NEWS
If bacteria band together, they can survive for years in space
Dead outer microbes protect inner ones in clumps attached to the International Space Station
Outer space is not friendly to life. Extreme temperatures, low pressure and radiation can quickly degrade cell membranes, destroy DNA and kill any life-forms that somehow find themselves in the void.
The quantum Hall effect continues to reveal its secrets to mathematicians and physicists
A transformative experiment is yielding fresh insights 40 years after the effect’s discovery — and energizing transdisciplinary collaborations.
At a lecture in 1939, Paul Dirac said that “pure mathematics and physics are becoming ever more closely connected”. He went on to say that the two subjects might unify, with “every branch of pure mathematics then having its physical application”.
A giant underground motion sensor in Germany tracks Earth’s wobbles
A giant underground motion sensor in Germany has taken its first measurements of Earth’s spin and tilt. The machine’s measurements could help ensure the accuracy of GPS navigation. Although researchers are still getting the machine’s accuracy up to snuff, their observations could someday keep GPS navigation working reliably on devices like smartphones.
What theatre and educational Nowruz gain and lose from online format
More than 700 participants from 33 regions, 135 hours of classes — the organizers of Nowruz forum summed up the results
This weird quantum state of matter was made in orbit for the first time
Scientists created weird quantum matter in orbit with the Cold Atom Lab, delivered to the International Space Station in 2018 by the Cygnus spacecraft. Bose-Einstein condensates in space could reach temperatures lower than any known in the universe.
Supporting the chemistry community
The Chemists’ Community Fund – formerly the Benevolent Fund – has been helping people for 100 years.
Even before the full implications of the Covid-19 outbreak were being felt in Europe, Chemists’ Community Fund manager Anna Dearden had begun to reach out to members in south-east Asia. Now the pandemic is global, it’s clear that there will be serious long and short term impacts on many members.
Astronomers Make Incredibly Rare Detection of Earth-Like Planet 25,000 Light-Years Away
There may be multitudes of Earth-like planets sprinkled throughout the Milky Way galaxy, but they are not so easy to find. To date, only around a third of the over 4,000 exoplanets found and confirmed are rocky - and most of those are within a few thousand light-years of Earth.
The sun is less magnetically active than similar stars. Why our star seems so different from its stellar kin is a mystery
A census of stars similar to the sun shows that our own star is less magnetically active than others of its kind, astrophysicists report in the May 1 Science. The result could support the idea that the sun is in a “midlife crisis,” transitioning into a quieter phase of life. Or, alternatively, it could mean that the sun has capacity for much more magnetic oomph than it’s shown in the past.
Methane Levels Reach an All-Time High
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) analyzed highlights an alarming trend; experts call for curbing pollution from oil and gas wells. A preliminary estimate from NOAA finds that levels of atmospheric methane, a potent heat-trapping gas, have hit an all-time high.
Just breathing or talking may be enough to spread COVID-19 after all
The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 may spread through the air in tiny particles that infected people exhale during normal breathing and speech. Experts had said that the virus spreads only through large droplets from a cough or sneeze before.
Artificial intelligence decodes the facial expressions of mice
Neuroscientists also uncover neural circuitry whose activity correlates with particular emotions.
Researchers have used a machine-learning algorithm to decipher the seemingly inscrutable facial expressions of laboratory mice. The work could have implications for pinpointing neurons in the human brain that encode particular expressions.
Physics : How slime mold helped scientists map out the cosmic web
Astronomers have struggled to visualize the giant tendrils of matter that connect galaxie. Creeping tendrils of slime seem to mirror the structure of the universe’s enormous filaments. That superficial similarity, in an organism called a slime mold, helped scientists map out the cosmic web, the vast threads of matter that connect galaxies.
Kazanorgsintez is ready to build two petrochemical facilities
The enterprise can augment ethylene production volumes in case a Kazan gas refinery is put into operation and gas processing capacities increase in Orenburg
This fundamental constant of nature remains the same even near a black hole
The fine-structure constant determines the strength of electromagnetic interactions. A gang of stars circles the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way (orbits illustrated). Scientists observed five such stars to show that the fine-structure constant is the same near a black hole as it is on Earth.
Enter the twilight zone: scientists dive into the oceans’ mysterious middle
The vast, wild depths between light and shadow face increasing threats from climate change and overfishing.
It is home to a majority of the marine fish biomass and helps to remove an estimated 4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year. Now, scientists are gearing up to dive into the twilight zone, the largely unexplored ocean layer 200 to 1,000 metres deep that some worry is threatened by a changing climate and increased pressure from fishing.
More than 80 clinical trials launch to test coronavirus treatments
As HIV drugs, stem cells and traditional Chinese medicines vie for a chance to prove their worth, the WHO attempts to bring order to the search. China has more than 80 running or pending clinical trials on potential treatments for COVID-19, the illness caused by a novel coronavirus that has thus far killed nearly 1,400 people and infected more than 48,000 across China.
Scientists entangled quantum memories linked over long distances. The result is a necessary step to building a quantum internet
Physicists’ fantasies of a future quantum internet are a bit closer to reality. Scientists entangled two quantum “hard drives” that were linked by fibers tens of kilometers long. Entanglement, a type of ethereal quantum connection, allows two particles to behave as if intertwined even when distantly separated. The new study entangled two devices called quantum memories using particles of light that were shuttled across a longer distance than ever before, the team reports February 12 in Nature.
A barrier to colliding particles called muons has been smashed. Physicists have now cooled beams of the subatomic particles
From protons to electrons to atomic nuclei, physicists love smashing tiny stuff together. And soon, they may have an even better way to get their kicks.
These are the most detailed images of the sun ever taken
Largest solar telescope in the world shows boiling plasma on the solar surface. Hot plasma churns on the sun with newfound precision in the first images from the largest solar telescope in the world.