Are Radioactive Diamond Batteries the Solution to Nuclear Waste?

These batteries are made from nuclear waste and could last thousands of years.

Aug 21, 2021By  Maia Mulko

University of Bristol

Nuclear power is considered a clean energy source because it has zero carbon dioxide emissions; yet, at the same time, it produces massive amounts of hazardous, radioactive waste that pile up as more and more reactors are built around the world. 

Experts have proposed different solutions for this issue in order to take better care of the environment and people’s health. With insufficient safe storage space for nuclear waste disposal, the focal point of these ideas is the reutilization of the materials. 

Radioactive diamond batteries were first developed in 2016 and were immediately acclaimed because they promised a new, cost-effective way of recycling nuclear waste. In this context, it’s unavoidable to deliberate whether they’re the ultimate solution to these toxic, lethal residues.

What Are Radioactive Diamond Batteries?

Radioactive diamond batteries were first developed by a team of physicists and chemists from the Cabot Institute for the Environment of the University of Bristol. The invention was presented as a betavoltaic device, which means that it’s powered by the beta decay of nuclear waste.

Beta decay is a type of radioactive decay that occurs when an atom’s nucleus has an excess of particles and releases some of them to obtain a more stable ratio of protons to neutrons. This produces a kind of ionizing radiation called beta radiation, which involves a lot of high-speed and high-energy electrons or positrons known as beta particles. 

Source: MikeRun/WikimediaCommons

Beta particles contain nuclear energy that can be converted into electric energy through a semiconductor. 

A typical betavoltaic cell consists of thin layers of radioactive material placed between semiconductors. As the nuclear material decays, it emits beta particles that knock electrons loose in the semiconductor, creating an electric current. 

However, the power density of the radioactive source is lower the further it is from the semiconductor. On top of this, because beta particles are randomly emitted in all directions, only a small number of them will hit the semiconductor, and only a small number of those will be converted into electricity. This means that nuclear batteries are much less efficient than other types of batteries. This is where the polycrystalline diamond (PCD) comes in. 

The radioactive diamond batteries are made using a process called chemical vapor deposition, which is widely used for artificial diamond manufacture. It uses a mixture of hydrogen and methane plasma to grow diamond films at very high temperatures. Researchers have modified the CVD process to grow radioactive diamonds by using a radioactive methane containing the radioactive isotope Carbon-14, which is found on irradiated reactor graphite blocks.

Diamond is one of the hardest materials that humanity knows — it’s even harder than silicon carbide. And it can act as both a radioactive source and a semiconductor. Expose it to beta radiation and you’ll get a long-duration battery that doesn’t need to be recharged. The nuclear waste in its interior fuels it over and over again, allowing it to self-charge for ages.

However, the Bristol team warned that their radioactive diamond batteries wouldn’t be suitable for laptops or smartphones, because they contain only 1g of carbon-14, meaning that they provide very low power —only a few microwatts, which is less than a typical AA battery. Therefore, their application so far is limited to small devices that must stay unattended for a long time, such as sensors and pacemakers. 

Nano Diamond Radioactive Batteries

The origins of nuclear batteries can be traced back to 1913, when English physicist Henry Moseley found out that particle radiation could generate an electric current. In the 1950s and 1960s, the aerospace industry was very interested in Moseley’s discovery, as it could potentially power spacecraft for long-duration missions. The RCA Corporation also researched an application for nuclear batteries in radio receivers and hearing aids. 

But other technologies were needed in order to develop and sustain the invention. In this regard, the usage of synthetic diamonds is seen as revolutionary, as it provides safety and conductivity to the radioactive battery. With the addition of nanotechnology, an American company built a high-power nano-diamond battery.

Source: D. Mukherjee/Wikimedia Commons

Based in San Francisco, California, NDB Inc. was founded in 2012 with the objective of creating a cleaner and greener alternative to conventional batteries. The startup introduced its version of diamond-based batteries in 2016 and announced two proof-of-concept tests in 2020. It’s one of the firms that is attempting to commercialize radioactive diamond batteries. 

Nano-diamond batteries from NDB are described as alpha, beta, and neutron voltaic batteries and have several new features according to their website.

• Durability. The firm calculates that the batteries could last up to 28,000 years, which means that they could reliably power space vehicles in long-duration missions, space stations, and satellites. Drones, electric cars, and aircraft on Earth would never need to make stops to be recharged. 
  
