The 2nd Full Moon Of August 2023 L Rami Ammoun

ScienceDaily

To make fluid flow in one direction down a pipe, it helps to be a shark

Researchers have discovered a new way to help liquid flow in only one direction, but without using the flaps that engines and our circulator

Flaps perform essential jobs. From pumping hearts to revving engines, flaps help fluid flow in one direction. Without them, keeping liquids going in the right direction is challenging to do. Researchers from the University of Washington have discovered a new way to help liquid flow in only one direction -- but without flaps. In a paper published Sept. 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they report that a flexible pipe -- with an interior helical structure inspired by shark intestines -- can keep fluid flowing in one direction without the flaps that engines and anatomy rely upon. Human intestines are essentially a hollow tube. But for sharks and rays, their intestines feature a network of spirals surrounding an interior passageway. In a 2021 publication, a different team proposed that this unique structure promoted one-way flow of fluids -- also known as flow asymmetry -- through the digestive tracts of sharks and rays without flaps or other aids to prevent backup. That claim caught the attention of UW postdoctoral researcher Ido Levin, lead author on the new paper.

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Think we're the only planet with life? 350mp quality. Remember to download to your phone and zoom in. Gets even more beautiful. Yes this is a nebula, yes I know there’s no life in a nebula. Of course these are not real photos. Duh!

When a physicist falls in love :)

Richard Feynman's love letter to his deceased wife, 1946.

Storm cloud over Texas l Laura Rowe NASA APOD

Discover Magazine

How a Tardigrade "Micro Animal" Became Quantum Entangled with Superconducting Qubit

Physicists have extended the conditions in which life can exist further than ever before.

Hey, so--we cooled your boyfriend down to a hundredth of a kelvin above absolute zero. Yeah, it was so cold that all of the chemical reactions in his body ceased. Sorry. We, uh, yeah, we used him as a dielectric material in a tiny qubit. And then we quantum-entangled him with another qubit, just to see if we could. Sorry. Yeah, anyway, we thawed him out after two weeks and apparently he's doing fine now. Didn't really teach us anything about how quantum processes work in biological systems, but it sure was, uh, cool. If you'll pardon the pun.

Dr. Mae Jemison was the first African American woman to travel in space. Born on October 17, 1956, in Decatur, Alabama, and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Jemison’s journey into the stars is a testament to the power of dreams and determination. 🚀

Pieces of History

Mae Jemison: First Black Woman in Space

March is Women’s History Month. Visit the National Archives website for resources related to women’s history. Today’s post comes from Dena L

phys.org

Scientists discover that water molecules define the materials around us

For decades, the fields of physics and chemistry have maintained that the atoms and molecules that make up the natural world define the char

OKAY THIS ARTICLE IS SO COOL

I'm going to try to explain this in a comprehensible way, because honestly it's wild to wrap your head around even for me, who has a degree in chemistry. But bear with me.

Okay, so. Solids, right? They are rigid enough to hold their shape, but aside from that they are quite variable. Some solids are hard, others are soft, some are brittle or rubbery or malleable. So what determines these qualities? And what creates the rigid structure that makes a solid a solid? Most people would tell you that it depends on the atoms that make up the solid, and the bonds between those atoms. Rubber is flexible because of the polymers it's made of, steel is strong because of the metallic bonds between its atoms. And this applies to all solids. Or so everybody thought.

A paper published in the journal Nature has discovered that biological materials such as wood, fungi, cotton, hair, and anything else that can respond to the humidity in the environment may be composed of a new class of matter dubbed "hydration solids". That's because the rigidity and solidness of the materials doesn't actually come from the atoms and bonds, but from the water molecules hanging out in between.

So basically, try to imagine a hydration solid as a bunch of balloons taped together to form a giant cube, with the actual balloon part representing the atoms and bonds of the material, and the air filling the balloons as the water in the pores of the solid. What makes this "solid" cube shaped? It's not because of the rubber at all, but the air inside. If you took out all the air from inside the balloons, the structure wouldn't be able to hold its shape.

Ozger Sahin, one of the paper's authors, said

"When we take a walk in the woods, we think of the trees and plants around us as typical solids. This research shows that we should really think of those trees and plants as towers of water holding sugars and proteins in place. It's really water's world."

And the great thing about this discovery (and one of the reasons to support its validity) is that thinking about hydration solids this way makes the math so so so much easier. Before this, if you wanted to calculate how water interacts with organic matter, you would need advanced computer simulations. Now, there are simple equations that you can do in your head. Being able to calculate a material's properties using basic physics principles is a really big deal, because so far we have only been able to do that with gasses (PV=nRT anyone?). Expanding that to a group that encompasses 50-90% of the biological world around us is huge.

Photographs of the Saturn V rocket by Dave Wilson, 2014

Deniz Burnham

A former NASA intern, Deniz Burnham started her career as an engineer on an oil rig in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and went on to lead operations on drilling rigs in Canada, Ohio, and Texas. https://go.nasa.gov/3wDpfBo

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From a million miles away, NASA captures Moon crossing face of Earth. Credit: NASA/NOAA