Wednesday, July 27, 2022

SCIENCE FICTION: FUSION POWER

New magnet breakthrough could unleash smaller, more potent fusion reactors

A new technique brings us a step closer to commercially viable nuclear fusion.

 
Chris Young
Created: 26 Jul 2022
INNOVATION

Kiran Sudarsanan/PPPL

Nuclear fusion promises practically limitless energy and an unshackling from the harmful impact of fossil fuel consumption.

Now, researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) announced they found a way to build powerful magnets much smaller than ever before, a press statement reveals.

The new innovation could help in the development of tokamak reactors, unlocking the potential of nuclear fusion.

We're on the verge of viable nuclear fusion HAVE BEEN FOR SIXTY YEARS NOW

The scientists found a new method for building high-temperature superconducting magnets that are made of material that conducts electricity with practically no resistance at temperatures warmer than before. The smaller magnets will more easily fit inside spherical tokamaks, which are being investigated as a potential alternative to the more conventional doughnut-shaped tokamaks.

Fusion scientists and engineers use these incredibly powerful magnets to control and maintain the hot plasma required for the nuclear fusion reaction to take place. Crucially, the new magnets could be placed separately from other machinery in the spherical tokamak's central cavity. This means scientists would be able to repair them without having to dismantle any other parts of the tokamak.

"To do this, you need a magnet with a stronger magnetic field and a smaller size than current magnets," explained Yuhu Zhai, a principal engineer at PPPL and lead author of a paper on the new magnets published in IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity. "The only way you do that is with superconducting wires, and that's what we've done."

The magnets could also potentially allow scientists to develop smaller tokamaks, which could improve performance as well as reduce the cost of construction and operation. "Tokamaks are sensitive to the conditions in their central regions, including the size of the central magnet, or solenoid, the shielding, and the vacuum vessel," said Jon Menard, PPPL's deputy director for research. "A lot depends on the center. So if you can shrink things in the middle, you can shrink the whole machine and reduce cost while, in theory, improving performance."

New technique makes magnets cheaper, smaller, and more powerful

The new magnets were designed using a technique developed by Zhai and colleagues at Advanced Conductor Technologies, the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, in Tallahassee, Florida. They devised a technique that does not require traditional epoxy and glass fiber insulation for their magnet's wires, allowing them to reduce the size.

By removing epoxy from the equation, the researchers also lower the cost of magnet production, which will also result in cheaper tokamaks. The costs to wind the coils are much lower because we don't have to go through the expensive and error-prone epoxy vacuum-impregnation process," Zhai said. "Instead, you're directly winding the conductor into the coil form."

The smaller magnets will, in theory, allow for more design iterations of tokamaks, as they can be more easily placed in different locations, allowing for more configurations. We may still be a long way from seeing the first fully operational fusion reactor, but this new development brings us one step closer to commercially viable nuclear fusion.
U.S. offers Russia deal to bring home basketball star Brittney Griner

Griner says interpreter translated only part of her answers at airport interrogation

The Associated Press · Posted: Jul 27, 2022 
Brittney Griner, seen above entering her trial on Wednesday, provided testimony about her airport interrogation after vape canisters containing cannabis oil were found in her luggage. CBD OIL
 (Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images)

The Biden administration has offered a deal to Russia aimed at bringing home WNBA star Brittney Griner and another jailed American, Paul Whelan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday. In a sharp reversal of previous policy, Blinken also said he expects to speak with his Kremlin counterpart for the first time since before Russia invaded Ukraine.

The statement marked the first time the U.S. government has publicly revealed any concrete action it has taken to secure the release of Griner, who was arrested on drug-related charges at a Moscow airport in February and testified Wednesday at her trial.

Blinken did not offer details on the proposed deal, which was offered weeks ago, though it is unclear if it will be enough for Russia to release the Americans. But the public acknowledgment of the offer at a time when the U.S. has otherwise shunned Russia, reflects the mounting pressure on the administration over Griner and Whelan and its determination to get them home.
Blinken said Washington would like a response from Moscow. Russia has for years expressed interest in the release of Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer once labeled the "Merchant of Death" who was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2012 on charges that he schemed to illegally sell millions of dollars in weapons.


Blinken said he had requested a call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. U.S. officials said the desire for an answer on the prisoner offer was the primary, but not only, reason that the U.S. on Wednesday requested the call with Lavrov.
1st contact since before Ukraine invasion

Should the call take place, it would be the first conversation that Blinken and Lavrov have held since Feb. 15, about a week before Russia invaded Ukraine. Blinken said he would also be speaking to Lavrov about the importance of Russia complying with a UN-brokered deal to free multiple tons of Ukrainian grain from storage and warning him about the dangers of possible Russian attempts to annex portions of eastern and southern Ukraine.

Whelan, a corporate security executive from Michigan, was sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in prison on espionage charges. He and his family have vigorously asserted his innocence. The U.S. government has denounced the charges as false. He and his family have vigorously asserted his innocence. The U.S. government has denounced the charges as false.

