Science

I like John Fetterman (a Senator from Pennsylvania) because he’s quirky, speaks his mind, and because he wears shorts on the Senate floor. (at 6 foot eight inches, he’s also the tallest Senator). Some of his quirkiness may be due to his seious stroke, but this article shows his straight talk—rare in today’s prominent Democrats. You can read about his political positions here.

You can read his interview with Jess Bidgood by clicking on the headline below, or find the story archived here.

There aren’t any revelations, just Fetter being himself and chilling, as well as telling the Democrats to chill the f out instead of pulling a Laura Helmuth or threatening to leave America. It’s a short interview and I’ve put a few excerpts below. This is pure Fetterman (I’d love to see him have a postmortem discussion of the election with James Carville).

BTW, he’s 55 years old.

Some excerpts:

Senator John Fetterman wasn’t in Washington for the first Trump administration. But he has a few ideas about how Democrats should handle the second.

He wants his party to accept its losses. He wants his party to chill out a little. And he wants his party to please stop with all the hot takes about what went wrong in November, since Democrats have four long years to figure it out.

Fetterman has some experience taking on President-elect Donald Trump’s G.O.P. He won his seat in 2022 after overcoming a near-fatal stroke and beating the Trump-endorsed Dr. Mehmet Oz, who has since become the president-elect’s pick to run Medicare. As the Democratic Party reckons with its losses in places like Pennsylvania — where Trump beat Vice President Kamala Harris by 1.7 percentage points and Bob Casey, a third-term Democratic senator, lost his seat — I called Fetterman.

Our conversation was the first in a series of interviews I’ll do in this newsletter about the path forward for the Democratic Party.

And the Q&A:

How do you think Democrats should be talking to bros, and should be talking to men, and should be talking to working-class voters?

Have a conversation. Have a conversation with anyone that’s willing to have an honest conversation. That’s always been the rule, and that’s what I’m going to continue. I’ve had conversations on Fox News, and they’ve played me straight. I’ve shown up on Newsmax, and they’ve played it straight. And Rogan. Rogan was great. He was cordial and open and warm.

Why was it important to you to go on Joe Rogan?

I’m a fan. I’m a huge fan of Bill Maher, a huge fan of Colbert.

. . . Do Democrats need to do an analysis of what went wrong? And, if so, who should do it?

We’re not even at Thanksgiving, and Democrats just can’t stop losing our minds every fifteen minutes. We really need to pace ourselves, or, you know, for FFS, just grab a grip. Realize that this is how elections go. At least for the next two years, they’re going to have the opportunity to write the narrative and to drive the narrative.

Trump is assembling a cabinet of people many Democrats find deeply objectionable. How do you think Democrats should respond?

I’m just saying, buckle up and pack a lunch, because it’s going to be four years of this. And if you have a choice to freak out, you know, on the hour, then that’s your right. But I will not. I’m not that dude, and I’m not that Democrat. I’m going to pick my fights. If you freak out on everything, you lose any kind of relevance.

. . . One analysis of the election that we’ve heard from your colleague Senator Bernie Sanders is that Democrats failed to recognize how bad people were feeling about the economy, about the country generally, and failed to name a villain. Do you agree with that analysis?

I do not.

Why?

I think there was a lot of other issues. I would even describe them as cultural. Walk around in Scranton, tell me what an oligarch is. I think it’s like, “Whose argument is the closest match to the kinds of things that are important to me?” And I think some of them are rooted in gender and worldviews, and even backlash of things like cancel culture.

I witness people, now there’s specific kinds of clothing. They call it Blue Collar Patriots. I’m willing to bet you know who they’re voting for.

And why is that? I don’t think it’s because we haven’t talked enough about oligarchs, and how it’s rigged.

Here’s the giant Fetterman with Israeli President Isaac Herzog:

Maayan Toaf, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Here’s Fetterman on the Joe Rogan show if you have two hours to spare after dinner. This has to be better than football!

Gravitational lensing is a concept where dark matter distorts space revealing its presence through its interaction with light. ESA’s Euclid mission is mapping out the gravitational lensing events to chart the large scale structure of the Universe. Euclid is also expected to discover in excess of 170,000 strong gravitational lensing features too. AI is expected to help achieve this goal but machine learning is still in its infancy so human beings are likely to have to confirm each lens candidate.

