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Entertainment

Whoopi Goldberg takes heat for repeating ‘incendiary’ Holocaust remarks: ‘She learned nothing’

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Jewish activists and community members demanded Whoopi Goldberg face termination from “The View” over the weekend after she doubled down on past Holocaust remarks, prompting a fierce outcry on social media.

Ten months after getting suspended from ABC’s daytime talk show for insisting that the Holocaust was “not about race,” Goldberg, in a new interview with U.K. paper The Sunday Times, showed little remorse for her past rhetoric, arguing again that the estimated 6 million Jews who were systematically killed in the Holocaust were not targeted based on their race.

“The View” co-host also claimed that the Nazis targeted people of African descent in addition to Jews because they were physically different and went as far as to suggest that Jews had an easier time blending in with White people and hiding from the Nazis than Black people did at the time of the Holocaust.

HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS’ MESSAGE TO WHOOPI GOLDBERG: ‘SHAME ON YOU’

“The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg doubled down on her belief that the Holocaust was “not about race.”
(Screenshot/ABC/TheView)

“It doesn’t change the fact that you could not tell a Jew on a street. You could find me. You couldn’t find them. That was the point I was making,” she said. “But you would have thought that I’d taken a big old stinky dump on the table, butt naked.”

The Times of Israel called Goldberg’s comments “incendiary” in an article Sunday, pointing out that while her real name is Caryn Elaine Johnson, the talk show co-host has no Jewish ancestry and adopted a more “Jewish-sounding” stage name.

Goldberg’s Holocaust comments in February, which led to her two-week suspension from the network and a subsequent apology, stunned many in the Jewish community. At the time, faith leaders, activists and online critics encouraged her to educate herself on the topic, but largely supported her return to the show. 

ADL, JEWISH GROUPS CONDEMN WHOOPI GOLDBERG’S HOLOCAUST COMMENTS, ACCUSE HER OF MINIMIZING JEWISH SUFFERING

Now, with the lack of remorse evident in her latest interview, some are calling for her termination over her history of historically ignorant statements.

“So, after supposed ‘apology’ earlier in year, Whoopi Goldberg doubles down on her vile remarks that the Holocaust was not about race, and instead ‘white on white’ violence. Someone get this ignorant fool off the air!,” International Legal Forum CEO Arsen Ostrovsky wrote.

“Once again Whoopi insists on dismissing the Holocaust as a mere white-on-white crime, rather than the industrial-scale murder of Europe’s Jews. #Antisemitism — history’s oldest and most toxic hatred — is surging, but Whoopi is determined to trivialize it,” Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby responded.

Lucy Lipiner, a Holocaust survivor and author of “Long Journey Home: A Young Girl’s Memoir of Surviving the Holocaust,” scolded Goldberg for continuously using the genocidal horrors she witnessed as a “punching bag.”

“Whoopi Goldberg continues to use the Holocaust as her punching bag. We told her that her comments harm us and she simply doesn’t care,” Lipiner, who was outspoken against Goldberg’s past Holocaust rhetoric, said.

“I survived the Nazis and the Holocaust,” she added, “so I’ll be damned if I let a comedy has-been, peddling a fake Jewish name get the better of me.”

Newsweek contributor Joel Petlin responded, “Accepting apologies from some people who spew Antisemitic garbage is the triumph of hope over experience. We know that the Antisemitism will likely reoccur, but we still hope that they learned something along the way. Alas Whoopi just learned she could get away with it. Again.”

“I wish actors would stick to acting and footballers would stick to football. Every time people like Whoopi Goldberg or Gary Lineker open their mouths about things they don’t understand they grow increasingly small..,” investigative journalist David Collier agreed.

Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y. also called out the “View” co-host.

“Antisemitism is anti-Jewish racism. Period. Claiming the Holocaust had nothing to do with racism is historical revisionism at its worst,” he wrote.

In her write-up of the interview, the Times’ Janice Turner revealed that, “Even now [Goldberg] does not understand why her remarks offended. She insists Jewish people themselves are divided about whether they are a race or a religion.”

