Science

Researchers can now fabricate a 3D chip with alternating layers of semiconducting material grown directly on top of each other. The method eliminates thick silicon substrates between the layers, leading to better and faster computation, for applications like more efficient AI hardware.

Researchers can now fabricate a 3D chip with alternating layers of semiconducting material grown directly on top of each other. The method eliminates thick silicon substrates between the layers, leading to better and faster computation, for applications like more efficient AI hardware.

Physicists have created a new and long-lasting magnetic state in a material, using only light. The results provide a new way to control and switch antiferromagnetic materials, which are of interest for their potential to advance information processing and memory chip technology.

Scientists propose a 'remelting' of the Moon's surface 4.35 billion years ago due to the tidal pull of Earth causing widespread geological upheaval and intense heating.

Atomic clocks that excite the nucleus of thorium-229 embedded in a transparent crystal when hit by a laser beam could yield the most accurate measurements ever of time and gravity, and even rewrite some of the fundamental laws of physics. Thorium-229-doped crystals are both scarce and radioactive. A thin film using a dry precursor of thorium-229 shows the same nuclear excitation as the crystal, but its low cost and radioactivity, and smaller size mean its production could be more easily scaled up to make smaller, less expensive, more portable atomic clocks.

It’s time to tell each other what we’re reading and what we think of the books. The object, of course, is to give all of us hints about what we might want to read.

I’ve just finished two books, both of them good  (of course both were recommended by a friend who knows good writing), and I recommend both, but especially this first one, which is superb. Click on the cover to go to the Amazon site:

There’s a Wikipedia article about this 1999 novel here, but don’t read it if you don’t want to see the whole plot. Without giving too much away, I’ll say that it’s about a Japanese-Korean man, Franklin Hata, who has moved to a small suburban town in New York, running a pharmacy-supplies store. He’s done well and has, in fact, become his town’s model citizen, eventually giving up his store and living a happy and prosperous retirement, having adopted, as a single man, a Korean girl named Sunny.

The one unhappy aspect of his life is that he can’t seem to form stable love relationships, not with Sunny nor with any of the several women he fancies. The reason involves a series of flashbacks to when Hata was serving in the Japanese Army in World War II (there are flashbacks involving nearly every relationship in the book), and a relationship he developed at that time, which haunts his whole existence. I will say no more, except that the prose is beautiful (a sine qua non for novels I like). HIGHLY recommended, and it should have won more awards than it did. I don’t think it was made into a movie, but it really should have been.

Here’s the book I just finished (click to go to Amazon site):

That one, from 2005, also has a Wikipedia page. Nathan Glass, stricken with cancer, moves to Brooklyn to live out his days in a pleasant urban environment (he’s the opposite of Franklin Hata, who hated cities). He meets his nephew, and then ensues series of random and unpredictable episodes involving an antique bookstore, long-lost relatives, and fractious relationships with other people.  It’s a good read, and a short one, so it’s a good book to take along on a trip or the beach (if you happen to live in a warm place). I would recommend it, but not nearly as highly as I would A Gesture Life.

I’m not going to read the other three essays in the Ta-Nehisi Coates book The Message, for his Israel-essay debacle put me off him for a while. Instead, I have two books in line. I started the first one, below, last night. It’s from 2001 and I have found but not read its Wikipedia page. (Click to go to the Amazon site.)

After that one, I’ll attack this monster, which I’ve requested on interlibrary loan (I have no more room to put any books I buy, so I get them all from the University Library). Click to go to the Amazon page. At 864 pages, this one is a monster, but, unlike the kids, I like long books. It was published in 2004, is highly regarded, and has its own Wikipedia page that I refuse to read.

It seems that I’m on a fiction kick lately, which isn’t usual for me, but the books that my literary advisor recommends, which have all been good, are guaranteed not to contain a clunker. As for nonfiction, I’m still waiting for Robert Caro to produce his fifth volume of the LBJ biography that I love so much (I think it’s the best biography ever written, at least that I’ve read), but Caro is now 89 and it’s a race against time.  The previous bio that I thought was the best, William Manchester’s biography of Winston Churchill, was abruptly truncated after volume 1 because Manchester died. I’d still recommend reading the first volume, even though it ends right as Winnie becomes Prime Minister and things would be getting even more interesting.

