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It is usually not possible to look inside cloudy liquids, but researchers have now managed to do so.

Imagine tires that charge a vehicle as it drives, streetlights powered by the rumble of traffic, or skyscrapers that generate electricity as the buildings naturally sway and shudder. These energy innovations could be possible thanks to researchers developing environmentally friendly materials that produce electricity when compressed or exposed to vibrations.

UPDATE:  The verification is almost complete. From the Times of Israel:

Channel 12 publishes what it says is a police document showing that one of the identification tests conducted earlier today regarding the body of a dead terrorist, apparently on the basis of photographic dental comparisons, found a “full match” to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

This is amazing, and, given reports that the head of Hamas was scuttling around Gaza’s tunnels surrounded by hostages (and a bunch of explosives to blow them all up if the IDF tried to get Sinwar), it’s doubly striking—as well as heartening.  Click to read from the Times of Israel: (it’s also reported in the NYT):

From the ToI:

The Israel Defense Forces said Thursday it was working to confirm that one of three terrorists its forces had killed in Gaza was Hamas terror chief Yahya Sinwar, as a senior Israeli official said it was very likely that a body found at the scene was that of the October 7 mastermind.

The official said that the security establishment assesses that there was a “high likelihood” that the terrorist killed by the IDF was Sinwar.

“At this time, the identity of the terrorists cannot be confirmed,” the IDF said in a statement.

However, since the IDF is very cautious about these things, the “high likelihood” statement carries some weight.  There’s a bit more:

Hebrew media reports said the IDF troops were not targeting Sinwar and did not know he might be in the building where they were operating.

The army noted that there were no hostages present in the area where the three terrorists were killed. There have been reports that Sinwar has been hiding among hostages throughout the war, using them as human shields.

“The IDF and Shin Bet forces operating in the area continue to operate under the necessary caution,” the army said.

The terrorists were killed when troops opened fire on a group of combatants on the ground floor of a Gaza building in an incident that began on Wednesday.

A strike was ordered against the building, which partially collapsed the structure. When the soldiers subsequently entered the building, they realized that one of the dead terrorists “looked very much like” Sinwar.

If it was Sinwar, it is serendipity, and the fact that no hostages were present in the area is fantastic.  The NYT adds this:

The Israeli military said on Thursday that it was assessing whether Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas and a mastermind of last year’s Oct. 7 terror attack in Israel, had been killed. Eliminating Mr. Sinwar has been a major goal of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, and his death would be a watershed in almost 13 months of fighting that have reshaped the Middle East.

The military released no further details. But four Israeli officials said the military was taking the body of a slain militant to a laboratory in Israel in order to assess whether its DNA matches that of Mr. Sinwar, who is in his early 60s. Three of the officials said the militant had been killed on Wednesday in a firefight with Israeli soldiers.

For months, Mr. Sinwar has escaped Israeli efforts to find and kill him, even as many of his top allies — including much of the leadership of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia, and Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s former political leader — have been assassinated.

Mr. Sinwar’s death, if confirmed, could raise hopes for an end to the conflict in Gaza, by encouraging Hamas to agree to Israeli demands or by providing Israel with a victory that could push Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to ease its negotiating stance. Hamas and the Israeli government have remained far apart on key issues during months of negotiations over a truce.

Here is a photo from the Polish website balconik.com showing the match of Sinwar’s teeth when he was alive (left) with the teeth of the body (other gruesome bits omitted). It’s a pretty good match. (You can see more photos, some you might find disturbing, here.)

This is the best chance yet for an end to the war–assuming that Hamas will fold given that both its political and military leaders have been killed by the IDF.  I would hope that Hamas would surrender unconditionally and release all the hostages, as they have no credible leadership.

