We may be looking for Martian life in the wrong places. The Viking life detection experiments might have inadvertently killed indigenous Martian life by applying too much water. Instead we should “follow the salt” to find life on Mars! See my blog on BigThink (with link to Nature Astronomy paper), Weblink through my webpage:
Posted on Big Think.
The foundation hopes to prevent extinctions, and obtain the necessary biological material to safeguard genetic diversity.
Already backed by a confirmed $50 million in funding, its goal is to halt the extinction crisis through three key conservation focus points.
Continue reading “Colossal Biosciences Launches $50 Million Foundation To Halt Extinction Crisis” »
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Scientists just released the first comprehensive survey of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, the most dangerous earthquake-producing fault in the US.
Physicists have observed the Zel’dovich effect in an electromagnetic system – something that was thought to be incredibly difficult to do until now. This observation, in a simplified induction generator, suggests that the effect could in fact be quite fundamental in nature.
In 1971, the Russian physicist Yakov Zel’dovich predicted that electromagnetic waves scattered by a rotating metallic cylinder should be amplified by gaining mechanical rotational energy from the cylinder. The effect, explains Marion Cromb of the University of Southampton, works as follows: waves with angular momentum – or twist – that would usually be absorbed by an object, instead become amplified by that object. However, this amplification only occurs if a specific condition is met: namely, that the object is rotating at an angular velocity that’s higher than the frequency of the incoming waves divided by the wave angular momentum number. In this specific electromagnetic experiment, this number was 1, due to spin angular momentum, but it can be larger.
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A prototype described as the world’s strongest functional structural battery has been unveiled by researchers in Sweden.
By 2023, Asp’s team had improved on this approach with a second-generation structural battery that used the same constituents, but employed an improved manufacturing method. This time, the team used an infusion technique to ensure the resin was distributed more evenly throughout the carbon fibre network.
In this incarnation, the team enhanced the battery’s negative electrode by using ultra-thin spread tow carbon fibre, where the fibres are spread into thin sheets. This approach improved both the mechanical strength and the electrical conductivity of the battery. At that stage, however, the mechanical strength of the battery was still limited by the LFP positive electrode.
Continue reading “Structural battery is world’s strongest, say researchers” »
A team of engineers and physicists at quantum computing company Quantinuum has conducted the first-ever teleportation of a logical qubit using fault-tolerant methods. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes the setup and teleportation methods they used and the fidelity achieved by each.
The group’s detector design exploits Cherenkov radiation, a phenomenon in which radiation is emitted when charged particles moving faster than light pass through a particular medium, akin to sonic booms when crossing the sound barrier. This is also responsible for nuclear reactors’ eerie blue glow and has been used to detect neutrinos in astrophysics laboratories.
The researchers proposed to assemble their device in northeast England and detect antineutrinos from reactors from all over the U.K. as well as in northern France.
One issue, however, is that antineutrinos from the upper atmosphere and space can muddle the signal, especially as very distant reactors yield exceedingly small signals—sometimes on the order of a single antineutrino per day.
A new model accounts for a wide range of ion-electrode interactions and predicts a device’s ability to store electric charge. The model’s theoretical predictions align with the experimental results. Data on the behavior of the electric double layer (EDL) can aid in the development of more efficient supercapacitors for portable electronics and electric vehicles. The study has been published in ChemPhysChem.
Researchers have developed a new type of bifocal lens that offers a simple way to achieve two foci (or spots) with intensities that can be adjusted by applying external voltage. The lenses, which use two layers of liquid crystal structures, could be useful for various applications such as optical interconnections, biological imaging, augmented/virtual reality devices and optical computing.