Your turn. Which books have you read lately, and which do you recommend (or not recommend)?

Astrophotography is a challenging art. Beyond the usual skill set of understanding things such as light exposure, color balance, and the quirks of your kit, there is the fact that stars are faint and they move.

Technically, the stars don’t move; the Earth rotates. But to capture a faint object, you need a long exposure time. Typically, from a few seconds to half a minute, depending on the level of detail you want to capture. In thirty seconds, the sky will shift by more than a tenth of a degree. That might not seem like much, but it’s enough to make the stars blur ever so slightly. Many astrophotographers take multiple images and stack them for even greater detail, which would blur things even more. It can create an interesting effect, but it doesn’t give you a panorama of pinpoint stars.

The motion blur of starlight used to create a rain of stars. Credit: Diana Juncher/ESO

Fortunately, there is plenty of off-the-shelf equipment you can get to account for motion blur. There are tracking motors you can mount to your camera that move your frame in time with the Earth’s rotation. They are incredibly precise so that you can capture image after image for hours, and your camera will always be perfectly aligned with the sky. If you make your images into a movie, the stars will remain fixed while the Earth rotates beneath them.

Of course, most astrophotographers have the same limitations of almost everyone. We are bound to the Earth and can only view the stars through our blanket of sky. If we could rise above the atmosphere, we would have an unburdened view of the heavens. A sky filled with uncountable, untwinkling stars. While astronauts often talk about this wondrous sight, photographs of stars from orbit are often less than spectacular. That’s because of how difficult astrophotography is in space, and it all comes back to motion blur.

Most astrophotography is done from the International Space Station (ISS). Since the ISS is in a relatively low orbit, it travels around the Earth once every 90 minutes. This means the stars appear to drift at a rate 16 times faster than they do on Earth. A 30-second exposure on the ISS has greater motion blur than an eight minute exposure on Earth. Because of this, most photographs from the ISS either have blurry stars or only capture the brightest stars.

Don Pettit’s Homemade Orbital Sidereal Tracker. Credit: Don Pettit

Ideally, an astronaut astrophotographer would bring along a camera mount similar to the ones used on Earth. But the market demand for such a mount is tiny, so you can’t just buy one from your local camera store. You have to make your own, which is precisely what astronaut Don Pettit did. Working with colleagues from RIT, he created a camera tracker that shifts by 0.064 degrees per second and can be adjusted give or take 5%. With this mount, Don has been able to capture 30-second exposures with almost no motion blur. His images rival some of the best Earth-based images, but he takes them from space!

The detail of his photographs is unprecedented. In the image above, for example, you can see the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, and not just as fuzzy patches in the sky. You can see individual stars within the clouds. The image also gives an excellent view of an effect known as airglow. Molecules in the upper atmosphere are ionized by sunlight and cosmic rays, which means this layer always has a faint glow to it. No matter how skilled a terrestrial astrophotographer is, their images will always have a bit of this glow.

Airglow from different molecules in the upper atmosphere. Credit: NASA/annotations by Alex Rivest

But not Don Pettit. He’s currently on the ISS, capturing outstanding photographs as a side hobby from his day job. If you want to see more of his work, check him out on Reddit, where he posts under the username astro_pettit.

The post Astronaut Don Pettit is Serious, He Rigged up Astrophotography Gear on the ISS appeared first on Universe Today.

Small robots directed by magnetic fields can cooperatively lift heavy objects, form floating rafts and push through clogs. They may one day deliver drugs within the human body

Electronics made using diamond-based chips would have many advantages, but have been hard to make – a new technique involving sticky tape could change that

Researchers have tried to work out how fast Australopithecus afarensis could run by creating a 3D digital robot of the ancient hominin

UPDATE: The site to which I refer below disappeared for a while this morning, and then reappeared.  So the post right below still links to the right places:

Simon Fraser University in British Columbia recently adopted a policy of institutional neutrality.  But its latest endeavor shows that it’s still in the thrall of wokeness, for it’s launched a policy of “decolonizing and indigenizing” STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).  Nothing good can come of their effort, for, as you see, it can mean only the adoption of indigenous “ways of knowing” in the sciences.  There are several pages on the site, which was sent to me by a member of the Simon Fraser community. Click on the screenshot below to go to the “welcome” page and its links.  The small print in the headline says this:

Welcome to the Decolonizing and Indigenizing STEM (DISTEM) Website, dedicated to decolonizing and Indigenizing STEM at Simon Fraser University (SFU)!

