Category - Science

When the United States of America made the decision to drop an atomic bomb on the Japanese in the Second World War, the world change. We watched first-hand the world adjust to a whole new kind of weaponry and firepower: a world that now knew planet-devastating horror.

Today, we have weapons of mass destruction that make the weapons dropped on Hiroshima seem like a cuddly toy. Depressingly, we as a species show no signs of slowing down in our desire to create warped weapons of infernal warfare that would, if used, bring about the end times.

Even the weapon dropped on Hiroshima, so weak compared to modern equivalents, is having an impact on the environment so many years later. Indeed, beaches which are situated close to the city of Hiroshima are loaded with tiny glass beads. These beads have formed over time after the nuclear bomb was dropped and are tiny pieces of debris which were melted by the ferocity of the fire blast.

This odd revelation was found by study scientists at UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab. They have done some research on the facility and found a host of beads that were never noticed until now. They seemingly formed in the atomic cloud from concrete, marble, stainless steel, and rubber. All of this was caught up in the explosion and could have created thousands of tons of these particles.

As Mario Wannier, a retired geologist at Berkeley Lab and study lead said: “This was the worst man-made event ever, by far,

“In the surprise of finding these particles, the big question for me was, you have a city, and a minute later you have no city … Where is the city? Where is the material? It is a trove to have discovered these particles. It is an incredible story.”

A world-changing discovery

The story if a horrifying example of the unique and demonic power of the nuclear bomb. The bomb itself was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6^th, 1945, and wiped out over 70,000 people in an instant.

Many more died – an equal number, many suggest – from the sickening after-effects of such an attack. Indeed, it destroyed the part of 90% of the structures in the city. The Japanese city of Nagasaki suffered the same fate only three days later.

These small beads have been around for some time, then, but only now are being noticed as part of the fabric of the beach. Collected by a colleague, Marc de Urreiztieta, on the Motoujina Peninsula, around four miles from the city.

Wannier, an expert in studying local marine environments and the study of sand, was notified immediately. Alongside UC Berkeley mineralogist, Rudy Wenk, the analyzed these beads further. What they found was that it was made up of a wide range of chemicals, made from numerous structures which were eviscerated in the strike.

If you wish to find out more about this engaging study, you can read more about it in the Anthropocene journal. We now have more proof, though, about the long-term and lasting damage that could be caused by the use of atomic firepower. Hopefully, we never have to witness its consequences again.

Whenever we find something new in this world, we have a tendency to want to know everything about it. In a world so full opportunity and discovery, it makes sense. With our immense ability to research and evaluate just about anything we find, why not find out everything that we can about, well, everything?

Sometimes though, we can find objects that totally shatter the conventional rules of what we thought we knew.

For example, a new crystalline material has been found that appears to have electronic properties never seen in the past. This unique new material was found recently and is made up of a mixture of aluminum and platinum.

It’s got a set of electronic properties that are unique, in that we have never seen their likes in the past. This was picked up in the Nature Physics science journal. Apparently, the structure is capable of producing Rarita-Schwinger fermions through its interior and also its Fermi arcs. That’s very interesting and shows a material state that behaves like an actual particle.

The finding is noted to be of significant importance moving forward. The research team working on it at the Paul Scherrer Institute, using the Swiss Synchrotron Light Source SLS, used this to observe the particles for the first time. It’s a very interesting finding and one that breaks away from a lot of conventional findings.

Unusual formation

Indeed, there is a repeated pattern of atoms taking place in a cube-shaped style, forming a cell unit of up to two elements. Inside this particular crystalline formation, there is a different layout. Normally, there would be a symmetry of sorts taking place within. This is different, with a slightly offset design in the middle. This forms what is known as a helical line.

This is known as a chiral crystal – a pair of mirror images, in essence. It’s very exciting and is the kind of finding which is often exceptionally rare in these particular fields. By using the SLS X-ray in conjunction with photoelectron spectroscopy tools at PSI, they were able to look at these unique electrical properties.