The interview comes less than a year after Goldberg issued a watered-down apology for the same comment after making people “very angry.” She did somewhat defend her remarks at the time, though, saying as a Black woman she viewed race as something she could see.

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Whoopi Goldberg attends the premiere of “Till” during the 60th New York Film Festival at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center on Oct. 1, 2022 in New York City.
(Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for FLC)

Responding to Goldberg in a Fox News Digital interview earlier this year, Lipiner said of her position, “She was mistaken. This was very much against my race, my Jewishness. It wasn’t White people against White people as she says. We were White, but we were being exterminated because we were Jewish. Men, women, children, infants, killed because we were Jewish.”

“I assume she’s an intelligent person,” Lipiner added. “[But] I don’t understand how she could be so unaware of the Holocaust, how it happened and that it happened to us, the Jewish people.” 

Fox News Digital has reached out to an ABC spokesperson for comment and will update if given a response.

Fox News’ Gabriel Hays contributed to this report. 

Yael Halon is a reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to yael.halon@fox.com. 

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Science

Repeating fast radio bursts from space are mysterious. This one is even weirder

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We’re driven to determine if “the truth is out there.” If we just had all of the pieces, they might fit together and form the bridge to a greater understanding.

The team will gather evidence and analyze data for unexplained events in the sky from a scientific perspective to determine if they are natural or require other explanation. The nine-month study kicks off in the fall, and the findings will be shared with the public.

“I’ve spent most of my career as a cosmologist. I can tell you, we don’t know what makes up 95% of the universe,” said astrophysicist David Spergel, who will lead the team.

To tide you over, here are some other unusual things we learned this week.

Across the universe

Mysterious fast radio bursts have long intrigued astronomers because they don’t understand what causes the bright, millisecond-long flashes in space.

Now, a pulsing burst of radio waves has been detected in a galaxy about 3 billion light-years away — and it’s even weirder than the others.

The celestial object constantly released weaker radio waves between the repeating bursts. There is only one other fast radio burst known to do this, which has astronomers questioning if there is more than one kind of these unexplained phenomena.

Trailblazers

It’s a livin’ thing.

For the first time ever, scientists have learned how to grow humanlike skin on a robotic finger.

This advancement is one step closer to giving robots the look and touch of living creatures, according to the researchers.

The same cells that serve as the building blocks for human skin were used in the trials. The humanlike skin was even able to repel water.

The researchers are interested in adding a vascular system that could help the skin sustain itself, grow nails and even sweat. Having humanlike hands could one day enable robots to help us with a surprising range of tasks.

Fantastic creatures

Meet Fernanda. She’s kind of a big deal in the Galapagos Islands, and we don’t blame you if you sing a version of ABBA’s “Fernando” in her honor.

The lone small female tortoise was found living on Fernandina Island in the Galapagos archipelago in 2019. Her discovery shocked scientists because they thought Fernandina tortoises were extinct, especially given the island’s very active volcano.

A new genetic study revealed Fernanda is indeed a native species of her island, especially when compared with the DNA of a male tortoise specimen collected from the island in 1906.

And Fernanda may not be the last of her kind. Recent evidence suggests there are more like her on the island — but any future expeditions, and the tortoises themselves, face formidable volcanic challenges.

Other worlds

The Ingenuity helicopter is battling a hazy shade of winter on Mars.

The arrival of cyclical dust storms caused the NASA team to lose contact with Ingenuity for two days in May. The little chopper now faces frigid nights without its heater and has less solar power due to a lack of sunlight. But the copter’s team has a plan that could help Ingenuity survive and continue flying high on Mars.
Reports are that the Perseverance rover has adopted a pet rock in the meantime (and we’re not joking).
Meanwhile, NASA’s DAVINCI spacecraft will face the opposite conditions when it orbits and then attempts to land on the hellish surface of Venus in 2031, descending through immense pressure and scorching temperatures to capture never-before-seen images of the planet.

Dino-mite!

