Science & TechnologyS


Gold mine

'Goldene': The gilded cousin of graphene that is also one atom thick

gold sheet single atom graphic
© imaginima/GettyResearchers have synthesized sheets of gold that are one atom thick.
Sheets of gold might find use as catalysts, or in light-sensing devices.

It is the world's thinnest gold leaf: a gossamer sheet of gold just one atom thick. Researchers have synthesized1 the long-sought material, known as goldene, which is expected to capture light in ways that could be useful in applications such as sensing and catalysis.

Goldene is a gilded cousin of graphene, the iconic atom-thin material made of carbon that was discovered in 2004. Since then, scientists have identified hundreds more of these 2D materials. But it has been particularly difficult to produce 2D sheets of metals, because their atoms have always tended to cluster together to make nanoparticles instead.

Gold mine

'Fool's Gold' may be valuable after all

pyrite fools gold lithium
© Wirestock/GettyA piece of fools gold, or pyrite. The material could be a major source of lithium.
We used to make fun of Fool's Gold. Now, it might fuel the future.

Fool's gold or iron pyrite โ€” a common mineral that resembles its precious counterpart โ€” may be more valuable than scientists originally thought, as it has been found to be abundant in lithium.

Lithium is vital to the future development of green energy. This is because the material, which is highly reactive, is a key element in batteries โ€” including of the kind used in electric vehicles (hence the name, lithium ion batteries).

Due to this, demand for lithium is soaring. The precious resource can be extracted from brines โ€” and also mined in select locations including Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Chile and China. But scientists have now found it in an apparently undervalued mineral.

Comment: Popular Mechanics expands:
Lithium is one of the most important elements on the periodic table. Because it's lightweight and easily gains and loses ions, the material is central to the batteries that power almost everything in our technological world.

But lithium's importance doesn't stop at your iPhone. Lithium-6 (an isotope of the soft metal) is crucial for breeding tritium, which is the hydrogen isotope that lies at the heart of nuclear fusion. It's for these reasons โ€” as well as the burgeoning EV revolution and the desperate need for green energy battery storage โ€” that the U.S. government considers lithium (also referred to as "White Gold") a critical mineral.

In other words, the world runs on lithium.

But for all of its amazing benefits, lithium has some major downsides. For one, its highly reactive nature means that most lithium-ion batteries are essentially just controlled bombs โ€” hence the long lines at airport security. It also isn't easy to extract, as it's often locked away in igneous rock and saltwater brine.

The world is hungry for more sources of lithium, and a new study from the Isotopic and Biogeochemical Characterization of Geological Materials (IsoBioGeM) laboratory at West Virginia University recently stumbled across another kind of "gold" that could be an "unheard of" source for this precious mineral โ€” pyrite, or known by its more derogatory nickname, "fool's gold."

After analyzing 15 sedimentary rock samples in the Appalachian basin dating from the middle-Devonian nearly 400 million years ago, what the scientists found surprised them. Within the pyrite minerals in shale were sources of lithium. This means that the organic-rich shale could have higher concentrations of lithium than previously believed due to little-known interactions between lithium and pyrite. The scientists presented their findings on Monday at the EGU General Assembly 2024.

"These initial findings suggest that pyrite in conjunction with organic matter may play a previously unrecognized role in the Li distribution in organic-rich shales," the study's abstract reads. "The geochemical processes that might cause Li enrichments associated with pyrite are not well-understood...[but] using material from previous industrial operations (e.g., mine tailings or drill cuttings) as a source of additional Li would be attractive as it would generate little or no new waste material."

While finding a potentially new source of a lithium is certainly exciting, this particular method would also be a very green option. Starting up new lithium mines costs a lot โ€” in time, money, and environmental degradation โ€” so extracting lithium from past and present oil and gas operations could help make the transition from those very greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels even easier. That's because industrial mining operations, especially mine tailings and drill cuttings, could contain leftover lithium deposits in the pyrite minerals left behind in the shale.

Demeaned for centuries, pyrite is now ready to accept your apology.



