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    New Water Map of Mars will Prove Invaluable for Future Exploration

    August 24, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Water-rich minerals at Jezero Crater
    Water-rich minerals at Jezero Crater

    A new map of Mars is changing the way we think about the planet’s watery past, and showing where we should land in the future.

    The map shows mineral deposits across the planet and has been painstakingly created over the last decade using data from ESA’s Mars Express Observatoire pour la Mineralogie, l’Eau, les Glaces et l’Activité (OMEGA) instrument and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) instrument.

    Specifically, the map shows the locations and abundances of aqueous minerals. These are from rocks that have been chemically altered by the action of water in the past, and have typically been transformed into clays and salts.

    On Earth, clays form when water interacts with rocks, with...

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    Mathematicians suggest Liquid Crystals could be used to create Building Blocks for a New Kind of Computer

    August 23, 2022, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    Mathematician pair suggest liquid crystals could be used to create building blocks of a new kind of computer
    Nbits pinned to an LC defect line. The local nematic director field n(r), indicated by cylindrical bars, rotates by π along closed curves encircling the defect line (black). The director field is colored by its out-of-plane component, nz(r), while xy-planes are colored by the director’s azimuthal orientation nϕ(r) relative to the x axis. The near-field director profile (red) close to the defect line defines the nbit state. The vertical direction may be interpreted as either a spatial or a time dimension. Credit: Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abp8371

    A pair of researchers at MIT have found evidence suggesting that a new kind of computer could be built based on liquid crystals rather than silicon...

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    Grains of Dust from Asteroid Ryugu Older than our Solar System

    August 23, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Grains of dust from Asteroid Ryugu older than our solar system
    (a) Backscattered electron (BSE) image of Ryugu thin section A0058-2. Every black area consists of ∼20 NanoSIMS maps measured. (b) An area in section C0002 with a less altered lithology than the surrounding Ryugu matrix (“clast 1”; BSE image). This area contains Mg-rich olivine, low-Ca pyroxenes, and spinel grains with sizes up to ∼15 μm (Kawasaki et al. 2022). Two of three O-anomalous grains identified in Ryugu, including one likely presolar silicate (g)–(h), were found in this region. (c)–(e) Secondary electron (SE) image of a Ryugu particle pressed into gold foil in which two presolar SiC grains were detected. The C-anomalous regions, indicated by the white arrows, are clearly associated with 28Si hotspots. (f) 17O-rich presolar oxide found in the Ryugu A0058-2 matrix...
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    Astronomers Solve the Case of Missing Carbon Monoxide in Protoplanetary Disks

    August 23, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Credit Required: M.Weiss/Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

    Astronomers frequently observe carbon monoxide in planetary nurseries. The compound is ultrabright and extremely common in protoplanetary disks—regions of dust and gas where planets form around young stars—making it a prime target for scientists.

    But for the last decade or so, something hasn’t been adding up when it comes to carbon monoxide observations, says Diana Powell, a NASA Hubble Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian. A huge chunk of carbon monoxide is missing in all observations of disks, if astronomers’ current predictions of its abundance are correct.

    Now, a new model—validated by observations with ALMA—has solved the mystery: carbon monoxide has been hiding in ice format...

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