Lifeboat Foundation

Isolated at home? Then train like an astronaut.

That’s the inspirational advice from a public engagement specialist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Astronaut wannabe Rachel Zimmerman-Brachman said Friday that isolation is a lot like astronaut training. So she came up with this positive message and launched it via Facebook on Thursday:

In the heart of a galaxy cluster 200 million light-years away, astronomers have failed to detect hypothetical particles called axions.

This places new constraints on how we believe these particles work — but it also has pretty major implications for string theory, and the development of a Theory of Everything that describes how the physical Universe works.

“Until recently I had no idea just how much X-ray astronomers bring to the table when it comes to string theory, but we could play a major role,” said astrophysicist Christopher Reynolds of the University of Cambridge in the UK.

Abstract: The Higgs mechanism predicts, apart from the existence of a new scalar boson, the presence of a constant Higgs field that permeates all of space. The vacuum expectation value (VEV) of this field is affected by quantum corrections which are mainly generated by the self-interactions and couplings of the Higgs field to gauge bosons and heavy quarks. In this work we show that gravity can affect, in a non-trivial way, these quantum corrections through the finite parts of the one-loop contributions to the effective potential. In particular, we consider the corrections generated by the Standard Model Higgs self-interactions in slowly-varying weak gravitational backgrounds. The obtained results amount to the existence of non-negligible inhomogeneities in the Higgs VEV. Such inhomogeneities translate into spatial variations of the particle masses, and in particular of the proton-to-electron mass ratio. We find that these Higgs perturbations in our Solar System are controlled by the Eddington parameter, and are absent in pure General Relativity. Yet, they may be present in modified gravity theories. This predicted effect may be constrained by atomic clocks or high-resolution spectroscopic measurements, which could allow to improve current limits on modifications of Einstein’s gravity.

‘La Maison de La Celle-Saint-Cloud’ is an art installation from 1974, in a house built by French artist, Jean Pierre Raynaud. Fascinated by space, uniformity and identity, he began to build this house in 1969 using entirely white tiles with black grout, creating the regular grid pattern in a rigid and geometric form. In 1974, the house was opened to the public in Paris showing the ultimate perfection and flawlessness. But then in 1988, the artist decided to closed the house to himself only and subsequently demolished it in 1993 and presented the debris in 976 surgical containers.

The life of La Maison didn’t stop there, the fragments of which, have since been exhibited in various installations, and the fashion industry has also been paying tribute to it with different ad campaigns and collections inspired by the house.

With a porosity of 99.99 %, it consists practically only of air, making it one of the lightest materials in the world: Aerobornitride is the name of the material developed by an international research team led by Kiel University. The scientists assume that they have thereby created a central basis for bringing laser light into a broad application range. Based on a boron-nitrogen compound, they developed a special three-dimensional nanostructure that scatters light very strongly and hardly absorbs it. Irradiated with a laser, the material emits uniform lighting, which, depending on the type of laser, is much more efficient and powerful than LED light. Thus, lamps for car headlights, projectors or room lighting with laser light could become smaller and brighter in the future. The research team presents their results in the current issue of the renowned journal Nature Communications, which was published today.

More light in the smallest space

In research and industry, laser light has long been considered the “next generation” of light sources that could even exceed the efficiency of LEDs (light-emitting diode). “For very bright or a lot of light, you need a large number of LEDs and thus space. But the same amount of light could also be obtained with a single laser diode that is one-thousandth smaller,” Dr. Fabian Schütt emphasizes the potential. The materials scientist from the working group “Functional Nanomaterials” at Kiel University is the first author of the study, which involves other researchers from Germany, England, Italy, Denmark and South Korea.

People around the world are currently isolating themselves or in a formal quarantine to prevent the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. But for decades, astronauts have been quarantined to ensure that they were virus-free and ready to fly (or, in the case of Apollo, to make sure they didn’t bring home any “moon bugs.”)

This quarantine period “ensures that they aren’t sick or incubating an illness when they get to the space station,” NASA spokesperson Brandi Dean told Space.com.

Stellar streams are long, thin filaments of stars orbiting galaxies, produced by the stretching action of tidal forces. For astronomers, observation of these structures could be crucial to test various galaxy formation models.

Located most likely some 420 light-years away in the Milky Way’s disk, Pisces–Eridanus (or Psc–Eri for short) is a cylindrically shaped stream of almost 1,400 identified stars distributed across about 2,300 light-years. Due to its relative proximity and population size, it is perceived as an excellent laboratory to study star formation and test theories of chemical and dynamical evolution of stellar systems.

They’ll serve as the heart as “discovery factories” for planetary science, astrophysics, materials physics, fusion and more.

:ooooo.

Recent NASA findings show there is a lot of water on Mars — but can future settlers actually drink it? If not, what will be needed for making water on Mars?