  
• Safety. Diamond is not only one of the hardest substances, but also one of the most thermally conductive materials in the world, which helps protect against the heat produced by the radioisotopes that the battery is built with, turning it into electric current very quickly.  
  
  
• Market-friendliness. Thin-film layers of PCD in these allow the battery to allow for different shapes and forms. This is why nano-diamond batteries can be multipurpose and enter different markets, from the aforementioned space applications to consumer electronics. The consumer version would not last more than a decade, though.

Nano-diamond batteries are scheduled to come onto the market in 2023. 

Arkenlight, the English firm commercializing Bristol’s radioactive diamond battery, plans on releasing their first product, a microbattery, to the market in the latter part of 2023. 

The Future of Radioactive Diamond-Based Batteries

The portability of modern electronic devices, the increasing popularity of electric vehicles, and the 21st Century race to take humanity on long space missions to Mars have triggered a growing interest in battery technology research in the last few years.

Some types of batteries are more appropriate for certain applications and not as useful for others. But we can say that the conventional lithium-ion batteries that we are familiar with won't be replaced with radioactive diamond batteries any time soon. 

Conventional batteries last a shorter time, but they are also much cheaper to manufacture. However, at the same time, the fact that they do not last that long (they have a lifespan of about five years) is problematic, because they also produce a great deal of electronic waste, which is not easy to recycle.

Radioactive diamond batteries are more convenient, because they have a much longer lifespan than conventional batteries. If they can be developed into a universal battery, like NDB Inc. proposes, we could end up with smartphone batteries that last much longer than the life of the smartphone, and we could simply change the battery from one phone to the next, much as we now transfer the SIM card. 

However, the diamond betavoltaics developed by Arkenlight won't go that far. The company is working on designs that stack up lots of their carbon-14 betabatteries into cells. To provide high power discharge, each cell could be accompanied by a small supercapacitor, which could offer an excellent quick-discharge capability.

However, this radioactive material also has a lifespan of more than 5000 years. If that radiation were to leak out of the device in gaseous form, it could be a problem. That's where the diamonds come in. In the diamond formation,  the C-14 is a solid, so it can't be extracted and absorbed by a living being.

The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) calculated that 100 pounds (approximately 45 kg) of carbon-14 could allow the fabrication of millions of long-duration diamond-based batteries. These batteries could also reduce the costs of nuclear waste storage. 

University of Bristol researcher Professor Tom Scott told Nuclear Energy Insider that, “By removing the Carbon-14 from irradiated graphite directly from the reactor, this would make the remaining waste products less radioactive and therefore easier to manage and dispose of. Cost estimates for disposing of the graphite waste are 46,000 pounds ($60,000) per cubic meter for Intermediate Level Waste [ILW] and 3,000 pounds ($4,000) per cubic meter for Low-Level Waste [LLW]."

Don’t all these features make them one of the best options for the sustainable future that we need? We’ll have to wait and see if the manufacturers can find a way of dealing with production costs and low energy output, and get their diamond-based batteries onto the market cost-effectively and accessibly.

Researchers work to make solar energy more efficient

A study found that hematite might be at the center of the way to make solar energy possible across large areas and through long-term sunless periods.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
AUGUST 21, 2021 

Left to right: Dr. David Ellis, Dr. Daniel Grave, Yifat Piekner
(photo credit: RAMI SHLUSH / TECHNION)
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New research conducted at the Technion may be instrumental in solving problems with solar energy.

The study, which was published in Energy & Environmental Science, was headed by Professor Avner Rothschild and doctoral student Yifat Piekner from the Technion.

Solar energy is important to human life and if we are able to harness the energy transmitted by the sun we may be able to minimize and even end the use of fossil fuels and pollutants. The biggest problem in switching to solar energy is that the sun is only visible for limited hours of the day, and sometimes only in specific seasons. In order to use solar energy at all times, we need to be able to store the sun's energy.

The problem is that the only existing method of storing energy is through using batteries, and batteries cannot store enough energy needed to power entire cities, neighborhoods, or even smaller areas like a manufacturing site. The other problem is that batteries can only hold power for a few hours, so they cannot provide power long time, like through entire seasons.

