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Tag Archives: material
Jeopardy! delays Tournament Of Champions, will still use recycled material – The A.V. Club
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Grizzlies continue to provide Lakers with bulletin-board material: ‘We’re going to be back for Game 7’ – CBS Sports
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Jack Teixeira, suspect in leak of Pentagon documents, charged with unauthorized retention of classified material – CBS News
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Ginkgo sells Zymergen lab to chemical and material manufacturer Solvay – Endpoints News
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Meteorite Made of Earth’s Oldest Material Found in Antarctica
Representational image
(IANS)
The cold continent of Antarctica holds relics of our planet’s past — from clues of major climate events to zombie viruses buried beneath its frozen exterior. Apart from being a repository of invaluable information about Earth, however, it also houses foreign visitors from the universe, including meteorites!
The home of the south pole is a perfect place for meteorite hunting, thanks to all the ice and snow! The white backdrop makes the dark-coloured meteorites easier to spot, and the dry, desert-ish climate keeps the weathering in check. And if those space rocks sink beneath the ice, they eventually get coughed out by glacial churning.
In spite of these positives, finding sizable chunks of space rocks in Antarctica is incredibly rare. Nevertheless, a study team that left for an Antarctic meteorite hunt in December 2022 has managed to return with some interesting finds.
During the month-long mission on meteorite exploration around the Belgian Princess Elisabeth Antarctica (PEA) Station, the team of scientists uncovered five new meteorites, one of which is a monster space rock weighing a whopping 7.6 kgs!
“At the moment, it looks like an ordinary chondrite. This type of meteorite came from the asteroid belt and ended its travel in the Antarctic blue ice, waiting several tens of thousands of years in the ice before discovery,” explains Professor Maria Schoenbaechler from the department of earth sciences at ETH-Zurich in Switzerland and a study team member.
Antarctica’s Blue Ice Field is an area with winds so strong, they can literally blow away layers of snow atop glaciers.
Around 45,000 meteorites have been retrieved from Antarctica over the past century, and this new find is easily among the top 100 meteorites (in terms of size) recovered from the continent, as per the Chicago Field Museum.
So, what does this exceptional find mean for research in Earth sciences?
According to Professor Maria Schoenbaechler, the meteorite belongs to the oldest material that can be found on Earth, which makes it similar to a building block of our planet. Therefore, it could play a vital role in helping humanity study the formation of its own world.
But this is not all. Before venturing out into Antarctica’s tricky terrain, the research team mapped the area using satellite imagery — covering aspects such as ice flow, temperature, and surface slope measurements — to pinpoint sites with a higher possibility of new meteorites with the help of artificial intelligence.
And this satellite map, thought to be around 80% accurate in giving directions, suggests more than 300,000 meteorites are still out there in Antarctica, just waiting to be found!
These predictions may well renew humanity’s aspirations of making more such discoveries, which could help us trace our solar system’s history and ultimately expand our understanding of the universe.
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Ground-Breaking New Shock-Absorbing Material Can Stop Supersonic Impacts
Researchers have created a new synthetic biology material that can stop supersonic impacts. It could have numerous practical applications, such as next-generation bulletproof armor.
Scientists have created and patented a ground-breaking new shock-absorbing material that could revolutionize both the defense and planetary science sectors. The breakthrough was made by a team from the University of Kent, led by Professors Ben Goult and Jen Hiscock.
Named TSAM (Talin Shock Absorbing Materials), this novel protein-based family of materials represents the first known example of a SynBio (or synthetic biology) material capable of absorbing supersonic projectile impacts. It opens the door for the development of next-generation bulletproof armor and projectile capture materials to enable the study of hypervelocity impacts in space and the upper atmosphere (astrophysics).
Professor Ben Goult explained: “Our work on the protein talin, which is the cells natural shock absorber, has shown that this molecule contains a series of binary switch domains which open under tension and refold again once tension drops. This response to force gives talin its molecular shock-absorbing properties, protecting our cells from the effects of large force changes. When we polymerized talin into a TSAM, we found the shock absorbing properties of talin monomers imparted the material with incredible properties.”
The team went on to demonstrate the real-world application of TSAMs, subjecting this hydrogel material to 1.5 km/s (3,400 mph) supersonic impacts – a faster velocity than particles in space impact both natural and man-made objects (typically > 1 km/s) and muzzle velocities from firearms – which commonly fall between 0.4-1.0 km/s (900-2,200 mph). Furthermore, the team discovered that TSAMs can not only absorb the impact of basalt particles (~60 µM in diameter) and larger pieces of aluminum shrapnel, but also preserve these projectiles post-impact.
