Science & Medicine
Here we bring you the latest on all things science from physical science, evolution, astronomy, space, physics, chemistry, and medicine.
Scientists Discover 97-Million-Year-Old “GPS” That May Have Guided Ancient Animals
By University of Cambridge – SciTechDaily
Ancient magnetic fossils reveal that animal navigation using Earth’s magnetic field may have evolved far earlier than previously known.
Researchers have uncovered what appears to be the oldest known evidence of an internal navigation system in an animal, a finding that may help explain how modern birds and fish developed the ability to orient themselves using the Earth’s magnetic field over long distances.
The evidence comes from microscopic magnetic fossils that are about 97 million years old. These remains were preserved in ancient seafloor sediments and are thought to have been produced by an unknown organism whose identity is still unclear.
The fossils take on a range of distinctive forms, including shapes resembling spearheads, spindles, bullets, and needles. Each one is no larger than a bacterial cell. Scientists are confident that these structures are biological in origin, yet they have not been able to determine what kind of animal…Read more here.
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Thomas Edison May Have Created a Miracle Material Before Physics Knew It Existed
Rice University / SciTechDaily
A modern materials study suggests that Thomas Edison’s early light bulb experiments may have unknowingly produced graphene decades before the material was formally theorized or isolated.
Thomas Edison never heard the word “graphene,” yet researchers at Rice University think his work may still brush up against it. In a recent paper from chemist James Tour’s lab, the team points to graphene as an unexpected thread connecting Edison to Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim, the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics winners who isolated and studied the material.
Edison died nearly two decades before physicist P.R. Wallace proposed that graphene might exist, and almost 80 years before the Nobel committee recognized its experimental discovery.
Graphene is a one-atom-thick form of carbon that is both transparent and remarkably strong, with growing importance in modern devices such as semiconductors. The Rice researchers focus on a…Read more here.
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Radio Signals Reveal a Star’s Final Years Before a Violent Supernova
By University of Virginia College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences – SciTechDaily
Astronomers have, for the first time, detected radio waves from an unusual type of exploding star. This achievement offers a rare glimpse into the final years of a massive star’s life before it ends in a dramatic supernova.
The study, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, focuses on a Type Ibn supernova. These events occur when a massive star tears itself apart after releasing large amounts of helium rich material shortly before it dies.
Following Radio Signals Over Time: Using the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico, the research team monitored faint radio emissions from the explosion for about 18 months. Those signals revealed clear evidence of gas the star expelled only a few years before it was destroyed, details that cannot be seen with optical telescopes alone.
Raphael Baer-Way, a third year Ph.D. student in astronomy at the University of Virginia and…Read more here.
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A Strange Ice Process May Be Making Europa’s Ocean Habitable
By Washington State University – SciTechDaily
Europa’s ice may be quietly delivering life-sustaining nutrients to a hidden ocean beneath the surface.
Geophysicists at Washington State University have uncovered a possible explanation for how nutrients may travel into the subsurface ocean of Europa, a moon of Jupiter that ranks among the strongest candidates for extraterrestrial life in the solar system.
For decades, researchers have questioned how essential nutrients could move from Europa’s surface down into its ocean, which lies buried beneath a thick layer of ice and is thought to host microscopic life. Using computer simulations inspired by a geological process on Earth called crustal delamination, the team showed that heavy, nutrient-rich ice can separate from surrounding ice and sink downward until it reaches the ocean.
“This is a novel idea in planetary science, inspired by a well-understood idea in Earth science,” said Austin Green, lead author and postdoctoral researcher at Virginia Tech. “Most excitingly, this…Read more here.
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