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Showing posts with the label EV

Cosmic Buckyballs Could Be Mysterious Infrared Light Source

Scientists may have just traced the source of some of the mysterious infrared emission detected from stars and clouds of interstellar dust and gas. This Unknown Infrared Emission Band (UIE) has baffled scientists for decades; According to a new theoretical work, at least some of these bands could be produced by highly ionized buckminsterfullerene, better known as buckyballs. “I am very honored to have played a part in the extremely complex quantum chemical investigations carried out by Dr Sadjadi that have produced these very exciting results,” said astrophysicist Quentin Parker of the Space Research Laboratory of the University of Hong Kong. “First they looked at the theoretical evidence that Fullerenes – Carbon 60 – can withstand very high ionization rates, and now this work shows the infrared emission signature of the species is a perfect match for some of the most prominent Unknown Infrared Emission features known. This will help re-strengthen this area of ​​research.” Buckminste

Crustaceans Discovered the First Scientifically 'Pollinating' Seaweed

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Pollination is a hallmark of flowering plants, with animal pollinators such as bees and birds sustaining the world’s food supply – not to mention our cravings for coffee, honey and macadamia nuts. But new research raises the possibility that animal-assisted pollination may have appeared in the ocean long before plants moved ashore. The study, carried out by a research group based in France and Chile, is the first to document a species of seaweed that relies on tiny marine crustaceans speckled in pollen-like spores to reproduce. Since red algae Gracilaria gracilis evolved long before land plants appeared, the researchers say their research suggests animal-assisted pollination could have occurred about 650 million years ago in the oceans once a suitable pollinator appeared. On land in flowering plants and gymnosperms that have seeds, the male reproductive cells, or gametes, fly in the form of pollen grains, which are carried by the wind, through the water, or by surprise insects, to hop

This Record-Breaking 'Black Widow' Pulsar Is The Biggest Neutron Star Ever

One of the most extreme stars in the Milky Way has just gotten even weirder. Scientists have measured the mass of a neutron star named PSR J0952-0607, and found that it is the most massive neutron star ever discovered, registering 2.35 times the mass of the Sun. If true, this is very close to the theorized upper mass limit of about 2.3 solar masses for neutron stars, which is an excellent laboratory for studying these ultra-dense stars at what we think are on the verge of collapse, in hopes of better understanding. strange quantum states of the matter they are made of. “We know roughly how matter behaves at nuclear densities, such as in the nuclei of uranium atoms,” said astrophysicist Alex Filippenko of the University of California, Berkeley. “A neutron star is like one giant core, but when you have one and a half solar masses of this material, which is about 500,000 Earth masses of cores all stuck together, it’s not at all clear how they’re going to behave.” Neutron stars are the col

What are the electric vehicle e-bikes that we have been ignoring?

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In an effort to decarbonise the Australian economy, much has been made of the need to switch to electric cars. But proponents say there’s a much cheaper and greener EV to consider – the electric bike. While you may have to be on a 12-month waiting list and make at least $40,000 to buy a new electric car in Australia right now, you can get a two-wheeler with a battery for less than 10 cents to charge, pretty easily. Chris Jones, president of the Australian Electric Vehicles Association, says many of us forget that bicycles are a form of transportation, and often see them only for fitness and recreation. Chris Jones says EVs on two wheels seem to be forgotten by policymakers. ( ABC Radio Perth: Emma Wynne ) “It’s kind of sad that these simple, highly efficient and very affordable electric vehicles are so often overlooked,” said Dr Jones. “I think a lot of people, especially in Perth, have always looked at bicycles as a toy or recreation; they are very rarely seen as transportation.” But

AI Just Found Alternative Physics Independently

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Pick up any physics textbook and you’ll find formula after formula that explains how things sway, fly, turn, and stop. The formula describes actions that we can observe, but behind each can be a series of factors that are not immediately apparent. Now, a new AI program developed by researchers at Columbia University appears to have found its own alternative physics. After being shown videos of physical phenomena on Earth, AI did not rediscover the current variables we used; instead, it actually comes up with a new variable to explain what it sees. To be clear, this does not mean that our current physics is flawed or that there is a more suitable model to explain the world around us. (Einstein’s laws have proven to be very powerful.) But they can only exist because they are built on a pre-existing ‘language’ of theories and principles established by centuries of tradition. Given an alternate timeline where other minds tackle the same problem from a slightly different perspective, wou

The World's Largest Shark Wasn't Actually A Carnivore, Scientists Find

The largest shark in our oceans already has a reputation for being gentle giants, and it seems there are more than we ever realized. whale shark ( Typhoid rhino ) is a filter feeder, considered carefully combing the water for small animals such as krill. Among the litany of small swimmers they take are leafy greens made up of algae and other photosynthetic organisms. It’s unavoidable, but researchers wonder if this vegetation is just a garnish for carnivores, or if it provides the side salad needed to keep them swimming. Researchers examining dirt and skin samples identified what these 10-meter (32-foot) long sea hoovers were actually taking advantage of from the giant pool of water they breathed through their system. “The droppings suggest that they ate krill,” said University of Tasmania marine biologist Patti Virtue. “But they don’t metabolize much.” In contrast, whale sharks, which are true sharks with cartilage instead of bones, seem to extract nutrients from a lot of algae. “Th