Current body armor tends to consist of a ceramic face backed by a fiber-reinforced composite, which is heavy and cumbersome. Also, while this armor is effective in blocking bullets and shrapnel, it doesn’t block the kinetic energy which can result in behind armor blunt trauma. Furthermore, this form of armor is often irreversibly damaged after impact, because of compromised structural integrity, preventing further use. This makes the incorporation of TSAMs into new armor designs a potential alternative to these traditional technologies, providing a lighter, longer-lasting armor that also protects the wearer against a wider range of injuries including those caused by shock.
In addition, the ability of TSAMs to both capture and preserve projectiles post-impact makes it applicable within the aerospace sector, where there is a need for energy-dissipating materials to enable the effective collection of space debris, space dust, and micrometeoroids for further scientific study. Furthermore, these captured projectiles facilitate aerospace equipment design, improving the safety of astronauts and the longevity of costly aerospace equipment. Here TSAMs could provide an alternative to industry-standard aerogels – which are liable to melt due to temperature elevation resulting from projectile impact.
Professor Jen Hiscock said: “This project arose from an interdisciplinary collaboration between fundamental biology, chemistry, and materials science which has resulted in the production of this amazing new class of materials. We are very excited about the potential translational possibilities of TSAMs to solve real-world problems. This is something that we are actively undertaking research into with the support of new collaborators within the defense and aerospace sectors.”
Reference: “Next generation protein-based materials capture and preserve projectiles from supersonic impacts” by Jack A. Doolan, Luke S. Alesbrook, Karen B. Baker, Ian R. Brown, George T. Williams, Jennifer R. Hiscock and Benjamin T. Goult, 29 November 2022, bioRxiv.
DOI: 10.1101/2022.11.29.518433
DART Mission: ‘Rail cars’ of material released after NASA spacecraft hit asteroid
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When NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft slammed into the tiny asteroid Dimorphos, the impact certainly left a mark.
The intentional collision, which took place on September 26 as a test of asteroid deflection technology, displaced more than 2 million pounds (1 million kilograms) of rocks and dust from the asteroid into space. Scientists estimate it was enough material to fill about six or seven rail cars.
The insights gained from the collision are helping scientists learn how this planetary defense technique might be used in the future. That’s if an asteroid is ever discovered to be on a collision course with Earth.
Neither Dimorphos, nor the larger asteroid Didymos that it orbits, pose a threat to Earth, but the system made for excellent target practice.
New findings and images from the impact were shared Thursday at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in Chicago.
“What we can learn from the DART mission is all part of a NASA’s overarching work to understand asteroids and other small bodies in our Solar System,” said Tom Statler, program scientist for DART at NASA, in a statement.
“Impacting the asteroid was just the start. Now we use the observations to study what these bodies are made of and how they were formed — as well as how to defend our planet should there ever be an asteroid headed our way.”
Images captured by space and ground-based telescopes before and after the impact are helping scientists piece together what happened when the spacecraft crashed into Dimorphos at about 14,000 miles per hour (22,530 kilometers per hour).
The DART team calculated that the transfer of momentum when the spacecraft hit the asteroid was 3.6 times greater than if the asteroid had absorbed the spacecraft and no material was blasted from the surface. The momentum created when Dimorphos’ surface material blasted out into space contributed to moving the asteroid more than the spacecraft did, the researchers said.
“Momentum transfer is one of the most important things we can measure, because it is information we would need to develop an impactor mission to divert a threating asteroid,” said Andy Cheng, DART investigation team lead from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, in a statement.
“Understanding how a spacecraft impact will change an asteroid’s momentum is key to designing a mitigation strategy for a planetary defense scenario.”
The DART mission successfully changed the trajectory of the asteroid Dimorphos, marking the first time humanity intentionally changed the motion of a celestial object in space.
Prior to impact, it took Dimorphos 11 hours and 55 minutes to orbit Didymos. Now, it takes Dimorphos 11 hours and 23 minutes to circle Didymos. The DART spacecraft changed the moonlet asteroid’s orbit by 32 minutes.
Initially, astronomers expected DART to be a success if it shortened the trajectory by 10 minutes.
DART Mission: ‘Rail cars’ of material released after NASA spacecraft hit asteroid
Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
CNN
—
When NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft slammed into the tiny asteroid Dimorphos, the impact certainly left a mark.
The intentional collision, which took place on September 26 as a test of asteroid deflection technology, displaced more than 2 million pounds (1 million kilograms) of rocks and dust from the asteroid into space. Scientists estimate it was enough material to fill about six or seven rail cars.
