Science Saturday 06/29
Welcome to Science Saturday. Let’s begin.
Science Alert: Metallic Hydrogen
This week, a French team of scientists announced that they believe they’ve created metallic hydrogen for the first time. This was achieved by squeezing a small sample of hydrogen between two ultra-hard diamonds in a press. The measurements that indicated metallic hydrogen were taken when the press was exerting a pressure of approximately 425 GPa, more than 4 million times the pressure of Earth’s atmosphere at sea level. Theoretically, Metallic hydrogen would be a nearly perfect conductor, and would have many uses in energy transfer and computing.
ScienceNews: Heat Wave
Europe has been suffering through an intense heat wave this week. Science News interviewed Karsten Haustein, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford in England, to get a professional’s opinion on whether or not climate change is causing the excessive heat. The result? Extreme heat waves are becoming more common and happening more frequently all over the world. It’s highly likely that global climate change is responsible for this.
NASA: Dragonfly
NASA has announced their next destination in the solar system: Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. Titan is thought to be quite similar to ancient Earth, at a time before life developed on the planet. NASA will send dragonfly, a drone-like machine to study various aspects of the gas giant’s large companion. Hopefully, this mission will give us more insight into our own world’s history, as well as Titans’s
Space.com: Marsquakes
Recently, NASA’s InSight lander on mars detected a series of shallow tremors on Mars. While the cause of these Marsquakes is unknown, one theory suggests that these may be similar to the Earthquakes experienced in Oklahoma due to Fracking. This would mean that the marsquakes are an indicator of water below the Martian surface.
Science Magazine: Tracing FRBs
Every once in a while, our observation equipment here on Earth will detect a very strong radio frequency originating from somewhere in space. These are known as Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) and they likely originate from distant supernovas, neutron stars, black holes, or y’know, aliens. This week, observers were able to trace one back to a galaxy more than 3.5 billion light years away from Earth. This is only the second time an FRB has been traced to its origin successfully, and only the 85th FRB that has been detected.
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading, and enjoy the weekend.
-Sal
