Science

Researchers verified the chiral-induced spin selectivity effect, i.e., the influence of chiral molecules on spin, using spintronic analytical techniques.

Researchers report that a more efficient and environmentally friendly form of refrigeration might be on the horizon. The new technology is based on thermogalvanic cells that produce a cooling effect by way of a reversible electrochemical reaction. Thermogalvanic refrigeration is cheaper and more environmentally friendly than other cooling methods because it requires a far lower energy input, and its scalability means that it could be used for various applications -- from wearable cooling devices to industrial-grade scenarios.

Zaps of static electricity might be a wintertime annoyance, but to certain scientists, they represent an untapped source of energy. Using a device called a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), mechanical energy can be converted into electrical energy using triboelectric effect static. Many TENGs contain expensive, specially fabricated materials, but one team has instead used inexpensive store-bought tape, plastic and aluminum metal.

Researchers have developed a recyclable alternative to a durable class of plastics used for items like car tires, replacement hip joints and bowling balls.

Some US states may see the number of power cuts caused by hurricanes jump by 60 per cent by 2100 in a high-emissions scenario, affecting tens of millions each decade

People receiving talking therapy for mild to severe depression reported greater improvements to their symptoms when also taking creatine compared with those on a placebo

Today’s photos come from Phil Frymire, who sends us birds photographed in South Africa. Phil’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Moving on from my previous submissions of mammals, here is a selection of birds from an August trip to South Africa. Lilac-breasted rollers are unforgettable, but I am a bit fuzzy on some of the other identifications. I forgot some of them and had to look them up online. Hopefully readers can make corrections if any errors remain.

Red-crested korhaan (Lophotis ruficrista):

Magpie shrike (Urolestes melanoleucus)

A pair of African fish eagles (Haliaeetus vocifer):

White-backed vulture (Gyps africanus), waiting for lions to leave a giraffe kill:

This is a poor photo of a black-headed oriole (Oriolus larvatus). This bird is a beautiful bright yellow. This was the only one we saw and it was quite skittish:

African green pigeon (Treron calvus):

White-fronted bee-eater (Merops bullockoides), perched on some elephant dung:

A gaggle of Egyptian geese (Alopochen aegyptiaca):

Hooded vulture (Necrosyrtes monachus), waiting for lions to abandon a buffalo kill:

Crested barbet (Trachyphonus vaillantii):

Helmeted guinea fowl (Numisa meleagris):

This is a saddle-billed stork (Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis). The first time I saw one I thought it must have an injury on its breast. No, the bare red spot is typical for the species:

Last, but certainly not least, my favorite bird seen on the trip, three lilac-breasted rollers (Coracias caudatus) [: This is my favorite African bird, too!]

Burn marks left on trees show that fires occurred frequently in North America from 1750 to 1880, but they tended to be less severe than modern fires and may have even been beneficial to forests

Sometimes, the best innovative ideas come from synthesizing two previous ones. We’ve reported before on the idea of having a balloon explore the atmosphere of Venus, and we closely watched the progress of the Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE) as part of the Perseverance rover on Mars. When you combine the two, you can solve many of the challenges facing balloon exploration of Venus’ upper atmosphere – the most habitable place in the solar system other than Earth. That is the plan for Dr. Michael Hecht, the principal investigator of the MOXIE system and professor at MIT, and his team for the Exploring Venus with Electrolysis (EVE) project, which recently received as NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase I grant as part of the 2025 NIAC awards.

Current ideas for balloon missions to Venus face two challenges. First, the buoyant gas they must use to stay afloat leaks out over time, limiting the mission duration. Second, they must carry large amounts of batteries to ensure their electronics (and, in some ways, the gases) can endure Venus’s 50-hour night cycle. If the gases inside the balloon get too cold, they depressurize, decreasing the balloon’s altitude.

Using a system akin to MOXIE would solve both of those problems. MOXIE famously created oxygen on Mars by splitting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into carbon monoxide and oxygen by using a process called solid oxide electrolysis (SOE). Despite that project coming to an end, it showed the proof of concept that where there is carbon dioxide, we can make oxygen, even on other planets.

Technology has to be tough to last on Venus, as Fraser explains.

There is plenty of carbon dioxide in Venus’ upper atmosphere – in fact, that is primarily what the atmosphere there is composed of. Notably, both carbon monoxide and oxygen, the components the SOE process creates, are lighter than the carbon dioxide they’re created from. In other words, in Venus’ atmosphere, the outputs of the SOE process are buoyant.