They found that it was not only chiral; it was also topological, meaning that it shows resistance to defects.

The hope is that, in time, this kind of finding could be used to assist in the creation of high-end computing equipment, such as quantum computing, in the near future.

Since long before the 1900’s, explorers and sailors around Antarctica have been greeted by the sight of beautiful, but strange,  green icebergs.  Researchers have been perplexed for decades by the unusually colored ice formations.

The mystery may finally be laid to rest, however.  A recent publication released in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans reports that the brilliant emerald green colorations occur because of mainland Antarctica’s rock dust is heavy in iron oxides.  The findings were revealed by a University of Washington glaciologist team, headed by Stephen Warren.

In a Newsweek report, Warren explained that the green icebergs wouldn’t have been seen before 1774’s discovery of the Antarctic Ocean by James Cook’s expedition.  In fact, a famous poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge, describes the phenomenon:
“Ice, mast high, came floating by, as green as emerald.”  It seems this was based on fact, not poetic license.

Warren went on to explain that a German expedition in 1903 noted the green icebergs, and they made the scientific headlines in 1921.  The novelty has been spotted on occasion by a number of sea captains and explorers.

When ice breaks apart from an ice shelf or a glacier, it forms an iceberg. Layers and layers of snow will pile onto the iceberg, gradually becoming solid.  These formations will contain light reflecting air pockets.  The iceberg absorbs less blue light than red, giving them a bluish appearance.

Layers Of Different Ice

The emerald green icebergs in the Antarctic Ocean contain layers of frozen ocean water under the ice shelf.  This marine ice lacks air pockets, making the icebergs look darker and more clear than normal icebergs.  According to Warren, one percent of all icebergs have this layer of visible marine ice.

The theory behind the green icebergs was traditionally that they were formed out of marine ice, not glacier ice.  The iceberg, it was thought, would take on a greenish hue because of dead marine animals or plants trapped in it as it froze. When this organic material began to break down, it took on a yellowish tinge as it produced organic carbons.  The green color, accordingly, was as elementary as this yellow marine ice mixing with the blue tinged glacier ice.

Warren, however, found that the same amounts of organic materials were found in both blue ice and the green.  This 1990’s discovery torpedoed the long-standing theory.  Something else had to be at work within the green icebergs.

A recent discovery by Tasmanian researchers found that an ice sample taken from the Antarctica Amery Ice Shelf had a significantly higher iron content at its base than was produced by the glacier ice above.  In fact, there was nearly 500 times more iron at the base of the core sample.

Rocks and soils that have heavy iron oxide content will be red, yellow or orange in color.  Warren began to consider that perhaps this is why the icebergs in Antarctica were green. The researchers theorized that when ocean water mixes with the mainland rock of Antarctica, the result was green marine ice.  If the ice turned over as it was breaking away from the main ice sheet, the green bottom layer would be exposed and create a green iceberg.

Scientists are considering the uses of this information and suggest that these icebergs play an important role as a delivery system of iron nutrients to the Southern Ocean.  Tiny marine plants at the bottom of the food chain, known as phytoplankton, need iron to survive.

Warren believes that the green icebergs are responsible for delivering iron directly to the phytoplankton that use it.  This means that green icebergs are more than just a bizarre fluke of nature, they are, in fact, very important to marine life.

Currently, Warren is teaming up with colleagues from the Hobart, Australia Antarctic Center for more testing.  They are hoping to gather more iceberg samples of all colors to check iron content and prove the theory.  The Australian team specialize in measuring the levels of iron in seawater and sea ice.

Warren says, “If our project is approved, we will travel by ship to the Australian Antarctic stations close to the Amery Ice Shelf, where green icebergs are commonly found. The iron analyses will be done in Australia. Spectral reflectance of icebergs will be measured by others of our group. We have submitted a proposal to do this work.”