Ancient bones newly unearthed on the Isle of Wight once belonged to one of Europe’s largest predators. The spinosaurid, a two-legged dinosaur with the face of a crocodile, was larger than a double-decker bus.

It’s possible that the bones, from an animal that lived 125 million years ago, belonged to a newly discovered species instead. But scientists need more information to make the determination.

Thanks to a number of fossils recovered from the island, the Isle of Wight is known as the UK’s dinosaur capital. And if you’re eager for more dinos, “Jurassic World: Dominion” was released this week.

Discoveries

Dive into these stories:

— The James Webb Space Telescope’s giant golden mirror was dinged by a micrometeoroid. Don’t worry: The observatory is still preparing to share its first hi-res color images on July 12.
— Abu Dhabi is full of ancient wonders. Explore some of the treasures in the Arabian desert that tell the story of the Emirati people’s connection to both land and sea.
— We promise this isn’t a Dr. Seuss riddle, even if it sounds like one. A California court has ruled that bees can legally be considered fish under specific circumstances, especially to protect them.
Like what you’ve read? Oh, but there’s more. Sign up here to receive in your inbox the next edition of Wonder Theory, brought to you by CNN Space and Science writer Ashley Strickland, who finds wonder in planets beyond our solar system and discoveries from the ancient world.



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Science

Mysterious repeating radio signal detected from space – study

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Scientists have managed to discover a new mysterious burst of radio waves from space, known as a fast radio burst (FRB) that is raising new questions.

The findings surrounding this mysterious phenomenon designated FRB 190520 were published Wednesday in a study in the peer-reviewed academic journal Nature.

What are FRBs?

FRBs are a phenomenon in the field of radio astronomy that refers to a very short burst of radio pulse associated with the release of a very large amount of energy. 

What causes them is unknown, though it seems to be a high-energy astrophysical process of some sort.

Radio telescopes, which are used to find radio broadcasts from space (Illustrative). (credit: PIXABAY)

What is known is that the average FRB, despite being very short by lasting from a fraction of a millisecond to a few milliseconds (a millisecond is one one-thousandth of a second), releases as much energy per millisecond as our sun releases in three days.

This field of study is still relatively new, with the first FRB having been discovered in 2007.

Several FRBs have been discovered since then, but some are especially strange. One of these, in particular, FRB 180916, pulsates on a regular basis every 16.35 days.

Another FRB that is particularly noteworthy is FRB 121102. Discovered in 2016, this radio burst was a major breakthrough in the field of study because its location was pinpointed.

At the time, researchers, writing in articles in Nature and the Astrophysical Journal Letters, wrote that it had originated from a dwarf galaxy over three billion light-years from Earth.

The new FRB

What makes this new mysterious FRB so interesting is that it, too, was able to be pinpointed.

FRB 190520 was first identified by a five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) in China in November 2019, with the burst itself having taken place on May 20 of that year.

Scientists made use of other telescopes, such as the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), to better study FRB 190520.

In 2020, VLA observations were able to pinpoint its location. Then, using the Subaru telescope in Hawaii, they were able to pinpoint its origin near another dwarf galaxy three billion light-years away.

But this raises all kinds of questions, especially when examining the similarities and differences between these two FRBs and all others.

One possibility: There may be two kinds of FRBs.

“Are those that repeat different from those that don’t? What about the persistent radio emission — is that common?” Kshitij Aggarwal, a graduate student at West Virginia University (WVU), said in a statement.

“Are those that repeat different from those that don’t? What about the persistent radio emission — is that common?”

Kshitij Aggarwal

Another question being asked is what causes FRBs in the first place. The two leading possibilities are the superdense neutron stars left over after a supernova or neutron stars with strong magnetic fields called magnetars.

But another curious feature about FRB 190520 is the strange interference.

One useful feature of FRBs is that scientists hoped they could use them to study material between them and the Earth through the use of radio waves.

Essentially, they could act as sort of measuring sticks.

This is measured through dispersion, which is when radio waves pass through spaces with free electrons, and higher-frequency waves would move faster than lower-frequency ones.