The insights gained from the collision are helping scientists learn how this planetary defense technique might be used in the future. That’s if an asteroid is ever discovered to be on a collision course with Earth.
Neither Dimorphos, nor the larger asteroid Didymos that it orbits, pose a threat to Earth, but the system made for excellent target practice.
New findings and images from the impact were shared Thursday at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in Chicago.
“What we can learn from the DART mission is all part of a NASA’s overarching work to understand asteroids and other small bodies in our Solar System,” said Tom Statler, program scientist for DART at NASA, in a statement.
“Impacting the asteroid was just the start. Now we use the observations to study what these bodies are made of and how they were formed — as well as how to defend our planet should there ever be an asteroid headed our way.”
Images captured by space and ground-based telescopes before and after the impact are helping scientists piece together what happened when the spacecraft crashed into Dimorphos at about 14,000 miles per hour (22,530 kilometers per hour).
The DART team calculated that the transfer of momentum when the spacecraft hit the asteroid was 3.6 times greater than if the asteroid had absorbed the spacecraft and no material was blasted from the surface. The momentum created when Dimorphos’ surface material blasted out into space contributed to moving the asteroid more than the spacecraft did, the researchers said.
“Momentum transfer is one of the most important things we can measure, because it is information we would need to develop an impactor mission to divert a threating asteroid,” said Andy Cheng, DART investigation team lead from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, in a statement.
“Understanding how a spacecraft impact will change an asteroid’s momentum is key to designing a mitigation strategy for a planetary defense scenario.”
The DART mission successfully changed the trajectory of the asteroid Dimorphos, marking the first time humanity intentionally changed the motion of a celestial object in space.
Prior to impact, it took Dimorphos 11 hours and 55 minutes to orbit Didymos. Now, it takes Dimorphos 11 hours and 23 minutes to circle Didymos. The DART spacecraft changed the moonlet asteroid’s orbit by 32 minutes.
Initially, astronomers expected DART to be a success if it shortened the trajectory by 10 minutes.
Experimental Shock-Absorbing Material Can Stop Projectiles Traveling Over 3,000 MPH
A team of researchers from the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, have used a protein called talin, which functions as “the cell’s natural shock absorber,” to create a new shock-absorbing material capable of stopping projectiles traveling at supersonic speeds without destroying them in the process.
Developing materials to improve the efficacy of armor isn’t a pursuit exclusive to the militaries of the world. Shock-absorbing materials have benefits in other fields, too. In the aerospace industry, they’ll be essential as we continue to expand our presence in space, where even tiny particles moving at supersonic speeds can cause significant damage to spacecraft. Even other researchers can benefit from breakthroughs in this field, particularly those conducting experiments with high-speed projectiles that eventually need to be safely stopped.
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The current design of projectile-stopping armors and materials uses a mix of ceramics and fiber-based components layered together, which are effective at stopping a high-speed object from passing straight through them, but end up transferring a lot of the projectile’s kinetic energy onto the armored vehicle or person, often resulting in non-fatal injuries. These materials also tend to get destroyed in the process, requiring them to be replaced after every use. This new research brings us one step closer to solving the unique challenges of developing shock-absorbing materials.
At the molecular level, talin has a structure that unfolds under tension to dissipate energy and then fold back up again afterwards, leaving it ready to absorb shocks again and again, keeping cells resilient against outside forces. When the protein was combined with other ingredients and polymerised into a TSAM (or Talin Shock Absorbing Material), those unique shock-absorbing properties were maintained.
To test the effectiveness of TSAMs, the researchers subjected them to impacts from basalt particles (around 60 µM in size, or roughly the diameter of a human hair) and later, larger aluminum shrapnel, traveling at 1.5 kilometers/second. That’s over 3,300 miles per hour, and three times faster than the speed of a nine-millimeter bullet fired from a hand gun. Not only was the impact of the particles completely absorbed by the TSAM material, but the particles themselves weren’t destroyed in the process.
The size of these test materials means the particles weren’t imparting as much energy into the TSAMs as a projectile fired from something like a tank would, but it does help demonstrate their potential. Eventually, the researchers are confident the hydrogel could be incorporated into lighter wearable armors for soldiers that do a better job of absorbing the energy of an impact, while retaining their shock-absorbing capabilities, even after saving a life.
It would potentially be even more useful for the aerospace industry, both for protecting spacecraft and for research involving space debris, dust, and micrometeoroids, which could be captured without being destroyed in the process. Of course, the captured micrometeroids would be easier to study than a handful of decimated dust. But far more important to regular readers of Gizmodo is how this new material can be incorporated into smartphone cases, making our expensive investments as durable and resilient as the nearly indestructible Nokia handsets from years ago.
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