Tsunami

Rare discovery: First fractal molecule identified inside bacteria

fractal Synechococcus elongatus
© Max Planck Institute/HochbergIllustration of the citrate synthase enzyme assembling into triangular fractal structures.Fractal patterns were known to exist only on macroscopic scale. This is the first time one is identified in the microscopic world.
Researchers from Max Planck Institute and Philipps University in Marburg have discovered the first fractal structure at the molecular scale.

A fractal is a geometrical pattern that tends to repeat itself regardless of the scale at which one observes it. The complex shape of a fractal often gives an impression of the endless repetition of a pattern.

Fern leaves, pine cones, romanesco broccoli, and succulent leaves are all examples of fractal. However, all such previously identified fractals exist on a macroscopic level.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's: MindMatters: Interview with Ken Pedersen: Quarks, DNA, Consciousness - It's All Information, Always Has Been




Cassiopaea

Ancient human evolution is 'unparalleled and almost opposite' to other species in nature, new study reveals

Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis and Homo heidelbergensis
© Duckworth Laboratory, University of Cambridge.Cast of Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis and Homo heidelbergensis skulls.
Interspecies competition in ancient humans saw an evolutionary trend that is the complete opposite of almost all other vertebrates, according to a new study.

For years, scientists assumed the main driver of the rise and fall of hominin species (which includes humans and our direct ancestors) was climate change. It is known, however, that interspecies competition is also at play as it is in most vertebrates.

New research published in Nature Ecology & Evolution examines the rate at which new species of hominin emerged over 5 million years. This speciation in our lineage, they found, is unlike almost anything else.

Comment: See also: Also check out SOTT radio's:



Sun

Enormous pink 'flames' recorded on sun during total solar eclipse.

pink solar prominences eclipse april 2024
© NASA/Keegan BarberProminences leap out of the sun during the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse over North Amrica.
Fiery pink towers could be seen erupting from the sun during the total solar eclipse on April 8. What are they?

In this surprisingly colorful image, NASA photographer Keegan Barber captured the view of totality โ€” the moment when the moon fully covered the sun's bright face, revealing its elusive outer atmosphere โ€” as seen over Texas. Behind the black disk of the moon, the two outermost layers of the sun's atmosphere stab into the darkness: the white corona and the reddish-pink chromosphere. Both layers are normally invisible to the human eye.

Many stunning photos of the eclipse have already been shared, but a field of pink structures popping out of the sun like cherry blossoms sets this image apart. Despite what some excited eclipse viewers have claimed, those are not solar flares. But they are an equally impressive phenomenon, known as solar prominences โ€” large, often looping towers of plasma that leap out of the sun's surface and stand anchored there for weeks or months at a time, according to NASA. (Flares, on the other hand, fly off into space within seconds.)

Blue Planet

Tri-ancestral origins for Japanese population, including an 'unidentified NE Asian population', revealed in large genomic study

japan genetic origins
© Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adi8419Fine-scale genetic structure of the modern Japanese and its three ancestry origins. (A) Geographic regions in Japan from which the samples were recruited are described. (B) PCA analysis based on common variants with a minor AF (C) Rare variant-based PCA-UMAP analysis (D) ADMIXTURE analysis with K set to 3. (E) UMAP1 is negatively correlated with the fraction of K2 ancestry.
A multi-institutional team of geneticists and genomic and genotyping specialists in Japan has sequenced the genomes of thousands of Japanese people from across the country, looking to settle the debate surrounding the ancestry of the Japanese people.

In their study, published in the journal Science Advances, the group sequenced the genes of so many people that they were able to decode the tri-ancestral origins of the Japanese population โ€” and also to identify gene variants that may make some Japanese people more likely to develop certain illnesses.

The research team began by noting that most large-scale genetic sequencing research efforts have been conducted on people of European descent, which, they point out, leaves gaps in knowledge surrounding Asian ancestral roots.

