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Category: materials – Page 40

“This Is From a Meteorite”: Scientist Stunned by Water Inside 400-Million-Year-Old Plant

The research, led by Zachary Sharp, a professor in UNM’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The study centers on horsetails, a family of hollow-stemmed plants that have survived on Earth for more than 400 million years.

The researchers found that water moving through these plants experiences such a powerful natural purification process that its oxygen isotope composition closely matches that of meteorites and other materials from beyond our planet.

“It’s a meter-high cylinder with a million holes in it, equally spaced. It’s an engineering marvel,” Sharp said. “You couldn’t create anything like this in a laboratory.”

AI model identifies high-performing battery electrolytes by starting from just 58 data points

In an ideal world, an AI model looking for new materials to build better batteries would be trained on millions or even hundreds of millions of data points.

But for emerging next-generation battery chemistries that don’t have decades of research behind them, waiting for new studies takes time the world doesn’t have.

“Each experiment takes up to weeks, months to get ,” said University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellow Ritesh Kumar. “It’s just infeasible to wait until we have millions of data to train these models.”

Physicists discover strange spinning crystals that behave like living matter

Spinning crystals that twist, shatter, and rebuild themselves may hold the key to next-generation materials… Physicists have uncovered the fascinating world of “rotating crystals” — solids made of spinning particles that behave in strange, almost living ways. These odd materials can twist instead of stretch, shatter into fragments, and even reassemble themselves.

Strong magnetic field helps answer a question about the ‘new duality’ in materials physics

As someone who studies materials, Lu Li knows people want to hear about the exciting new applications and technologies his discoveries could enable. Sometimes, though, what he finds is just too weird or extreme to have any immediate use.

Working with an international team of researchers, Li has made one of those latter types of discoveries, detailed in Physical Review Letters.

“I would love to claim that there’s a great application, but my work keeps pushing that dream further away,” said Li, professor of physics at the University of Michigan. “But what we’ve found is still really bizarre and exciting.”

Bridging light, microwaves and electrons for precision calibration

EPFL researchers have developed a method to calibrate electron spectrometers with extreme accuracy by linking microwave, optical, and free-electron frequencies.

Frequency is one of the most precisely measurable quantities in science. Thanks to , tools that generate a series of equally spaced, precise frequencies like the teeth of a ruler, researchers can connect frequencies across the electromagnetic spectrum, from microwaves to optical light, enabling breakthroughs in timekeeping, spectroscopy, and navigation.

Electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) is a powerful tool used to investigate the structure and properties of materials at the atomic level. It works by measuring how electrons lose energy as they pass through a sample. But although EELS provides excellent spatial resolution, its spectral resolution, the ability to measure energy precisely, has lagged behind optical methods.

The Red Spider Nebula, caught by Webb

This new NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month features a cosmic creepy-crawly called NGC 6537—the Red Spider Nebula. Using its Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam), Webb has revealed never-before-seen details in this picturesque planetary nebula with a rich backdrop of thousands of stars.

Planetary nebulae like the Red Spider Nebula form when ordinary stars like the sun reach the end of their lives. After ballooning into cool red giants, these stars shed their outer layers and cast them into space, exposing their white-hot cores. Ultraviolet light from the central star ionizes the cast-off material, causing it to glow. The planetary phase of a star’s life is as fleeting as it is beautiful, lasting only a few tens of thousands of years.

The central star of the Red Spider Nebula is visible in this image, glowing just brighter than the webs of dusty gas that surround it. The surprising nature of the nebula’s tremendously hot and luminous central star has been revealed by Webb’s NIRCam.

Bubble wrap bursts enable power-free acoustic testing

Non-destructive testing allows engineers to evaluate the integrity of structures such as pipelines, tanks, bridges, and machinery without dismantling them. Conventional approaches rely on loudspeakers, lasers, or electric sparks. While effective, these systems can be difficult or dangerous to use in flammable or confined areas and require considerable power to function effectively.

Now, a new study from Japan, available online in Measurement, shows how a common packaging material can replace power-hungry devices in non-destructive testing. The team, led by Professor Naoki Hosoya, along with Shuichi Yahagi from Tokyo City University, Toshiki Shimizu and Seiya Inadera from the Shibaura Institute of Technology, and Itsuro Kajiwara of Hokkaido University, found a simple way to test pipes for hidden flaws by using bubble wrap.

The researchers discovered that the sharp crack of a bubble burst can be a viable substitute for the expensive, energy-dependent tools usually employed in non-destructive testing. The researchers claim the method can detect objects inside a pipe within a 2% error margin, without requiring electricity or heavy equipment.

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