Gravitational lensing was originally predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. The theory proposed that a massive object such as galaxy or even a cluster of galaxies, would warp and bend space, thus magnifying light from more distant objects. Light travels through space in a straight line but bend space, for example in a gravitational field, and light appears to bend too. The lensing effect can result in various visual phenomenon such as arcs, multiple lensed images or even a complete ring around an object which became known as an Einstein ring. 

The picture shows Abell 2218, a rich galaxy cluster composed of thousands of individual galaxies. It sits about 2.1 billion light-years from the Earth (redshift 0.17) in the northern constellation of Draco. When used by astronomers as a powerful gravitational lens to magnify distant galaxies, the cluster allows them to peer far into the Universe. However, it not only magnifies the images of hidden galaxies, but also distorts them into long, thin arcs. Several arcs in the image can be studied in detail thanks to Hubble’s sharp vision. Multiple distorted images of the same galaxies can be identified by comparing the shape of the galaxies and their colour. In addition to the giant arcs, many smaller arclets have been identified.

Observing gravitational lensing gives a great insight into the distribution of matter across the universe. One probe which is exploring and studying the phenomenon is the Euclid mission. It was launched by the European Space Agency in 2023 to study the lensing events. Studying the lenses and analysing the resultant images across billions of visible galaxies allows for a detailed map to be built revealing the distribution of both dark matter and dark energy. This will help us to understand how dark matter shapes structures in the Universe and how dark energy drives the accelerated expansion of the universe. 

Artist impression of the Euclid observatory. Credit: ESA

One aspect of the Euclid mission is the Euclid Wide Survey (EWS) which will observe 14,000 deg2 of the sky hunting for gravitational lenses. It is predicted the study will find 170,000 strong gravitational lenses (a strong gravitational lens produces a very strong distorted image while weak events are much more subtle.) The challenge is in identifying the lensing features which is challenging for human beings to process that amount of data. 

Machine learning algorithms have been used previously to detect the strong lenses including the use of convolutional neural networks (CNNs.) These networks are often used in imaging analysis and comprise of several layers. An image would be used as input, it would be analysed through several different layers but must achieve a specified threshold before being passed on to the next. Eventually, if it successfully passes through all layers of analysis, a strong gravitational lens should be identified. 

A team of researchers led by R. Pearce-Casey from the Open University in the UK has identified that the machine learning technology can present a number of false positives still requiring human visual inspection of the results. Their research aims to identify a higher quality CNN model and strong starting point to improve the output of the CNN based detection process. To test their approach they took images from the Euclid Early Release Observation run of the Perseus field and applied their CNN analysis. The results were promising however when applied to real Euclid EWS data the results still required human verification. 

NGC 1270 is just one member of the Perseus Cluster, a group of thousands of galaxies that lies around 240 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Perseus. This image, taken with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on the Gemini North telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, captures a dazzling collection of galaxies in the central region of this enormous cluster. Image Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/ Image Processing: J. Miller & M. Rodriguez (International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab) Acknowledgements: PI: Jisu Kang (Seoul National University)

The team are now exploring if a second filtering stage ahead of  CNN analysis may be needed to fine tune the identification of strong lenses. They conclude that currently, there is no alternative to the good old fashioned human eyeball to confirm the existence of strong and especially weak gravitational lenses to eradicate the false positives from machine learning.

Source : Euclid – Searches for strong gravitational lenses using convolutional neural nets in Early Release Observations of the Perseus field

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Feeling scared seems to reduce elevated levels of inflammation, which may help explain why some people enjoy a haunted attraction

Feeling scared seems to reduce elevated levels of inflammation, which may help explain why some people enjoy a haunted attraction

Subsurface oceans of liquid water are a common feature of the moon’s of Jupiter and Saturn. Researchers are exploring whether the icy moons of Uranus and Neptune might have them as well. Their new paper suggests future missions to the outer Solar System could measure the rotation of the moons and detect any wobbles pointing to liquid oceans. Less wobble means the moons is mostly solid but large wobbles can indicate ice floating on an ocean of liquid. 

Uranus is the 7th planet in the Solar System, classed as an ice giant and measures 50,724 km across. It has 27 known moons each of which have very unique and distinct characteristics. They tend to be categorised into three different groups; large moons, small inner moons and those which are irregular outer moons. The largest moon of Uranus is Titania which is composed broadly of equal parts rock and ice. The surface has a mix of old craters and younger geological features, fault lines and even cryovolcanism. 

This zoomed-in image of Uranus, captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) Feb. 6, 2023, reveals stunning views of the planet’s rings. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI IMAGE PROCESSING: Joseph DePasquale (STScI).

