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Physics, AI, and the nobel prize.
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Why have 700 stars vanished how is it possible?
Of all the objects in the universe, stars are amongst the most fascinating. From the birth of newborn protostars to the dramatic final stages of their lives, the life cycle of stars has captivated the human imagination for centuries. Yet one of the greatest stellar mysteries is that of vanishing stars — stars that were once visible but have suddenly disappeared. While the mysteries behind them haven’t been completely unraveled, recent advances in telescope and monitoring technology have unveiled shocking truths about this extremely rare occurrence. Join us as we explore the concept of vanishing stars and unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of 700 known stars.
When we look up at the night sky, the stars appear eternal. In a sense, that’s true, as stars can live for millions or even billions of years, which is just mind-boggling compared to our own lifespans. However, like all living things, stars are born, they live, and they eventually die. Astrophysicists have made significant progress in understanding the life cycles of stars. However, when a star suddenly disappears, it raises more questions than answers. What could have caused it to vanish? Was it a natural event or something more unusual? The discovery that as many as a hundred stars may have disappeared from our observations in recent decades is a sobering reminder that our understanding of the universe is still incomplete. The vanishing stars challenge our assumptions and force us to confront the limitations of our knowledge. Keep watching as we explore some of the most groundbreaking discoveries in our understanding of vanishing stars and provide possible explanations to the stars that has vanished from our solar system and beyond in the last few decades.
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Distortions in pulsar signals reveal flaws in galactic models, pointing to new opportunities for understanding the universe and studying cosmic waves.
By analyzing patterns in pulsar signals, researchers discovered discrepancies in existing models of how the galaxy impacts pulsar signals, suggesting that these models need updates. The findings not only deepen our understanding of the universe but also improve our ability to study phenomena like gravitational waves.
Dr. Sofia Sheikh from the SETI Institute led a groundbreaking study that explores how pulsar signals—emissions from the spinning remnants of massive stars—become distorted as they travel through space. Published on November 26 in The Astrophysical Journal, this research was conducted by a group of undergraduate students from the Penn State branch of the Pulsar Search Collaboratory, a student club dedicated to pulsar science.
Trying to understand the makeup and evolution of the solar system’s Kuiper belt has kept researchers busy since it was hypothesized soon after the discovery of Pluto in 1930. In particular, binary pairs of objects there are useful as indicators since their existence today paints a picture of how energetic or violent the evolution of the solar system was in its early days four billion years ago.
Looking closely at the evolution of an ultrawide (in separation) binary object, researchers included more physics that reveals much about their architecture and unfolding. They found that these ultrawide binaries may not have been formed in the primordial solar system as has been thought. Their work has been published in Nature Astronomy.
“In the outer reaches of the solar system, there exists a population of binary systems so widely separated that it seemed worth looking into whether or not they could even survive 4 billion years without being [completely] separated somehow,” said Hunter M. Campbell of the University of Oklahoma in the US.
Radiative heat transfer is one of the most critical energy transfer mechanisms in nature. However, traditional blackbody radiation, due to its inherent characteristics, such as its non-directional, incoherent, broad-spectrum, and unpolarized nature, results in energy exchange between the radiating body and all surrounding objects, significantly limiting heat transfer efficiency and thermal flow control. These limitations hinder its practical application.
A recent study published in Science utilized thermal photonics to achieve cross-band synergistic control of thermal radiation in both angle and spectrum. The researchers then designed a directional emitter with cross-scale symmetry-breaking, angularly asymmetric and spectrally selective thermal emission, achieving daytime subambient radiative cooling on vertical surfaces.
The research team was led by Prof. Wei Li from the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics (CIOMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with Prof. Shanhui Fan’s team from Stanford University and Prof. Andrea Alu’s team from the City University of New York.
Nano-ZnO is a potential catalyst material for carbon dioxide electrocatalytic reduction (CO2RR), but its effective Faraday efficiency (FE) is still below 90% and the current density is less than 300 mA cm-2, which is not enough to meet industrial requirements.
A new study published in Chem Catalysis reported on ZnO nanorods for electrocatalytic CO2RR, which after 500°C heat-treatment, achieved the highest oxygen vacancy content, the highest FECO of 98.3%, and a partial current density of 786.56 mA cm-2 in a 3 M KCl electrolyte.
The research was conducted by Prof. Wu Zhonghua and Dr. Xing Xueqing from the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Prof. Han Buxing from the Institute of Chemistry of CAS.
The universe just got a whole lot bigger—or at least in the world of computer simulations, that is. In early November, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory used the fastest supercomputer on the planet to run the largest astrophysical simulation of the universe ever conducted.
The achievement was made using the Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The calculations set a new benchmark for cosmological hydrodynamics simulations and provide a new foundation for simulating the physics of atomic matter and dark matter simultaneously. The simulation size corresponds to surveys undertaken by large telescope observatories, a feat that until now has not been possible at this scale.
Cyanobacteria, an ancient lineage of bacteria that perform photosynthesis, have been found to regulate their genes using the same physics principle used in AM radio transmission.
New research published in Current Biology has found that cyanobacteria use variations in the amplitude (strength) of a pulse to convey information in single cells. The finding sheds light on how biological rhythms work together to regulate cellular processes.
In AM (amplitude modulation) radio, a wave with constant strength and frequency—called a carrier wave—is generated from the oscillation of an electric current. The audio signal, which contains the information (such as music or speech) to transmit, is superimposed onto the carrier wave. This is done by varying the amplitude of the carrier wave in accordance with the frequency of the audio signal.
When laser energy is deposited in a target material, numerous complex processes take place at length and time scales that are too small to visually observe. To study and ultimately fine-tune such processes, researchers look to computer modeling. However, these simulations rely on accurate equation of state (EOS) models to describe the thermodynamic properties—such as pressure, density and temperature—of a target material under the extreme conditions generated by the intense heat of a laser pulse.
One process that is insufficiently addressed in current EOS models is ablation, where the irradiation from the laser beam removes solid material from the target either by means of vaporization or plasma formation (the fourth state of matter). It is this mechanism that launches a shock into the material, ultimately resulting in the high densities required for high pressure experiments such as inertial confinement fusion (ICF).
To better understand laser–matter interactions with regard to ablation, researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and other collaborating institutions conducted a study that represents the first example of using X-ray diffraction to make direct time-resolved measurements of an aluminum sample’s ablation depth. The research appears in Applied Physics Letters.
In 2019, the High Energy Density Science (HEDS) Center at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) launched its postdoctoral fellowship program, welcoming one new scientist annually to come and conduct research for a two-year term. Supported by LLNL’s Weapons Physics and Design program, HEDS fellows are encouraged to pursue their own research agenda as it relates to the study of matter and energy under extreme conditions.
The most recent postdoctoral fellows, physicist Elizabeth “Liz” Grace (2022 fellow) and plasma physicist Graeme Sutcliffe (2023 fellow), are using high-intensity lasers and advanced diagnostics to observe the behaviors of plasma. A plasma, known as the “fourth state of matter,” is a superheated, ionized gas that makes up the majority of visible matter in the universe, like stars and nebulae. Replicating these conditions is a key step to achieving robust igniting inertial fusion designs for energy resilience.
