Other Sciences News

The dashed white line in this illustration shows the boundary between the inner and outer Solar System, with the asteroid belt positioned roughly in between Mars and Jupiter. A bubble near the top of the image shows water molecules attached to a rocky fragment, demonstrating the kind of object that could have carried water to Earth. Image credit: Jack Cook / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Study Offers New Insights into Extraterrestrial Origins of Earth’s Water

Mar 16, 2023 by News Staff

In new research, planetary scientists from the University of Maryland and elsewhere analyzed melted meteorites that had been floating around in space since...

Duan et al. identified a mechanism of intestinal Th17 cell differentiation that emerges from an intestinal epithelial cell-associated an unfolded protein response. Image credit: Duan et al., doi: 10.1016/j.immuni.2023.02.018.

Xanthine Plays Important Role in Gut Health, New Study Suggests

Mar 15, 2023 by News Staff

Xanthine, which is found in coffee, tea and chocolate, may play a role in the generation of interleukin-17-producing T helper (Th17) cells, an important...

Shoshany et al. define and analyze a new model of time travel paradoxes, which is fully compatible with all known physics; the model consists of a wormhole time machine in 3+1 spacetime dimensions, which can be either permanent (existing eternally) or temporary (activated only for a short time). Image credit: Genty.

New Quantum Breakthrough Paves Way for ‘Local Wormholes’

Mar 13, 2023 by News Staff

A local wormhole is a physical system characterized by the no-cloning of information that mediates the action of an exchange-free quantum computer: locally...

Chauhan et al. designed a smart supercapacitor using a novel stack of metal oxides that can efficiently harvest energy from sunlight and simultaneously store it. Image credit: Chauhan et al., doi: 10.1039/D2TA06790K.

Newly-Developed Supercapacitor Harvests and Stores Solar Energy

Mar 9, 2023 by News Staff

Like batteries, supercapacitors store and release electricity. But unlike batteries, supercapacitors don’t need a chemical reaction to store energy....

This schematic shows the layers of Earth’s atmosphere, from the troposphere to the thermosphere. SOFIA observes from within the stratosphere and studied the ratio of main oxygen to heavy oxygen in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere, up to an altitude of about 200 km (124 miles). Image credit: NASA / SOFIA / L. Proudfit.

SOFIA Makes First Detection of Oxygen-18 in Mesosphere and Lower Thermosphere of Earth

Mar 8, 2023 by News Staff

In the lower atmosphere of Earth, oxygen contains a higher fraction of the heavy isotope 18O than ocean water does. This enrichment is a signature of biological...

This artist’s impression shows the evolution of the Universe beginning with the Big Bang on the left followed by the appearance of the Cosmic Microwave Background. The formation of the first stars ends the cosmic dark ages, followed by the formation of galaxies. Image credit: M. Weiss / Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Study: Our Momentary Perception of Time May Stretch or Shrink with Each Heartbeat

Mar 8, 2023 by News Staff

The role of the heart in the experience of time has been long theorized but empirical evidence is scarce. In new research, scientists from Cornell University...

The demonstration of the metalens telescope proves the exciting potential lying in the metasurfaces and could bring new possibilities for areas involving large optical systems, including geosciences, planetary observation, and astrophysical science. Image credit: Zhang et al., doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c03561.

Scientists Create First Ultrathin, Compact Metalens Telescope Capable of Imaging Far-Away Objects

Mar 7, 2023 by News Staff

Metalenses promise potential for a paradigm shift of conventional optical devices. They comprise tiny, antenna-like surface patterns that can focus light...

Experimentally determined crystal structure of the K9N56 compound at 61 GPa. Image credit: Laniel et al., doi: 10.1038/s41557-023-01148-7.

Chemists Form First Known Compound Containing Aromatic Nitrogen Rings

Mar 7, 2023 by News Staff

A team of chemists from Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom and China has synthesized the potassium nitrogen compound K9N56 — composed of 520 atoms...

How has sediment transfer and accumulation from lands to oceans affected Earth’s geomorphology? Salles et al. present results from a high-resolution model of surface physiography, validated by independent observations from the geological record, which simulates landscape evolution caused by erosion and deposition over the past 100 million years. Image credit: Salles et al., doi: 10.1126/science.add2541.

Geoscientists Create Dynamic Model of Earth’s Landscape over Past 100 Million Years

Mar 3, 2023 by News Staff

The new model provides a high-resolution understanding of how today’s geophysical landscapes were created and how millions of tons of sediment have flowed...

The space salad. Image credit: University of Adelaide.

