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A white dwarf star can explode as a supernova when its mass exceeds the limit of about 1.4 solar masses. A team led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching and involving the University of Bonn has now found a binary star system in which matter flows onto the white dwarf from its companion.

The system was found due to bright, so-called super-soft X-rays, which originate in the nuclear fusion of the overflowed gas near the surface of the white dwarf. The unusual thing about this source is that it is and not hydrogen that overflows and burns. The measured luminosity suggests that the mass of the white dwarf is growing more slowly than previously thought possible, which may help to understand the number of supernovae caused by exploding . The results have been published in the journal Nature.

Exploding white dwarfs are not only considered the main source of iron in the universe, they are also an important tool for cosmology. As so-called Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia), they all become roughly equally bright, allowing astrophysics a precise determination of the distance of their host galaxies.

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One of the best ways to learn about any historical period is by conversing with the people who lived through it. Speaking with people from the distant past is very one-sided, as they are typically dead and have stopped listening long ago. However, they speak volumes if you have the patience to listen, or rather, read what they say in letters, diaries and primitive post-it notes with no sticky back sides.

An international group of computer scientists from Italy, the U.K. and Pakistan have teamed up to resurrect the dead from writings that have been degraded by time by developing a computer-assisted method to virtually return documents to a more legible and decipherable condition. In their research paper, “Restoration and content analysis of ancient manuscripts via color space based segmentation,” published in the journal PLOS ONE, the team details their digital restoration technique’s method and experimental results.

We get a sense of ancient civilizations from their writings, both trivial and profound. The Sumerian cuneiform writing on reveals 4,000-year-old merchant transactions, geometric calculations, and poetry detailing the fall of a great city. Had they been written on paper and not in clay we would likely not have them today.

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Graphene is one of the strongest materials. On top of that, it is exceptionally good at conducting heat and electrical currents, making it one of the most special and versatile materials we know. For all these reasons, the discovery of graphene was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010.

Yet, many properties of the material and its cousins are still poorly understood—for the simple reason that the atoms they are made up of are very difficult to observe. A team of researchers from the University of Amsterdam and New York University have now found a surprising way to solve this issue.

Two-dimensional materials, consisting of a hyper-thin single layer of atomic crystal, have attracted a lot of attention recently. This well-deserved attention is mainly due to their unusual properties, very different from their three-dimensional ‘bulk’ counterparts. Graphene, the most famous representative, and many other , are nowadays researched intensely in the laboratory.

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Michael Levin is a biologist at Tufts University working on novel ways to understand and control complex pattern formation in biological systems.

Michael Levin links.
Michael’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/drmichaellevin.
Michael’s Website: https://drmichaellevin.org.

PODCAST INFO:
The Learning With Lowell show is a series for the everyday mammal. In this show we’ll learn about leadership, science, and people building their change into the world. The goal is to dig deeply into people who most of us wouldn’t normally ever get to hear. The Host of the show – Lowell Thompson-is a lifelong autodidact, serial problem solver, and founder of startups.

LINKS

Continue reading “Michael Levin: Epigenetic Adaptation, Bioelectricity, Anatomical Compiler — Learning with Lowell 170” | >

March 21 (Reuters) — Two organic compounds essential for living organisms have been found in samples retrieved from the asteroid Ryugu, buttressing the notion that some ingredients crucial for the advent of life arrived on Earth aboard rocks from space billions of years ago.

Scientists said on Tuesday they detected uracil and niacin in rocks obtained by the Japanese Space Agency’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft from two sites on Ryugu in 2019. Uracil is one of the chemical building blocks for RNA, a molecule carrying directions for building and operating living organisms. Niacin, also called Vitamin B3 or nicotinic acid, is vital for their metabolism.

The Ryugu samples, which looked like dark-gray rubble, were transported 155 million miles (250 million km) back to Earth and returned to our planet’s surface in a sealed capsule that landed in 2020 in Australia’s remote outback for analysis in Japan.

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In a mind-warping milestone experiment, scientists have been able to manipulate small numbers of individual photons of light, opening doors for the development of quantum technologies. This research, published in the journal Nature Physics on March 20, describes how the researchers were able to make two photons of light interact and measure the difference between these interacting photons and a single photon.

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