A team of researchers with the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science and The University of Tokyo, both in Japan, has found a way to force a metal to be a superconductor by cooling it very quickly. In their paper published on the open access site, Science Advances, the group describes their process and how well it worked.
Scientists around the world continue to seek a material that behaves as a superconductor at room temperature—such a material would be extremely valuable because it would have zero electrical resistance. Because of that, it would not increase in heat as electricity passed through it, nor lose energy. Scientists have known that cooling some materials to very cold temperatures causes them to be superconductive. They have also known that some metals fail to do so because they enter a “competing state.” In this new effort, the researchers in Japan have found a way to get one such non-cooperative metal to enter a superconductive state anyway—and to stay that way for over a week.
If you’re following the global effort to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, you may notice a lot of people are assuming they’ll have access to low- or zero-emission hydrogen. Thing is, most H2 today is made from fossil fuels, and H2 production dumps 830 megatons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year, according to the International Energy Agency. Eric Lopato of Carnegie Mellon University is one of the chemists looking to change that. With advisor Stefan Bernhard, Lopato is investigating iridium-based compounds that can split water into H2 and O2 using sunlight. Various organic groups, called ligands, attached to the iridium core produce the range of colors seen in these 1-ml vials, a result of the unique way each compound interacts with light. — Craig Bettenhausen
The fact that tarbosaurus, an apex predator, was first shown resting in the sun, and then only once again peacefully drinking from a watering hole is so unbelievably important to me. The most ferocious thing it did that whole episode was lazily snap at a velociraptor when it disturbed its nap.
Absolutely one of my favourite things about prehistoric planet is how it completely subverts/ignores popular dinosaur documentary tropes
if mononykus has a thousand fans I am one of them. if mononykus has one fan it’s me. if mononykus has no fans then I’m dead. if the world is against mononykus then I am against the world
