High-voltage cell with Li metal anode and LLZCN electrolyte

A team of researchers at the University of Maryland Energy Research Center and A. James Clark School of Engineering have announced a transformative development in the race to produce batteries that are at once safe, powerful, and affordable. The researchers are developing game-changing solid-state battery technology, and have made a key advance by inserting a layer of ultra-thin aluminum oxide between lithium electrodes and a solid non-flammable ceramic electrolyte known as garnet. Prior to this advance, there had been little success in developing high-performance, garnet-based solid-state batteries, because the high resistance, between the garnet electrolyte and electrode materials limited the flow of energy or current.

The ultra...

This mosaic image of the Crab Nebula was taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Features of this nebula and other astrophysical phenomena are being studied at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center. Credit: NASA / ESA / J. Hester / Arizona State University

Intrigued by a curious “kink” phenomenon observed in the Crab Nebula, an interstellar cloud of gas and dust that formed in the wake of a supernova explosion, senior research scientist Chikang Li has been looking for answers. Images from the Chandra X-ray observatory show that a jet of plasma pouring straight out from the neutron star at the center of the nebula appears to change direction every few years, without changing its structure...

Pan-STARRS SKY SURVEY This compressed view of the entire sky visible from Hawai’i by the Pan-STARRS1 Observatory is the result of half a million exposures, each about 45 seconds in length, taken over a period of four years. The shape comes from making a map of the celestial sphere, like a map of the Earth, but leaving out the southern quarter. The disk of the Milky Way looks like a yellow arc, and the dust lanes show up as reddish brown filaments. The background is made up of billions of faint stars and galaxies. If printed at full resolution, the image would be 1.5 miles long, and you would have to get close and squint to see the detail. Credit: Danny Farrow, Pan-STARRS1 Science Consortium and Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestial Physics

Mapping billions of stars and galaxies in the w...

Dark brown fallow deer (buck) with big antlers is shown. Credit: Wikipedia commons

Scientists from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) have discovered the secret behind the toughness of deer antlers and how they can resist breaking during fights. The team looked at the antler structure at the nano-level and were able to identify the mechanisms at work, using state-of-the-art computer modelling and xray techniques.

Paolino De Falco from QMUL’s School of Engineering and Materials Science said: “The fibrils that make up the antler are staggered rather than in line with each other. This allows them to absorb the energy from the impact of a clash during a fight...