Griner, in Russian custody for the last five months, acknowledged in court this month that she had vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage when she arrived in Moscow in February but contends she had no criminal intent and packed the cartridges inadvertently.
Griner testifies in court

At her trial Wednesday, Griner said she did not know how the cannabis oil ended up in her bag but explained she had a doctor's recommendation for it and had packed in haste. She said she was pulled aside at the airport after inspectors found the cartridges, but that a language interpreter translated only a fraction of what was said during her questioning and that officials instructed her to sign documents without providing an explanation.

Griner faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of transporting drugs.

WATCH | Griner tells court of poor translation during arrest: 

U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner told a Russian courtroom in an ongoing trial on drug charges that a language interpreter translated only a fraction of what was said during her interrogation at a Moscow airport. She testified the officials instructed her to sign documents without providing an explanation.

The U.S. government has long resisted prisoner swaps out of concern that it could encourage additional hostage-taking and promote false equivalency between a wrongfully detained American and a foreign national regarded as justly convicted. But an earlier deal in April, in which Marine veteran Trevor Reed was traded for jailed Russian pilot, Konstantin Yaroshenko, appeared to open the door to similar resolutions in the future and the Biden administration has been hounded with political pressure to bring home Griner and other Americans designated as unjustly detained.

There was no indication that Blinken and Lavrov had communicated to secure Reed's release. Their last publicly recognized contact was Feb. 22, when Blinken wrote to Lavrov to cancel a meeting they had planned as a last-ditch effort to avert the Russian invasion, saying Moscow had shown no interest in serious diplomacy on the matter. The State Department said later that Russia's diplomacy was "Kabuki Theater" — all show and no substance.


The two last met in person in Geneva in January to discuss what was then Russia's massive military build-up along Ukraine's border and Russian demands for NATO to reduce its presence in eastern Europe and permanently deny Ukraine membership. The U.S. rejected the Russian demands.

Blinken and Lavrov avoided each other earlier this month at the next time they were in the same place at the same time: at a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of 20 nations in Bali, Indonesia.

The two men will next be in the same city at the same time next week in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where they will both be attending the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum. It was not immediately clear if the phone call ahead of that meeting, set for Aug. 4-5, would presage an in-person discussion.
INFLATIONARY PROFITEERING
Rogers profits jumped 35% in the three months prior to the recent outage

Pete Evans · CBC News · Posted: Jul 27, 2022 
Rogers added 122,000 new wireless customers between April and June and saw its profits jump by more than a third in the three months leading to the devastating outage that affected the entire country. (Cole Burston/Bloomberg)

Rogers Communications Inc. earned 10 per cent more revenue and saw its profits jump by more than a third in the three months leading to the end of June, a financial reporting period that ended just before a devastating outage wiped out the company's telecom networks across the country.

The telecom giant posted quarterly results before stock markets opened on Wednesday, and the numbers painted a picture of a company whose business was booming.

Wireless service revenue increased by 11 per cent to just shy of $1.8 billion "primarily as a result of higher roaming revenue associated with significantly increased travel," the company said. Rogers added roughly 122,000 new wireless customers during the quarter, roughly twice the number it added a year ago.

As well, cable revenues increased by 3 per cent to just over $1.03 billion, "primarily as a result of service pricing changes," the company said.

Rogers promises investment to avoid future network outagesRogers executives try to quell anger over outage during committee appearance

The media division saw the biggest boost of all, with revenues increasing by 21 per cent to $659 million compared to the same period a year ago. The biggest reason for that uptick was the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team, which Rogers owns, being able to once again play home games and televise them from the Rogers Centre in Toronto.

This time last year, the Blue Jays were playing home games in the United States due to COVID travel restrictions.

Across all business units, Rogers took in just over $3.8 billion during the quarter, an eight per cent increase from last year, and posted a profit of $409 million — a 35 per cent increase from a year ago.
Cost of outage yet to be accounted for

However, all of this financial performance came before July 8th, when the company's network was wiped out by a botched upgrade that caused cascading failures across the country.

Rogers estimates that it expects to issue about $150 million in rebates to customers as compensation for the outage, and pledges to spend billions in capital investments to upgrade its systems to ensure it doesn't happen again.

"The investments we are making to enhance the reliability of our networks are the right things to do, and it will not impact our prices in this highly competitive market," a spokesperson with the company told CBC News this week.

Rogers also officially delayed its self-imposed deadline to finalize its merger with Shaw until the end of the year. When the merger was first proposed in early 2021, both sides expected it to be completed by now, but regulatory delays caused them to push the deadline back until July 31.

On Wednesday, the company revealed it doesn't expect to be able to make the deal official until the end of this year.

New study looks at 'magic' mushrooms as treatment for depression, without the psychedelic high











Megan DeLaire
CTVNews.ca Writer
 July 27, 2022 

A new study by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) will attempt to harness the antidepressant power of psilocybin mushrooms, but without the psychedelic experience.

