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Gold Does Something Unexpected When Superheated Past Its Melting Point

Gold remains perfectly solid when briefly heated beyond previously hypothesized limits, a new study reports, which may mean a complete reevaluation of how matter behaves under extreme conditions.

The international team of scientists behind the study used intense, super-short laser blasts to push thin fragments of gold past a limit known as the entropy catastrophe; the point at which a solid becomes too hot to resist melting. It’s like a melting point, but for edge cases where the physics isn’t conventional.

In a phenomenon called superheating, a solid can be heated too quickly for its atoms to have time enter a liquid state. Crystals can remain intact way past their standard melting point, albeit for a very, very brief amount of time.

BlackSuit ransomware extortion sites seized in Operation Checkmate

Law enforcement has seized the dark web extortion sites of the BlackSuit ransomware operation, which has targeted and breached the networks of hundreds of organizations worldwide over the past several years.

The U.S. Department of Justice confirmed the takedown in an email earlier today, saying the authorities involved in the action executed a court-authorized seizure of the BlackSuit domains.

Earlier today, the websites on the BlackSuit.onion domains were replaced with seizure banners announcing that the ransomware gang’s sites were taken down by the U.S. Homeland Security Investigations federal law enforcement agency as part of a joint international action codenamed Operation Checkmate.

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