A possible solution to the storage problem is the conversion of solar energy into hydrogen through the use of photoelectrochemical solar cells, which split water into hydrogen and oxygen. These cells are similar to the cells that convert solar energy into electricity, but the photoelectrochemical cells convert the energy into hydrogen instead.

Left to right: Yifat Piekner, Dr. Daniel Grave, Prof. Avner Rothschild, 

Dr. David Ellis (credit: RAMI SHLUSH / TECHNION)

The advantage of converting solar energy into hydrogen instead of electricity is that hydrogen is easier to store long-term, and can be used when needed to be converted into electricity. It can also power electric vehicles, replacing the current heavy and expensive batteries.

Another advantage is that using hydrogen for fuel is environmentally friendly because its production does not involve emissions of any sort except oxygen and water, meaning that it would greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The main challenge in this method is that the production of the electrodes that convert the sunlight into electrochemical cells is not stable in the chemical environments in which water can be efficiently split into hydrogen and oxygen. Silicone is used as this material when converting solar energy directly into electricity, but silicone is unstable in electrolyte, a substance used in the creation of electricity, so it won't work for the suggested method.

The study suggests the use of hematite as a solution to this problem. Hematite is an iron oxide that is chemically similar to rust. It is inexpensive, stable and not toxic. It also has properties that make it suitable for water splitting.

The issue is that theoretically hematite-based devices should produce double the energy that they do in practice. The research team may have discovered why.

They discovered that the photons absorbed by hematite produce localized electronic transitions that have very specific abilities which do not include splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen.

 

Photon activity in a 32 nanometers thick hematite layer. Only the photons in green contribute to hydrogen generation. (credit: COURTESY TECHNION)

Piekner and her colleagues, Dr. David Ellis and Dr. Daniel Grave, used a new analysis method developed by Piekner to measure data that has never been measured before.

The first type of data measured was the minimal efficiency of productive and non-productive electronic transitions in a material as a result of different wavelengths, and the other type of data measured was the efficiency of separation in an electron-hole, which is a single unit of the generation and elimination in an inorganic semiconductor.

While these two types of data have been measured together previously, this is the first time they have ever been examined separately. The separated measurements gave the researchers a better understanding of the efficiency of the materials used for the conversion of solar energy into hydrogen or electricity, which will pave the way for future breakthroughs in the field.

New Fuel Tank Captures Carbon Dioxide for Emission-Free Cargo Shipping

In one year, a large container ship can emit pollutants equivalent to that of 50 million cars.

By Loukia Papadopoulos

Aug 20, 2021 


A container ship.SHansche/iStock


Cargo and tanker ships account for 3% of all CO2 emissions and research has shown that in one year, a single large container ship can emit pollutants equivalent to that of 50 million cars. But cargo ships are very rarely discussed when it comes to reducing emissions. This is because they are a complicated group to deal with it.

One solution is onboard nuclear reactors but this is option is way too expensive for cargo ships. Luckily, a team of researchers at Northwestern University has come up with another solution.

They have conceived of CO2-capturing solid oxide fuel cells: in other words, cells that capture “burning” traditional carbon-based fuels and store them to then be sequestered or recycled into renewable hydrocarbon fuel.

This option has only been conceived of now because it is associated with polluting carbon-based fuel, Northwestern University’s Scott A. Barnett, senior author of the study, said in a statement.

“It might be harder for people to see onboard CO2 capture as climate-friendly because it uses conventional, carbon-based fuels,” explained Barnett.

He added that people tend to turn to hydrogen fuel cells and electric vehicles when looking for climate-friendly options. But these processes are not what they seem as power from electric vehicles may come from burning coal and hydrogen is often produced by natural gas.

Barnett goes on to explain that batteries are just not an option for cargo ships as they would have to be as big as the ship to function. Projects such as the Smart Green Shipping Alliance and the Carbon War Room have also proposed that ships be propelled by renewable energy but this option has also been dismissed by Barnett and his team.


"When it comes to long-range vehicles, carbon-based fuel combined with onboard CO2 capture is arguably the best way to make these vehicles CO2 neutral," said Barnett.

To store and reuse this CO2 Barnett and his team have invented a patent-pending dual-chamber storage tank. After all the carbon emissions on board are captured by this tank they would then be offloaded as carbon to be geosequestered deep underground at each destination port. Now, that's a solution that may work.