There Might Be a Planet Orbiting a Cruel Dead Star, And Now We Know How To Find Them

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Have you heard of the LU Camelopardalis, QZ Serpentis, V1007 Herculis, and BK Lyncis? No, they weren’t in the boy band in ancient Rome. They are Cataclysmic Variables, binary stars so close together that one star takes matter from its sibling. This causes the pairs to vary greatly in brightness. Could a planet exist in this chaotic environment? Can we see them? A new study says yes to both. Cataclysmic Variables (CVs) experienced a large increase in brightness. All stars vary in brightness to some degree, even our own sun. But the CV increase in brightness is much more pronounced than in stars like our Sun, and it happens on an irregular basis There are different types of catastrophic variables: classic nova, dwarf nova, multiple supernova, and others. All types share the same basic mechanics. A pair of stars orbit each other closely, and one star is larger than the other. The more massive ones are called primary stars, and draw gas from lower-mass stars, which astronomers ca

The James Webb Space Telescope May Have Found The Oldest Galaxy Ever

Just a week after its first images were shown to the world, the James Webb Space Telescope may have discovered a galaxy that existed 13.5 billion years ago, a scientist analyzing the data said Wednesday. Known as GLASS-z13, this galaxy dates back to 300 million years after the Big Bang, about 100 million years earlier than anything previously identified, Rohan Naidu of the Harvard Center for Astrophysics told AFP. “We are potentially seeing the light of the most distant star that anyone has ever seen,” he said. The further away the object is from us, the longer it will take for its light to reach us, and so gazing back into the distant universe is looking into the deep past. JWST has the potential to break records, discovering galaxies that existed when the universe was only 300 million years old! Light from GLASS-z13 took 13.4 billion years to reach us, but the distance between us is now 33 billion light years due to the expansion of the universe! pic.twitter.com/5AcOBwHuO1 — Dr. Ja

Astrophysicists Think They've Found a Mysterious Source of High-Energy Neutrinos

Some of the brightest and most energetic objects in the Universe are the mystery source of high-energy cosmic neutrinos, new research has confirmed. A comprehensive analysis has been convincing enough to link the galaxies that host the fiery cores known as blazars with these mysterious particles. It’s a result that provides a completely unexpected solution to a problem that has kept astrophysicists scratching their heads for years. “The results provide, for the first time, irrefutable observational evidence that the PeVatron blazar sub-sample is a source of extragalactic neutrinos and thus an accelerator of cosmic rays,” said astrophysicist Sara Buson of the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg in Germany. Neutrinos are the odd little things at the best of times. These subatomic particles are ubiquitous and are among the most abundant in the Universe. However, their mass is almost zero, they are electrically neutral, and they interact very little with anything else in the universe

Monster Hydrothermal Field Found in the Dark Depths of the Eastern Pacific

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The large field of hydrothermal vents on the seafloor in the dark depths of the East Pacific ocean is the hottest and largest ever found in the region. Not only that, but in places where scientists don’t expect to find active vents, let alone the entire system, hundreds of meters from the axis of the volcanic ridge. The discovery, scientists say, could have a significant impact on our understanding of ventilation systems, and the role they play in marine ecosystems. The field was discovered by a team of scientists using autonomous underwater vehicles to map the ocean floor at depths inhospitable to human explorers. In the data obtained from the AUV. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Security the team looked at the region of the massive tower, standing three stories high at 2,560 (8,400 feet) meters below the surface – in permanently dark and silent bathypelagic depths. Ventilation is monitored with a temperature recorder. (WHOI/NDSF/ROV Jason/NSF) Initially, the team thought the v

Scientists Have Found A Way To Save Energy And Boil Water More Efficiently

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Water boils a lot – whether it’s a cup of tea brewed in the kitchen or a power station that generates electricity. Any increase in the efficiency of this process will have a major impact on the overall amount of energy used for it each day. One such improvement could come with newly developed treatments for surfaces involved in heating and evaporating water. The treatment improves the two main parameters that determine the boiling process: heat transfer coefficient (HTC) and critical heat flux (CHF). Most of the time, there is a trade-off between the two – when one improves, the other worsens. After years of investigation, the research term behind this technique has found a way to improve both. “Both parameters are important, but raising the two parameters together is a bit tricky because they have an intrinsic trade-off,” said bioinformatics scientist Youngsup Song of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. “If we have a lot of bubbles on the boiling surface, that

