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- Terrestrial bodies: a flawless snowflake and a new interstellar "guest" in the Solar System
Terrestrial bodies: a flawless snowflake and a new interstellar "guest" in the Solar System
A new interstellar "guest" visited the solar system, and in Russia, physicists have studied how to grow the perfect snowflake. In addition, Russian scientists have come up with a way to read a 3D map of atoms in a material, and in the laboratory, for the first time in the world, they have recorded how particles exchange energy over long distances without touching each other. Geneticists have discovered how bats protect themselves from DNA damage during hibernation, which will help to find new ways to protect humans from viruses. The most interesting science and technology news of the week can be found in the Izvestia article.
Microbes in the intestines of bats will protect against DNA damage
In most animals exposed to hibernation, DNA repair systems are blunted during this period. As a result, they become vulnerable to viruses that embed their harmful genome into the DNA of the host organism. However, bats have developed a mechanism that protects them from this threat. In this case, their allies were intestinal bacteria, scientists from the Don State Technical University found out.
The researchers studied the red—headed evening bat, a common European bat, and took samples of intestinal bacteria from sleeping and active individuals. It turned out that some microorganisms in the intestines of sleeping bats are more active in producing substances that protect DNA strands from damage. For example, breaks.
— This means that during hibernation, bacteria help animal cells avoid damage to their genetic material. The most effective "defenders" were Citrobacter freundii and Lactococcus garvieae," said Alexey Ermakov, project manager and Director of the Institute of Living Systems at DSTU.
The discovery is important for understanding how bats carry dozens of viruses, but they hardly get sick themselves. This, in turn, will help to find ways to rid people of dangerous infections caused by bats, he explained.
The secret of the "perfect" snowflake has been discovered in Russia
Scientists from Ural Federal University have compiled a database on all terrestrial and space experiments, where they studied the formation of snowflakes. The study showed that in the atmosphere of the planet, gravity, air currents, temperature differences and other factors "put pressure" on the growing ice crystal.
As a result, the shape of snowflakes, despite the well-established opinion, turns out to be uneven and asymmetrical. In orbit, where there is much less interference, the snowflakes will turn out to be more predictable in shape.
— To describe the growth of such crystals, we applied theory and various calculation methods. This allowed us to determine the growth rate of the tip of the dendrite (the "ray" of a snowflake) and the radius of its tip, depending on the experimental conditions," explained Dmitry Alexandrov, professor at the UrFU Department of Theoretical and Mathematical Physics.
He admitted that scientists are not yet able to fully control the development of ice crystals. To achieve this, it is necessary, for example, to find out the stability of growth modes or to understand how and when the main "branches" have lateral processes. When the answers are found, this knowledge can be put into practice. This includes creating new materials with an "ideal" structure.
Physicists have learned how to create 3D maps of atoms in a material
Specialists from the National Research Nuclear University "MEPhI" have created an installation that allows you to "disassemble" various materials into atoms and build a 3D map of the elements they consist of.
The device uses laser pulses to affect the samples and vaporize them one or two atoms at a time, then the type of chemical elements is determined by mass spectroscopy. After that, the computer processes the data and builds a model that can contain hundreds of millions of atoms.
— The properties of materials are largely determined by their structure. Especially at the nanoscale. The significance of the development is that it provides a tool for controlling properties on this scale," Sergey Rogozhkin, one of the developers, Deputy head of the Department of Physics of Extreme States of Matter at the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI, explained to Izvestia.
For example, in a nuclear reactor, harmful defects can occur at the most microscopic level under the influence of high temperatures and radiation, making the body fragile. To "cure" them, you need to find the cause, the scientist noted. The proposed method allows you to do this. The device will also help create new materials by borrowing effective structures from wildlife.
Particle flows without collisions will help create a new type of artificial "stars"
In the universe, the most powerful events are accompanied by the appearance of collisionless streams. This is the name given to the movement of charged particles (electrons and ions) in a plasma, in which they almost do not collide, but transfer energy over long distances and interact with each other.
Such waves can be observed during solar flares, star birth, supernova explosions, or black hole collisions. The particle densities in these streams are small, and the energies are enormous. Scientists from the A.V. Gaponov-Grekhov Institute of Applied Physics have recreated similar conditions using a petawatt PEARL laser (1 HTp — 1015 W).
This is a unique complex, the ultrashort pulse of which is a thousand times stronger than the power of all Earth's power plants. With its help, the researchers launched two ultrafast plasma jet streams towards each other. Each of them formed a powerful magnetic field.
But when the jets met, these fields did not penetrate each other, as happens with less powerful impulses, but "hung", almost touching the boundaries. At the same time, the plasma began to spread out to the sides, as if on glass. This new type of interaction was recorded by scientists in the laboratory for the first time in the world.
The discovery, firstly, sheds light on the mechanisms of energy transfer in space. And secondly, it will help to create a new type of thermonuclear reactors — artificial "suns" — installations in which thermonuclear fusion takes place — reactions similar to those that occur inside stars. In the new devices, plasma will be held by controlling collisionless particle flows, rather than magnetic fields, as they try to do in modern thermonuclear reactors.
The fourth known interstellar object visited the solar system
In Hawaii (USA), Pan-STARRS panoramic survey and rapid response system telescopes have registered an object that may turn out to be the fourth interstellar "guest" in the Solar System. It received the temporary designation P22IbY0. The value of the eccentricity of its orbit is about 1.26, which indicates that it will leave the Solar System in the future.
As noted by Russian astronomer Gennady Borisov, the object is moving in an open orbit, which confirms its interstellar origin. A body that moves along such a trajectory will one day approach the central object, and then go to infinity, never returning. It is expected that the guest will pass the center of the Solar System and, having flown in May 2027 in the vicinity of Jupiter, will again move beyond the sphere of gravity of our star.
The scientist noted that the official confirmation of the object's status is delayed. Nevertheless, it was included in the "comet" section of the Minor Planet Center, an international organization that collects and systematizes observational data on small celestial bodies of the Solar System — dwarf planets, asteroids and comets.
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