As an addendum, remember that Sinwar (now 61) was an Israeli prisoner, doing a life sentence for multiple murder of both Israelis and Palestinians suspected of collaboration.  He got a brain tumor, and an Israeli doctor saved his life by removing it. He was then released in a prisoner swap when over a thousand Palestinian terrorists were exchanged for a single Israeli soldier, Gilat Shalit. No matter that an Israeli doctor saved his life, for Sinwar vowed to kill him and his countrymen after release.

This is still a developing story, but I am optimistic that, if true, this portends an end to the war in Gaza and the release of the hostages. Fingers crossed!

A mouse's tumours, scales from a butterfly's wings and a smiling cross-section of a bracken fern are some of the incredible images from the Nikon Small World photography competition

People who went from using social media for at least 2 hours a day to just 30 minutes a day reported no improvement to their sleep or emotional well-being

I wrote earlier this week about the latest successful test of Starship and the capture of the Super Heavy booster by grabbing arms of the landing tower. This was quite a feat, but it should not eclipse what was perhaps even bigger space news this week – the launch of NASAs Clipper probe to Europa. If all goes well the probe will enter orbit around Jupiter in 2030.

Europa is one of the four large moons of Jupiter. It’s an icy world but one with a subsurface ocean – an ocean that likely contains twice as much water as the oceans of Earth combined. Europa is also one of the most likely locations in our solar system for life outside Earth. It is possible that conditions in that ocean are habitable to some form of life. Europa, for example, has a rocky core, which may still be molten, heating Europa from the inside and seeding its ocean with minerals. Chemosynthetic organisms survive around volcanic vents on Earth, so we know that life can exist without photosynthesis and Europa might have the right conditions for this.

But there is still a lot we don’t know about Europa. Previous probes to Jupiter have gathered some information, but Clipper will be the first dedicated Europa probe. It will make 49 close flybys over a 4 year primary mission, during which it will survey its magnetic field, gravity, and chemical composition. Perhaps most exciting is that Clipper is equipped with instruments that can sample any material around Europa. The hope is that Clipper will be able to fly through a plume of material shooting up geyser-like from the surface. It would then be able to detect the chemical composition of Europa material, especially looking for organic compounds.

Clipper is not equipped specifically to detect if there is life on Europa. Rather it is equipped to determine how habitable Europa is. If there are conditions suitable to subsurface ocean life, and certainly if we detect organic compounds, that would justify another mission to Europa specifically to look for life. This may be our best chance and finding life off Earth.

Clipper is the largest probe that NASA has sent out into space so far. It is about the size of an SUV, and will be powered by solar panels that span 100 feet. Light intensity at Jupiter is only 3-4% what it is on Earth, so it will need large panels to generate significant power. It also has batteries so that it can operate while in shadow. NASA reports that soon after launch Clipper’s solar arrays successfully fully unfolded, so the probe will have power throughout the rest of its mission. These are the largest solar arrays for any NASA probe. At Jupiter they will generate 700 watts of power. NASA says they are “more sensitive” than typical commercial solar panels, but I could not find more specific technical information, such as their conversion efficiency. But I did learn that the panels have much more sturdy, in order to survive the frigid temperatures and heavy radiation environment around Jupiter.

Clipper will take a somewhat indirect path, first flying to Mars where it will get a gravity boost and swing back to Earth where it will get a second gravity boost. Only then will it head for Jupiter, where it will arrive in 2030 and then use its engines to enter into orbit around Jupiter. The orbit is designed to bring it close to Europa, where it will get as close at 16 miles from the surface over its 49 flybys. At the end of its mission NASA will crash Clipper into Ganymede, another of Jupiter’s large moons, in order to avoid any potential contamination of Europa itself.

I always get excited at the successful launch of another planetary probe, but then you have to wait years before the probe finally arrives at its destination. The solar system is big and it takes a long time to get anywhere. But it is likely to be worth the wait.

An even longer wait will be for what comes after Clipper. NASA is “discussing” a Europa lander. Such a mission will take years to design, engineer, and build, and then more years to arrive and land on Europa. We won’t get data back until the 2040s at the earliest. So let’s get hopping. The potential for finding life off Earth should be one of NASA’s top priorities.

