Aurelia Butler

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  • 138 Shares149 Views

    in Space & Astronomy

    How did dark matter shape the universe? This physicist has ideas

    At age 12, Tracy Slatyer felt sorry for a book. She read a newspaper article about how lots of people were buying A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. “But then … nobody was actually reading it,” she says. “People were just leaving it on their coffee tables.”

    Determined to rectify this wrong, Slatyer obtained a copy and diligently read each page. The famous physicist’s popular text revealed to her “that math was in some sense an expressive language for describing how things really work,” she says. “That, to me, was exciting.” More

  • 125 Shares149 Views

    in Physics

    Why this physicist is bringing thermodynamics to the quantum age

    Senior physics writer Emily Conover has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago. She is a two-time winner of the D.C. Science Writers’ Association Newsbrief award and a winner of the Acoustical Society of America’s Science Communication Award. More

  • 125 Shares199 Views

    in Physics

    A materials scientist seeks to extract lithium from untapped sources

    Electric vehicles promise to help wean us off of fossil fuels, but they introduce a new problem: how to get enough of the lithium that EV batteries require (SN: 5/7/19).

    Materials scientist Chong Liu of the University of Chicago has some ideas. Existing technology can extract lithium only from sources with highly concentrated ions, like hard rocks or underground deposits of salty water called brines. Not only will those sources not be enough to meet demand, but mining them also comes with environmental consequences (SN: 3/15/22). More

  • 113 Shares129 Views

    in Heart

    Climate change could double U.S. temperature-linked deaths by mid-century

    Heat-related deaths in the United States are on the rise. But how bad will it be 20, 30 or 40 years from now? Scientists now have a clue.

    Currently, an estimated 8,000-plus deaths in the United States every year are associated with extreme temperatures, both hot and cold. Within the next few decades, that number could double or even triple, largely due to heat, researchers report September 20 in JAMA Network Open.

    “As the climate warms, the frequency, duration and intensity of heat waves is increasing. Understanding how this will impact our health is crucial,” Sameed Khatana, a cardiologist at the University of Pennsylvania, says. Our bodies are capable of bearing sweltering temperatures, but as temperatures rise, this ability is pushed to its limit (SN: 6/21/24). More

  • 100 Shares189 Views

    in Space & Astronomy

    A neutrino mass mismatch could shake cosmology’s foundations

    As the youthful universe congealed under the pull of gravity, matter knotted itself into galaxies, galaxy clusters and filaments, weaving a dazzlingly intricate cosmic web. This web’s structure is thanks, in part, to the handiwork of neutrinos — lightweight, subatomic particles that surge through the cosmos in unimaginable numbers.

    Because they streak about at high speeds and rarely interact with other matter, the particles weren’t easily caught in the gravitational molasses of that latticework. So their presence swept away the cobwebs, hindering the formation of fine details in this cosmic filigree. More

  • 100 Shares99 Views

    in Heart

    Earth’s ancient ‘greenhouse’ conditions were hotter than thought

    Over the last 485 million years, Earth has been both a lot colder and a lot hotter than once thought.

    A new temperature timeline that combines geologic data with computational simulations reveals a rich, detailed and dramatic picture of the ebb and flow of icehouse and greenhouse conditions on Earth throughout this span of time, which includes most of the Phanerozoic Eon. The timeline shows Earth’s average temperature dropping to as low as 11° Celsius and rising to as high as 36° C, researchers report in the Sept. 20 Science. More

  • 163 Shares169 Views

    in Space & Astronomy

    How to spot tiny black holes that might pass through the solar system 

    Black holes about the size of a hydrogen atom could be careening through the solar system unnoticed. But their days of stealth may be numbered.

    Two teams of researchers propose methods to search for these tiny, hypothetical objects, which would have the mass of an asteroid. Because they would have formed in the universe’s infancy, they are known as primordial black holes.

    If they exist, primordial black holes in this mass range could explain some or all of the universe’s dark matter (SN: 8/7/16). That unknown invisible source of mass exerts gravitational influence on galaxies and, perplexingly, seems to outweigh normal matter by about 6 to 1. Extensive searches for subatomic particles that could explain dark matter have come up empty, putting new focus on primordial black holes (SN: 8/26/24).  More

  • 88 Shares179 Views

    in Heart

    Can solar farms and crop farms coexist?

    Transcript

    James McCall: Solar production in the US really started to pick up around 2012. As solar really became mainstream, there was a lot more concerns of land use changes.

    Ravi Sujith: If you look at the type of land that’s been converted for solar installations, over 60 percent of those landscapes are converted croplands.

    Chong Seok-Choi: They both require flat areas with a lot of sun, and that’s close to transmission infrastructures. So in this context, it is important for us to figure out how to combine farming and solar power production so that both can exist in harmony. More