But this is where the problem lies.

As stated previously, FRB 190520’s point of origin seemed to have been at a dwarf galaxy around three billion light-years away. But that was just calculations from an independent measurement. 

Calculating it from the signal and dispersion, the distance should actually be eight to 9.5 billion light-years away.

“This means that there is a lot of material near the FRB that would confuse any attempt to use it to measure the gas between galaxies,” Aggarwal said. “If that’s the case with others, then we can’t count on using FRBs as cosmic yardsticks.” 

There are possible explanations. For instance, if FRB 190520 is still surrounded by material from a supernova, it would interfere with the measurement of dispersion.

But ultimately, many questions still remain in a still-mysterious field of study.



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Science

New unusual repeating fast radio burst detected 3 billion light-years away

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The cosmic object is distinctive when compared with other detections of radio bursts in recent years, according to new research.

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are millisecond-long bursts of radio waves in space. Individual radio bursts emit once and don’t repeat. But repeating fast radio bursts are known to send out short, energetic radio waves multiple times.

Astronomers have been able to trace some radio bursts back to their home galaxies, but they have yet to determine the actual cause of the pulses. Learning more about the origin of these bright, intense radio emissions could help scientists understand what causes them.

Astronomers detected the object, named FRB 190520, when it released a burst of radio waves on May 20, 2019. The researchers used the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope, or FAST, in China, and discovered the burst in the telescope data in November 2019. When they conducted follow-up observations, the astronomers noticed something unusual — the object was releasing frequent, repeating bursts of radio waves.

In 2020, the team used the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, or VLA, of telescopes to pinpoint the origin of the burst before zeroing in on it using the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. Subaru’s observations in visible light showed that the burst came from the outskirts of a distant dwarf galaxy.

A study detailing the findings published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

Two of a kind

The VLA observations also revealed that the celestial object constantly released weaker radio waves between the repeating bursts. That’s very similar to only one other known repeating fast radio burst: FRB 121102, discovered in 2016.

The initial detection and subsequent tracing of FRB 121102 back to its origin point in a small dwarf galaxy more than 3 billion light-years away was a breakthrough in astronomy. It was the first time astronomers were able to learn about the distance and environment of these mysterious objects.

“Now we actually need to explain this double mystery and why FRBs and persistent radio sources are found together sometimes,” said study coauthor Casey Law, staff scientist in radio astronomy at the California Institute of Technology. “Is it common when FRBs are young? Or perhaps the object that makes the bursts is a massive black hole that is messily eating up a neighboring star? Theorists have a lot more detail to work with now and the scope for explanation is shrinking.”

Currently, less than 5% of the hundreds of identified fast radio bursts have been known to repeat and only a few of them are regularly active.

But FRB 190520 is the only persistently active one, meaning that it has never “turned off” since being discovered, said study author Di Li, chief scientist for the radio division of the National Astronomical Observatories of China and the FAST Operation Center. Meanwhile, FRB 121102, “the first known famous repeater, can turn off for months,” Li said.

New questions

The latest findings raise more questions because now astronomers wonder if there might be two kinds of fast radio bursts.

“Are those that repeat different from those that don’t? What about the persistent radio emission — is that common?” said study coauthor Kshitij Aggarwal, who was involved in the study as a doctoral student at West Virginia University, in a statement.

It’s possible that there are different mechanisms that cause the radio bursts, or that whatever produces them is behaving differently during various stages of evolution.

Previously, scientists have hypothesized that fast radio bursts are caused by the dense remnants leftover after a supernova, called a neutron star, or neutron stars with incredibly strong magnetic fields called magnetars.

FRB 190520 is being considered as a possible “newborn” object because it was located in a dense environment, Law said. That environment may be caused by material released by a supernova, which resulted in the creation of a neutron star. As this material scatters over time, the bursts from FRB 190520 may decrease as it ages.

Going forward, Li wants to discover more fast radio bursts.

“A coherent picture of the origin and evolution of FRBs is likely to emerge in just a few years,” Li said.