Icy moons are fascinating to explore largely because of the potential for finding life! Jupiter’s moon Europa is a great example. Beneath the icy crust which is 30 km thick exists an ocean thought to be 100 km deep. The ocean is kept liquid by internal heat generated from the tidal interactions with Jupiter. It’s hypothesised that subsurface oceans like these may harbour life. On Earth we have found life in the deepest crevices of our oceans, drawing energy not from sunlight but from hydrothermal vents. Such features may well exist on Europa and other icy moons making them great places to detect life. 

Europa captured by Juno

Much has been learned about the outer Solar System largely from the Voyager and Pioneer probes. Exploring the region nearly 40 years ago, the probes were equipped with fairly limited imaging systems. NASA is now planning on sending another probe to Uranus with better technology and learn more about its icy moons. 

Illustration of voyager 1

A team of researchers based at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics are gearing up for the mission by developing a technique to detect subsurface oceans using only cameras! Their approach relies upon capturing high resolution images of the moons an analysing them for any wobbles as the moon spins.

From this information, it’s possible to work out how much ice, water and rock is inside. If the wobble is only slight then it’s likely the interior of the moon is solid whereas a much larger amplitude to the wobble could mean ice is floating around on a subsurface ocean. In reality a large wobble only means movement of under 100 metres. This is within the capability of modern technology to detect. 

The technique that has been developed by planetary scientist Doug Hemingway and team has been run through some theoretical calculations. They found that for example, if Ariel wobbles by about 100 metres then it is likely to have an ocean 160 km thick surrounded by an ice shell around 30 km thick. Smaller oceans are detectable but the work the team have undertaken will help give mission designers guidelines to maximise the outcome of the scientific goals. 

Source : Uranus’s swaying moons will help spacecraft seek out hidden oceans

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Extended periods spent in microgravity can take a serious toll on the human body, leading to muscular atrophy, bone density loss, vision problems, and changes to the cardiovascular, endocrine, and nervous systems. At the same time, however, scientists have found that microgravity may play a key role in the future of medicine. This includes bioprinting in space, where cultured cells are printed out to form organic tissues and organs without the need for grafts. Printing in microgravity also ensures that fragile cell structures do not collapse due to pressures caused by Earth’s gravity.

However, space medicine may also have applications for stem cell research, which also benefit from a microgravity environment. Stem cells have countless applications in medicine because of their ability to quickly replicate and differentiate into many different types of cells. Based on experiments carried out aboard the International Space Station (ISS), researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Florida determined that these abilities are enhanced when grown in space. These findings could have significant benefits in the study of disease prevention and treatment on Earth, as well as medical treatments delivered in space.

The research was conducted by Fay Ghani and Abba C. Zubair, two pathologists with the Mayo Clinic’s Center for Regenerative Biotherapeutics and the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology. The paper detailing their experiment and findings was recently published in NPJ Microgravity. For their experiment, the team specifically examined the behavior of several types of adult stem cells, which manage normal wear and tear on the body. These cells are often grown by scientists for the sake of disease research and developing new therapies.

Several experiments have been run on the ISS. Credit: Ghani & Zubair, NPJ Microgravity (2024)

The process is challenging, expensive, and takes a long time. But as Zubair said in a recent interview with ScienceAlert!, the process could be simplified by growing them in space-based labs:

“Studying stem cells in space has uncovered cell mechanisms that would otherwise be undetected or unknown within the presence of normal gravity. That discovery indicates a broader scientific value to this research, including potential clinical applications. The space environment offers an advantage to the growth of stem cells by providing a more natural three-dimensional state for their expansion, which closely resembles growth of cells in the human body.

Ghani and Zubair experimented with many types of adult stem cells and obtained positive results for them all. This included general improvements in cell expansion and stability of replication, which continued after the cell cultures were returned to Earth. In particular, they noted improvements with mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), a class of multipotent stromal cells that can differentiate into bone, cartilage, muscle, and fat cells – which gives rise to marrow adipose tissue, thus increasing bone density.

When grown in microgravity, these cells were shown to be better at managing immune system responses and reducing inflammation. “That’s in comparison to the two-dimensional culture environment available on Earth that is less likely to imitate human tissue,” said Zubair. “The space research conducted so far is just a starting point. A broader perspective about stem cell applications is possible as research continues to explore the use of space to advance regenerative medicine.”

