Lifeboat Foundation

NASA has revealed that it has already processed 70.3 grams of rocks and dust collected by the OSIRIS-REx mission from asteroid Bennu. That means the mission has way exceeded its goal of bringing 60 grams of asteroid samples back to Earth — especially since NASA scientists have yet to open the primary sample container that made its way back to our planet in September. Apparently, they’re struggling to open the mission’s Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) and could not remove two of its 35 fasteners using the tools currently available to them.

The scientists are processing the samples inside a specialized glovebox (pictured above) with a flow of nitrogen in order to keep them from being exposed to our atmosphere and any contaminants. They can’t just use any implement to break the container’s fasteners open either: The tool must fit inside the glovebox, and it also must not compromise the samples’ integrity. NASA has sealed the primary container sample for now, while it’s developing the procedure to be able to open it over the next few weeks.

If you’re wondering where the 70.3 grams of rocks and dust came from, well, NASA collected part of it from the external sample receptacle but outside TAGSAM itself. It also includes a small portion of the samples inside TAGSAM, taken by holding down its mylar flap and reaching inside with tweezers or a scoop. NASA’s initial analysis of the material published earlier this month said it showed evidence of high carbon content and water, and further studies could help us understand how life on Earth began. The agency plans to continue analyzing and “characterizing” the rocks and dust it has already taken from the sample container, so we may hear more details about the samples even while TAGSAM remains sealed.

“An exciting feature of these materials is their inherent simplicity—they need no electronics, no external power source,” said study senior author Shengqiang Cai, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. “We demonstrate how we can harness the power of nature to directly convert mechanical stimuli into light emission.”

Alginate, a polymer made from seaweed, was added to the dinoflagellates as the main components of the bioluminescent materials. These substances were combined to generate a solution, which was then processed by a 3D printer to produce an assortment of shapes.

During tests, the substances lit up when the scientists applied pressure and made patterns on their surface. The materials were so sensitive that even the weight of a foam ball moving across their surface caused them to glow.

A team of researchers led by the University of California San Diego has developed soft yet durable materials that glow in response to mechanical stress, such as compression, stretching or twisting. The materials derive their luminescence from single-celled algae known as dinoflagellates.

The work, inspired by the bioluminescent waves observed during red tide events at San Diego’s beaches, was published Oct. 20 in Science Advances.

“An exciting feature of these materials is their inherent simplicity—they need no electronics, no external power source,” said study senior author Shengqiang Cai, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. “We demonstrate how we can harness the power of nature to directly convert mechanical stimuli into light emission.”

Researchers have developed a potentially revolutionary superlens technique that once seemed impossible to see things four times smaller than even the most modern microscopes have seen before. Known as the ‘diffraction limit’ because the diffraction of light waves at the tiniest levels has prevented microscopes from seeing things smaller than those waves, this barrier once seemed unbreakable.

Many have tried to peer below this optical barrier using a technique that researchers in the field term ‘superlensing, including making customized lenses out of novel materials. But all have gathered too much light. Now, a team of physicists from the University of Sydney says they have discovered a viable path that peeks beyond the diffraction limit by a factor of four times, allowing researchers to see things smaller than ever seen before. And the way they did, it is like nothing anyone else has tried.

Breaking the Diffraction Limit by ‘Superlensing’ without a Superlens.

That spider you squished? It could have been used for science!

At least, that’s what Faye Yap and Daniel Preston think. Yap is a mechanical engineering PhD student in Preston’s lab at Rice University, where she co-authored a paper on reanimating spider corpses to create grippers, or tiny machines used to pick up and put down delicate objects. Yap and Preston dubbed this use of biotic materials for robotic parts “necrobotics” – and think this technique could one day become a cheap, green addition to the field.

It’s inspired by Iron Man.

Despite its waif-like proportions, scientists have found over the years that graphene is exceptionally strong. And when the material is stacked and twisted in specific contortions, it can take on surprising electronic behavior.

Now, MIT physicists have discovered another surprising property in graphene: When stacked in five layers, in a rhombohedral pattern, graphene takes on a very rare, “multiferroic” state, in which the material exhibits both unconventional magnetism and an exotic type of electronic behavior, which the team has coined ferro-valleytricity.

Researchers from Monash University have unlocked fresh insights into the behavior of quantum impurities within materials.

The new, international theoretical study introduces a novel approach known as the “quantum virial expansion,” offering a powerful tool to uncover the complex quantum interactions in two-dimensional semiconductors.

This breakthrough holds potential to reshape our understanding of complex quantum systems and unlock exciting future applications utilizing novel 2D materials.

The rich dust clouds that are responsible for producing these giant stars are blocking the light from Hubble’s view. The star and the jet of material it is emitting are visible near the very center.

“The small, bright orange streak is a cavity in the dust carved out by the ferocity of the jet as it streams towards us. By breaking through its dusty cocoon, the jet reveals light from the protostar, but there is still so much dust that the light is “reddened” to a fiery orange. The massive protostar lies at the very lower-left tip of this cavity,” NASA wrote in a post.

Jet-setting through a star formation hotbed!The glimmering, star-forming region seen in this #HubbleFriday view is called G35.2–0.7N. The spectacular light show is caused by a powerful jet of matter ejecting from a very young star: https://go.nasa.gov/3twrzbE pic.twitter.com/hLEwFDqZCy — Hubble (@NASAHubble) October 13, 2023