Lifeboat Foundation

These peculiar geological structures could explain a long-standing mystery of how Venus loses its heat.

Given Venus and Earth are both rocky planets with roughly the same size and chemistry of their rocks, they should be losing their interior heat to space at a similar rate. How Earth loses its heat is well known, whereas Venus’ flow process remains a mystery.

How does Venus, the hottest planet in the solar system, lose its heat?

Continue reading “30 years of NASA’s Magellan mission may finally solve how Venus cools” »

A liquid nitrogen spray developed by Washington State University researchers can remove almost all of the simulated moon dust from a space suit, potentially solving what is a significant challenge for future moon-landing astronauts.

The sprayer removed more than 98% of moon dust simulant in a vacuum environment with minimal damage to spacesuits, performing better than any techniques that have been investigated previously. The researchers report on their work in the journal, Acta Astronautica.

While people have managed to put men on the moon, they haven’t figured out how to keep them clean there. Similar to the clingiest packaging peanuts, moon dust sticks to everything that it touches. Worse than the packing peanuts, the dust is composed of very fine particles that are the consistency of ground fiberglass.

The first analyses of samples brought back from the asteroid Ryugu show that this space rock contains some of the molecules needed for life.

Physicists in West Virginia have announced a potential breakthrough that could help upend a longstanding constraint imposed by the first law of thermodynamics.

The discovery, involving how energy is converted in plasmas in space, was described in new research published in the journal Physical Review Letters, and could potentially require scientists to have to rethink how plasmas are heated both in the lab and in space.

The first law of thermodynamics, an expression of the law of conservation of energy albeit styled with relation to thermodynamic processes, conveys that the total energy within a system will remain constant, but that it can be converted from one form of energy into another. More simply, the idea is commonly expressed as “energy can neither be created or destroyed.”

Chaotic behavior is typically known from large systems: for example, from weather, from asteroids in space that are simultaneously attracted by several large celestial bodies, or from swinging pendulums that are coupled together. On the atomic scale, however, one does normally not encounter chaos—other effects predominate.

Now, for the first time, scientists at TU Wien have been able to detect clear indications of chaos on the nanometer scale—in chemical reactions on tiny rhodium crystals. The results have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

The chemical reaction studied is actually quite simple: with the help of a precious metal catalyst, oxygen reacts with hydrogen to form water, which is also the basic principle of a fuel cell. The reaction rate depends on external conditions (pressure, temperature). Under certain conditions, however, this reaction shows oscillating behavior, even though the external conditions are constant.

Recently, a research team led by Prof. Guo Guangcan from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) constructed a non-Hermiticity (NH) synthetic orbital angular momentum (OAM) dimension in a degenerate optical cavity and observed the exceptional points (EPs). This study was published in Science Advances.

In topological physics, the NH systems depict open systems with complex energy spectra. Exceptional points are one of the unique features of NH systems. To study EPs, the team had constructed synthetic one-dimensional lattices and established topological simulation platform in a degenerate optical cavity. Based on this platform, an additional pseudomomentum was introduced as a parameter to construct the Dirac point in the two-dimensional momentum space. A pair of EPs can be obtained by introducing non-Hermitian perturbation around the Dirac point.

The detection of complex energy spectra in NH systems can be troublesome for traditional means. The research group developed a method which is referred to as wave front angle–resolved band structure spectroscopy to investigate complex energy spectra based on synthetic OAM. Using this method, the team not only detected EPs in momentum space, but also the key features of EPs like bulk Fermi arcs, parity-time symmetry-breaking transition, energy swapping and half-integer band windings.

Science_Hightech — operanewsapp.

“Enceladus is giving us free samples of what’s hidden deep below.”

Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus shoots particles of frozen silica into space, and scientists might finally know why. Scientists have long known that Enceladus spewed out icy silica that eventually made its way into Saturn’s E ring, but they didn’t have a good explanation as to why this was happening.

Now, a new study by a team at the University of California Los Angeles might provide the answer. Their research shows that tidal heating in Encealadus’ rocky core creates currents that push the silica to the surface. Once there, it’s likely released into space by deep-sea hydrothermal vents.

Continue reading “We finally know why Saturn moon shoots silica into space” »

The TOI-5205’s planetary system’s unusual “forbidden planet” is set to reveal deeper secrets of the cosmos and challenge the theories of planet formation.

Astronomers recently discovered a planet as massive as our Jupiter orbiting dwarf star called TOI 5205b. Such a sporadic cosmic occurrence led scientists to call the gas giant the “forbidden planet.” Located around 280 lightyears away from Earth, the planet was spotted with the assistance of TESS, or NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. The finding has challenged the long-held idea about the planetary system.

Carnegie Science.

Continue reading “‘Forbidden planet’ discovered 280 lightyears away from Earth” »