Law is excited about the implications of having a new class of radio wave sources.

“For decades, astronomers thought there were basically two kinds of radio source that we could see in other galaxies: accreting supermassive black holes and star formation activity,” Law said. “Now we’re saying that it can’t be an either/or categorization any more! There is a new kid in town and we should consider that when studying populations of radio sources in the universe.”

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Science

Mysterious repeating fast radio burst from space looks strangely familiar, scientists realize

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Scientists got a strange sense of déjà vu when they took a close look at a mysterious series of bright flashes in a galaxy just 12 million light-years away.

The flashes, known as a repeating fast radio burst (FRB), appear surprisingly similar to flashes found in the Crab Nebula. The Crab Nebula is a famous remnant from an old stellar explosion, or supernova, that humans observed in 1054 AD, which was recorded by several distinct cultures. The colorful remnants have displayed bright and brilliant flashes that look a lot like the newly found FRBs, which occurred in the galaxy M81, researchers said.

“Some of the signals we measured are short and extremely powerful, in just the same way as some signals from the Crab pulsar,” Kenzie Nimmo, a Ph.D. student in astronomy at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy and the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, said in a statement.

Related: ‘Weird signal’ hails from the Milky Way. What’s causing it?

The explosion in what’s now the Crab Nebula was recorded on July 4, 1054, by Chinese astronomers, who saw a new or “guest” star above the southern horn of Taurus. The “guest” shone brightly in the sky for 23 days and was 6 times more luminous than Venus, the astronomers recorded. It was still visible for almost two years after the explosion, and was recorded by Arab and Japanese astronomers as well.

The remnant was best visible with a telescope, and that meant the remaining nebula was only spotted for the first time in 1731 by British astronomer John Bevis. French astronomer Charles Messier independently observed it 27 years later and added it to his now-famous catalog of Messier objects, designating the nebula as Messier 1 or M1.

And it wasn’t until the 1960s when astronomers noticed a fluctuating radio source that coincided with the location of the Crab Nebula and eventually determined that the signal came from a pulsar, a kind of neutron star (itself a super-dense stellar corpse left by a supernova) with a strong magnetic field.

An artist’s depiction of a magnetar in galaxy M81. (Image credit: Chalmers University of Technology/Daniëlle Futselaar, artsource.nl)

But despite the known cause of the Crab Nebula’s bursts and their similarity to those seen in M81, astronomers aren’t sure yet what’s happening in galaxy M81. These FRBs were first spotted in January 2020, coming from the direction of the constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear.

To date, FRBs have mostly been found in galaxies studded with young stars, but the M81 sightings are an exception, since a network of a dozen radio dishes pinpointed the source of the signal quite clearly to an old group of stars known as a globular cluster.

One candidate for explaining FRBs is that these bright flashes come from magnetars — the strongest magnets in the universe and another type of supernova remnant. And this explanation makes sense where young stars are common, but it’s trickier when it comes to M81, the researchers said.

“We expect magnetars to be shiny and new, and definitely not surrounded by old stars,” Jason Hessels, University of Amsterdam and ASTRON, said in the statement. “If what we’re looking at here really is a magnetar, then it can’t have been formed from a young star exploding. There has to be another way.”

One possible explanation might be that a white dwarf (the cooling core of a large burnt-out star) pulled gas off an unlucky neighboring star. Over time, the researchers suspect, the extra mass may have caused the white dwarf to collapse into a magnetar.

The spiral galaxy M81 is located about 12 million light-years away from Earth. (Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: Detlef Hartmann; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

All told, although the scientists aren’t positive what caused the signal or why it’s so similar to the one emanating from the Crab Nebula, they suspect the answer is something unusual — whether an unusual magnetar, an unusual pulsar or another celestial phenomenon.

The research was published in two papers Wednesday (Feb. 23): one in Nature Astronomy led by Nimmo, and the other in Nature led by Franz Kirsten, who is with the Chalmers University of Technology and the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 



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Science

Over a thousand cosmic explosions traced to repeating fast radio burst

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Using China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope, or FAST, researchers detected 1,652 bursts over the course of 47 days, between August 29 and October 29, 2019. This is the largest set of fast radio burst events so far.