Psilocybin is the hallucinogenic chemical compound in "magic" mushrooms that generates a psychedelic high. However, clinical trials have shown psilocybin mushrooms also have antidepressant effects on people whose depression is resistant to other treatments, when combined with intensive psychotherapy.

Over a period of three years, researchers at CAMH will try to learn whether the psychedelic experience itself is necessary to treat depression in a federally-funded study that lead researcher Dr. Ishrat Husain says is the first of its kind.


"What we're trying to address with this study, which I think is a glaring question in the field, is whether the psychedelic high is required for the therapeutic benefits,” Husain told CTVNews.ca. “It's assumed that it is, but nobody's actually designed a clinical trial to answer that question."

Husain and his team will compare the outcomes of 60 adults with treatment-resistant depression. Over the course of the study, a third of the participants will receive a full dose of psilocybin plus a serotonin blocker to inhibit the drug’s psychedelic effect. Another group will be given psilocybin plus a placebo. The final group will receive a placebo, plus the serotonin blocker. All participants will also receive 12 hours of psychotherapy.

This is the second clinical psilocybin trial at CAMH, which was the Canadian site for the world’s largest clinical trial of psilocybin in mental health to date, in 2021.

If the new study shows psilocybin mushrooms have equal antidepressant effects with or without the psychedelic experience, Husain said it could be a “game changer” for people with treatment-resistant depression who aren’t candidates for a psychedelic high.

“There are certain physical and psychological contraindications to receiving potent psychoactive drugs like psilocybin,” he said. “If we're able to show that the psychedelic experience isn't entirely necessary, it could lead to a sort of new therapeutic development for the treatment of depression."

'HOPE OF INNOVATION'


Some day, Carole Dagher might need to put her trust in a new treatment. In fact, Dagher believes it’s inevitable. After years of trying to treat her depression, she’s in a good place. But she knows it won’t last.

"I will have another dip, there's no question about it,” Dagher told CTVNews.ca. “This is just going to be my life, it's something I'm going to have to manage."

Dagher is a patient of Husain’s who suffers from treatment-resistant major depressive disorder and anxiety disorder. She first developed postpartum depression following the birth of her oldest daughter 12 years ago. Her symptoms were compounded by trauma from childhood experiences growing up in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War In the years since her initial diagnosis, she has struggled with suicidal ideation, tried five classes of antidepressant medication, seen psychologists and tried both electroconvulsive therapy and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation therapy.

After those methods failed, she turned to ketamine therapy, which was approved by Health Canada to treat major depressive disorder in 2020. Ketamine is an anaesthetic that induces strong psychedelic experiences in therapeutic doses. Dagher called those experiences “horrific,” and said they were so unbearable she nearly quit the therapy before finishing her eight sessions. She stuck with it, however, and awoke one morning after her final session feeling restored.

"I opened my eyes in the morning and the sky was blue, and the birds were chirping, and I smiled for the first time in 12 years and it was a genuine smile,” she said.

She’s still doing well, with help from an antidepressant and regular therapy sessions. But she’s waiting for the day her symptoms stop responding to ketamine. When that day comes, she'll need to look for another treatment — preferably one without a high. That's why she sees so much promise in Husain’s study.

"Without the hope of innovation, I cannot survive another day. I have to believe deep down in my heart that people like Dr. Husain and hospitals like CAMH will not stop innovating. Ketamine worked now, but it might not work later,” she said. “And I'd much rather not have the psychedelic trip, and take the [psilocybin] and have it do its thing."

On the subject of access to psilocybin therapy, while Johns Hopkins University scientist David Yaden agrees being able to offer the therapy without a psychedelic experience would make it accessible to more people, he worries about patients who may want or need the full experience.

Yaden is an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research who has published multiple scientific articles about the use of psilocybin as a potential treatment.

“What I worry about is an unintentional side-effect of characterizing the acute subjective effects of psychedelics — the trip, so to speak — as an unwanted side effect,” he told CTVNews.ca.

"As long as participants are screened and administered psilocybin in a supportive setting, we see that these experiences can be challenging, but they're overall very positive and deeply meaningful. That's just what the data say."

Yaden also believes, based on past studies, that a dose of psilocybin without the psychedelic side-effects likely only delivers short-term neurobiological benefits. In a report released in December 2020, he and fellow Johns Hopkins researcher Roland Griffiths argued there are long term, complex changes that can only take place in the brain during a psychedelic experience.

Regardless, he said the CAMH study is asking important questions in an area of research his team would like to explore more.

“I support research like this study looking at the causal role of the acute subjective effects of psychedelics, because I think it's a very important question to examine,” he said.

"This research is important for both clinical and scientific reasons. It's great and I'm really glad it's happening. We've been trying to do this research as well. I'm very much for it."

