When Three Massive Objects Meet In Space, They Influence Each Other Through Gravity In Ways That Evolve

Saturn by NASA (2019

Gigapixel Supernova

Eleven thousand years ago, a star exploded in the constellation Vela, blowing off its outer layers in a spectacular shock wave that remains visible today. Today’s image is a piece of a 1.3-gigapixel composite image of the supernova remnant. (Image credit: CTIO/NOIRLab/DOE/NSF/AURA; via Colossal) Read the full article

Nichole Ayers

Nichole Ayers was born in San Diego but considers Colorado her home. A major in the U.S. Air Force, Ayers led the first-ever all-woman F-22 formation in combat in 2019. https://go.nasa.gov/3IqAyzw

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The Pleiades

Solar eclipse shadows

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.

NASA’s new images of Uranus captured by James Webb Space Telescope (2024)

Do You Love the Color of the Sun?

Get dazzled by the true spectrum of solar beauty. From fiery reds to cool blues, explore the vibrant hues of the Sun in a mesmerizing color order. The images used to make this gradient come from our Solar Dynamics Observatory. Taken in a variety of wavelengths, they give scientists a wealth of data about the Sun. Don't miss the total solar eclipse crossing North America on April 8, 2024. (It's the last one for 20 years!) Set a reminder to watch with us.

YouTube

2024 Total Solar Eclipse: Through the Eyes of NASA (Official Broadcast)

Watch live with us as a total solar eclipse moves across North America on April 8, 2024, traveling through Mexico, across the United States

Space.com

Scientists find slowest spinning 'radio neutron star' — it breaks all the dead-star rules

ASKAP J1935+2148 will have other dead stars turning in their graves.

Astronomers have discovered the slowest spinning radio wave-blasting neutron star ever seen; it takes almost an hour to complete a full rotation.  That may sound rather fast, but these dead stars are known to spin so rapidly that some experience 700 full turns every second. Even the most leisurely of the about 3,000 radio-emitting neutron stars, or "pulsars," discovered so far complete a full rotation in a second or so. This ultra-leisurely neutron star, however, designated ASKAP J1935+2148 and located 16,000 light-years from Earth, is emitting radio light at a rate too slow to even fit with current theories describing the behavior of these dense stellar remnants.

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Extracting the Soul of a Violin

midjourney / Darius Greene / ghost owl attic