Lifeboat Foundation

One of the key metrics for climate modeling is radiative forcing. Most climate models, including the general circulation models (GCMs), focus on the effects of different atmospheric factors on radiative forcing. However, there are still large uncertainties in satellite observations and multi-model simulations associated with some atmospheric factors.

Among them, clouds are a known source of uncertainty in GCMs, leading to radiative biases. However, another possible source of radiative uncertainty is associated with precipitation.

In principle, precipitating particles affect radiative forcing by disrupting incoming shortwave and outgoing longwave radiations. But most conventional GCMs in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) treat precipitation diagnostically and exclude the radiative effects of precipitation (REP). Extracting the magnitude of REP in climate models is challenging because of complicated atmosphere-ocean feedback and multi-model variabilities.

An international research group led by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) and comprising 34 research institutes and universities worldwide utilized the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) on board the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to witness the dramatic interaction between a quasar inside the PJ308–21 system and two massive satellite galaxies in the distant universe.

The observations, made in September 2022, unveiled unprecedented and awe-inspiring details, providing new insights into the growth of galaxies in the early universe. The results, presented July 5 during the European Astronomical Society (EAS 2024) meeting in Padua (Italy), will be published soon in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Observations of this quasar (already described by the same authors in another study published last May), one of the first studied with NIRSpec when the universe was less than a billion years old (redshift z = 6.2342), have revealed data of sensational quality: the instrument “captured” the quasar’s spectrum with an uncertainty of less than 1% per pixel.

Following the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, engineers worldwide have been working on new architectures and hardware components that replicate the organization and functions of the human brain.

Most brain-inspired technologies created to date draw inspiration from the firing of brain cells (i.e., neurons), rather than mirroring the overall structure of neural elements and how they contribute to information processing.

Researchers at Tsinghua University recently introduced a new neuromorphic computational architecture designed to replicate the organization of synapses (i.e., connections between neurons) and the tree-like structure of dendrites (i.e., projections extending from the body of neurons).

Using the repurposed equipment, a team including Imperial College London researchers have measured parts of the Martian atmosphere that were previously impossible to probe. This includes areas that can block radio signals if not properly accounted for—crucial for future Mars habitation missions.

The results of the first 83 measurements, analyzed by Imperial researchers and European Space Agency (ESA) colleagues across Europe, are published today in the journal Radio Science.

To achieve this, ExoMars’ Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) teamed up with another ESA spacecraft orbiting the red planet: Mars Express (MEX). The two craft maintain a radio link, so that as one passes behind the planet, radio waves cut through the deeper layers of the Martian atmosphere.

This new picture of the month from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features the gravitational lensing of the quasar known as RX J1131-1231, located roughly six billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Crater.

It is considered one of the best lensed quasars discovered to date, as the foreground galaxy smears the image of the background quasar into a bright arc and creates four images of the object.

Gravitational lensing, first predicted by Einstein, offers a rare opportunity to study regions close to the black hole in distant quasars, by acting as a natural telescope and magnifying the light from these sources. All matter in the universe warps the space around itself, with larger masses producing a stronger effect.

Imagine being able to watch the inner workings of a chemical reaction or a material as it changes and reacts to its environment—that’s the sort of thing researchers can do with a high-speed “electron camera” called the Megaelectronvolt Ultrafast Electron Diffraction (MeV-UED) instrument at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

Now, in two new studies, researchers from SLAC, Stanford and other institutions have figured out how to capture those tiny, ultrafast details with more accuracy and efficiency.

In the first study, recently published in Structural Dynamics, one team invented a technique to improve time resolution for the electron camera.

How can we advance cutting-edge research but consume less energy? CERN’s scientists are working on innovative solutions, and superconductivity is one of the key ingredients.

A team has recently successfully tested a demonstrator magnet coil that will significantly reduce the power consumption of certain experiments. The coil is made of magnesium diboride (MgB₂) superconducting cables, which are used in the high-intensity electrical transfer line that will power the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), the successor to the LHC. It is mounted in a low-carbon steel magnetic yoke that holds and concentrates the field lines, in a so-called superferric configuration.

This innovative magnet is intended for the SHiP experiment, which is designed to detect very weakly interacting particles and is scheduled to be commissioned in 2031. One of the detector’s two magnets must produce a field of approximately 0.5 tesla. The field is of moderate intensity but must be produced in a huge volume that is 6 meters high and 4 meters wide and deep. A normal-conducting resistive electromagnet would have an electrical power of over one megawatt and, as it would have to operate continuously, its power consumption would be high.

Intense laser pulses can be used to manipulate or even switch the magnetization orientation of a material on extremely short time scales. Typically, such effects are thermally induced, as the absorbed laser energy heats up the material very rapidly, causing an ultrafast perturbation of the magnetic order.

Scientists from the Max Born Institute (MBI), in collaboration with an international team of researchers, have now demonstrated an effective non-thermal approach of generating large magnetization changes.

By exposing a ferrimagnetic iron-gadolinium alloy to circularly polarized pulses of extreme ultraviolet (XUV) radiation, they could reveal a particularly strong magnetic response depending on the handedness of the incoming XUV light burst (left-or right-circular polarization).

Researchers at Finland’s Aalto University have found a way to use magnets to line up bacteria as they swim. The approach offers more than just a way to nudge bacteria into order—it also provides a useful tool for a wide range of research, such as work on complex materials, phase transitions and condensed matter physics.

The paper is published in the journal Communications Physics.

Bacterial cells generally aren’t magnetic, so the magnets don’t directly interact with the bacteria. Instead, the bacteria are mixed into a liquid with millions of magnetic nanoparticles. This means the rod-shaped bacteria are effectively non-magnetic voids inside the magnetic fluid.