___

If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health matters, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 (or 988 beginning July 16, 2022) or Canada's Talk Suicide 1-833-456-4566. The following resources are also available to support people in crisis:

Hope for Wellness Helpline (English, French, Cree, Ojibway and Inuktitut): 1-855-242-3310

Embrace Life Council hotline: 1-800-265-3333

Trans Lifeline: 1-877-330-6366

Kids Help Phone: 1-800-668-6868

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COLD WAR 2.0
U$ Senate Passes $280 Billion Industrial Policy Bill to Counter China

The lopsided bipartisan vote reflected a rare consensus in the otherwise polarized
 Congress in favor of investing federal resources into a broad industrial policy to counter China.

A semiconductor production facility in Beijing. The issue of commercial and military competition with China — as well as the promise of thousands of new American jobs — has brought Democrats and Republicans together.
Credit...Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press

By Catie Edmondson
July 27, 2022

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Wednesday passed an expansive $280 billion bill aimed at building up America’s manufacturing and technological edge to counter China, embracing in an overwhelming bipartisan vote the most significant government intervention in industrial policy in decades.

The legislation reflected a remarkable and rare consensus in an otherwise polarized Congress in favor of forging a long-term strategy to address the nation’s intensifying geopolitical rivalry with Beijing, centered around investing federal money into cutting-edge technologies and innovations to bolster the nation’s industrial, technological and military strength.

It passed on a lopsided bipartisan vote of 64 to 33, with 17 Republicans voting in support. The margin illustrated how commercial and military competition with Beijing — as well as the promise of thousands of new American jobs — has dramatically shifted longstanding party orthodoxies, generating agreement among Republicans who once had eschewed government intervention in the markets and Democrats who had resisted showering big companies with federal largess.

“No country’s government — even a strong country like ours — can afford to sit on the sidelines,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader who helped to spearhead the measure, said in an interview. “I think it’s a sea change that will stay.”

The legislation will next be considered by the House, where it is expected to pass with some Republican support. President Biden, who has backed the package for more than a year, could sign it into law as early as this week.

The bill, a convergence of economic and national security policy, would provide $52 billion in subsidies and additional tax credits to companies that manufacture chips in the United States. It also would add $200 billion in scientific research, especially into artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing and a range of other technologies.

Senator Todd Young, Republican of Indiana, left, and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, had been working on the technology bill for years.
Credit...Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times

Its passage was the culmination of a years long effort that, in Mr. Schumer’s telling, began in the Senate gym in 2019, when he approached Senator Todd Young, Republican of Indiana, with the idea. Mr. Young, a fellow China hawk, had previously collaborated with Democrats on foreign policy.

In the end, it was made possible only by an unlikely collision of factors: a pandemic that laid bare the costs of a global semiconductor shortage, heavy lobbying from the chip industry, Mr. Young’s persistence in urging his colleagues to break with party orthodoxy and support the bill, and Mr. Schumer’s ascension to the top job in the Senate.

Many senators, including Republicans, saw the legislation as a critical step to strengthen America’s semiconductor manufacturing abilities at a time when the nation has become perilously reliant on foreign countries — especially an increasingly vulnerable Taiwan — for advanced chips.

Read More on the Relations Between Asia and the U.S.Trade Policy: The new trade deal announced by President Biden during a trip to Asia is based on two big ideas: containing China and moving away from a focus on markets and tariffs.

Taiwan: The Biden administration has grown increasingly anxious that China might try to move against this self-governing island over the next year and a half — perhaps by trying to close off the Taiwan Strait.

China: At a Group of 20 meeting in Indonesia, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken sought to cool tensions with Beijing in an effort to further isolate Russia. He met resistance.


A phalanx of former President Donald J. Trump’s national security advisers, from H.R. McMaster to Mike Pompeo, came out in support for the legislation, helping Republican lawmakers make the argument that voting for the bill would be a sufficiently hawkish move.

Mr. Schumer said it had been not too difficult to rally votes from Democrats, who tend to be less averse to government spending. “But to their credit, 17 Republicans, including McConnell, came in and said, ‘This is one expenditure we should make.’”

The legislation, which was known in Washington by an ever-changing carousel of lofty-sounding names, has defied easy definition. At more than 1,000 pages long, it is at once a research and development bill, a near-term and long-term jobs bill, a manufacturing bill and a semiconductors bill.

Its initial version, written by Mr. Schumer and Mr. Young, was known as the Endless Frontier Act, a reference to the 1945 landmark report commissioned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking how the federal government could promote scientific progress and manpower.

“New frontiers of the mind are before us, and if they are pioneered with the same vision, boldness, and drive with which we have waged this war,” Mr. Roosevelt wrote at the time, “we can create a fuller and more fruitful employment and a fuller and more fruitful life.”

Enactment of the legislation is considered a critical step to strengthening America’s semiconductor abilities at a time when the share of modern manufacturing capacity in the United States has plummeted to 12 percent. That has left the nation increasingly reliant on foreign countries amid a chip shortage that has sent shock waves through the global supply chain.