One of the experiments conducted aboard the ISS. Credit: Mayo Clinic

While there is still a significant amount of research and testing to be done, these results are very promising and indicate that stem cells can be grown faster and in greater numbers in microgravity. Ghani and Zubair are confident that space-grown stem cells will help treat the most common causes of mortality here on Earth, including heart disease, stroke, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases like dementia, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis (MS), and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).

Further Reading: ScienceAlert!, NPJ Microgravity

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Researchers' new polymer strategy shifts a centuries-old engineering paradigm with a molecular design that doesn't sacrifice stretchability for stiffness.

Using 'DNA origami' scientists have built innovative nanostructures that pave the way for advanced robotics that can deliver targeted drugs -- plus they made a tiny map of Australia and mini dinosaurs.

A tiny, four-fingered 'hand' folded from a single piece of DNA can pick up the virus that causes COVID-19 for highly sensitive rapid detection and can even block viral particles from entering cells to infect them, researchers report. Dubbed the NanoGripper, the nanorobotic hand also could be programmed to interact with other viruses or to recognize cell surface markers for targeted drug delivery, such as for cancer treatment.

Jupiter is a stunning planet to observe. Whether it be visible light or any other wavelength. In a stunning new image released by the University of California -Berkley, Jupiter is seen in ultraviolet light. The familiar Great Red Spot appears as a blue oval as do many of the familiar belt features. Around the polar regions are revealed a brown haze which is thought to be caused by a high altitude vortex mixing up the atmosphere. The jury is still out on the mechanism behind this though but it may be an interaction between Jupiter’s strong magnetic field which pierces the atmosphere near the poles. 

Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System, a gas giant with powerful storms. With a diameter of 143,000 km, Jupiter is 11 times wider than Earth and capable of swallowing all of the other planets in the Solar System and still have room to spare. It is composed or hydrogen and helium and lacks a solid surface. It’s atmosphere has bands of alternating colour with strong winds, hurricanes and lightning storms. The Great Red Spot is one of its most well known features, a hurricane system three times the size of Earth. It’s also home to a family of satellites including the four well known Galilean moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. 

Side-by-side images show the opposite faces of Jupiter. The largest storm, the Great Red Spot, is the most prominent feature in the left bottom third of this view. Credit: NASA, ESA, Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC).

The atmosphere of Jupiter is a complex system of thick clouds, storms and high winds. The hydrogen makes up about 90% of the atmosphere with helium the bulk of the remainder plus trace amounts of methane, water vapour and other compounds. The belts in the atmosphere appear to alternate between lighter and darker colours driven by different temperatures, chemical compositions and wind speeds that reach up to 640 km/hr. Lower down, beneath the visible layer, the atmosphere becomes denser, hotter and eventually becomes fluid. Other phenomenon have been observed from lightning storms, aurora and ice crystal clouds. 

Europa and Io move across the face of Jupiter, with the Great Red Spot behind them. Image: NASA/JPL/Cassini, Kevin M. Gill

The newly released ultraviolet image reveals strange features around the polar regions. The oval shaped features are Earth-sized and only visible in the ultraviolet wavelengths. The ovals seems to consistently appear at a slightly lower latitude than the auroral zones around the poles. In the image, the ovals seem dark in colour due to absorption of ultraviolet radiation, more so than the brighter surrounding regions. 

The Hubble Space Telescope orbits Earth at an altitude of 540 km and takes yearly images of Jupiter and the other planets. Hubble was the first telescope to capture the so called UV ovals and they have since been detected by the Cassini spacecraft. The team at UC Berkeley discovered that the ovals were more common around the south pole (appearing in 75% of images around south pole and only 12% around north pole.) 

This image of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope was taken on May 19, 2009 after deployment during Servicing Mission 4. NASA

The team spoke with planetary atmospherics experts Tom Stallard (Northumbria University in UK) and Xi Zhang (from UC Santa Cruz) to try and understand the mechanism. They theorise that Jupiter’s strong magnetic field lines experience friction in the ionosphere leading to the establishment of a vortex (a rotating, spinning flow of fluid or air.) It is the vortex that drives the dark ovals. 

Source : Magnetic tornado is stirring up the haze at Jupiter’s poles

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Three people in North America without known animal exposures have tested positive for the bird flu virus H5N1, and samples from two of them suggest the virus is adapting to humans

Venus is often referred to as Earths twin but size and mass are the only similarities. A visitor to one of our nearest neighbours would experience a very different world at the surface. Unlike other planets in the Solar System, Venus seems to show very little active volcanism. The environmental conditions on the surface are harsh so a researcher has suggested a combination of an orbiter, a balloon and a lander would be able to work together to detect seismic activity under the surface.

