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Category: space

Phonon lasers unlock ultrabroadband acoustic frequency combs

Acoustic frequency combs organize sound or mechanical vibrations into a series of evenly spaced frequencies, much like the teeth on a comb. They are the acoustic counterparts of optical frequency combs, which consist of equally spaced spectral lines and act as extraordinarily precise rulers for measuring light.

While optical frequency combs have revolutionized fields such as precision metrology, spectroscopy, and astronomy, acoustic frequency combs utilize sound waves, which interact with materials in fundamentally different ways and are well-suited for various sensing and imaging applications.

However, existing acoustic frequency combs operate only at very high, inaudible frequencies above 100 kHz and typically produce no more than a few hundred comb teeth, limiting their applicability.

Atom-thin electronics withstand space radiation, potentially surviving for centuries in orbit

Atom-thick layers of molybdenum disulfide are ideally suited for radiation-resistant spacecraft electronics, researchers in China have confirmed. In a study published in Nature, Peng Zhou and colleagues at Fudan University put a communications system composed of the material through a gauntlet of rigorous tests—including the transmission of their university’s Anthem—confirming that its performance is barely affected in the harsh environment of outer space.

Beyond the protection of Earth’s magnetic field, the electronic components of modern spacecraft are extremely vulnerable to constant streams of cosmic rays and heavy ions. While onboard systems can be shielded with radiation-protective materials, this approach takes up valuable space and adds weight to spacecraft.

That extra mass drives up launch costs and can limit the payload available for scientific instruments or communications hardware. A far better solution would be to fabricate the electronics themselves from materials that are intrinsically resistant to radiation damage.

Supercomputer simulations reveal rotation drives chemical mixing in red giant stars

Advances in supercomputing have made solving a long‐standing astronomical conundrum possible: How can we explain the changes in the chemical composition at the surface of red giant stars as they evolve?

For decades, researchers have been unsure exactly how the changing chemical composition at the center of a red giant star, caused by nuclear burning, connects to changes in composition at the surface. A stable layer acts as a barrier between the star’s interior and the outer connective envelope, and how elements cross that layer remained a mystery.

In a Nature Astronomy paper, researchers at the University of Victoria’s (UVic) Astronomy Research Center (ARC) and the University of Minnesota solved the problem.

Webb maps the mysterious upper atmosphere of Uranus

For the first time, an international team of astronomers have mapped the vertical structure of Uranus’s upper atmosphere, uncovering how temperature and charged particles vary with height across the planet. Using Webb’s NIRSpec instrument, the team observed Uranus for nearly a full rotation, detecting the faint glow from molecules high above the clouds.

These unique data provide the most detailed portrait yet of where the planet’s auroras form, how they are influenced by its unusually tilted magnetic field, and how Uranus’s atmosphere has continued to cool over the past three decades. The results, published in Geophysical Research Letters, offer a new window into how ice-giant planets distribute energy in their upper layers.

Led by Paola Tiranti of Northumbria University in the United Kingdom, the study mapped out the temperature and density of ions in the atmosphere extending up to 5,000 kilometers above Uranus’s cloud tops, a region called the ionosphere where the atmosphere becomes ionized and interacts strongly with the planet’s magnetic field. The measurements show that temperatures peak between 3,000 and 4,000 kilometers, while ion densities reach their maximum around 1,000 kilometers, revealing clear longitudinal variations linked to the complex geometry of the magnetic field.

Quantum entanglement could link distant telescopes for sharper images

To capture higher-definition and sharper images of cosmological objects, astronomers sometimes combine the data collected by several telescopes. This approach, known as long-baseline interferometry, entails comparing the light signals originating from distant objects and picked up by different telescopes that are at different locations, then reconstructing images using computational techniques.

Conventional long-baseline interferometry methods combine the light signals collected by different telescopes using an interferometer. To do this, however, it relies on delicate optical links that bring light beams together and that are difficult to establish when telescopes are located at long distances from each other.

Researchers at University of Arizona, University of Maryland and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center recently proposed an alternative approach to achieve higher resolution telescopy images that leverages a quantum effect known as entanglement. Their proposed approach, outlined in a paper published in Physical Review Letters, allows distant entangled telescopes, which share a unified quantum state irrespective of how distant they are, to extract the same information about a given scene or cosmological image.

ALMA and JWST Identification of Faint Dusty Star-forming Galaxies up to z ∼ 8 and Their Connection with Other Galaxy Populations

A recent discovery in astrophysics could overturn our current models of the Universe! A team of astronomers led by UMass Amherst “stacked” observations between the ALMA telescope and the JWST to confirm approximately 70 faint dusty galaxies at the edge of our universe, which were formed almost 13 billion years ago 🌠🔭. This shows that stars were being formed earlier than our current models predict — turning everything we thought we knew upside down. What does this mean for the future of astrophysics? Find out here: https://ow.ly/Nab150Yil7i astronomy.

