Stars are getting sharper in the James Webb Space Telescope’s field of view.
The team recently completed the third of seven planned steps to align the 18 hexagonal segments of Webb’s mirror, marking nearly the halfway point in a complex, weeks-long process.
Are we alone in the Universe? Billions of dollars are being spent trying to answer that simple question. The implications of finding evidence for life beyond Earth are staggering. The “before and after” mark would punctuate human history.
Mars is currently the most popular exploration target to search for evidence of life elsewhere. Yet little is known about its early history. Our research on a Martian meteorite provides new clues about early surface conditions on the red planet.
Today Mars is cold and inhospitable. But it may have been more Earth-like and habitable in a bygone era. Landforms on Mars record the action of liquid surface water, perhaps as early as 3.9 billion years ago.
New research reveals that electrolysis does work at lower gravitational levels. The findings could support the idea that humans could travel to Mars, use the planet’s resources to refuel, and return home.
It’s coming together! Engineers for the James Webb Space Telescope have now completed two more phases of the seven-step, three-month-long mirror alignment process. This week, the team made more adjustments to the mirror segments along with updating the alignment of its secondary mirror. These refinements allowed for all 18 mirror segments to work together — for the first time — to produce one unified image.
As you can see in the image above, this view of the star HD 84,406 shows one image instead of the 18 views – one from each segment – that we saw earlier this week. NASA engineers say that after future alignment steps, the image will be even sharper.
“We still have work to do, but we are increasingly pleased with the results we’re seeing,” said Lee Feinberg, optical telescope element manager for Webb, in a blog post. “Years of planning and testing are paying dividends, and the team could not be more excited to see what the next few weeks and months bring.”
The joint development team of Professor Shibata (the University of Tokyo), JEOL Ltd. and Monash University succeeded in directly observing an atomic magnetic field, the origin of magnets (magnetic force), for the first time in the world. The observation was conducted using the newly developed Magnetic-field-free Atomic-Resolution STEM (MARS). This team had already succeeded in observing the electric field inside atoms for the first time in 2012. However, since the magnetic fields in atoms are extremely weak compared with electric fields, the technology to observe the magnetic fields had been unexplored since the development of electron microscopes. This is an epoch-making achievement that will rewrite the history of microscope development.
Electron microscopes have the highest spatial resolution among all currently used microscopes. However, in order to achieve ultra-high resolution so that atoms can be observed directly, we have to observe the sample by placing it in an extremely strong lens magnetic field. Therefore, atomic observation of magnetic materials that are strongly affected by the lens magnetic field such as magnets and steels had been impossible for many years. For this difficult problem, the team succeeded in developing a lens that has a completely new structure in 2019. Using this new lens, the team realized atomic observation of magnetic materials, which is not affected by the lens magnetic field. The team’s next goal was to observe the magnetic fields of atoms, which are the origin of magnets (magnetic force), and they continued technological development to achieve the goal.
This time, the joint development team took on the challenge of observing the magnetic fields of iron (Fe) atoms in a hematite crystal (α-Fe2O3) by loading MARS with a newly developed high-sensitivity high-speed detector, and further using computer image processing technology. To observe the magnetic fields, they used the Differential Phase Contrast (DPC) method at atomic resolution, which is an ultrahigh-resolution local electromagnetic field measurement method using a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM), developed by Professor Shibata et al. The results directly demonstrated that iron atoms themselves are small magnets (atomic magnet). The results also clarified the origin of magnetism (antiferromagnetism) exhibited by hematite at the atomic level.
Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, issued a stark warning.
The future of the ISS has come into question amid conflict in Ukraine. Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos, has warned that blocking cooperation could have catastrophic consequences.
Nature is a never-ending source of inspiration for scientists, but our artificial devices usually don’t communicate well with the real thing. Now, researchers at Linköping University have created artificial organic neurons and synapses that can integrate with natural biological systems, and demonstrated this by making a Venus flytrap close on demand.
The new artificial neurons build on the team’s earlier versions, which were organic electrochemical circuits printed onto thin plastic film. Since they’re made out of polymers that can conduct either positive or negative ions, these circuits form the basis of transistors. In the new study, the team optimized these transistors and used them to build artificial neurons and synapses, and connect them to biological systems.
When the transistors detect concentrations of ions with certain charges, they switch, producing a signal that can then be picked up by other neurons. Importantly, biological neurons operate on these same ion signals, meaning artificial and natural nerve cells can be connected.