But that’s not all – in an interview with Fraser, Dr. Hecht describes another advantage of using the SOE system. “When people ask me how MOXIE works, I always describe it as fuel cell running backwards” he said. But, during the Venusian night, “you could take some fraction, maybe 10% of the carbon monoxide and oxygen that you made during daytime and run it through the instrument backwards to get power a night.”

Not only would EVE get an unlimited amount of buoyant gases from the SOE process, but it would also essentially get unlimited electricity, even without sunlight and without the need for heavy batteries that would otherwise weigh it down. Other advantages include using carbon monoxide as a propellant for other powered aircraft for which the balloon could serve as a base station. Plenty of ideas come to mind when exploring the use cases of this platform.

There’s so much we don’t know about our sister planet – Fraser suggests we need to go back.

Doing this process on Venus has some added advantages as well. Given the thickness of the atmosphere, especially compared to Mars, the SOE system in Venus’ atmosphere would just need a fan rather than the miniaturized compressive pump used in the MOXIE system on Perseverance. Also, since Venus is much closer to the Sun, during the daytime, there will be abundant solar power to power the system, whereas on Mars, solar power is still an option, but the Perseverance rover ran off a radioisotope thermal generator instead.

Venus does have some unique challenges, though – there is also sulfuric acid, though not much of it, in the atmosphere. Dr. Hecht mentioned the need for a protective coating, like Teflon, on the components that would be exposed to the atmosphere. He didn’t seem worried about the mass increase either, mentioning, “How much mass is in your nonstick pan from the Teflon coating?”

However, a balancing act has to happen with the SOE process itself. Dr. Hecht mentions in his NIAC proposal the goal of a 75% conversion efficiency between CO2 and Oxygen/CO. If aiming for more than that – say 100% efficiency –  some of the CO created as part of the process is also electrolyzed, and the instrument becomes clogged with pure carbon (i.e., soot).

Fraser’s original interview with Dr. Hecht about the MOXIE system.

However, at the 75% efficiency range (which admittedly is about 3x more efficient than MOXIE was), the buoyancy of the oxygen and a combination of the leftover CO2 and CO is about equal, so you could split the two gas streams into separate chambers and have equal buoyancy, without tipping it one way or another.

Overall, this seems like an eminently practical solution to a problem with a long-standing idea in the future of Venus exploration. But why stop there? Dr. Hecht also mentioned that such a system would theoretically work on Titan and on other planets and moons with thick atmospheres. As EVE moves through the NIAC phases and the team starts detailed technical work on it, humanity will get closer to a technology that could revolutionize the exploration of our nearest planetary neighbor. 

Learn More:
NASA / Michael Hecht – Exploring Venus with Electrolysis (EVE)
UT – Perseverance Successfully Extracts Oxygen From the Martian Atmosphere. About 10 Minutes of Breathing Time for an Astronaut
UT – A Balloon Mission that Could Try to Confirm Life On Venus
UT – The Best Way to Learn About Venus Could Be With a Fleet of Balloons

Lead Image:
Artist concept highlighting the novel approach proposed by the 2025 NIAC awarded selection of Exploring Venus with Electrolysis (EVE)
Credit – NASA/Michael Hecht

The post A Balloon Mission That Could Explore Venus Indefinitely appeared first on Universe Today.

Please recognize that you are now influencing the national public health policy and understand that being in authority is a very different job than simply questioning authority

The post An Open Letter to Dr. Vinay Prasad first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

The study of asteroid samples is a highly lucrative area of research and one of the best ways to determine how the Solar System came to be. Given that asteroids are leftover material from the formation of the Solar System, they are likely to contain vital clues about how several key processes took place. This includes how water, organic molecules, and the building blocks of life were distributed throughout the Solar System billions of years ago. For this reason, space agencies have attached a high importance to the retrieval of asteroid samples that are returned to Earth for analysis.

This includes NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission. This spacecraft rendezvoused with asteroid (101955) Bennu on December 3rd, 2018, returning 121.6 grams of material (the largest sample ever) to Earth by September 2023. A recent analysis by scientists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center revealed molecules key to life on Earth, including all five nitrogen bases – molecules required for building DNA and RNA. These findings support the theory that asteroids could have delivered the building blocks of life to Earth in the distant past.

The research was led by Daniel P. Glavin and Jason P. Dworkin, two senior scientists with the Solar System Exploration Division (SSED) at NASA Goddard. They were joined by multiple colleagues from the SSED, the Goddard Center for Research and Exploration in Space Science and Technology (CRESST), the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division (ARES) at the NASA Johnson Space Center, and multiple universities and institutes. Their findings were presented in papers that appeared in Nature and Nature Astronomy.