Venus is the second planet from the Sun and is enshrouded in a thick atmosphere. From Earth, it is impossible to see any visual detail on the surface of the planet due to the planet-wide thick clouds that engulf it. The atmosphere is composed mostly of carbon dioxide with clouds of sulfuric acid which together have raised the surface temperature to a staggering ~475°C. Venus is a pretty inhospitable world given these high surface temperatures, atmospheric pressure equivalent to being a kilometre under water and sulfuric acid rain in the atmosphere. There is strong evidence of geological activity on Mars with volcanoes, volcanic plains and highland areas.

Venus

There have been a number of robotic explorers and orbiters visit Venus but some have braved the extreme surface conditions. Venera, part of the Soviet space program was the first series of landers to successfully land on the Venusian surface. They were designed to last for about half an hour in the hostile environment but generally lasted for just over an hour before the conditions caused them to fail. Despite the challenges, the landers have provided valuable information of the conditions that have helped to learn more about climate change and atmospheric chemistry. 

The surface of Venus as captured by Soviet Venera 13 lander in March of 1982. NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org

One aspect of Venus that we still don’t know much about is its interior. Seismic activity measurements are one way we can probe the interior of planets and already we have learned a lot in this way about the Moon and Mars. The high winds and extreme temperatures make measuring quakes on Venus difficult.

A team of researchers led by Raphael F. Garcia from Université de Toulouse in France have proposed a technique that might be used to detect Venusian quakes using three different sensors. One will be based on the ground to try and detect them directly although with current technology is only likely to survive for around a day. In addition to a lander, the team propose a balloon based sensor that may be able to detect infrasound waves. These low frequency waves are often detected in the atmosphere as a result of the quakes. They have been used before for example during the Soviet Vega program and could last for up to a month in the atmosphere of Venus.

Vega balloon probe on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian Institution. Photo by Geoffrey A. Landis. CC by SA 4.0

Ground and balloon based detectors can only detect quakes on Venus to magnitude 4.5. An additional approach is to use a satellite based detector which could detect and measure airglow or emissions of light from molecules perturbed by infrasound waves. Satellites in orbit can of course last for years, long after ground and airborne sensors are Inoperative. 

Source : Three Ways to Track Venus quakes, from Balloons to Satellites

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There’s a new contender for your holiday fireplace video. This one comes from NASA, and features rocket engines and boosters to light up your days with Space Launch System holiday cheer.

Say goodbye to the crackling logs in fireplace videos of Christmas past. We’ll miss the anticipation of the fire burning down to embers and the next log being placed in the fireplace.

Instead, we can gaze contentedly as the Space Launch System’s four RS-25 engines and pair of boosters light up our video hearths.

Enjoy the warm glow of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as their combustion casts a calming, flickering glow. Thrill to the intense white-hot gases from the solid boosters as their aluminum powder and ammonium perchlorate oxidizer, bound together by polybutadiene acrylonitrile, is set ablaze.

NASA created this 8-hour-long looping video from the November 2022 launch of Artemis 1 to the Moon. The holiday video is a somewhat sanitized version of the real launch. The real launch was a thunderous, bellowing spectacle featuring a towering maelstrom of light and thorax-vibrating sound. Below is the real launch.

Traditionalists might scoff at this updated holiday fireplace video, and tradition is fine. But progress is also good, so why not spend some time thinking about humanity’s frontiers, and our return to the Moon, while tucking into some turkey and eggnog?

Merry Christmas, and Happy Thanksgiving to our American friends.

The post The Holiday Fireplace Video We Needed appeared first on Universe Today.

Breaking oxygen out of a water molecule is a relatively simple process, at least chemically. Even so, it does require components, one of the most important of which is a catalyst. Catalysts enable reactions and are linearly scalable, so if you want more reactions quickly, you need a bigger catalyst. In space exploration, bigger means heavier, which translates into more expensive. So, when humanity is looking for a catalyst to split water into oxygen and hydrogen on Mars, creating one from local Martian materials would be worthwhile. That is precisely what a team from Hefei, China, did by using what they called an “AI Chemist.”

