Lifeboat Foundation

Using observations made with the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) a study led from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) has confirmed that the asteroid 2023 FW14, discovered last year, is accompanying the red planet in its journey round the sun, ahead of Mars and in the same orbit.

With this new member, the group of Trojans that accompany Mars has increased in number to 17. But it shows differences in its orbit and chemical composition which may indicate that it is a captured asteroid, of a primitive type. The results are published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

A team from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) has observed and described for the first time the object 2023 FW14, a Trojan asteroid that shares its orbit with Mars. After Jupiter, the red planet has the largest number of known Trojans, totaling 17 with this new identification.

Nuclear nonproliferation scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have published the Compendium of Uranium Raman and Infrared Experimental Spectra, or CURIES, a public database and analysis of structure-spectral relationships for uranium minerals. This first-of-its-kind dataset and corresponding analysis fill a key gap in the existing body of knowledge for mineralogists and actinide scientists.

Laser based vibrational spectroscopy methods such as Raman and IR are frequently employed by nonproliferation materials scientists because they are rapid, nominally non-destructive, and can give direct insight to what a material contains. Where spectral assignments may be difficult, the CURIES database uses structural information, subject matter expertise and statistical analysis to determine key features of Raman spectra based on their structural origins.

“When I was in grad school studying uranium mineralogy, there was no single repository to look up a feature of a sample and compare it for identification,” said ORNL’s Tyler Spano, lead author on the CURIES article in American Minerologist. “What we did was bring together data from many different sources including structural information and spectroscopy to understand spectral features and similarities as they relate to chemical, structural and other properties.” The ORNL team hopes that CURIES will support researchers who are looking for new relationships among various types of uranium materials and foster development of rapid characterization and analysis of spectra collected on new materials.

A professor has developed a groundbreaking theory that provides a universal method for predicting melting points, addressing a century-old challenge in physics and offering significant benefits to materials science.

A longstanding problem in physics has finally been cracked by Professor Kostya Trachenko of Queen Mary University of London’s School of Physical and Chemical Sciences. His research, published in the Physical Review E, unveils a general theory for predicting melting points, a fundamental property whose understanding has baffled scientists for over a century.

Understanding States of Matter.

If you were to throw a message in a bottle into a black hole, all of the information in it, down to the quantum level, would become completely scrambled. Because in black holes this scrambling happens as quickly and thoroughly as quantum mechanics allows. They are generally considered nature’s ultimate information scramblers.

If there is life in the solar system beyond Earth, it might be found in the clouds of Venus. In contrast to the planet’s blisteringly inhospitable surface, Venus’ cloud layer, which extends from 30 to 40 miles above the surface, hosts milder temperatures that could support some extreme forms of life.

If it’s out there, scientists have assumed that any Venusian cloud inhabitant would look very different from life forms on Earth. That’s because the clouds themselves are made from highly toxic droplets of sulfuric acid—an intensely corrosive chemical that is known to dissolve metals and destroy most biological molecules on Earth.

But a new study by MIT researchers may challenge that assumption. Published today in the journal Astrobiology, the study reports that, in fact, some key building blocks of life can persist in solutions of concentrated sulfuric acid.

The performance of numerous cutting-edge technologies, from lithium-ion batteries to the next wave of superconductors, hinges on a physical characteristic called intercalation. Predicting which intercalated materials will be stable poses a significant challenge, leading to extensive trial-and-error experimentation in the development of new products.

Now, in a study recently published in ACS Physical Chemistry Au, researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, and collaborating partners have devised a straightforward equation that correctly predicts the stability of intercalated materials. The systematic design guidelines enabled by this work will speed up the development of upcoming high-performance electronics and energy-storage devices.

Did Mars once contain life, or even the building block for life? This is what NASA’s Perseverance (Percy) rover has been trying to determine ever since it landed in Jezero Crater, which has shown an overwhelming amount of evidence to have once been site to a massive lakebed. Now, NASA recently announced that Percy has collected its 24th rock sample on March 11th, nicknamed “Comet Geyser”, with this sample being unlike the first 23 in that evidence suggests it was submerged in standing water for an indeterminant amount of time when Mars had liquid water billions of years ago.

Mosaic image of the drill holes where NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover extracted the “Comet Geyser” rock sample. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS)

“To put it simply, this is the kind of rock we had hoped to find when we decided to investigate Jezero Crater,” said Dr. Ken Farley, who is a project scientist for Perseverance and a professor of geochemistry at the California Institute of Technology. “Nearly all the minerals in the rock we just sampled were made in water; on Earth, water-deposited minerals are often good at trapping and preserving ancient organic material and biosignatures. The rock can even tell us about Mars climate conditions that were present when it was formed.”

A battery cathode in development in labs at the University of California San Diego has Wolverine-like self-healing properties.

Better yet, the regenerative ability of the lithium-sulfur electrode could help to unlock chemistry that doubles electric vehicle range, according to the experts. It’s a promising breakthrough with fascinating potential.

Continue reading “Scientists develop new material that could allow rechargeable batteries to ‘self-heal’: ‘We are very excited about the discovery’” »

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