A study detailing these findings published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are millisecond-long emissions of radio waves in space, and astronomers have been able to trace some radio bursts back to their home galaxies. Scientists have yet to determine the actual cause of the flashes. But the short bursts can produce a year’s worth of our sun’s total energy output.

Individual radio bursts emit once and don’t repeat. But repeating fast radio bursts are known to send out short, energetic radio waves multiple times. FRB 121102 has been known as a repeating fast radio burst since 2016.

During testing of the FAST telescope as it was being commissioned, researchers noticed FRB 121102 was frequently flaring and sending out radio signals, with a varying cadence. A total of 122 bursts were recorded during the peak hour, making it the highest rate ever for any fast radio burst. The 1,652 individual bursts occurred over a total of 59.5 hours spread across 47 days.

“This was the first time that one FRB source was studied in such great detail,” said study coauthor Bing Zhang, an astrophysicist and distinguished professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in a statement. “The large burst set helped our team hone in like never before on the characteristic energy and energy distribution of FRBs, which sheds new light on the engine that powers these mysterious phenomena.”

The energy of the signals “severely constrains the possibility that FRB 121102 comes from an isolated compact object,” said study coauthor Wang Pei, an assistant professor from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in a statement.

While some people favor the idea that aliens could be the source of these bursts, scientists are leaning toward black holes or hyper-magnetized neutron stars called magnetars.

Magnetars are dense stars, about the size of a city like Chicago or Atlanta, with the strongest magnetic fields found in the universe. Scientists think the bursts could originate from the magnetic field of magnetars.

FRB 121102 was the first repeating fast radio burst to be traced back to its source, linked back to a small dwarf galaxy more than 3 billion light-years away in 2017. Researchers also detected a pattern within the burst in 2020. During this cyclical pattern, radio bursts are emitted during a 90-day window, followed by a silent period of 67 days. This pattern repeats every 157 days.

Previous observations showed that usually when they repeat, it’s sporadic or in a cluster.

With this new impressive set of activity from FRB 121102, researchers can better understand the energy associated with these flashes. This could help scientists learn more about the potential source of fast radio bursts.

Fast radio bursts were only discovered in 2007, followed by the discovery that some of them can repeat in 2016. Now, researchers know they can have patterns as well.

The Commensal Radio Astronomy FAST Survey has helped find six new fast radio bursts, including a repeating one like FRB 121102.

“As the world’s largest antenna, FAST’s sensitivity proves to be conducive to revealing intricacies of cosmic transients, including FRBs,” said lead study author Li Di, a professor at the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in a statement.

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Science

Elusive ‘Electron Crystal’ Phenomenon Directly Imaged For First Time Ever

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Physicists have taken the first ever image of a Wigner crystal – a strange honeycomb-pattern material inside another material, made entirely out of electrons.

Hungarian physicist Eugene Wigner first theorized this crystal in 1934, but it’s taken more than eight decades for scientists to finally get a direct look at the “electron ice”.

 

The fascinating first image shows electrons squished together into a tight, repeating pattern – like tiny blue butterfly wings, or pressings of an alien clover. 

The researchers behind the study, published on Sept. 29 in the journal Nature, say that while this isn’t the first time that a Wigner crystal has been plausibly created or even had its properties studied, the visual evidence they collected is the most emphatic proof of the material’s existence yet.

Related: 12 stunning quantum physics experiments 

“If you say you have an electron crystal, show me the crystal,” study co-author Feng Wang, a physicist at the University of California, told Nature News.

Inside ordinary conductors like silver or copper, or semiconductors like silicon, electrons zip around so fast that they are barely able to interact with each other. But at very low temperatures, they slow down to a crawl, and the repulsion between the negatively charged electrons begins to dominate.

The once highly mobile particles grind to a halt, arranging themselves into a repeating, honeycomb-like pattern to minimize their total energy use. 