The subsidies for chip companies were expected to immediately produce tens of thousands of jobs, with manufacturers pledging to build new factories or expand existing plants in Ohio, Texas, Arizona, Idaho and New York.

The bill also seeks to create research and development and manufacturing jobs in the long run, with provisions aimed at building up pipelines of workers — through work-force development grants and other programs — concentrated in once-booming industrial hubs hollowed out by corporate offshoring.

In an interview, Mr. Young described the legislation as an effort to equip American workers hurt by globalization with jobs in cutting-edge fields that would also help reduce the nation’s dependence on China.

“These technologies are key to our national security,” Mr. Young said. “We’re actually giving rank-and-file Americans an opportunity, as it relates to chip manufacturing, for example, to play a meaningful role, not only in supporting their families, but also harnessing our creativity, talents, and hard work, to win the 21st century.”

The bill is expected to pave the way for the construction of factories across the country and, along with that, an estimated tens of thousands of jobs.

Image
President Biden met virtually with CEOs and labor leaders about the CHIPS Act on Monday. Its subsidies for chip companies were expected to lead to the production of tens of thousands of jobs.
Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Chip manufacturers lobbied heavily, and often shamelessly, for the subsidies, in recent months vocally threatening to plunge their resources into building plants in foreign countries like Germany or Singapore if Congress didn’t quickly agree to shower them with federal money to stay in the United States.

Most senators, especially those representing states eyed by chip companies, saw those efforts as reason to quickly pass the legislation. But they particularly infuriated Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, who bluntly and frequently accused the prosperous executives of such companies of shaking down Congress.

“In order to make more profits, these companies took government money and used it to ship good-paying jobs abroad,” Mr. Sanders said. “Now, as a reward for that bad behavior, these same companies are in line to receive a massive taxpayer handout to undo the damage that they did.”

Several times in the bill’s life span, it appeared doomed to either collapse or be drastically slimmed down, with the long-term strategic policy provisions whittled off and only the most commercially and politically urgent measure, the $52 billion in subsidies for chip companies, remaining.

The bill appeared imperiled late last month after Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, announced that he would not let it proceed if Senate Democrats continued to advance their social policy and tax plan, the centerpiece of Mr. Biden’s domestic agenda.

In a private conversation, Mr. Young asked Mr. McConnell to reconsider.

Mr. McConnell “saw the near-term value proposition, and frankly, the criticality of getting the chips legislation funded,” Mr. Young recalled.

Still, with Mr. McConnell’s position uncertain and other Republicans refusing to commit to supporting the measure, Mr. Schumer moved last week to force a quick vote on the semiconductor subsidies, leaving open the possibility that the broader bill would be sidelined.

That sparked a last-minute effort by Mr. Young to secure the support of enough Republicans — at least 15, Mr. Schumer had told him — to restore the critical investments in manufacturing and technology. For days, Mr. Young and his allies worked the phones to try to win over Republicans, emphasizing the national security importance of the bill and the opportunities it could bring to their states.

Ahead of the final passage vote at a private party lunch on Tuesday, Mr. Schumer gave his members a pitch of his own.

“This bill is going to have one of the greatest and most far-reaching effects on America that we’ve ever done,” Mr. Schumer said he told Democratic senators. “A lot of your grandchildren will be in good-paying jobs because of the vote you’re taking.”
GEOLOGY
Strange, never-before-seen diamond crystal structure found inside 'Diablo canyon' meteorite

Scientists found something unexpected inside a meteorite that hit Earth 50,000 years ago.


By JoAnna Wendel 
published 2 days ago



A Diablo Canyon meteorite fell to Earth around 50,000 years ago and was first discovered in 1891. New research suggests it contains never-before-seen diamond crystal structures. (Image credit: Terryfic3D/Getty)

While studying diamonds inside an ancient meteorite, scientists have found a strange, interwoven microscopic structure that has never been seen before.

The structure, an interlocking form of graphite and diamond, has unique properties that could one day be used to develop superfast charging or new types of electronics, researchers say.

The diamond structures were locked inside the Canyon Diablo meteorite, which slammed into Earth 50,000 years ago and was first discovered in Arizona in 1891. The diamonds in this meteorite aren't the kind most people are familiar with. Most known diamonds were formed around 90 miles (150 kilometers) beneath Earth's surface, where temperatures rise to more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,093 degrees Celsius). The carbon atoms within these diamonds are arranged in cubic shapes.

By contrast, the diamonds inside the Canyon Diablo meteorite are known as lonsdaleite — named after British crystallographer Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, University College London's first female professor — and have a hexagonal crystal structure. These diamonds form only under extremely high pressures and temperatures. Although scientists have successfully made lonsdaleite in a lab — using gunpowder and compressed air to propel graphite disks 15,000 mph (24,100 km/h) at a wall — lonsdaleite is otherwise formed only when asteroids strike Earth at enormously high speeds.