This website, originally designed to support STEM faculty, is a valuable tool for anyone committed to the decolonization of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to decolonize and indigenize our teaching. Click the link to go to the web site. Most of the pages are just a bit of text and links to other sites or to the home pages of the authors.

The endeavor seems serious, for this is part of the rationale:

To understand the importance of such systems in the decolonization of library classification, it is essential to explore Ashley’s work with the Indigenous Curriculum Resource Centre (ICRC) and her adaptation of the Brian Deer Classification System (BDCS). Most importantly, classification and categorization systems need to shift away from Western-European knowledge systems to prioritizing Indigenous ways of knowing and being, which are community focused. For example, a shift in language from “Indigenous Peoples – History and Culture” to “Indigenous Peoples – Communities,” moves the narrative away from historicizing Indigenous peoples toward their power, knowledge, and contemporary contributions. Not only does this shift place Indigenous Peoples and communities at the centre, but all other surrounding categories move outward to reflect their relationality to these communities and Indigenous knowledge. Such shifts in thinking and doing are crucial for STEM faculty and students to learn and apply. We strongly encourage you to follow the links provided above to gain a deeper understanding of these vital concepts and how we can all further decolonize our minds.

Note that the program is not designed to bring more indigenous people into science—though that may be one of its aims—but to CENTER the contributions “Indigenous Peoples and Communities” in teaching the content of science, at the same time “moving all other surrounding categories outward.”

Some of the aims from the Project History:

One of the major concerns faculty shared was that they lack the time and resources necessary to learn about and then implement these processes, both personally and professionally. This issue was exasperated because information and resources related to decolonizing and Indigenizing STEM, as well as teaching and learning, are dispersed and disconnected both online and off, which can be overwhelming for faculty, particularly those just beginning their decolonizing journeys. Thus, the DISTEM Website originally aimed to meet faculty needs by creating a central online living archive of relevant and varied resources focused on decolonizing and Indigenizing STEM, both generally and regarding teaching and learning, in postsecondary institutions.

As I always say, if there is indigenous knowledge that is part of STEM, then by all means incorporate it into STEM, for I seriously doubt that there is enough empirical knowledge in American northwest tribes to constitute a substantial moiety of modern science. Like the indigenous “knowledge” of New Zealand, it will consist largely of trial-and-error methods that the locals developed for subsistence: how, when, and where to catch fish, collect berries, build canoes, and the like.  Indigenous knowledge is not a toolkit like modern science—a toolkit for finding answers that incorporates hypothesis-testing, experiments, statistics, blind testing, pervasive doubt, and so out. Rather, indigenous knowledge is a set of facts acquired independently of that tookit. But yes, there may be some indigenous knowledge there, but seriously, why would Simon Fraser make a whole program out of centering science on it.

You know why: they are displaying their virtue by sacralizing the practices of the indigenous people.  But those people descended from other people who crossed over the Bering Strait about 15,000 years ago, and those people had their own knowledge. It’s bizarre to center the “knowledge” of tribes who flourished before modern science began, but again, that’s what you have to do if you want to show your virtue. And it’s too bad for science—and for Simon Fraser.

If you have any interest in scrolling around these pages, the person who sent this to me says this: The “Prototype” page is the resource. The coloured circles and the orbiting dots are links – click one to make the dots stand still and get a pop-up with some text and a link to a resource. They are amazingly bad. I picked one from “Animals” and one from “Creation Stories”, and got links to old essays by the queer theorist Kim Tallbear. Not a scientist, and not writing about or engaging with science. The “Creation Stories” link is full of old tropes about the racism of human population genetics research. Ho hum. Here’s what the prototype page looks like (click to go to it). The rings are labeled, from the outside in, “Indigenous Influence/Contributions to Non-Indigenous Society,” “Elders,” “Family Life and Parenting,” “Sexuality and Relationships,” “Gender Roles and Gender Identity,” “Children and Youth,” “Social Structures—Kinship, Clans, Families,” “Indigenous Identity”, and, in the center, “Roles and Relationships.” You know already that this is a sociological resource having almost nothing to do with STEM.

