Science news of the day thread.

[Svartalf]

intgeresting find, just want to know exactly what's the cost compared to more usual kinds, and the availablility of the necessary compounds etc

[macdoc]

Far too early - it's a sci-fi breakthrough tho ....hard to imagine malleable ceramics.

[rainbow]

Far too early - it's a sci-fi breakthrough tho ....hard to imagine malleable ceramics.

Not really, as long as you control the eta phase.

[macdoc]

Well they think it is and so do I ..you are welcome to your opinion....unsupported as it is.

[Brian Peacock]

Now now ladies

[macdoc]

yowser

This image released by NASA on Sept. 6, 2022, shows the Tarantula Nebula star-forming region, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. Stretching 340 light-years across, Webb's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) displays the Tarantula Nebula star-forming region in a new light, including tens of thousands of never-before-seen young stars that were previously shrouded in cosmic dust.
CANADA
‘X-ray specs’: Canadian scientists starry-eyed over James Webb space telescope
BW
By Bob WeberThe Canadian Press
Mon., Oct. 10, 2022timer3 min. read

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/202 ... tar_canada

[Brian Peacock]

Cold Fusion, just around the corner for nearly 50 years, nearly, almost, but perhaps never...

[macdoc]

wow - drop dead gorgeous micro-photos.

Image of Distinction: Grains of sand from Alaska #

Xinpei Zhang, Ya'an, China

many more
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2022/ ... ld/671696/

[Sean Hayden]

they always put out great pictures.

[Brian Peacock]

Scientists have pinpointed a range of commonly used medicines that could be repurposed to treat people suffering from obesity and diabetes.

The medicines – to be outlined at the International Congress on Obesity in Melbourne this weekend – include treatments for stomach ulcers and heart rhythm disorders and were identified using sophisticated computer programs.

“New treatments with high activity and specificity are urgently needed to tackle a pandemic of chronic illness associated with type 2 diabetes and obesity,” said Professor Murray Cairns of the University of Newcastle, in New South Wales, Australia.

“Our technology harnesses genetically informed precision medicine to identify and target new treatments for these complex disorders.”

Drugs chosen as potential obesity treatments include baclofen, a muscle relaxant, and carfilzomib, a medicine used in chemotherapy. In the case of potential diabetes treatments, the researcher identified palbociclib, which is used to treat breast cancer, and cardiac glycosides, which are used to treat heart failure and heart rhythm disorders...

https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... scientists

[Svartalf]

If reasonably safe ways to help me lose weight are available, I'd like to know... I'd be ready to go the amphetamine way, but I'd rather something less fraught.

[rainbow]

If reasonably safe ways to help me lose weight are available, I'd like to know... I'd be ready to go the amphetamine way, but I'd rather something less fraught.

Eat only fresh fruit.

[Svartalf]

Unlike you lucky African junglefolk, I don't have them growing on trees where I can get at them, and they are effing expensive... if healthy food were more affordable than junk, there'd be fewer overweight people around

[rainbow]

Unlike you lucky African junglefolk, I don't have them growing on trees where I can get at them, and they are effing expensive... if healthy food were more affordable than junk, there'd be fewer overweight people around

Try Rue Montorgueil, quite reasonable.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Astronomers have given a splendid explanation of the rings around the star WR140 observed in an early release from the James Webb Space Telescope. The papers linked are open access.


Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STSCI, JPL-CALTECH


'Alien megastructures? Cosmic thumbprint? What’s behind a James Webb telescope photo that had even astronomers stumped'

In July, a puzzling new image of a distant extreme star system surrounded by surreal concentric geometric rungs had even astronomers scratching their heads. The picture, which looks like a kind of “cosmic thumbprint”, came from the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s newest flagship observatory.

The internet immediately lit up with theories and speculation. Some on the wild fringe even claimed it as evidence for “alien megastructures” of unknown origin.

Luckily, our team at the University of Sydney had already been studying this very star, known as WR140, for more than 20 years – so we were in prime position to use physics to interpret what we were seeing.

Our model, published in Nature, explains the strange process by which the star produces the dazzling pattern of rings seen in the Webb image (itself now published in Nature Astronomy).

WR140 is what's called a Wolf-Rayet star. These are among the most extreme stars known. In a rare but beautiful display, they can sometimes emit a plume of dust into space stretching hundreds of times the size of our entire Solar System.

The radiation field around Wolf-Rayets is so intense, dust and wind are swept outwards at thousands of kilometres per second, or about 1% the speed of light. While all stars have stellar winds, these overachievers drive something more like a stellar hurricane.

Critically, this wind contains elements such as carbon that stream out to form dust.

WR140 is one of a few dusty Wolf-Rayet stars found in a binary system. It is in orbit with another star, which is itself a massive blue supergiant with a ferocious wind of its own.

Only a handful of systems like WR140 are known in our whole galaxy, yet these select few deliver the most unexpected and beautiful gift to astronomers. Dust doesn't simply stream out from the star to form a hazy ball as might be expected; instead it forms only in a cone-shaped area where the winds from the two stars collide.

Because the binary star is in constant orbital motion, this shock front must also rotate. The sooty plume then naturally gets wrapped into a spiral, in the same way as the jet from a rotating garden sprinkler.