 

Desperate to fund fight against climate change, former Maldives president calls for debt restructuring

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Mohamed Nasheed says without restructuring, the nation can't afford projects to protect islands and citizens

CBC Radio · Posted: Aug 21, 2021

An aerial view shows the Maldives capital Male on Dec. 14, 2009. Former Maldivian president Mohamed Nasheed says that without debt restructuring, the island nation won't be able to afford needed climate change mitigation projects. (Reinhard Krause/Reuters)

Without debt restructuring, the Maldives will struggle to fund much needed climate change adaptation measures — even as the island nation faces the existential threat of rising sea levels — according to the country's former president.

Mohamed Nasheed, who led the Maldives from 2008 until 2012 and pushed for greater attention to the effects of climate change on the country, says that vulnerable countries will struggle to pay down debt while mitigating the effects of a warming planet.

"The planet has already heated enough, going out of its usual course, and therefore we are going to face challenges with extreme weather coming upon us," Nasheed told Day 6 guest host Faith Fundal.

Among the world's lowest-lying nations, 80 per cent of the islands of the Maldives are only one metre above sea level. That makes the archipelago's approximately 1,200 islands extremely vulnerable to storm surges and severe weather events.

The inhabited islands, about 200, are home to a population of about 530,000 people, which means solutions are needed urgently.

In order to protect the islands, Nasheed says the country must invest in mitigation projects like water breakers to help slow coastal erosion.

But he says with the country spending approximately 30 to 40 per cent of its budget on debt repayment, and another 25 per cent on adaptation measures, the Maldives are facing a financial crunch.

Maldives' former president Mohamed Nasheed led the country from 2008 to 2012. During his tenure, he held an underwater meeting with ministers to draw attention to the effects of climate change. (Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters)

The Maldives spends around $10 million annually for coastal protection initiatives, but will need up to $8.8 billion to protect all of its inhabited islands, according to a 2016 estimate by its environment ministry reported by Reuters.

"For us to be able to have a decent living, we must be able to suspend our debt repayment and spend on adaptation measures as well," said Nasheed, who is now an ambassador for the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a group of countries disproportionately affected by climate change.

'Most vulnerable country in the world,' says minister

Speaking on CNBC in May, the Maldives' environment minister Aminath Shauna warned the country could disappear by the end of the century if environmental damage continues at its current pace.

"Climate change is real and we are the most vulnerable country in the world," she said.

As the sea level rises, ocean water is encroaching on land, which is already being consumed by increasingly powerful waves that are eroding coasts. Warmer oceans, too, have resulted in coral bleaching and the loss of biodiversity, impacting the region's fishing industry.

Fresh water supplies have also been contaminated by sea water, requiring costly desalination, Nasheed says.

A resort island in the Maldives. Approximately 80 per cent of islands in the Maldives are one metre above sea level. (Reinhard Krause/Reuters)

It's no surprise that the country, best-known for its luxury resorts, is already preparing for a warmer future. 

The government has built sea walls and is also implementing natural solutions like planting coral reefs to help reduce coastal erosion.

A human-made island, built with sand pumped from the seabed, will be home to the City of Hope — a new settlement that rests two metres above sea level — in the coming years.

• Earth hasn't been this hot in 125,000 years, but scientists say temps are rising much faster now

• WHAT ON EARTH?
  If you're anxious about climate change, here are some ways to feel more empowered

But efforts to mitigate climate change require funding — and Nasheed maintains that will be impossible without debt restructuring for vulnerable countries like his.

"It is through [restructuring] that we would be able to find some space in our budgets to build the water breakers, to build the embankments, to raise our land, to build flood defence systems, to have better irrigation for us to survive," he said.

Tipping point

A report released earlier this month by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that in several scenarios, Earth will surpass 2 C of warming above pre-industrial times within this century unless significant reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.

On the heels of the report, Nasheed warns the Earth is at a tipping point.

"Everything is going out of control. We are losing the equilibrium of the planet," he said, echoing calls for measures that would limit warming to just 1.5 C and reduce carbon in the atmosphere.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the world is dangerously close to runaway warming — and that humans are "unequivocally" to blame. 3:48

Even still, Nasheed says he's positive about the possibilities that technology holds in the effort to slow global warming.