Unfortunately, the name “AIChemist” didn’t stick, though that joke might vary depending on the font you read it in. Whatever its name, the team’s work was some serious science. It specifically applied machine learning algorithms that have become all the rage lately to selecting an effective catalyst for an “oxygen evolution reaction” by utilizing materials native to Mars. 

To say it only chose the catalyst isn’t giving the system the full credit it’s due, though. It accomplished a series of steps, including developing a catalyst formula, pretreating the ore to create the catalyst, synthesizing it, and testing it once it was complete. The authors estimate that the automated process saved over 2,000 years of human labor by completing all of these tasks and point to the exceptional results of the testing to prove it.

Depiction of the process the AI Chemist went through to create the test catalyst.
Credit – Zhu et al.

Before we get to that, though, let’s start with the “initial conditions.” The team developed an “all-in-one” robotic AI chemist capable of performing all these tasks. It was initially based on work done by more limited AI chemists who could read synthetic chemistry literature and estimate the efficacy of different chemical compounds for different tasks. After they built the model, they needed to feed it with some data.

For that data, they selected five different common rocks from the surface of Mars. They estimated that there would be 3,764,376 possible combinations to come out of the elements present in those rocks, depending on how the combinations were manufactured. So, the first task of the AI Chemist was to select one that could act as a catalyst for splitting off oxygen. Part of that dataset was built with 30,000 other theoretical datasets and the results of 243 experiments. The result is a “polymetallic” material composed of manganese, iron, nickel, magnesium, aluminum, and calcium. 

Next, a sample of the catalyst would be manufactured for testing. The AI is equipped with a robot arm that took physical samples of meteorites that had been dissolved in hydrochloric acid and attempted to synthesize the suggested catalyst out of those materials. This process involved pretty extreme processes like centrifuging the samples at 7,500g for 5 minutes to separate out the necessary materials and drying out the resultant material. Impressively, all of this was seemingly done without human intervention.

Fraser goes into detail about how a potential mission to Mars will happen in the near future – including creating oxygen using catalysts.

After some of the material had been synthesized, the research team tested it by actually performing the reduction process it was designed to do. More importantly, they did so under Martian ambient conditions. The material performed admirably, similar to existing catalysts already used.

So, effectively, an AI just developed and tested a catalyst for use on Mars using local materials. And potentially saved over 2,000 years of intensive human labor in doing so. That is a testament to how effective AI is at finding patterns in existing data and extrapolating them using new data. It remains to be seen, though, if this catalyst will ever see the light of day on Mars, as the catalyst itself must be integrated with the rest of the system to perform the reduction reaction to split oxygen from water effectively. Given the complexity of the process used to create that catalyst, it might be easier for us to ship one directly from Earth, even if it doesn’t use Martian materials.

Learn More:
Zhu et al. – Automated synthesis of oxygen-producing catalysts from Martian meteorites by a robotic AI chemist
UT – A Single Robot Could Provide a Mission To Mars With Enough Water and Oxygen
UT – What is ISRU, and How Will it Help Human Space Exploration?
UT – A new way to Make Oxygen on Mars: Using Plasma

Lead Image:
Series of images of the robotic arm used in the experiments running the catalyst synthesis process.
Credit – Zhu et al.

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Rising carbon dioxide levels are driving an increase in the ocean’s acidity – and this change is sinking deeper as emissions increase, putting even more marine organisms at risk

A research team has found a way to make more efficient the desorption of water-adsorption polymers used in atmospheric water harvesting and desiccant air conditioning.

Large language models, a type of AI that analyses text, can predict the results of proposed neuroscience studies more accurately than human experts, finds a new study. The findings demonstrate that large language models (LLMs) trained on vast datasets of text can distil patterns from scientific literature, enabling them to forecast scientific outcomes with superhuman accuracy. The researchers say this highlights their potential as powerful tools for accelerating research, going far beyond just knowledge retrieval.

Researchers have investigated how cationic polymers organize on a molecular level when transporting RNA drugs.

A team of physics educators is focusing on a new approach to teaching quantum physics in schools. Traditional classroom teaching has tended to focus on presenting the history of the origins of quantum physics, which often poses problems for learners. Using the quantum measurement process as an example, the researchers have now published their first empirical findings on learning quantum physics -- based on two-state systems.

A team of physics educators is focusing on a new approach to teaching quantum physics in schools. Traditional classroom teaching has tended to focus on presenting the history of the origins of quantum physics, which often poses problems for learners. Using the quantum measurement process as an example, the researchers have now published their first empirical findings on learning quantum physics -- based on two-state systems.