A poster depicting all the compounds discovered in the OSIRIS-REx sample. ©NASA

Their results represent the first in-depth analyses of the minerals and molecules in the Bennu samples. Among the most compelling detections (reported in the Nature Astronomy paper) were 14 of the 20 amino acids life on Earth uses to make up protein cells. They also detected five nucleobases vital to DNA and RNA, which most complex lifeforms on Earth use to store and transmit genetic instructions, including how to arrange amino acids into proteins. As Associate Administrator Nicky Fox of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters explained in a NASA press release:

“NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission already is rewriting the textbook on what we understand about the beginnings of our solar system. Asteroids provide a time capsule into our home planet’s history, and Bennu’s samples are pivotal in our understanding of what ingredients in our solar system existed before life started on Earth.”

The teams also reported exceptionally high abundances of ammonia in the Bennu samples and formaldehyde. Ammonia is an important component in biology since it can react with formaldehyde to form complex molecules like amino acids. These building blocks have previously been detected in other rocky bodies, including meteorites retrieved on Earth. However, the way OSIRIS-REx found them in pristine condition on an asteroid supports the theory that objects that formed far from the Sun could have delivered the raw material for life throughout the Solar System. Said Glavin:

“The clues we’re looking for are so minuscule and so easily destroyed or altered from exposure to Earth’s environment. That’s why some of these new discoveries would not be possible without a sample-return mission, meticulous contamination-control measures, and careful curation and storage of this precious material from Bennu.”

Illustration of the asteroid Bennu. Credit: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Glavin and Dworkin’s team analyzed the Bennu samples for hints of compounds related to life on Earth. Meanwhile, Tim McCoy and Sara Russell, the curator of meteorites at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington and a cosmic mineralogist at the Natural History Museum in London (respectively), looked for evidence of where these molecules formed. As they reported in the study appearing in Nature, they discovered hints that they came from an ancient prebiotic environment.

These included traces of 11 minerals ranging from calcite to halite and sylvite, compounds that form from salts dissolved in water that become solid crystals (brines) once the water dissolves. Evidence of similar brines have been detected on Ceres, Saturn’s moon Enceladus, and other bodies in the Solar System. While scientists have also detected brines in meteorites that fell to Earth, they have never seen a complete set created by an evaporation process that could have lasted thousands of years or more. Moreover, some minerals found in Bennu have never been detected in other extraterrestrial samples.

Another analysis was carried out by members of the OSIRIS-REx sample analysis team, including researchers from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), Hokkaido University, Keio University, Kyushu University, and Tohoku University. Together, they analyzed a 17.75 mg sample using high-resolution mass spectrometry for organic molecules with a ring structure containing carbon and nitrogen (N-heterocycles). This revealed a concentration of N-heterocycles 5-10 times higher than that reported from the sample taken from Ryugu (~5 nmol/g) by the Hayabusa2 mission.

In addition to the five nitrogenous bases, their analysis showed evidence of the purines xanthine, hypoxanthine, and nicotinic acid (vitamin B3). “In previous research, uracil and nicotinic acid were detected in the samples from asteroid Ryugu, but the other four nucleobases were absent,” said team member Dr. Toshiki Koga of JAMSTEC. “The difference in abundance and complexity of N-heterocycles between Bennu and Ryugu could reflect the differences in the environment to which these asteroids have been exposed in space.”

A mosaic image of asteroid Bennu, composed of 12 PolyCam images collected by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft from a range of 24 kilometers. Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

While these findings have provided compelling evidence of where the building blocks of life on Earth came from, several unanswered questions remain. For starters, amino acids can be created in “mirror-image” versions, similar to how complex lifeforms have a left and right side – hands, feet, brains, lungs, heat chambers, etc. While life on Earth almost exclusively exhibits the left variety, the Bennu samples contain an equal mixture of both. This could mean amino acids started in equal mixtures on Earth billions of years ago but made a left turn along the way.

This is not unlike theories regarding matter and antimatter in the early Universe and how “normal” matter came to be predominant. In any case, these findings are a key piece in the ongoing study of how and where life may have emerged in the Solar System. “OSIRIS-REx has been a highly successful mission,” said Dworkin. “Data from OSIRIS-REx adds major brushstrokes to a picture of a solar system teeming with the potential for life. Why we, so far, only see life on Earth and not elsewhere, that’s the truly tantalizing question.”