Related: Diamond hauled from deep inside Earth holds never-before-seen mineral

While studying lonsdaleite in the meteorite, the researchers found something odd. Instead of the pure hexagonal structures they were expecting, the researchers found growths of another carbon-based material called graphene interlocking with the diamond. These growths are known as diaphites(opens in new tab), and inside the meteorite, they form in a particularly intriguing layered pattern. In between these layers are "stacking faults," which mean the layers don't line up perfectly, the researchers said in a statement(opens in new tab).

Finding diaphites in the meteoritic lonsdaleite suggests that this material can be found in other carbonaceous material, the scientists wrote in the study, which means it could be readily available to use as a resource. The finding also gives the researchers a better sense of the pressures and temperatures needed to create the structure.

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Graphene is made of a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon, arranged in hexagons. Although research on this material is still ongoing, the material has many potential applications. Because it is both as light as a feather and as strong as a diamond; both transparent and highly conductive; and 1 million times thinner than a human hair(opens in new tab), it could one day be used for more targeted medicines, tinier electronics with lighting-fast charging speeds, or faster and bendier technology, the researchers said.

And now that researchers have discovered these graphene growths inside meteorites, it's possible to learn more about how they form — and thus how to make them in the lab.

"Through the controlled layer growth of structures, it should be possible to design materials that are both ultra-hard and also ductile, as well as have adjustable electronic properties from a conductor to an insulator," Christoph Salzmann, a chemist at University College London and co-author of a paper describing the research, said in the statement

The strange new structures were described July 22 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Originally published on Live Science.
GEMOLOGY

Australian mining company unearths rare 170-carat pink diamond believed to be largest seen in 300 years

The Lulo rose is among the largest pink diamonds ever found.
(Lucapa Diamond Company Limited / AFP)

Miners in Angola have unearthed a rare pure pink diamond that is believed to be the largest found in 300 years, the Australian site operator has announced.


Key points:

Angola's mines make it one of the world's top 10 producers of diamonds

The pink gemstone is the fifth-largest diamond found at Lulo mine

In 2017 a 59.6-carat pink diamond sold at a Hong Kong auction for more than $102 million


A 170-carat pink diamond — dubbed the Lulo rose — was discovered at the Lulo alluvial diamond mine in the country's diamond-rich north-east, and is among the largest pink diamonds ever found, the Lucapa Diamond Company said in a statement to investors on Wednesday.

The Lulo mine has already produced the two largest diamonds ever found in Angola, including a 404-carat clear diamond.

The pink gemstone is the fifth-largest diamond found at the mine where 27 diamonds of 100 carats or more have been found, according to Lucapa.

Angola's mines make it one of the world's top 10 producers of diamonds.

Similar pink diamonds have sold for record-breaking prices.
(Lucapa Diamond Company Limited / AFP)

The "historic" find of the Type IIa diamond, one of the rarest and purest forms of natural stones, was welcomed by the Angolan government, which is also a partner in the mine.


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"This record and spectacular pink diamond recovered from Lulo continues to showcase Angola as an important player on the world stage," Angola's Mineral Resources Minister Diamantino Azevedo said.

The pink diamond will be sold by international tender by the Angolan state diamond marketing company, Sodiam, likely at a dazzling price.

Although the Lulo rose would have to be cut and polished to realise its true value, in a process that can see a stone lose 50 per cent of its weight, similar pink diamonds have sold for record-breaking prices.

The 59.6-carat Pink Star was sold at a Hong Kong auction in 2017 for US$71.2 million (more than $102 million). It remains the most expensive diamond ever sold.

The pink diamond is an impressive size but many clear diamonds are larger than 1,000 carats.

The Cullinan diamond found in South Africa in 1905 tips the scales at 3,106 carats and is in the British Sovereign's Sceptre.

AFP / AP

How do galaxies evolve? A college student may have provided the missing link

How do galaxies evolve? A college student may have provided the missing link
Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage-Hubble Collaboration, and A. Evans

A University of Massachusetts Amherst undergraduate student has contributed significant work regarding the growth of stars and black holes, providing key insight into how they are linked. This new information will allow the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to more efficiently untangle how, exactly, galaxies work.

Astronomers know that the  of galaxies is powered by two processes: the growth of supermassive  at each galaxy's center and the formation of new stars. How these processes are related has remained a mystery and is one of the questions that the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be exploring. Work by Meredith Stone, who graduated from UMass Amherst's astronomy program in May 2022, will help scientists better understand how they are linked.

"We know that galaxies grow, collide and change throughout their lives," says Stone, who completed this research under the direction of Alexandra Pope, professor of astronomy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and senior author of a new paper, recently published in The Astrophysical Journal. "And we know that black hole growth and  play crucial roles. We think that the two are linked and that they regulate each other, but until now, it's been very hard to see exactly how."

Part of the reason that it has been difficult to study the interaction between black holes and stars is that we can't really see these interactions because they take place behind enormous clouds of galactic dust. "For galaxies that are actively forming stars, more than 90% of the  can be absorbed by dust," says Pope, "and this dust absorbs visible light."