"I'm very optimistic, mostly because renewable energy now is financially viable, economically feasible," he said. "Even if people try to sell fossil fuel, soon it [will] go out of the market."

"The world will be challenged. There's no doubt about that…. But the question is, how far can we adapt ourselves to survive the extreme weather that will be upon us?"

---

Written by Jason Vermes with files from Reuters. Produced by Sameer Chhabra.

Hear full episodes of Day 6 on CBC Listen, our free audio streaming service.

Water Scarcity Is Starting to Bite in Biggest Copper Supplier

James Attwood and Thomas Biesheuvel
Fri, August 20, 2021

Water Scarcity Is Starting to Bite in Biggest Copper Supplier

(Bloomberg) -- Water shortages are starting to threaten copper production in a country that accounts for more than a quarter of global supply.

In Chile this week, a BHP Group mine was ordered to halt groundwater pumping for three months, while Antofagasta Plc warned it will produce less than expected this year amid water supply constraints.

While BHP’s Cerro Colorado is a small operation coming to the end of its life and Antofagasta’s guidance cut isn’t huge, the disruptions underscore the challenges of running mines in one of the world’s driest deserts. Copper mines have been pumping water out from aquifers under the soil for decades, often to the detriment of local communities.

The issue has risen to prominence recently as the desert expands south amid a decade-long drought, potentially exacerbated by global warming. The industry has responded by stepping up efforts to switch to seawater, which is expected to account for almost half of its total water consumption by 2031.

Chile is now drafting a new constitution in the wake of mass protests against social injustices, with lawmakers pushing for reforms to a water system that has relied heavily on private enterprise and market forces to allocate rights and deliver services.

In that context, an environmental court took the surprising step of blocking, albeit temporarily, Cerro Colorado’s use of water from the Lagunillas aquifer starting on Oct. 1 as it hears a lawsuit that accuses the operation of environmental damage.

The company said it would “evaluate the courses of action based on instruments that the legal framework provides and will take operational actions to comply with the measures that are available.”]

Read More: Drought-Stressed Chile Is Reining In Its Privatized Water Model

The smallest of BHP’s three copper mines in Chile has faced opposition from local communities over its use of underground water. Last year, it announced plans to scale back operations, effectively bringing forward a programmed downsizing ahead of the 2023 expiry of its permits. At the time, the company said it would continue to explore options to extend mining beyond 2023 by using seawater.

Antofagasta now expects to produce 710,000 tons to 740,000 tons of copper this year, down from its previous forecast of 730,000 tons to 760,000 tons. The Santiago-based company is building a desalination plant, but that won’t come into operation until the second half of 2022, putting at risk another 50,000 tons of copper production next year.

“This year has been the driest of a 12-year drought in Chile,” Antofagasta said in a statement Thursday. “Given the traditional rainy season runs from June to September, it is looking increasingly likely that the low levels of precipitation will continue until at least the Southern Hemisphere winter next year.”

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

Why Cosmic Radiation Could Foil Plans for Farming on Mars

New research suggests gamma rays stunt plant growth.

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Media credits

SergeyDV via Shutterstock

Friday, August 20, 2021 - 

Karen Kwon, Contributor

(Inside Science) -- What would it take for humans to live on Mars? The first step is to successfully get people to the red planet, of course. Once there, the astronauts would face a task that could be even more difficult: figuring out how to survive in an environment that is vastly different from Earth's. A new study demonstrates one of the challenges -- Earth's plants don’t grow as well when exposed to the level of radiation expected on Mars.

Wieger Wamelink, an ecologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands who describes himself as a space farmer, has been frustrated by sci-fi depictions of growing plants on Mars. "What you often see is that they do it in a greenhouse," he said, "but that doesn't block the cosmic radiation," which consists of high-energy particles that may alter the plants' DNA. Mars lacks the same degree of protection from cosmic radiation that the Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field provide. To prove his suspicion that cosmic radiation could be dangerous to plants, Wamelink decided to test the hypothesis himself.

First, Wamelink and his team had to recreate the cosmic radiation. The team settled on using gamma rays generated by radioactive cobalt, even though the actual cosmic radiation that bombards Mars' surface consists of various types of radiation, including alpha and beta particles. But, generating alpha and beta rays on Earth is much more difficult, Wamelink said. It would require a particle accelerator, which Wamelink would love to use, "but I would have to put some plants in the collider for, let's say, two or three months." Considering the high demand for the equipment, "I think it's not ever going to happen," he said.