Further Reading: NASA, Hokkaido University, Nature Astronomy

The post The Building Blocks for Life Found in Asteroid Bennu Samples appeared first on Universe Today.

Though it’s a cold, dead planet, Mars still has its own natural beauty about it. This image shows us something we’ll never see on Earth.

Mars has only a thin, tenuous atmosphere, and most of it (95%) is carbon dioxide. When Martian winter arrives, CO2 freezes and forms a thick coating on the ground in the polar regions. It lies there dormant for months.

As Spring approaches, temperatures gradually warm. Sunlight passes through the translucent frozen layer of CO2, warming the ground beneath it.

The warming ground sublimates frozen CO2 into vapour that accumulates under the solid CO2. Eventually, the gas escapes through weak spots in the ice. It can erupt into geysers that spread darker material out onto the frozen surface.

Artist’s impression of geysers at the Martian south polar icecap as southern spring begins. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Arizona State University/Ron Miller

The HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this image of these geysers on Mars in October 2018. It has also captured other images of Martian CO2 geysers.

This HiRISE image shows different dark shapes and bright spots on sand dunes in Mars’ north pole region. The bright spots are where frozen CO2 sublimated into gas and erupted, spreading darker material on the surface. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Some of Mars’ CO2 geysers erupt and create dark spots as large as 1 km across. They are fueled by considerable power and can erupt at speeds up to 160 km/h.

Sometimes the eruptions create dark regions under the ice which look like spiders.

This NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image, acquired on May 13, 2018, during winter at the South Pole of Mars, shows a carbon dioxide ice cap covering the region and as the sun returns in the spring, “Mars spiders” begin to emerge from the landscape. Image Credit: NASA

Scientists are calling these features araneiform terrain or spider terrain. They are found in clusters that give the surface a wrinkled appearance. NASA scientists recreated these patterns in lab tests to understand the processes behind their formation. “The spiders are strange, beautiful geologic features in their own right,” said Lauren McKeown of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

The process that explains how the CO2 cycle creates these features is called the Keiffer model. Hugh Keiffer was with the US Geological Survey when he and his colleagues published a paper explaining the model in 2006 in Nature titled “CO2 jets formed by sublimation beneath translucent slab ice in Mars’ seasonal south polar ice cap.”

“We propose that the seasonal ice cap forms an impermeable, translucent slab of CO2 ice that sublimates from the base, building up high-pressure gas beneath the slab. This gas levitates the ice, which eventually ruptures, producing high-velocity CO2 vents that erupt sand-sized grains in jets to form the spots and erode the channels,” Keiffer and his co-authors wrote in their paper.

This simple illustration shows what happens when Spring comes and frozen CO2 is warmed by solar insolation. As the CO2 sublimates into gas, pressure builds, and it erupts through weaknesses in the seasonal cap, carrying dust with it that creates dark spots on the surface. Image Credit: By BatteryIncluded – Own work by uploader: I scanned, cropped and resized the original image from a paper by Sylvain Piqueux. JGR, VOL. 108, no. E8, 5084, doi:10.1029/2002JE002007, 2003, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7736765

Maybe humans are biased, but there’s nothing as beautiful and splendorous as Earth. Generations of poets have acclaimed its beauty to the point where it borders on the spiritual. However, when it comes to CO2 geysers and the natural patterns they create, Mars has something that Earth doesn’t.

“These processes are unlike any observed on Earth,” the authors of the 2006 paper stated.

Source: Geyser Season on Mars

The post These Bizarre Features on Mars are Caused by Carbon Dioxide Geysers appeared first on Universe Today.

How can the latest technology, such as solar cells, be improved? An international research team is helping to find answers to questions like this with a new technique. For the first time, the formation of tiny, difficult-to-detect particles -- known as dark excitons -- can be tracked precisely in time and space. These invisible carriers of energy will play a key role in future solar cells, LEDs and detectors.

Scientists have developed a new method for measuring temperature extremely accurately by using giant 'Rydberg' atoms. This atomic thermometer provides accurate measurements 'out of the box,' without needing initial factory adjustments, because it relies on the basic principles of quantum physics. By using Rydberg atoms' sensitivity to environmental changes, this technique could simplify temperature sensing in extreme environments, from space to high-precision industries.

What would you do for fun on another planet? Go ballooning in Venus’ atmosphere? Explore the caves of Hyperion? Hike all the way around Mercury? Ride a toboggan down the slopes of Pluto’s ice mountains? Or watch clouds roll by on Mars?