If you click on the green dot in the “Gender Roles and Gender Identity” site, for instance, you get one reference and its summary:

Two Spirit Garrett, M. T., & Barret, B. (2003). Two Spirit: Counseling Native American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual People. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 31(2), 131–142. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-1912.2003.tb00538.x

The cultural world of the Two Spirit, the traditional role of Native individuals believed to possess both male and female spirit, is explored in both “old ways” and current-day experiences. Cultural beliefs and meanings around sexual identity are discussed from a Native perspective with recommendations for counseling Two Spirit clients.  (A Spanish translation follows.)

This has nothing to do with STEM.

In one respect this seems harmless, because there’s no way in tarnation for this stuff to really make its way into STEM. But in other ways it’s not harmless, as it warps scholarship, pretends that sociology or ideology is hard science, and makes a mockery of true STEM.

Poor Simon Fraser. In the end they are not decolonizing of indigenizing science, but sacralizing Native Americans.

Quantum computing hardware has been progressing rapidly in recent years – and quantum software is following

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “rooted,” is a good one, and comes with this note:

#ffffff to be precise. [JAC: this refers to the color white]

A reminder of the UK parliament’s proposed definition of Islamophobia:

Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.

Jesus is right on the money, but Mo is wrong in saying Jesus is an “old white guy” (he was supposedly around 33 when he was crucified.

We’ve already seen the success of the Ingenuity probe on Mars. The first aircraft to fly on another world set off on its maiden voyage in April 2021 and has now completed 72 flights. Now a team of engineers are taking the idea one step further and investigating ways that drones can be released from satellites in orbit and explore the atmosphere without having to land. The results are positive and suggest this could be a cost effective way to explore alien atmospheres. 

The idea of using drones on alien worlds has been enticing engineers and planetary explorers for a few years now. They’re lightweight and versatile and an excellent cost effective way to study the atmosphere of the planets. Orbiters and rovers have been visiting the planets for decades now but drones can explore in ways rovers and orbiters cannot. Not only will they be useful to study atmospheric effects but they will be able to reach inaccessible surface areas providing imagery to inform potential future land based study. 

Illustration of Perseverance on Mars

Perhaps one of the most famous, indeed the only successful planetary drone to date is the Ingenuity drone which was part of the Perseverance rover mission. It was able to demonstrate that controlled flight in the Martian atmosphere was possible, could hunt out possible landing sites for future missions and direct ground based exploration. It’s iconic large wingspan was needed due to the rarefied atmosphere on Mars requiring larger rotor blades to generate the required lift. Ingenuity was originally planned as a technology demonstration mission but it soon became a useful tool in the Perseverance mission arsenal. 

Ingenuity helicopter

NASA engineers are very aware of the benefits of drone technology and so a team of engineers and researchers from the Armstrong Flight Research Center in California have been taking the idea of small drones one step further. The research was part of the Center Innovation Fund award from 2023 and began as the team developed three atmospheric probe models. The models were all the same, measuring 71 cm from top to bottom, one for visual demonstration, the other two for research and technology readiness. 

Their first launch on 1 August didn’t go to plan with a failure in the release mechanism. The team reviewed everything from the lifting aircraft, the release mechanism and even the probe design itself to identify improvements. The team were finally able to conduct flights with their new atmospheric probe after it was released from a quad rotor remotely piloted aircraft on 22 October 2024. 

The flights were conducted above the Rogers Dry Lake near in California with designs informed by previous NASA instrumentation designed for lifting and transportation. The test flights were aiming to prove the shape of the probe worked. The team now want to release the probe from a higher altitude, ultimately hoping to be able to release it from a satellite in orbit around a planet. 

The next steps are to review photos and videos from the flight to identify further improvements before another probe is built. Once they have probed the flight technology, instrumentation will be added to facilitate data gathering and recording. If all goes to plan then the team hope to be chosen for a mission to one of the planets, be released in orbit and then dive into the atmosphere under controlled flight to learn more about the environment. 

Source : Atmospheric Probe Shows Promise in Test Flight

The post Drone Test Flights Are Being Tested for Flights on Alien Worlds appeared first on Universe Today.

Today we have some underwater photos from reader Peter Klaver. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

My friends and I did 5 days of scuba diving from San Pedro in Belize. The coral reefs there are beautiful and are home to many animals.

