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A new discovery could help scientists to understand “strange metals,” a class of materials that are related to high-temperature superconductors and share fundamental quantum attributes with black holes. Scientists understand quite well how temperature affects electrical conductance in most everyday metals like copper or silver. But in recent years, researchers have turned their attention to a class of materials that do not seem to follow the traditional electrical rules. Understanding these so-called “strange metals” could provide fundamental insights into the quantum world, and potentially help scientists understand strange phenomena like high-temperature superconductivity. Now, a research team co-led by a Brown...

AAP/Japan Meteorology Agency Why the volcanic eruption in Tonga was so violent, and what to expect next January 15, 2022 3.04pm EST Shane Cronin, University of Auckland Author Shane Cronin Professor of Earth Sciences, University of Auckland The Kingdom of Tonga doesn’t often attract global attention, but a violent eruption of an underwater volcano on January 15 has spread shock waves, quite literally, around half the world. The volcano is usually not much to look at. It consists of two small uninhabited islands, Hunga-Ha’apai and Hunga-Tonga, poking about 100m above sea level 65km north of Tonga’s capital Nuku‘alofa. But hiding...

The underlying theory is simple enough. "If you can get electrons to pair, they can superconduct," said Dean. According to the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory, an attractive force between electrons—no matter how weak—will cause those electrons to pair up and form a new kind of particle called a "Cooper pair." These behave like particles called bosons and, at low enough temperatures, can enter into a collective state and move through a material unimpeded by disorder—a feature any single electron just cannot achieve on its own. But there's been a problem. "Electrons do not want to pair," said Dean. Like repels like,...

UCSC science writers examine the evidence for ghost hunting, chemtrails, cryptozoology and moreEach year, the graduate students of UCSC’s Science Communication Program research a different topic for the first GT issue of the new year. This year, with so much abuse and misuse of science floating around, especially on social media, we decided to take on the topic of pseudoscience. It’s a wildly varied list of subjects, and whether they’re fun and seemingly harmless, have implications for believers’ pocketbooks, or are the basis for sinister conspiracy theories, it’s edifying to know their scientific basis—or lack of one—and to consider...

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. Explanation: It's easy to get lost following the intricate, looping, twisting filaments in this detailed image of supernova remnant Simeis 147. Also cataloged as Sharpless 2-240 it goes by the popular nickname, the Spaghetti Nebula. Seen toward the boundary of the constellations Taurus and Auriga, it covers nearly 3 degrees or 6 full moons on the sky. That's about 150 light-years at the stellar debris cloud's estimated distance of 3,000 light-years. This composite includes...

THIS IS MY INTRO, NOT THE ARTICLE. THUS THE partial vanity label. We've seen from the initial South African Health Ministry discovery of the Omicron variant that Omicron (actually Xi) is a mild but highly infectious pathogen. In other words, a typical corona virus. Omicron rapidly became the globally dominant, endemic strain of COVID19.x Read this article from Time.com (of all places) that properly puts Omicron in its place in the human life experience. It's time to move on from locking down the world and liberties for what essentially is a 'cold'.

The hunt for moons outside our solar system has just turned up another possible lunar world, a moon bigger than Earth that's orbiting a Jupiter-like planet. The planet and its moon — if it really is a moon — orbit a Sun-like star that's over 5,000 light years away, according to a report in the journal Nature Astronomy. "The moon is pretty alien compared to any moon in the solar system," says David Kipping, an astronomer at Columbia University. "We're not sure if it's rocky, we're not sure if it's gaseous. It's kind of in between the size of Neptune,...

The US experts want to know how interstellar space travel affects the microscopic animals, known for an ability to survive extreme conditions including in outer space. In a new paper, they've proposed building small space probes containing tardigrades, also known as 'water bears', that would travel at up to 30 per cent the speed of light into space. These probes would be propelled by laser light instead of rocket fuel, from a laser array stationed on Earth, or possibly the moon. At speeds of roughly 100 million miles per hour, tardigrades would reach the next solar system, Proxima Centauri, in...

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi have hatched a whole new scheme to federalize elections. How? They gutted a NASA bill that had already been passed by the House and had made its way to the Senate floor, stripping out the language and replacing it with language that federalizes our elections. ACLJ Director of Government Affairs Thann Bennett explained how this bill was stripped down to be used for hyper-partisan legislation: "Can you imagine being the supporters of that NASA authority bill right now when it is now being used to take over elections,...

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are intense bursts of radio emission lasting milliseconds and showcasing characteristic dispersion sweep of radio pulsars. The physical nature of these bursts is yet unknown, and astronomers consider a variety of explanations ranging from synchrotron maser emission from young magnetars in supernova remnants to cosmic string cusps. FRB 121102 is the first repeating fast radio burst detected and one of the most extensively studied FRB sources. It exhibits complex burst morphology, sub-burst downward frequency drifts, and also complex pulse phenomenology. FRB 121102 is also one of only two FRBs reported to be spatially associated with persistent...

Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, working with Japanese researchers, made the observation on the Large Helical Device (LHD) in Japan, a twisty magnetic facility that the Japanese call a "heliotron." The results demonstrated for the first time a novel regime for confining heat in facilities known as stellarators, similar to the heliotron. The findings could advance the twisty design as a blueprint for future fusion power plants Researchers produced the higher confinement regime by injecting tiny grains of boron powder into the LHD plasma that fuels fusion reactions. The injection through a PPPL-installed dropper...

Artist’s representation of IXPE in Earth orbit. Credit: NASA NASA’s newest X-ray eyes are open and ready for discovery! Having spent just over a month in space, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) is working and already zeroing in on some of the hottest, most energetic objects in the universe. A joint effort between NASA and the Italian Space Agency, IXPE is the first space observatory dedicated to studying the polarization of X-rays coming from objects like exploded stars and black holes. Polarization describes how the X-ray light is oriented as it travels through space. “The start of IXPE’s science...

Leading British and US scientists thought it was likely that Covid accidentally leaked from a laboratory but were concerned that further debate would harm science in China, emails show. An email from Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, on February 2 2020 said that “a likely explanation” was that Covid had rapidly evolved from a Sars-like virus inside human tissue in a low-security lab. The email, to Dr Anthony Fauci and Dr Francis Collins of the US National Institutes of Health, went on to say that such evolution may have “accidentally created a virus primed for rapid transmission...

Scientists have found that antimatter particles fall down, not up, just like regular matter... Physicists at CERN have discovered that antimatter falls down. Sure, it sounds like an obvious thing, but scientists haven’t yet been able to confirm that it responds to gravity in exactly the same way as regular matter does. A new experiment provides the best answer so far. Antimatter is much like the matter that makes up everything around us, with one important difference: its particles have the opposite electric charge. And that simple difference has some major implications – whenever a particle and its antiparticle meet,...

Are we getting all the information necessary to make informed decisions about vaccination? Molecular Biologist Dr. Aditi Bhargava, the director of laboratory research at UCSF develops mRNA technology, the same technology used in covid vaccines. We are also joined by two individuals who have been injured by the vaccine, professional mountain biker Kyle Warner and Brianne Dressen who is a school teacher from Utah. In this profoundly illuminating and unifying podcast, we agree that everybody is simply doing what they think is best for themselves and society based on the information they have. An issue arises when we all operate...

The Yutu-2 image of the ‘mysterious hut’. (CNSA/CLEP/Our Space) China's mysterious "Moon cube" is a mystery no longer. The big reveal: It's a rock that's not even shaped like a cube. The nation's Yutu-2 rover discovered the object – which appeared to be a gray cube looming on the lunar horizon – in early December. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) dubbed it 'mysterious hut', playfully speculating that the cube might be an alien house or spacecraft. News reports called it the 'Moon cube'. The CNSA estimated the object was about 80 meters (262 feet) away, according to the blog...

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Yet more earthquakes have struck near South Carolina's capital city, the ninth and tenth in a series of rumblings that have caused geologists to wonder how long the convulsions might last, or if they could possibly portend future, more serious seismic activity. Early Wednesday, a 2.6-magnitude earthquake struck near Elgin, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northeast of Columbia, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was measured at a depth of 0.5 kilometers, officials said. About 7 hours later, another earthquake hit the area, this one with a magnitude of 1.5, according to officials. That area, a...

Explanation: What will become of Jupiter's Great Red Spot? Gas giant Jupiter is the solar system's largest world with about 320 times the mass of planet Earth. Jupiter is home to one of the largest and longest lasting storm systems known, the Great Red Spot (GRS), visible to the left. The GRS is so large it could swallow Earth, although it has been shrinking. Comparison with historical notes indicate that the storm spans only about one third of the exposed surface area it had 150 years ago. NASA's Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program has been monitoring the storm more...

Is there a county public health officer who doesn't follow whatever the CDC say without question? See this article for the full list of these courageous public health officers.Steve Kirsch1 hr ago Joseph Ladapo (Surgeon General of Florida)

[T]he meteor that exploded Saturday morning in the skies above Western Pennsylvania produced a blast that was equal to 30 tons of TNT. On New Year’s Day, a loud boom was heard and felt throughout the region, with some people reporting rumbles in their homes and rattling windows. NASA told The Post that the meteor was a yard in diameter, weighed 1,000 pounds, and hit the atmosphere at a staggering 45,000 mph. A meteor of that size travels through Earth’s atmosphere every three or four days, but because most of the planet is water-covered, the majority of those meteors fall...