Lifeboat Foundation

The mission always had uncertainties. “If an asteroid were constructed as a monolithic rock, similar to the rocks we find on the ground, the deflection and calculations would be straightforward,” Peter Veres, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian, who was not involved in the study, tells Smithsonian magazine in an email. “Instead, we already knew from ground-based observations and several space missions that asteroids are often rubble piles—loosely aggregated spheres of large and small boulders, dust and sometimes ice, with numerous empty spaces.” Hitting one of these asteroids, Veres says, is almost more like striking a sponge than a rock, and it’s harder to predict the impact’s results.

Swift’s team shared their surprising new research at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in June and posted a preprint of their paper on the online server Arxiv in August. According to Veres, the team relied on a widely used method and gathered enough data points to conclude that Dimorphos’ orbit is degrading.

As for why this may be happening, scientists only have guesses so far. One idea is that Dimorphos was once tidally locked to Didymos—meaning that, like Earth’s moon, the same side of the satellite always faced its host. But now, after the DART mission, this alignment might have been broken, causing Dimorphos to tumble around as the system’s tidal forces change its orbit. If this is the case, Veres says, Dimorphos will likely settle back into a tidally locked state over time.

The innovation – which has undergone advanced pre-clinical trials – is effective against a broad range of drug-resistant bacterial cells, including ‘golden staph’, which are commonly referred to as superbugs.

Antibiotic resistance is a major global health threat, causing about 700,000 deaths annually, a figure which could rise to 10 million deaths a year by 2050 without the development of new antibacterial therapies.

The new study led by RMIT University and the University of South Australia (UniSA) tested black phosphorus-based nanotechnology as an advanced infection treatment and wound healing therapeutic.

Continue reading “Ultrathin nanotech promises to help tackle antibiotic resistance” »

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Quantum computing is the next frontier of computation, potentially allowing for calculations that are impossible for classic computers to even process. As researchers around the world work to optimize the computations with an increasing number of quantum bits or qubits, the biggest hurdle they face is the need for ultra-cool environments to run these computers themselves.

A breakthrough in a topological insulator material, which possesses insulating properties internally but conductive properties on the surface, has the potential to transform the realms of advanced electronics and quantum computing.

Performing computation using quantum-mechanical phenomena such as superposition and entanglement.

Scientists at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have developed a new approach to potentially detect and kill cancer cells, especially those that form a solid tumor mass. They have created hybrid nanoparticles made of gold and copper sulfide that can kill cancer cells using heat and enable their detection using sound waves, according to a study published in ACS Applied Nano Materials.

Early detection and treatment are key in the battle against cancer. Copper sulfide nanoparticles have previously received attention for their application in cancer diagnosis, while gold nanoparticles, which can be chemically modified to target cancer cells, have shown anticancer effects. In the current study, the IISc team decided to combine these two into hybrid nanoparticles.

“These particles have photothermal, oxidative stress, and photoacoustic properties,” says Jaya Prakash, Assistant Professor at the Department of Instrumentation and Applied Physics (IAP), IISc, and one of the corresponding authors of the paper. Ph.D. students Madhavi Tripathi and Swathi Padmanabhan are co-first authors.

Tesla’s latest version of FSD had taught itself how to drive by processing billions of frames of video of how humans do it, Isaacson writes.

A spherical structure nearly one billion light-years wide has been spotted in the nearby Universe, dating all the way back to the Big Bang.

Experiments promote a curious flipside of decaying monopoles: a reality where particle physics is quite literally turned on its head.

The field of quantum physics is rife with paths leading to tantalizing new areas of study, but one rabbit hole offers a unique vantage point into a world where particles behave differently—through the proverbial looking glass.

Dubbed the “Alice ring” after Lewis Carroll’s world-renowned stories on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the appearance of this object verifies a decades-old theory on how monopoles decay. Specifically, that they decay into a ring-like vortex, where any other monopoles passing through its center are flipped into their opposite magnetic charges.

Normally, when we think of a rolling object, we tend to imagine a torus (like a bicycle wheel) or a sphere (like a tennis ball) that will always follow a straight path when rolling. However, the world of mathematics and science is always open to exploring new ideas and concepts. This is why researchers have been studying shapes, like oloids, sphericons and more, which do not roll in straight lines.

All these funky shapes are really interesting to researchers as they can show us new ways to move objects around smoothly and efficiently. For example, imagine reducing the energy required to make a toy robot move, or mixing ingredients more thoroughly with a unique-looking spoon. While these peculiar shapes have been studied before, scientists have now taken it a step further.

Consider a game where you draw a path on a tilted table—similar to tilting a pinball table to make the ball go in a particular direction. Now, try to come up with a 3D object that, when placed at the top of the table, will roll down and exactly follow that path, instead of just going straight down. There are a few other rules of this game: the table needs to be inclined slightly (and not too much), there should be no slipping during rolling, and the initial orientation of the object can be chosen at launch. Plus, the path you draw must never go uphill and must be periodic. It must also consist of identical repeating segments—somewhat like in music rhythm patterns.