To see this in action, the researchers trapped electrons in the gap between atom-thick layers of two tungsten semiconductors – one tungsten disulfide and the other tungsten diselenide.

 

Then, after applying an electric field across the gap to remove any potentially disruptive excess electrons, the researchers chilled their electron sandwich down to 5 degrees above absolute zero.

Sure enough, the once-speedy electrons stopped, settling into the repeating structure of a Wigner crystal.

The researchers then used a device called a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) to view this new crystal. STMs work by applying a tiny voltage across a very sharp metal tip before running it just above a material, causing electrons to leap down to the material’s surface from the tip.

The rate that electrons jump from the tip depends on what’s underneath them, so researchers can build up a picture of the Braille-like contours of a 2D surface by measuring current flowing into the surface at each point.

But the current provided by the STM was at first too much for the delicate electron ice, “melting” it upon contact. To stop this, the researchers inserted a single-atom layer of graphene just above the Wigner crystal, enabling the crystal to interact with the graphene and leave an impression on it that the STM could safely read – much like a photocopier.

 

By tracing the image imprinted on the graphene sheet completely, the STM captured the first snapshot of the Wigner crystal, proving its existence beyond all doubt.

Now that they have conclusive proof that Wigner crystals exist, scientists can use the crystals to answer deeper questions about how multiple electrons interact with each other, such as why the crystals arrange themselves in honeycomb orderings, and how they “melt”.

The answers will offer a rare glimpse into some of the most elusive properties of the tiny particles.

Related content:

This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.

 

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Science

Strange, repeating radio signal near the center of the Milky Way has scientists stumped

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Astronomers have detected a strange, repeating radio signal near the center of the Milky Way, and it’s unlike any other energy signature ever studied.

According to a new paper accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal and posted on the preprint server arXiv, the energy source is extremely finicky, appearing bright in the radio spectrum for weeks at a time and then completely vanishing within a day. This behavior doesn’t quite fit the profile of any known type of celestial body, the researchers wrote in their study, and thus may represent “a new class of objects being discovered through radio imaging.”

The radio source — known as ASKAP J173608.2−321635 — was detected with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope, situated in the remote Australian outback. In an ASKAP survey taken between April 2019 and August 2020, the strange signal appeared 13 times, never lasting in the sky for more than a few weeks, the researchers wrote. This radio source is highly variable, appearing and disappearing with no predictable schedule, and doesn’t seem to appear in any other radio telescope data prior to the ASKAP survey.

When the researchers tried to match the energy source with observations from other telescopes — including the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, as well as the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy in Chile, which can pick up near-infrared wavelengths — the signal disappeared entirely. With no apparent emissions in any other part of the electromagnetic spectrum, ASKAP J173608.2−321635 is a radio ghost that seems to defy explanation.

Prior surveys have detected low-mass stars that periodically flare up with radio energy, but those flaring stars typically have X-ray counterparts, the researchers wrote. That makes a stellar source unlikely here.

Dead stars, like pulsars and magnetars (two types of ultradense, collapsed stars), are also unlikely explanations, the team wrote. While pulsars can stream bright beams of radio light past Earth, they spin with predictable periodicity, usually sweeping their lights past our telescopes on a timescale of hours, not weeks. Magnetars, meanwhile, always include a powerful X-ray counterpart with each of their outbursts — again, unlike ASKAP J173608.2−321635’s behavior.

The closest match is a mysterious class of object known as a galactic center radio transient (GCRT), a rapidly glowing radio source that brightens and decays near the Milky Way’s center, usually over the course of a few hours. So far, only three GCRTs have been confirmed, and all of them appear and disappear much more quickly than this new ASKAP object does. However, the few known GCRTs do shine with a similar brightness as the mysterious signal, and their radio flare-ups are never accompanied by X-rays.

If this new radio object is a GCRT, its properties push the boundaries of what astronomers thought GCRTs were capable of, the researchers concluded. Future radio surveys of the galactic center should help clear up the mystery.

Originally published on Live Science.

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