On Thursday, February 21, Space X launched its 70^th completed mission, making company history. At 8:45 EST, Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station successfully sent the Nusantara Satu Mission into the atmosphere, hauling several payloads.

SpaceX is a private space exploration corporation with several spacecraft to its name, including the Nusantara Satu satellite, the Air Force Research Laboratory S5 spacecraft, and the Beresheet lunar spacecraft.

The Indonesian Nusantara Satu satellite has been launched to provide internet access to its citizens.  Israel’s Beresheet is set to make Israel the fourth country to have ever landed on the moon.

Beresheet will take almost two months to reach the moon and will be the first spacecraft from Israel as well as the first privately-owned spacecraft to ever reach the moon.  It will take photos and video for scientific research, explains SpaceX, the owner of the spacecraft.

SpaceX released high-resolution pictures of the launch immediately after it happened.  The test launch had occurred on Monday for Thursday’s planned launch, and a back-up plan of a Friday launch was scheduled in case of complications.

Reusable Rocket

SpaceX is well known for using reusable rockets; in fact, this payload was launched on a Falcon 9 rocket while the first stage rocket had been used to launch Iridium 7 in July of 2018 and SAOCOM 1A in October of 2018. SpaceX successfully recovered first stage booster again after the launch on Thursday night.  The mission makes the 70^th one for SpaceX, and the 20^th successful launch reusing a booster.

Nusantara Satu was successfully launched to a geosynchronous transfer orbit and was expected to work soon after. SpaceX, still riding high from its successes, is scheduled for another launch in March in its partnership with NASA.  The unmanned test launch will demonstrate the possibility of sending astronauts into space in the future.

Recent discoveries had given a surprising new perspective to 2014 MU69, which has been the most distant object ever explored by NASA. Ultima Thule, in the Kuiper Belt, seems to be a lot less round than originally thought.

According to footage captured by a January 1 New Horizons flyby, Ultima Thule is more of a deflated beach ball than an air-filled one.  The photo above shows Ultima Thule with a crescent shape in an image shared ten minutes after the capsule crossed paths with the entity.

Ultima Thule is a tiny world that is over 4 billion miles from planet earth. Southwest Research Institute’s Principal investigator Alan Stern confirmed, “Nothing quite like this has ever been captured in imagery.”

A Change In Point Of View

The pictures shared a surprising piece of scientific evidence: Ultima Thule’s segments aren’t round, as expected. NASA describes the largest of the lobes as pancake shaped and the smallest lobe carries more of a dented walnut shape.

Prior to this clear image, everything science understood about Ultima Thule was based on a very limited mount of photos transmitted during a flyby, but nothing as informative as this one.  Stern has admitted that they have had to rethink what they understood about Ultima Thule and compare it to a pancake rather than a basketball.

While the bottom image in this picture most closely represents NASA’s current understanding of Ultima Thule’s shape, there is still a fair amount of uncertainty because the images transmitted didn’t include areas of the entity that were hidden from view and not lit by the sun.  Scientists speculate that Ultima Thule could be shaped more like the dotted blue line depictions, flatter than expected or not as flat as the pictures indicate.

Stern explains, “The new images are creating scientific puzzles about how such an object could even be formed. We’ve never seen something like this orbiting the Sun.”

The images taken by New Horizons on departure revealed the object from a different angle than scientists had previously studied.  Fast flybys aren’t entirely an accurate way of understanding the actual shape of Ultima Thule, but the latest images have given scientists a greater, more accurate view that opens new possibilities regarding the formation of planets in the solar system.

Originally, scientists had theorized that Ultima Thule was single entity with two separate lobes.  Now, they understand that it is actually two separate stars who are so close together that they are touching, perhaps even merging, called a “contact binary.”

Ultima measures approximately 12 miles across, while Thule measures around nine miles across.  It is theorized that the two celestial bodies merged during the solar system’s formation at a speed and force only as comparable as two vehicles in a fender bender.