Comment: See also:


Blue Planet

Observation of the Earth shows that deforestation and urbanization cause three times more warming than CO2

citytrees/not
© Unknown
Forget approximate climate models, whose simulations are increasingly removed from reality. There's a far more scientific way of understanding the climate, and that involves observing the actual climate system directly from space or in situ. A multitude of satellites and a worldwide network of land, air and sea sensors make millions of observations every day, creating detailed, faithful images of the Earth. In particular, satellites transmit huge volumes of data on the upper atmosphere and the Earth's surface, enabling us to measure the system's energy balance and attribute infrared emissions to particular atmospheric components. This high-quality space and in-situ data is freely available to all thanks to Copernicus, but the problem is that we don't use it...

Forget proxies and old data that are constantly being "adjusted". We have proven, measured information that allows us to go back in time to 1960. It's a happy coincidence that January 1, 1960 is the reference 0 for the temperature series commonly used. The IPCC has arbitrarily ruled that climate change began with industrialization, i.e. around 1850 or 1880, since it assumes that GHG emissions are the cause. But data from the world's oceans, which drive climate, show that their temperature began to diverge from its natural cycle around 1980. So let's focus on the last sixty years, using the real-world observations available to objectively identify the true culprits of anthropogenic warming.

Fireball

2,000-foot-wide 'city-killer' asteroid has just made its closest approach to Earth

asteroid closse passage earth 2013 NK4
© NASA/JPL-CaltechNASA astronomers were able to obtain radar images of the large asteroid 2013 NK4 that passed Earth safely on Monday, April 15, 2024.
The 2,000-foot-wide asteroid 2013 NK4 just made its closest approach to Earth in recorded history, sailing by at about eight lunar distances. You can still see the massive rock with a backyard telescope.

A "city-killer" asteroid has just made its closest approach to Earth since records began, sailing safely past our planet at more than eight times the average distance between Earth and the moon. Despite being classified as "potentially hazardous," the gigantic space rock poses no threat to our planet. But for the first time ever, it will be visible via amateur telescopes over the next three nights (April 15 - April 17).

The hefty asteroid, named 2013 NK4, is around 2,000 feet (610 meters) wide, making it about twice the size of the "god of chaos" asteroid Apophis, which will make a superclose approach to Earth in 2029, EarthSky reported.

Blue Planet

Is Natural Law irreducible?

Seashells display the Fibonacci  sequence
Seashells display a Golden Spiral
Perhaps the most fundamental distinction between naturalism and intelligent design is where each metaphysical framework draws the line at irreducibility. Leading intelligent design theorists Michael Behe, William Dembski, and Stephen Meyer, for example, have asserted that the specified complexity of living systems cannot be reduced to natural law. Scientific atheists, aka naturalists, deny this, insisting that what is truly irreducible is natural law itself. That is, scientific atheism is based on the belief that all of reality ultimately reduces to matter and energy, and the natural law that governs the interactions between them.

Naturalism, aka materialism, aka scientism, rests irrevocably on that discrete metaphysical position. Without it, the edifice of scientism or naturalism must collapse. In writing at Evolution News on the science of purpose, my goal has been to deconstruct that foundational assertion. The next step in that undertaking is to demonstrate the reducibility of natural law itself.

Cassiopaea

Most massive stellar black hole in the Milky Way discovered 'extremely close' to Earth

black hole star companion artist illustration
© ESO/L. CalรงadaAn artist's illustration of the black hole and its orbiting star.
Astronomers found the most massive stellar-mass black hole in the galaxy after spotting a star "wobbling" nearby. The baby monster is the 2nd-closest black hole to Earth ever detected.

Astronomers have found the most massive stellar-mass black hole ever discovered in our galaxy โ€” and it's lurking "extremely close" to Earth, according to new research.

The black hole, named Gaia BH3, is 33 times more massive than our sun. Cygnus X-1, the next-biggest stellar black hole known in our galaxy, weighs only 21 solar masses. The newfound black hole is located roughly 2,000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila, making it the second-closest known black hole to Earth.

The researchers published their findings April 16 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.