Starfish Embryo Spins Into Formation Like Living Crystals

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Tiny blobs of jelly spin perfect circles in the water – their movement produces a force that attracts their neighbors. When enough of them come together, this synchronized dance aligns them into a precise six-sided, regular, repeating pattern, much like the carbon atoms in graphene’s crystal structure. But these are not atoms or any kind of inanimate object governed solely by the forces of physics – they are living, self-propelled, embryonic starfish ( patiria miniata ). The spinning starfish embryos gather into living crystals. (Tan et al., Natural 2022) “We know we have crystals of many materials, but we have never really linked crystal formation to actually living components,” said MIT physicist Nikta Fakhri. Natural . “This is a truly extraordinary phenomenon that has never been reported before.” Fakhri, MIT physicist Tzer Han Tan and colleagues studied active matter — a system in which each individual component (such as a bird in a flock, or a cell in a drop of water) uses energ

Why Don't Woodpeckers Get Brain Damage? Research Presents Exciting New Hypotheses

Forced to spend their days slamming their tiny skulls into the sides of trees in search of buried pieces, woodpeckers should have developed a trick or two to avoid brain damage. So you would think. A new study of woodpecker biomechanics has cast doubt on speculation that the chisel-headed little bird avoided turning its brains to mush through a fancy shock-absorbing adaptation. On the other hand, his brain may be too small to care. “By analyzing high-speed video of three woodpecker species, we found that woodpeckers do not absorb the shock of impact with trees,” said Sam Van Wassenbergh, a biomechanics researcher from the University of Antwerp in Belgium. Anyone who’s ever seen, or even just heard of, machine gun fire from the woodpecker’s signature beat will appreciate the physics involved. Snapping their heads back and forth at an astonishing 20 times per second, members of some species can experience forces of up to 1400 g. Compare that to the paltry 90 to 100 grams that can cause

After Years of Searching, Physicists Observe Electrons Flow Into Whirlpools Like Liquids

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For the first time, physicists have witnessed something very interesting: electrons form eddies like liquids. This behavior is one that scientists have long predicted, but never observed before. And that could be the key to developing next-generation electronics that are more efficient and faster. “Electron vortex is expected in theory, but there is no direct evidence yet, and seeing is believing,” said one of the researchers behind the new study, physicist Leonid Levitov of MIT. “Now we’ve seen it, and it’s a clear sign of being in this new regime, where electrons behave as liquids, not as individual particles.” While electrons flowing in a vortex might not sound like a breakthrough, it’s a big deal because flowing like a liquid results in more energy being sent to the end point, instead of being lost on the way while the electrons are pushed around by things like impurities in matter or vibrations in atoms. “We know that when an electron enters a liquid state, [energy] dissipation d

We Have New Record For Fastest Star Enlarging Supermassive Black Hole

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A newly discovered star is so close to the center of our galaxy’s supermassive black hole that it completes an orbit in just four years. It is the shortest orbit for any of the stars around Sagittarius A*. This is an oval-shaped journey around a black hole that takes the star to an orbital speed of more than 2.5 percent of the speed of light. This discovery adds exciting new information about the strange dynamics of the center of the Milky Way. Although the center of our galaxy is quite quiet compared to other galaxies, the environment around Sgr A* is an extreme place. Black holes are monsters, which have a mass about 4 million times the mass of the Sun. Before astronomers confirmed its existence with live images, scientists deduced its existence and calculated its mass based on the star locked in orbit around Sgr A*. The star, called S2, is just one of a group of stars known as S-stars, which follow a long, sharp elliptical orbit around Sgr A*, with a black hole at one end of the

Many Precursors For RNA Have Been Detected In Our Galactic Center

The heart of the Milky Way appears to be a hotspot for molecules that combine to form RNA. A new survey of the thick molecular cloud that shrouds the galactic center has revealed the presence of various nitriles – organic molecules that are often toxic in isolation, but are also molecular building blocks essential for life. The increase in prebiotic molecules (molecules involved in the emergence of life) identified at the center of galaxies, particularly those associated with RNA, has implications for our understanding of how life emerged in the Universe – and how it happened on Earth. “Here we show that the chemistry occurring in the interstellar medium is able to efficiently form some of the nitriles, which are key molecular precursors of the ‘RNA World’ scenario,” explains astrobiologist Víctor Rivilla of the Spanish National Research Council and National Institutes. Aerospace Technology in Spain. Exactly how life arose on Earth is a mystery that basic scientists are eager to achie

This Confusing Water Creature Could Be The Oldest Relative Of All Vertebrates

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The strange creatures that raged in Earth’s oceans more than half a billion years ago appear to be the earliest vertebrate relatives we’ve found to date. They are called yunnanozoans, dating from the Early Cambrian about 518 million years ago. The cartilaginous features found in their fossil remains are comparable to those of modern vertebrates, paleontologists have found. This suggests that these animals were stem vertebrates, an extinct sister group to the original group of modern vertebrates. “The pharyngeal curvature is a key innovation that likely contributed to the evolution of the vertebrate jaw and braincase,” wrote the team led by Qingyi Tian of Nanjing University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in China. “The pharyngeal skeletons of controversial Cambrian animals called yunnanozoans may contain the oldest fossil evidence limiting the early evolution of arches, but their correlation to vertebrates is debated. “By examining additional specimens in previously unexplored tec