Lifeboat Foundation

For decades, scientists have used the Milky Way as a model for understanding how galaxies form. But three new studies raise questions about whether the Milky Way is truly representative of other galaxies in the universe.

“The Milky Way has been an incredible physics laboratory, including for the physics of galaxy formation and the physics of dark matter,” said Risa Wechsler, the Humanities and Sciences Professor and professor of physics in the School of Humanities and Sciences. “But the Milky Way is only one system and may not be typical of how other galaxies formed. That’s why it’s critical to find similar galaxies and compare them.”

To achieve that goal, Wechsler cofounded the Satellites Around Galactic Analogs (SAGA) Survey dedicated to comparing galaxies similar in mass to the Milky Way.

Using various telescopes, an international team of astronomers has conducted a comprehensive study of a double-lined spectroscopic binary known as HD 34736. The study, published November 6 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, delivers important insights into the properties of this system.

So far, the majority of binaries have been detected by Doppler shifts in their spectral lines, hence these systems are called spectroscopic binaries. Observations show that in some spectroscopic binaries, spectral lines from both stars are visible, and these lines are alternately double and single. These systems are known as double-lined spectroscopic binaries (SB2).

HD 34,736 is an SB2 system consisting of two chemically peculiar late B-type stars, located some 1,215 light years away. Previous observations of HD 34,736 have found that the system has an extraordinarily strong magnetic field exceeding 4.5 kG. The effective temperatures of the primary and secondary star were found to be 13,700 and 11,500 K, respectively.

Normally found only in heavy metal bands or certain post-apocalyptic films, a “flame-throwing guitar” has now been spotted moving through space. Astronomers have captured movies of this extreme cosmic object using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope.

The new movie of Chandra (red) and Palomar (blue) data helps break down what is playing out in the Guitar Nebula. X-rays from Chandra show a filament of energetic matter and antimatter particles, about two light-years or 12 trillion miles long, blasting away from the pulsar (seen as the bright white dot connected to the filament).

Continue reading “Chandra and Hubble tune into ‘flame-throwing’ Guitar Nebula” »

Graphene, particularly in its purest form, has long been considered a promising material for developing spintronic devices. These devices leverage the intrinsic angular momentum (i.e., spin), as opposed to the charge, of electrons to transmit and process data.

A research team led by Dominik Schneble, Ph.D., Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, has uncovered a novel regime, or set of conditions within a system, for cooperative radiative phenomena, casting new light on a 70-year-old problem in quantum optics.

Their findings on previously unseen collective spontaneous emission effects, in an array of synthetic (artificial) atoms, are published in Nature Physics, accompanied by a theoretical paper in Physical Review Research.

Spontaneous emission is a phenomenon in which an excited atom falls to a lower-energy state and spontaneously emits a quantum of electromagnetic radiation in the form of a single photon. When a single excited atom decays and emits a photon, the probability of finding the atom in its excited state falls exponentially to zero as time progresses.

Over the past decades, psychologists and policymakers have been trying to devise interventions that could dissuade individuals from engaging in dishonest social behaviors, such as tax evasion or fraud. One promising strategy they identified entails asking people to commit to being honest before they are given the opportunity to engage in dishonest behavior.

While many studies found evidence suggesting that honesty oaths can reduce dishonest behavior, very few explored how different interventions utilizing these oaths compare. Researchers at Aarhus University and other institutes worldwide recently carried out a study investigating the effectiveness of various ex-ante honesty oath interventions.

Their findings, published in Nature Human Behavior, suggest that while different honesty oath-based interventions can successfully curb dishonesty, their effectiveness varies greatly depending on their content. The researchers also identified an intervention that appears to be particularly promising for reducing dishonest behavior.

More than 4 million people in the U.S. have glaucoma, a group of eye diseases that can damage the optic nerve and lead to vision loss. It’s the second-leading cause of blindness worldwide and there’s currently no cure, but there’s a way to help prevent vision loss through early detection and treatment.

The two main treatment options, however, are inefficient and have downsides. Medicated eyedrops are noninvasive but can’t be absorbed for full effectiveness. Repeated injections into the eye can lead to infections or inflammation, not to mention patient discomfort.

Researchers at Binghamton University are exploring several new glaucoma treatments that would be less invasive. In a study recently published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry B, Assistant Professor Qianbin Wang and Ph.D. student Dorcas Matuwana from the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science’s Department of Biomedical Engineering shared their findings for drug-carrying liposomes that could be activated in the eye using near-infrared light.

Researchers from Seoul National University College of Engineering announced they have developed an optical design technology that dramatically reduces the volume of cameras with a folded lens system utilizing “metasurfaces,” a next-generation nano-optical device.

By arranging metasurfaces on the glass substrate so that light can be reflected and moved around in the glass substrate in a folded manner, the researchers have realized a lens system with a thickness of 0.7mm, which is much thinner than existing refractive lens systems. The research was published on Oct. 30 in the journal Science Advances.

Traditional cameras are designed to stack multiple glass lenses to refract light when capturing images. While this structure provided excellent high-quality images, the thickness of each lens and the wide spacing between lenses increased the overall bulk of the camera, making it difficult to apply to devices that require ultra-compact cameras, such as virtual and augmented reality (VR-AR) devices, smartphones, endoscopes, drones, and more.

A study found that male worms’ brains can activate conflicting memories, but behavior is driven by the more beneficial one. This research sheds light on how brains prioritize information, offering insights into conditions like PTSD.

A new study by UCL researchers reveals that two conflicting memories can simultaneously be activated in a worm’s brain, even though only one memory directly influences the animal’s behavior.

In the paper published in Current Biology, the researchers showed how an animal’s sex drive can at times outweigh the need to eat when determining behavior, as they investigated what happens when a worm smells an odor that has been linked to both good experiences (mating) and bad experiences (starvation).