The large animals we saw most often were nurse sharks (Ginglymostoma cirratum):

They are quite tame and if we spotted them lying on the sea floor, we could move in quite close to them:

The other type of sharks we saw were reef sharks:

There were lobsters:

And turtles. I’m not 100% sure, but I thin this is a green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas):

There were rays of wildly varying size. This was a larger one:

And there were these almost entirely white fish whose name I don’t know:

Since the discovery of the first exoplanet in 1992, thousands more have been discovered. 40 light years away, one such system of exoplanets was discovered orbiting a star known as Trappist-1. Studies using the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed that one of the planets, Trappist-1 b has a crust that seems to be changing. Geological activity and weathering are a likely cause and if the latter, it suggests the exoplanet has an atmosphere too. 

Exoplanets are planets that orbit around other stars. In every way they vary in size, composition and distance from their star. Finding them is quite a tricky undertaking and there are a number of different approaches that are used. Since the first discovery, over 5,000 exoplanets have been found and now of course, the hunt is on to find planets that could sustain life. Likely candidates would be orbiting their host star in a region known as the habitable zone where the temperature is just right for a life sustaining world to evolve. 

This illustration shows what the hot rocky exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 b could look like. A new method can help determine what rocky exoplanets might have large reservoirs of subsurface water. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Olmsted (STScI)

There are three exoplanets in the Trappist-1 system that orbit the star within the habitable zone; Trappist-1e, f and g. The star is a cool dwarf star in the constellation of Aquarius and was identified as being a host of exoplanets in 2017. The discoveries were made using data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope. The system was named after the Transiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST.)

The Spitzer Space Telescope observatory trails behind Earth as it orbits the Sun. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the Commissariat aux Énergies Atomiques (CEA) in Paris have been studying Trappist-1b. They have been using the Mid-Infrared Imager of the James Webb Space Telescope to measure thermal radiation from the exoplanet. Their findings have been published in the journal Nature Astronomy. Previous studies concluded that Trappist-1b was a dark rocky planet that and no atmosphere. The new study has turned this conclusion on its head. 

The measurements found by the team revealed something else. They found a world with a surface composed of largely unchanged material. Typically the surface of a world with no atmosphere is weathered by radiation and peppered with impacts from meteorites. The study found that the surface materials is around 1,000 years old, much younger than the planet itself which is thought to be several billion years old. 

The team postulate that this could indicate volcanic activity or plate tectonics since the planet has sufficient size to still retain internal heat from its formation. It’s also possible that the observations reveal a thick atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide. The observations suggested at first that there was no layer of carbon dioxide since they found no evidence of thermal radiation absorption. They ran models however to show that atmospheric haze can reverse the temperature profile of a carbon dioxide rich atmosphere. Typically the ground is the warmest region but in the case of Trappist-1b, it may be that the atmosphere absorbs radiation, this heats the upper layers which radiates the infrared energy itself. A similar process is seen on Saturn’s moon Titan. 

Fortunately, the alignment of the planetary system means that it passes directly in front of the star so that spectroscopic observations and the dimming of starlight as the planet passes in front can reveal the profile of the atmosphere. Further studies are now underway to explore this and take further observations to conclude the nature of the atmosphere around Trappist-1b. 

Source : Does the exoplanet Trappist-1 b have an atmosphere after all?

The post One of the Most Interesting Exoplanets Just Got Even More Interesting! appeared first on Universe Today.

We have been giving a lot of attention to RFK Jr recently, with good reason. He is poised to be put in charge of the federal institutions that regulate health and medicine. This is beyond problematic, as he has a long list of antiscience opinions. Part of the problem is that he lacks topic expertise (he is not a health care professional […]

The post RFK Jr On Obesity first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Reinforcement Learning, an artificial intelligence approach, has the potential to guide physicians in designing sequential treatment strategies for better patient outcomes but requires significant improvements before it can be applied in clinical settings, finds a new study.

A new study offers hope for people who are blind or have low vision (pBLV) through an innovative navigation system that was tested using virtual reality. The system, which combines vibrational and sound feedback, aims to help users navigate complex real-world environments more safely and effectively.

A team of researchers has created an innovative drug delivery system with outstanding potential to improve drug development.