The post The Clipper Europa Mission first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

The natural motors that power tail-like appendages in bacteria seem to have a single evolutionary origin, allowing parts from different species to be combined to create a tiny new engine

Colossal, a US firm that is aiming to revive lost species such as the woolly mammoth, says it now has a near-complete genome of the extinct thylacine

Testing the equipment on an interstellar mission is one of the first things operators do when the spacecraft successfully launches. In some cases, those tests show the future troubles the mission will face, such as what happened to NASA’s Lucy mission a few years ago. However, in some cases, the mission provides us with perspectives we might never have seen before, which was the case for Hera, ESA’s mission to Dimorphos. This asteroid was deflected successfully during NASA’s DART test in 2022.

Hera was successfully launched on October 7th and carries a series of instruments designed to peer at the asteroids using different wavelengths. Some instruments were turned toward the Earth and Moon from about a million km away as part of the mission’s Near-Earth Commissioning Phase. The resulting pictures showcase the spacecraft’s capabilities and provide a new perspective of our “terraqueous globe,” as Carl Sagan once put it, and our much more sterile neighbor.

First, we have an image from the Asteroid Framing Camera or AFC. Technically comprised of two cameras (for redundancy, as so many space missions do), this monochrome 1020×1020 image is the clearest of the three released by ESA as part of a press release. It gives a sense of the scale of the distance between the Earth and the Moon, which can be hard to judge when down on the planet’s surface.

Image of the Earth (left) and Moon from Hera’s AFC.
Credit – ESA

Next up is the Thermal Infrared Imager, or TIRI. This one was taken slightly closer, at 1.4 million kilometers away (about three times the distance from the Earth to the Moon itself). TIRI is designed to capture infrared wavelengths of light – which we usually think of as heat. Watching Dimorphos over time will allow it to understand the “thermal inertia” of certain regions, which scientists can use to discern some important physical properties of the asteroid. While not the most exciting space image ever captured, the successful operation of this sensitive instrument is critical to the mission.

Image of the Earth (center) and Moon from Hera’s TIRI.
Credit – ESA

Finally, there’s Hyperscout H. It, too, is designed to capture Dimorphos in wavelengths that humans can’t visibly see – in this case, 650 nm to 950 nm wavelengths, which is considered “near infrared” as compared to the “mid-infrared” capabilities of TIRI. Also, this imager comes with its own false color depiction, showing “shorter” wavelengths, which are closer to our visible spectrum, as shades of blue, whereas “reds” represent wavelengths farther away from visible light. 

Image of Earth (bottom left) and Moon from Hera’s Hyperscout H imager.
Credit – ESA

The Earth and Moon have been imaged most likely millions of times in these wavelengths before, so it’s unlikely that any science will be gleaned from these images. Still, these images are invaluable as proof of concept for the operation of the systems. The three cameras comprise some of the essential parts of Hera’s “asteroid deck,” which houses most of the spacecraft’s other instruments, including two CubeSat deployers, a laser rangefinder, and antennas for deep-space communication with Earth. Many of those different instruments will have to wait until “show time” when the craft arrives at the binary asteroid system in December 2026. Hopefully, we will also receive plenty more images from the three systems covered here.

Learn More:
ESA – Hera’s first images offer parting glimpse of Earth and Moon
UT – Hera Probe Heads Off to See Aftermath of DART’s Asteroid Impact
UT – ESA’s Hera Mission is Bringing Two Cubesats Along. They’ll Be Landing on Dimorphos
UT – The Smallest Radar Ever Sent to Space Will Probe the Interior of Dimorphos After its Impact From DART

Lead Image:
Image of Earth from the AFC
Credit – ESA

The post Hera Says Farewell to the Earth and Moon appeared first on Universe Today.

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