Once Wamelink and his team secured radioactive cobalt, the team grew rye and garden cress in two groups: one with typical growing conditions and the other had similar conditions but added gamma radiation. Four weeks after germination, the scientists compared the two groups and saw that the leaves of the group exposed to gamma rays had abnormal shapes and colors. The weights of the plants also differed; the rye plants in the gamma-ray group weighed 48% less than the regular group, and the weight of the garden cress exposed to gamma rays was 32% lower than their unblasted counterparts. Wamelink suspects the weight difference is due to the gamma rays damaging the plants' proteins and DNA. The results were published in the journal Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences this month.

Michael Dixon, who studies agriculture at the University of Guelph in Canada and wasn't involved in the study, said this research did a reasonable job replicating the cosmic radiation considering that it's impossible to copy it perfectly. Ultimately, researchers would need to study plants on the Martian surface to get a full understanding of the impacts.

Dixon is a part of a team that's planning to attempt to grow barley on the Moon, which should happen in the next ten years, he said. One of the first questions that Dixon and his co-workers plan to study is whether or not plants can survive the exposure to lunar radiation.

Wamelink said space agencies should step up their research into crops to improve the quality of the food that astronauts eat. "People at ISS [International Space Station] still eat astronaut food. And that's not very nice," Wamelink said. "I don't know if you ever tasted it, but, well, you don't get happy from it."

Researching space farming and food production is "way more important than some people think," he said. "Radiation is a problem, but it's solvable, I think."

New clues regarding formation of solar system discovered
Oman Saturday 21/August/2021 
By: ANI

Active star formation in the constellation Ophiuchus could hold clues of how the solar system was formed | Representative image

Washington (USA): A region of active star formation in the constellation Ophiuchus is giving astronomers new insights into the conditions in which our own solar system was born.

The findings of the study were published in the journal 'Nature Astronomy'. In particular, the study showed how our solar system may have become enriched with short-lived radioactive elements.

Evidence of this enrichment process has been around since the 1970s when scientists studying certain mineral inclusions in meteorites concluded that they were pristine remnants of the infant solar system and contained the decay products of short-lived radionuclides.

These radioactive elements could have been blown onto the nascent solar system by a nearby exploding star (a supernova) or by the strong stellar winds from a type of massive star known as a Wolf-Rayet star.

The authors of the new study used multi-wavelength observations of the Ophiuchus star-forming region, including spectacular new infrared data, to reveal interactions between the clouds of star-forming gas and radionuclides produced in a nearby cluster of young stars.

Their findings indicated that supernovas in the star cluster are the most likely source of short-lived radionuclides in the star-forming clouds.

"Our solar system was most likely formed in a giant molecular cloud together with a young stellar cluster, and one or more supernova events from some massive stars in this cluster contaminated the gas which turned into the sun and its planetary system," said co-author Douglas N. C. Lin, professor emeritus of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz.

"Although this scenario has been suggested in the past, the strength of this paper is to use multi-wavelength observations and a sophisticated statistical analysis to deduce a quantitative measurement of the model's likelihood," he added.

First author John Forbes at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Astrophysics said data from space-based gamma-ray telescopes enable the detection of gamma rays emitted by the short-lived radionuclide aluminum-26.

"These are challenging observations. We can only convincingly detect it in two star-forming regions, and the best data are from the Ophiuchus complex," he said.

The Ophiuchus cloud complex contains many dense protostellar cores in various stages of star formation and protoplanetary disk development, representing the earliest stages in the formation of a planetary system.

By combining imaging data in wavelengths ranging from millimetres to gamma rays, the researchers were able to visualise a flow of aluminum-26 from the nearby star cluster toward the Ophiuchus star-forming region.

"The enrichment process we're seeing in Ophiuchus is consistent with what happened during the formation of the solar system 5 billion years ago," Forbes said.

"Once we saw this nice example of how the process might happen, we set about trying to model the nearby star cluster that produced the radionuclides we see today in gamma rays," he added.

Forbes developed a model that accounts for every massive star that could have existed in this region, including its mass, age, and probability of exploding as a supernova, and incorporates the potential yields of aluminum-26 from stellar winds and supernovas.

