposed perturbations and settle into stationary states over time.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-exploring-quantum-state-weakly-coupled.html?fbclid=IwAR0kv5MCxOlGiPjtAj4fzx-LkHwCqXk0hZbReYTdhw41oAZttYSbskqM_-Q
10/30/2022 6:00 PMAstrophysicists have performed a powerful new analysis that places the most precise limits yet on the composition and evolution of the universe. With this analysis, dubbed Pantheon+, cosmologists find themselves at a crossroads.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-precise-accounting-dark-energy.html?fbclid=IwAR1b1XoLr3bGYavYXj41wmfZcBmZrf8oxXT5AZ15y6jWTFkmqNwb8mjPDR8
10/31/2022 8:00 AMA team of marine biologists has discovered 16 species of “ultra-black” fish that absorb more than 99% of the light that hits their skin, making them virtually invisible to other deep-sea fish.https://bigthink.com/life/deep-sea-fish/
10/31/2022 10:00 AMAn astronaut onboard the International Space Station (ISS) has snapped a peculiar image of Earth from space that contains two bizarre blue blobs of light glimmering in our planet’s atmosphere. The dazzling pair may look otherworldly. But in reality, they are the result of two unrelated natural phenomena that just happened to occur at the same time.https://www.space.com/astronaut-blue-blob-pair-atmosphere?fbclid=IwAR0BK7eyJNbopNvfmzHU4hJqDNG0i5ILLdBwgUA0hQj5Y2ploJ8mcJsRcvs
10/31/2022 12:00 PMA new scientific review article in Nature Reviews Chemistry discusses how carbon dioxide (CO2) converts from a gas to a solid in ultrathin films of water on underground rock surfaces. These solid minerals, known as carbonates, are both stable and common.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-carbon-dioxide-solid-minerals-underground.html?fbclid=IwAR0IsomDq0jbf7qnSUk0XXabu_KSltsBTDEVy5bwD0GR4GBCLo43L_lPgO4
10/31/2022 2:00 PMDiscovery of intriguing material behavior at small scales could reduce energy demands for computing. As electronic devices become smaller and smaller, the materials that power them need to become thinner and thinner. Because of this, one of the key challenges scientists face in developing next-generation energy-efficient electronics is discovering materials that can maintain special electronic properties at an ultrathin size.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-thinnest-ferroelectric-material-paves-energy-efficient.html?fbclid=IwAR0kv5MCxOlGiPjtAj4fzx-LkHwCqXk0hZbReYTdhw41oAZttYSbskqM_-Q
10/31/2022 4:00 PMThe discovery of a so-called monster black hole that has about 12 times the mass of the sun is detailed in a new Astrophysical Journalresearch submission, whose lead author is Dr. Sukanya Chakrabarti, a physics professor at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH).https://phys.org/news/2022-10-monster-black-hole-yard.html?fbclid=IwAR1LKhomYQRg7vjqJXaPRbUB21lI4PznHLXMyY9SNq7d7-9ac6M9inyg8wM
10/31/2022 6:00 PMMagma beneath long-dormant Mount Edgecumbe volcano in Southeast Alaska has been moving upward through Earth’s crust, according to research the Alaska Volcano Observatory rapidly produced using a new method.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-reveals-magma-beneath-mount-edgecumbe.html?fbclid=IwAR3qfWWVHGY5RRy8SiGylt0CgbYLHz-0nX9_hFJNGbBJEYv-LdZtiOcbHIA
11/1/2022 8:00 AMThe lunar crystal is made of material previously unknown to the scientific community and contains a key ingredient for the nuclear fusion process, a form of power generation that harnesses the same forces that fuel the Sun and other stars in the galaxy.https://www.discovery.com/science/scientists-in-china-discover-rare-moon-crystal-that-could-power-?fbclid=IwAR2kLQdi6s7qTLEMtwb2p9rXdzYss7bConlc5VcbiG4TS0y9O9iqhMV5Wco
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11/1/2022 12:00 PMWhat is the structure of the Earth? For starters, it consists of several layers: the crust, the upper and lower mantle, and the core. The mantle makes up most of our planet’s volume—84%. The lower mantle represents 55% of the Earth’s volume—it is also hotter and denser than the upper mantle.https://phys.org/news/2022-10-previously-unknown-mineralogy-deep-earth.html?fbclid=IwAR0YNbapVXj9Yu2yzupJZWyRyJ2-qFEdFxB9vv7qvA6sGNDpu9Wr8rye0Vo
11/1/2022 2:00 PMVoyager 1—one of two sibling NASA spacecraft launched 44 years ago and now the most distant human-made object in space—still works and zooms toward infinity.https://blog.scientiststudy.com/2021/05/voyager-1-is-detecting-of-plasma-waves.html?fbclid=IwAR2025Fx5ZPpZl2opXbl6jVMuoqpTzJ_3ccW3u4gyyoF3A5Ibi-Ecu4S1cE
11/1/2022 4:00 PMBlack holes gobbling gas, baby stars emerging within thick dust shrouds and old stars exploding in powerful supernovas: these are just a few of the types of events witnessed in a decade by NASA’s asteroid and comet explorer NEOWISE and released in a stunning new video.