Zavala, Jorge A., Faisst, Andreas L., Aravena, Manuel, Casey, Caitlin M., Kartaltepe, Jeyhan S., Martinez, Felix, Silverman, John D., Toft, Sune, Treister, Ezequiel, Akins, Hollis B., Algera, Hiddo, Barboza, Karina, Battisti, Andrew J., Brammer, Gabriel, Cai, Zheng, Champagne, Jaclyn, Drakos, Nicole E., Egami, Eiichi, Fan, Xiaohui, Franco, Maximilien, Fudamoto, Yoshinobu, Fujimoto, Seiji, Gillman, Steven, Gozaliasl, Ghassem, Harish, Santosh, Jin, Xiangyu, Kakiichi, Koki, Kakkad, Darshan, Koekemoer, Anton M., Lin, Ruqiu, Liu, Daizhong, Long, Arianna S., Magdis, Georgios E., Manning, Sinclaire, Martin, Crystal L., McKinney, Jed, Meyer, Romain, Rodighiero, Giulia, Salazar, Victoria, Sanders, David B., Shuntov, Marko, Talia, Margherita, Tanaka, Takumi S.

HD 137010 b: Earth-Sized Exoplanet Could Be Icy and Cold

Astronomers have found an Earth-sized exoplanet, HD 137,010 b, orbiting a nearby Sun-like star but likely far too cold to be habitable.

How any Earth-sized exoplanets exist, and how do we find them? This is what a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters hopes to address as a team of scientists announced the discovery of an Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting a K-dwarf star, the latter of which is smaller and cooler than our Sun. This discovery has the potential to help scientists not only better understand the formation and evolution of Earth-like worlds, but also the methods used to find them.

For the discovery, the researchers analyzed data obtained from the NASA Kepler K2 mission about HD 137,010 b, which is located approximately 146 light-years from Earth. While the data was collected in 2017 using the transit method, which is when astronomers observe a dip in starlight as the planet crosses in front of its star, astronomers only recently were able to analyze the data to confirm this dip in starlight was an exoplanet. Despite the transit only lasting 10 hours, the astronomers estimate this means HD 137,010 b has an approximate orbital period of 355 days and an approximate radius of 1.06 Earths.

Space Station Microbes Harvest Metals from Meteorites

Most microbes aboard the International Space Station can extract valuable metals like palladium from meteorite material in microgravity, showing potential for sustainable space resource mining.

How can microbes be used to help enhance human space exploration, specifically on the Moon and Mars? This is what a recent study published in npj Microgravity hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated how microbes could be used to harvest essential minerals from rocks that could be used to enhance sustainability efforts on long-term human missions to the Moon and Mars. This study has the potential to help scientists develop new methods for improving human spaceflight, which could substantially alleviate the need for relying on Earth for supplies.

For the study, the researchers sent meteorite and microorganism samples to the International Space Station (ISS) where astronauts conducted a series of experiments to ascertain how microorganisms could harvest essential minerals, specifically platinum and palladium, from the meteorite samples. Concurrently, the researchers also conducted the same experiments on Earth to compare the results under microgravity and terrestrial environments.

The goal of the study was to ascertain whether microorganisms could be used on future long-term space missions to harvest precious metals for construction of space habitats. In the end, the researchers and astronauts found that the microorganisms not only successfully extracted metals like palladium and platinum but also had minimal fungal residues typically that results from such processes. This lack of fungal residue was found to be more prevalent under microgravity conditions.

One of the astronauts stuck in space after Starliner malfunction to be on Cape Cod Feb. 20

She is an inspiration!

NASA astronaut Sunita “Suni” Williams, a Needham native with Falmouth ties, will speak about her experiences during a recent space mission at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 20 at the Marine Biological Laboratory’s Falmouth Forum, according to a community announcement.

The lecture, titled “So Much Space… So Much Time!,” will take place in the Cornelia Clapp Auditorium in Lillie Laboratory, 7 MBL St., Woods Hole. It is free and open to the public.

Williams and fellow astronaut Butch Wilmore remained aboard the International Space Station after thruster failures on their spacecraft. They returned to Earth on an alternate vehicle. Williams will share videos and personal accounts to highlight the rapid commercialization of space and the challenges it presents.

Can AI build a machine that draws a heart? What automated mechanism design could mean for mechanical engineering

Can you design a mechanism that will trace out the shape of a heart? How about the shape of a moon, or a star? Mechanism design—the art of assembling linkages and joints to create machines with prescribed motion—is one of the quintessential activities of mechanical engineers, but has resisted automation for almost two centuries.

In his seminal 1841 book Principles of Mechanisms, Oxford professor Robert Willis famously noted, “When the mind of a mechanician is occupied with the contrivance of a machine, he must wait until, in the midst of his meditations, some happy combination presents itself to his mind which may answer his purpose.”

Almost 200 years later, we still teach machine design mostly by apprenticeship. While we can simulate machines of almost any complexity, systematic methods for design are known only for the most trivial contraptions.

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