[DrCaleb]

Trillionth-of-a-Second Shutter Speed Camera Catches Chaos in Action

$1:

Simply put, it's when clusters of atoms move and dance around in a material in specific ways over a certain period – triggered by a vibration or a temperature change, for example. It's not a phenomenon that we fully understand yet, but it's crucial to the properties and reactions of materials.

The new super-speedy shutter speed system gives us much more insight into what's happening with dynamic disorder. The researchers are referring to their invention as variable shutter atomic pair distribution function, or vsPDF for short.

"It's only with this new vsPDF tool that we can really see this side of materials," says materials scientist Simon Billinge from Columbia University in New York.

"With this technique, we'll be able to watch a material and see which atoms are in the dance and which are sitting it out."

One axiom of Science is that the better we can measure time, the more we can learn about the Universe.

[DrCaleb]

RNA molecule uracil found in asteroid Ryugu samples

[DrCaleb]

Physicists Created 'Slits in Time' and Discovered 'Unexpected Physics' in Experiment

Double-slit time diffraction at optical frequencies

[DrCaleb]

Proton’s mass radius is apparently shorter than its charge radius

$1:

If you ask how much an object like a bicycle weighs, there's a simple answer. But if you ask where the mass of a bicycle is, things get more complex. The bike has a lot of parts—some of which move—that all have different volumes, shapes, and densities, so its mass is distributed irregularly around its form.

To an extent, this is similar to the question of where the mass of a proton is. Figuring out where its mass lives would be difficult even without the fact that the analogy with bicycles completely falls apart due to one awkward fact: A proton weighs much more than its component quarks, and the gluons that hold the quarks together are massless. In fact, the mass of the particles involved is somewhat irrelevant. "If you do calculations where you set the quark mass to zero, the proton is pretty much the same thing," physicist Sylvester Johannes Joosten told Ars.

[DrCaleb]

American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'

[Scape]

[Scape]

[DrCaleb]

Pacific garbage patch providing a deep ocean home for coastal species

$1:

A survey of plastic waste picked up in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre—aka the Giant Pacific Garbage Patch—has revealed that the garbage is providing a home to species that would otherwise not be found in the deep ocean. Over two-thirds of the trash examined plays host to coastal marine species, many of which are clearly reproducing in what would otherwise be a foreign habitat.

The findings suggest that, as far as coastal species are concerned, there was nothing inhospitable about the open ocean other than the lack of something solid to latch on to.

[raydan]

Why atoms are the Universe’s greatest miracle

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang ... ket-newtab

[DrCaleb]

[DrCaleb]

The Universe sucks: The mysterious Great Attractor that’s pulling us in

$1:

Our Milky Way galaxy is speeding through the emptiness of space at 600 kilometers per second, headed toward something we cannot clearly see. The focal point of that movement is the Great Attractor, the product of billions of years of cosmic evolution. But we'll never reach our destination because, in a few billion years, the accelerating force of dark energy will tear the Universe apart.

[DrCaleb]

[DrCaleb]

[DrCaleb]

Scientists find link between photosynthesis and 'fifth state of matter'

$1:

When a photon from the sun strikes a leaf, it sparks a change in a specially designed molecule. The energy knocks loose an electron. The electron, and the "hole" where it once was, can now travel around the leaf, carrying the energy of the sun to another area where it triggers a chemical reaction to make sugars for the plant.

Together, that traveling electron-and-hole-pair is referred to as an "exciton." When the team took a birds-eye view and modeled how multiple excitons move around, they noticed something odd. They saw patterns in the paths of the excitons that looked remarkably familiar.

In fact, it looked very much like the behavior in a material that is known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, sometimes known as "the fifth state of matter." In this material, excitons can link up into the same quantum state—kind of like a set of bells all ringing perfectly in tune. This allows energy to move around the material with zero friction. (These sorts of strange behaviors intrigue scientists because they can be the seeds for remarkable technology—for example, a similar state called superconductivity is the basis for MRI machines).

It's been suspected for years that when the electron is freed in a leaf, that somehow it gets to the glucose producing part of the leaf without travelling. It simply goes from point A to point B without transiting. It was thought that the electron reverted to it's wave form, and went everywhere through the leaf until it got the the right place, instantly.

$1:

This was a huge surprise. Exciton condensates have only been seen when the material is cooled down significantly below room temperature. It'd be kind of like seeing ice cubes forming in a cup of hot coffee.

Very neat! Hot temperature excitons. If we can figure that out, it will mean a huge boost in our power grid, where power could travel free from resistance. Superconductors are the holy grail of everything from computers to nuclear reactors.

[DrCaleb]

Pancreatic Cancer Vaccine Shows Promise in Small Trial


The Study:
Personalized RNA neoantigen vaccines stimulate T cells in pancreatic cancer