All those adventures, and more, are offered in a new book titled “Daydreaming in the Solar System.” But the authors don’t stop at daydreaming: York University planetary scientist John E. Moores and astrophysicist Jesse Rogerson also explain why the adventures they describe would be like nothing on Earth.

In the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, Moores says the idea behind the book was to tell “a little story that is really, really true to what the science is, and then give the reader an idea of what science there is that actually enables that story to take place.”

Trips to other worlds have been the stuff of science fiction for more than a century — going back to Jules Verne’s “From the Earth to the Moon” and continuing today with shows like “For All Mankind.” But most of those tales are told from the perspective of intrepid explorers who have to deal with life-threatening dramas.

In contrast, most of the stories in “Daydreaming in the Solar System” have to do with space travelers having fun, or handling the day-to-day challenges of living in an otherworldly locale.

John E. Moores and Jesse Rogerson tell tales of interplanetary adventures. (Credits: John E. Moores and York University)

“Often you’re visiting a place for the very first time, and of course it’s an amazing, awe-inspiring place, but you’re also very concerned about not dying,” Moores said. “So, we wanted to take that away — that bit of danger — so that people dive into the environment. Everywhere we went, we needed the right combination of an interesting activity, an interesting environment.”

Moores and Rogerson also use a second-person perspective. You’re the one riding a submarine through the hidden seas of Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter. You’re the one spelunking on Hyperion, a spongy Saturnian moon that appears to contain 40% empty space.

The end of each chapter takes a deeper dive into the peculiarities of each extraterrestrial environment. For example, riding a balloon around Venus makes sense because the surroundings at an altitude of 30 to 40 miles are similar to Earth’s when it comes to temperature and atmospheric pressure. In contrast, the surface of Venus is hellishly hot.

Ballooning on Venus is much more than a daydream. More than a decade ago, NASA engineers came up with a concept that called for sending habitable airships into the Venusian atmosphere. More recently, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been looking into a mission that would use robotic balloons to study the clouds of Venus.

“Daydreaming in the Solar System,” by John E. Moores and Jesse Rogerson. (Cover art by Michelle D. Parsons)

Similarly, the idea of sending mini-subs through Europa’s subsurface ocean is being considered as a follow-up to NASA’s Europa Clipper mission. A robotic submarine has also been proposed for exploring Titan’s hydrocarbon seas — although NASA’s Dragonfly mission to Titan, which relies on a rotorcraft, will be taking precedence.

The authors don’t shy away from the important issues: In one chapter, they describe in depth how to brew a delicious cup of coffee on Titan — and then explain why you could conceivably put on a pair of mechanical wings and flap your way through the Saturnian moon’s dense atmosphere after your morning cup of joe.

Will humans ever be able to experience the adventures described in the book? “I hope so,” Moores says.

“One thing that our publisher pointed out when we submitted our final manuscript, which wasn’t actually intentional, was that they felt that the book was actually very optimistic and very hopeful — just the framing of it, that you could imagine the future in a way that actually allows these things to happen,” he says. “So many other works are a little bit apocalyptic right now.”

My co-host for the Fiction Science podcast is Dominica Phetteplace, an award-winning writer who is a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop and lives in San Francisco. To learn more about Phetteplace, visit her website, DominicaPhetteplace.com.

Check out the original version of this posting on Cosmic Log to get Moores’ recommendations for further reading, and stay tuned for future episodes of the Fiction Science podcast via Apple, Spotify, Player.fm, Pocket Casts and Podchaser. If you like Fiction Science, please rate the podcast and subscribe to get alerts for future episodes.

The post Science Points Out Paths to Interplanetary Adventures appeared first on Universe Today.

The US Congress is expected to vote on whether to confirm Robert F Kennedy Jr to lead the nation’s public health institutions in the coming days – he would be taking over during a time of turmoil

AI agents trained in simulations that differ from the environments where they are deployed sometimes perform better than agents trained and deployed in the same environment, research shows.

AI agents trained in simulations that differ from the environments where they are deployed sometimes perform better than agents trained and deployed in the same environment, research shows.

Researchers have pioneered a new approach to simulate turbulent systems, based on probabilities.

Many materials store information about what has happened to them in a sort of material memory, like wrinkles on a once crumpled piece of paper. Now, a team of physicists has uncovered how, under specific conditions, some materials seemingly violate underlying mathematics to store memories about the sequence of previous deformations.