Researchers Create Space Salad for Astronauts

Mar 3, 2023 by News Staff

The space salad contains ingredients — including soybean, poppy, barley, kale, peanuts, sweet potato and sunflower seeds — that could be grown...

Reconstruction of a hunter-gatherer associated with the Gravettian culture (32,000-24,000 years ago), inspired by the archaeological findings at the Arene Candide site, Italy. Image credit: Tom Bjoerklund.

Scientists Sequence Genomes of Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers from Different Eurasian Cultures

Mar 2, 2023 by News Staff

Modern humans have populated Europe for more than 45,000 years. However, our knowledge of the genetic relatedness and structure of ancient hunter-gatherers...

The climbing capabilities of living creatures such as geckos, tree frogs, and inchworms provide a promising platform for exploiting biomimetic soft climbing robots. Image credit: Sun et al., doi: 10.1016/j.xcrp.2022.101241.

GeiwBot: Gecko- and Inchworm-Inspired Robot Can Climb Walls and Ceilings

Feb 28, 2023 by News Staff

GeiwBot can climb on walls and ceilings of different textures including glass, polyimide, and aluminum; its climbing behavior is based on dynamic attachment...

An illustration of Earth as it existed during part of its formation billions of years ago, when an ocean of magma covered its surface and stretched thousands of km deep into the core; a typical cell from a simulation conducted by Bajgain et al. with the relative positions of atoms are shown in the left. Image credit: Suraj Bajgain / Lake Superior State University.

New Research Provides Insights into Dynamics of Primordial Earth’s Magma Ocean

Feb 28, 2023 by News Staff

Previous research estimated that it took hundreds of million years for early Earth’s magma ocean to solidify, but new research narrows these large uncertainties...

The oxidation of ferrocenyl-substituted boranes and boronic esters allows for the straightforward synthesis of strong boron-centered Lewis superacids. Image credit: Köring et al., doi: 10.1002/anie.202216959.

Chemists Develop New Technique to Synthesize Lewis Superacids

Feb 27, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

Lewis superacids are very special catalysts that can be used to break strong chemical bonds in non-biodegradable fluorinated hydrocarbons and climate-damaging...

Differences between 3D, 2D, and 1D corrosion: (a) schematic drawing of a typical bulk bicontinuous dealloying corrosion morphology; (b) schematic drawing of a typical pitting corrosion morphology with the volume set as transparent; the grain boundaries (GBs) were not displayed because both intergranular and intragranular pitting can occur; (c) schematic drawing of a typical intergranular corrosion morphology with the volume set as opaque; the sides of the cube display the cross-sectional views; (d) schematic drawing of 1D wormhole corrosion in a polycrystalline material; the upper half is a cross-sectional view showing discontinuous dots (i.e., voids filled by molten salt) along the GBs; the bottom half is a volumetric cutaway along the GBs where the 1D percolating network of tunnels on the grain surfaces is clearly shown in red; the dark blue color in (a) to (c) indicates free space such as cracks, voids, crevices etc., while the red color in (d) indicates wormholes filled with molten salt; (e) a representative false-colored SEM image showing the cross-section of Ni-20Cr after corrosion; (f) FIB-SEM 3D reconstruction of the volume shown in (e). Image credit: Yang et al., doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-36588-9.

New Form of Corrosion Discovered: One Dimensional Wormhole Corrosion

Feb 24, 2023 by News Staff

Corrosion is a ubiquitous failure mode of materials. Often, the progression of localized corrosion is accompanied by the evolution of porosity in materials...

Left: a fully assembled quantum system at Google Quantum AI; prominently displayed is the dilution refrigerator in which the computations occur, the quantum processor and quantum-limited amplifiers installed at the bottom stage of the refrigerator, various cables connecting bottom to top, and control electronics of quantum computer in the back. Right: two generations of Sycamore processors fabricated by Google Quantum AI; each processor features two chips that are bonded together: a chip containing the quantum bits (qubits), and a chip containing the wiring between the qubits and the outside world; the latest generation of the Sycamore processor on the right is notably larger than previous generations, but also has several modifications to the qubits resulting in improved performance. Image credit: Google Quantum AI.

Google Quantum AI Team Improves Error Correction in Quantum Computing

Feb 23, 2023 by News Staff

A new work from Google Quantum AI represents a step towards the development of scalable quantum error correction to enable quantum computers to reach sufficiently...

$Mathematicians often describe arguments as beautiful or dull, and famous scientists have claimed that mathematical beauty is a guide toward the truth. Do laypeople, like mathematicians and scientists, experience mathematics aesthetically? Three studies by Johnson & Steinerberger suggest that they do. Image credit: Gerd Altmann.$

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