The model enabled him to determine the probabilities of different scenarios for the production of the aluminum-26 observed today.

"We now have enough information to say that there is a 59 per cent chance it is due to supernovas and a 68 per cent chance that it's from multiple sources and not just one supernova," Forbes said.

This type of statistical analysis assigns probabilities to scenarios that astronomers have been debating for the past 50 years, Lin noted. "This is the new direction for astronomy, to quantify the likelihood," he added.

The new findings also showed that the amount of short-lived radionuclides incorporated into newly forming star systems can vary widely.

"Many new star systems will be born with aluminum-26 abundances in line with our solar system, but the variation is huge -- several orders of magnitude," Forbes said.

"This matters for the early evolution of planetary systems since aluminum-26 is the main early heating source. More aluminum-26 probably means drier planets," he added.

The infrared data, which enabled the team to peer through dusty clouds into the heart of the star-forming complex, was obtained by coauthor Joao Alves at the University of Vienna as part of the European Southern Observatory's VISION survey of nearby stellar nurseries using the VISTA telescope in Chile.

"There is nothing special about Ophiuchus as a star formation region," Alves said.

"It is just a typical configuration of gas and young massive stars, so our results should be representative of the enrichment of short-lived radioactive elements in star and planet formation across the Milky Way," he concluded.

The team also used data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Herschel Space Observatory, the ESA's Planck satellite, and NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory.

An organism that moves, eats and learns without a bubble, mouth, legs or brain 

CARY DOUGLAS 

AUG 22, 2021

The International Space Station is preparing to launch a unique lease, the “Blob”, an unclassified creature that will attract biologists, which will enter orbit for use in an educational experiment. Space French Thomas Basket.

From Earth, several hundred students between the ages of 8 and 17 will begin experimenting with this curious creature starting next fall, not just an animal or a plant or a fungus. Students will be guided by the National Center for Space Research (CNES) in collaboration with the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).

The “Bubble”, Is called “Polycystic ovary syndrome”, Consisting of a single cell and multiple nuclei. It looks fluffy yellow and has no gas, no legs and no brain. Yet it eats, grows, moves (very slowly) and has amazing learning skills.

Their embryos can divide at will and the organism can go dormant (without dying) through dehydration. It was at that point, called the “sclerosia”, that several pieces of the “blob” would enter space, aboard the International Space Station’s cargo ship.

When the astronaut rearranges them, in September, about 0.5 cm. The other will provide food for the lucky ones (oat flakes).
“Third dimension?”

The goal is to look at the effects of not having that body weight. “Today, no one knows what he will do [situación de] Microgravity: which direction it moves, if it takes the third dimension upwards or obliquely … “Asked Pierre Ferrand, professor of life and earth sciences at CNES, one of the project’s architects.

“I’m curious to see if it develops into pillars.”Audrey Tussauds, a research director at CNRS’s Center for Animal Knowledge Research in Toulouse, southern France, said:
READ “Women can’t do math or science” is a misconception. The role of men and women in experiments to improve the “gap” improved.

On land, thousands of “flop” models are cut from the same strain (LU352) of their space connectors, which will be distributed among 4,500 schools, high schools and lyceums in France.

“More than 350,000 students will ‘touch’ the ‘bubble’

Said Christine Correcher, head of educational programs for the space agency.

In late August and early September, teachers will receive a kit with 3 to 5 sclerosis and a tutorial on testing.

When Thomas Basket moistens his “bubbles” in space, students will do the same in class. After that, several observation sessions will be conducted to compare the behavior of the samples from Earth with those sent into space.

Since “Blob” calls into question some scientific theories, it is expected to lead to many discussions in the class. For example, in cell theory, the oldest one, each cell is said to divide into two cells. With a ‘flop’, it doesn’t work because it’s a single cell that never grows apart, “says Pierre Ferrand.

Another oddity: “While most creatures use both sexes, the ‘bubble’ is more than 720!The author adds.

The “bubble” appeared on Earth 500 million years ago, before animals. For a long time it was considered a fungus, but it was later removed from that kingdom and since the 1990s it has been part of a subfamily of amoebozones, belonging to the amoebae.

With information from AFP.

WHAT IF THERE WAS MORE THAN ONE ORIGIN OF LIFE?



