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IMAGE: Analysis of the first super slow motion recordings of upward flashes suggests a possible explanation for the formation of luminous structures after electrical discharges split in the atmosphere view more
Credit: INPE
Researchers at Brazil s National Space Research Institute (INPE), in partnership with colleagues in the United States, United Kingdom and South Africa, have recorded for the first time the formation and branching of luminous structures by lightning strikes.
Analyzing images captured by a super slow motion camera, they discovered why lightning strikes bifurcate and sometimes then form luminous structures interpreted by the human eye as flickers.
The study was supported by São Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP. An article outlining its results is published in
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Atomic nuclei are held together by the strong interaction between neutrons and protons. About ten percent of all known nuclei are stable. Starting from these stable isotopes, nuclei become increasingly unstable as neutrons are added or removed, until neutrons can no longer bind to the nucleus and drip out. This limit of existence, the so-called neutron dripline , has so far been discovered experimentally only for light elements up to neon. Understanding the neutron dripline and the structure of neutron-rich nuclei also plays a key role in the research program for the future accelerator facility FAIR at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt.
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People worldwide want their coffee to be both satisfying and reasonably priced. To meet these standards, roasters typically use a blend of two types of beans, arabica and robusta. But, some use more of the cheaper robusta than they acknowledge, as the bean composition is difficult to determine after roasting. Now, researchers reporting in ACS
Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry have developed a new way to assess exactly what s in that cup of joe.
Coffee blends can have good quality and flavor. However, arabica beans are more desirable than other types, resulting in a higher market value for blends containing a higher proportion of this variety. In some cases, producers dilute their blends with the less expensive robusta beans, yet that is hard for consumers to discern. Recently, methods involving chromatography or spectroscopy were developed for coffee authentication, but most of these are labor- and time-intensive, or use chloroform for the extraction, which lim
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VIDEO: (90 second, 9.5MB video) On April 15 2020, a giant wave of X-rays and gamma rays lasting only a fraction of a second swept across the solar system, triggering. view more
Credit: Animation: NASA s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA/GESTAR).
Video: Therese van Wyk, University of Johannesburg.
Earth gets blasted by mild short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) most days. But sometimes a giant flare like GRB 200415A arrives at our galaxy, sweeping along energy that dwarfs our sun. In fact, the most powerful explosions in the universe are gamma-ray bursts.
Now scientists have shown that GRB 200415A came from another possible source for short GRBs. It erupted from a very rare, powerful neutron star called a magnetar.
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IMAGE: Tuned photon-magnon interactions. The team s device is in the center. Arrow indicates direction of spin excitation for magnons. The purplish shroud represents reflectance measurements. The separated darker lines on each. view more
Credit: Argonne National Laboratory.
Scientists tame photon-magnon interaction.
Working with theorists in the University of Chicago s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, researchers in the U.S. Department of Energy s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have achieved a scientific control that is a first of its kind. They demonstrated a novel approach that allows real-time control of the interactions between microwave photons and magnons, potentially leading to advances in electronic devices and quantum signal processing.