However, there's a workaround: When the dust absorbs visible light, it heats up, and though the naked human eye can't see heat,  can. "We used the Spitzer Space Telescope," says Stone, who will begin her graduate studies in astronomy at the University of Arizona this fall, "collected during the Great Observatories All-sky LIRG Survey (GOALS) campaign, to look at the mid-infrared wavelength range of some of the brightest galaxies that are relatively close to Earth." In particular, Stone and her co-authors were looking for particular tell-tale tracers that are the fingerprints of black holes and stars in the midst of formation.

The difficulty is that these fingerprints are exceedingly faint and nearly impossible to distinguish from the general noise of the infrared spectrum. "What Meredith did," says Pope, "is to calibrate the measurements of these tracers so that they are more distinct."

Once the team had these more distinct observations in hand, they could see that in fact, black hole growth and star formation are happening concurrently in the same  and they do seem to be influencing each other. Stone was even able to calculate the ratio that describes how the two phenomena are linked.

Not only is this an exciting scientific achievement on its own, Stone's work can be taken up by the JWST, with its unprecedented access to the mid-infrared spectrum light, and used to zero in much more closely on the questions that remain. For though Stone and her co-authors, including UMass Amherst astronomy graduate student Jed McKinney, quantified how black holes and stars are linked in the same galaxy, why they're linked remains a mystery.Supermassive black holes inside dying galaxies detected in early universe


More information: Meredith Stone et al, Measuring Star Formation and Black Hole Accretion Rates in Tandem Using Mid-infrared Spectra of Local Infrared Luminous Galaxies, The Astrophysical Journal (2022). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac778b

Journal information: Astrophysical Journal

Physics Mystery Solved: Findings Could “Revolutionize” Our Understanding of Distance

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Plasma Particle Physics Art Concept

The researchers discovered that a new theoretical framework to unify Hermitian and non-Hermitian physics is established by the duality between non-Hermiticity and curved spaces.

A physics puzzle is resolved through a new duality.

According to traditional thinking, distorting a flat space by bending it or stretching it is necessary to create a curved space. A group of scientists at Purdue University has developed a new technique for making curved spaces that also provides the answer to a physics mystery. The team has developed a method using non-Hermiticity, which occurs in all systems coupled to environments, to build a hyperbolic surface and a number of other prototypical curved spaces without causing any physical distortions of physical systems.

“Our work may revolutionize the general public’s understanding of curvatures and distance,” says Qi Zhou, Professor of Physics and Astronomy.

“It has also answered long-standing questions in non-Hermitian quantum mechanics by bridging non-Hermitian physics and curved spaces. These two subjects were assumed to be completely disconnected. The extraordinary behaviors of non-Hermitian systems, which have puzzled physicists for decades, become no longer mysterious if we recognize that the space has been curved. In other words, non-Hermiticity and curved spaces are dual to each other, being the two sides of the same coin.”

Poincare Half Plane

A Poincaré half-plane can be viewed in the background which demonstrates a curved surface. The white geodesics of the curved surface are shown as an analog of straight lines on a flat space. White balls moving in the right direction demonstrate the geometric origin of an extraordinary skin effect in non-Hermitian physics. Credit: Chenwei Lv and Ren Zhang.

The team’s results were published in the journal Nature Communications in an article titled “Curving the Space by Non-Hermiticity.” Most of the team’s members are employed at Purdue University’s West Lafayette campus. The Purdue team is made up of Professor Qi Zhou, Zhengzheng Zhai, a postdoctoral researcher, with graduate student Chenwei Lv serving as the primary author. Professor Ren Zhang from Xi’an Jiaotong University, who is a co-first author of the paper, was a visiting scholar at Purdue when the study was originally started.

One must first comprehend the distinction between Hermitian and non-Hermitian systems in physics in order to comprehend how this discovery works. Zhou explains it using the example of a quantum particle that can “hop” between several locations on a lattice.

If the probability for a quantum particle to hop in the right direction is the same as the probability to hop in the left direction, then the Hamiltonian is Hermitian. If these two probabilities are different, the Hamiltonian is non-Hermitian. This is the reason that Chenwei and Ren Zhang have used arrows with different sizes and thicknesses to denote the hopping probabilities in opposite directions in their plot.

“Typical textbooks of quantum mechanics mainly focus on systems governed by Hamiltonians that are Hermitian,” says Lv.

“A quantum particle moving in a lattice needs to have an equal probability to tunnel along the left and right directions. Whereas Hermitian Hamiltonians are well-established frameworks for studying isolated systems, the couplings with the environment inevitably lead to dissipations in open systems, which may give rise to Hamiltonians that are no longer Hermitian. For instance, the tunneling amplitudes in a lattice are no longer equal in opposite directions, a phenomenon called nonreciprocal tunneling. In such non-Hermitian systems, familiar textbook results no longer apply and some may even look completely opposite to that of Hermitian systems. For instance, eigenstates of non-Hermitian systems are no longer orthogonal, in sharp contrast to what we learned in the first class of an undergraduate quantum mechanics course. These extraordinary behaviors of non-Hermitian systems have been intriguing physicists for decades, but many outstanding questions remain open.”