Credit: Joe McNally/Getty Images

SYFY
Aug 21, 2021

If where life spawned from is a question that often keeps you up at night, maybe you ought to look in the mirror — right into your own eyes.

How life emerged and evolved is often seen as a road that has gone in one direction for 4 billion years. That might not have actually been what happened. Researchers Chris Kempes and David Krakauer of the Santa Fe Institute believe that life probably originated multiple times, in different ways. It is possible that new features showed up in different life-forms that were unrelated, and neither may have even known the other existed.

Kempes and Krakauer, who recently published a study in Journal of Molecular Evolution, compare the dawn and development of life to the eye. Eyes of many creatures evolved from independent features that came together over time. Life is less likely to be descended from one organism that started it all — and what seem to be adaptations could go beyond that and actually define new life-forms.

“Even rudimentary photoreceptors confer some advantage on an organism. And we know from morphological and phylogenetic evidence that image-forming eyes evolved independently many times from simple photoreceptors,” Krakauer tells SYFY WIRE. “Life, like eyes, is a story of converging on similar functions not inheriting similar functions.”

When something that evolves features far removed from another organism that takes on similar (often the same) traits, that is the phenomenon of convergent evolution. An ice-age mammal was thought to have been a killer cat until scientists realized it was closer to what are now marsupials, but happened to have evolved huge teeth and claws because of similar survival needs. It lived nowhere near any saber-tooth tigers. This is analogous to how photoreceptors evolved into what are now eyes in so many various species everywhere on Earth.

There are three main elements to Kempes and Kraukauer’s theory. It considers all the materials which could have led to or at least been advantageous for a type of life forming. In an opposite turn, it also has to take any restrictions into account, because depending on where you are looking, there are most likely certain organisms that would not survive. The final piece is how particular forms of life end up optimizing processes that eventually give them adaptations that allow them to live everywhere from inhospitable cold to the scorching wasteland surrounding a volcano.

“The eye and life are ‘principles first’ narratives,” Kempes tells us. “This is because different types of eyes or life use multiple different materials for a similar function. Their structures also solve similar physical challenges — like focusing light (vision) or propagating adaptive information into the future (life) — which we see as the level of constraints.”

There are creatures that can see in infrared, whose wavelengths are too long for humans, and UV, whose wavelengths are too short for us. Some see in extreme detail. Others have incredible night vision but awful daytime vision — and vice versa. The tarsier’s enormous orbs (which outsize its brain) are optimized for seeing both predators and prey after dark. We would need night vision goggles for that. Not everything has two eyes, either. Most spiders have eight. When you have as many eyes as you have legs, prey is going to be easier to grab.

As for adaptations that turn one organism into a completely new species, maybe one of the best examples we can find on earth is the island of Madagasar. Scientists are still unearthing species no one ever knew existed before. The nano-chameleon is just one. You don’t have to go far to find related lizards that are both similar and strikingly different all at once. Just a slight change in elevation can reveal an entirely new population of life-forms in some areas, living things that started off as similarly as photoreceptors that morphed into different types of eyes. Is it any surprise that tarsiers also live in Madagascar?

“Adaptations can include mechanisms for sensing environmental signals, adaptive memory, efficient representations of environmental regularities in memory, mechanisms for transforming memory into action, and strategies of competition and cooperation that contribute positively to both persistence and abundance,” Krakauer says.

The scientists also compare biological adaptations and variance to technology and society. When something is alive, how “alive” is it? Its individuality can be a clue. Viruses are pretty much self-multiplying automatons that depend on living hosts to feed and don’t encode much information in their genes. They need a high level of metabolic input from the organisms they invade to stay alive. Humans encode huge amounts of information in comparison, and we don’t need to have a parasitic relationship with another species in order to keep ourselves breathing.

Using this theory could have radical implications for how we seek extraterrestrial life in the future. There are extreme, almost alien environments right here on Earth that make us question what “life as we know it” really is. There are worms that live in glaciers and microbes that eat methane. Unearthly organisms lurk in the darkest depths of the sea. Now apply that to frozen moons Europa and Enceladus, which supposedly have enormous oceans beneath the ice, and Titan, a moon where it rains liquid methane into oceans and lakes already flooded with methane.

“We think that our theory will shift the emphasis from searching for particular materials to searching for particular principles of a system,” Kempes and Krakauer say. “It is prospective rather than retrospective, and hence predictive of life.”