He further explains that their work provides an unprecedented explanation of fundamental non-Hermitian quantum phenomena. They found that a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian has curved the space where a quantum particle resides. For instance, a quantum particle in a lattice with nonreciprocal tunneling is in fact moving on a curved surface. The ratio of the tunneling amplitudes along one direction to that in the opposite direction controls how large the surface is curved.

In such curved spaces, all the strange non-Hermitian phenomena, some of which may even appear unphysical, immediately become natural. It is the finite curvature that requires orthonormal conditions distinct from their counterparts in flat spaces. As such, eigenstates would not appear orthogonal if we used the theoretical formula derived for flat spaces. It is also the finite curvature that gives rise to the extraordinary non-Hermitian skin effect that all eigenstates concentrate near one edge of the system.

“This research is of fundamental importance and its implications are two-fold,” says Zhang. “On the one hand, it establishes non-Hermiticity as a unique tool to simulate intriguing quantum systems in curved spaces,” he explains. “Most quantum systems available in laboratories are flat and it often requires significant efforts to access quantum systems in curved spaces. Our results show that non-Hermiticity offers experimentalists an extra knob to access and manipulate curved spaces.

An example is that a hyperbolic surface could be created and further be threaded by a magnetic field. This could allow experimentalists to explore the responses of quantum Hall states to finite curvatures, an outstanding question in condensed matter physics. On the other hand, the duality allows experimentalists to use curved spaces to explore non-Hermitian physics. For instance, our results provide experimentalists a new approach to access exceptional points using curved spaces and improve the precision of quantum sensors without resorting to dissipations

Now that the team has published their findings, they anticipate it spinning off into multiple directions for further study. Physicists studying curved spaces could implement their apparatuses to address challenging questions in non-Hermitian physics.

Also, physicists working on non-Hermitian systems could tailor dissipations to access non-trivial curved spaces that cannot be easily obtained by conventional means. The Zhou research group will continue to theoretically explore more connections between non-Hermitian physics and curved spaces. They also hope to help bridge the gap between these two physics subjects and bring these two different communities together with future research.

According to the team, Purdue University is uniquely qualified to foster this type of quantum research. Purdue has been growing strong in quantum information science at a fast pace over the past few years. The Purdue Quantum Science and Engineering Institute paired with the Department of Physics and Astronomy, allows the team to collaborate with many colleagues with diverse expertise and foster interdepartmental and collegiate growth on a variety of platforms that exhibit dissipations and nonreciprocal tunneling.

Reference: “Curving the space by non-Hermiticity” by Chenwei Lv, Ren Zhang, Zhengzheng Zhai, and Qi Zhou, 21 April 2022, Nature Communications.
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-29774-8

Falls in Europe’s crop yields due to heatwaves could worsen price rises

From Spain to Hungary, output of staples such as corn forecast to fall by up to 9%, adding to impact of Ukraine war on food security

Mauro Nuvolone of agricultural company Fonio assesses the effects of drought in a maize field in Sozzago, northern Italy on 11 July.
 Photograph: Piero Cruciatti/AFP/Getty


Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent
Wed 27 Jul 2022 

Yields of key crops in Europe will be sharply down this year owing to heatwaves and droughts, exacerbating the impacts of the Ukraine war on food prices.

Maize, sunflower and soya bean yields are forecast by the EU to drop by about 8% to 9% due to hot weather across the continent. Supplies of cooking oil and maize were already under pressure, as Ukraine is a major producer and its exports have been blocked by Russia.

Large parts of Europe have been afflicted by drought and hot weather in recent weeks, including Spain, southern France, central and northern Italy, central Germany, northern Romania and eastern Hungary. Cereal yields are down about 2% overall, compared with the five-year average, though a handful of crops such as sugar beet and potatoes are doing better than average.

According to the latest monthly edition of the Mars Bulletin, published this week by the EU’s Joint Research Centre, drought and heat stress in many regions coincided with the flowering stage for key crops, and water reservoirs in many places are at levels too low to meet the demand for irrigation.

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, has been refusing to allow shipments of grain and other foodstuffs from Ukraine, though a fragile deal on some shipments has been reached that should enable at least some of Ukraine’s harvests to reach world markets.

Putin’s attack on the grain deal was despicable. It also shows he’s desperate
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon


The war in Ukraine has also raised prices of fuel and fertiliser, both essential inputs for farming, which has raised food prices further. Ukraine itself is also suffering the impacts of hot weather and heat stress, as well as the war, which is preventing the shipment of grain, maize, sunflower and other crops already harvested, and is likely to have a severe impact on coming harvests as farmers are unable to plant their fields properly.

Food prices have been rising across the world as a result of the Ukraine war and the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic – which led to people in many countries exhausting their reserves of food, as well as rising demand and the impacts of the climate crisis.