This Week In Science

This Week In Science

1. CO₂ could be removed to decrease atmospheric levels below pre-Industrial Revolution levels within 10 years.

 Researchers have found a way to pluck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turn it into a useful product – carbon nanofibers. They say, using their method across an area 10% the size of the Sahara Desert, enough CO₂ could be removed to decrease atmospheric levels below pre-Industrial Revolution levels within 10 years. The research was presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Boston this week, and published online in Nano Letters.

The process involves using two electrodes in a bath of molten lithium carbonates at high temperature, 750°C (1,380°F). The CO₂ dissolves when subjected to both the heat and a direct current through the electrodes, made from nickel and steel. High-yield (80 to 100%) carbon nanofibers will then build up on the steel electrode and can be removed. What’s more, there are no waste products; aside from carbon, the only other product of the reaction is oxygen.
“We can directly convert CO₂ through our process to a useful commodity: carbon nanofibers,” lead researcher Dr. Stuart Licht of George Washington University in Washington D.C. told IFLScience. Carbon nanofibers could be used for all sorts of things, including building construction and batteries with a greater storage capacity. Making them has proved costly, though; this research could provide a cheaper alternative, which has the rather pleasing side effect of removing CO₂ from the air.
The system can be powered using an extremely efficient solar-energy system. It focuses the Sun's rays on a solar cell, and uses the same sunlight to generate heat. For this reason, somewhere hot and sunny like the Sahara Desert or Mojave Desert would be perfect for a large-scale version of the process.

^{Shown are carbon nanofibers, made by removing CO₂ from the air. Stuart Licht, Ph.D.}

Turning the CO₂ into useful carbon nanofibers, and not just removing it from the atmosphere, is especially important. According to Licht, carbon nanofibers sell for about $25,000 (£16,000) a ton – compared to $40 (£25) a ton for coal and $100 (£65) for graphite. This is of course partially because there is not a huge demand for carbon nanofibers yet – but if their potential can be realized, this research could be huge.
“The exciting ramification is that the carbon nanofibers are quite valuable, and this should provide significant impetus to start scaling up and building these plants,” said Licht. This prototype system is estimated to produce a ton of carbon nanofiber at $1,000 (£640) – giving returns of 25:1 in the current market. If someone were to scale it up, it would not only be beneficial to the environment – but would be financially viable as well.
“Climate change is a massive problem,” said Licht. “Greenhouse gases pose a very serious global crisis.” So, is this a solution to global warming? “The system scales beautifully,” said Licht. “I think this is a viable path, although I think we would like to see it in much larger demonstration modes first.”
If the system were to be scaled up, Licht thinks that it could have a drastic effect on atmospheric CO₂. "We calculate that with a physical area less than 10 percent the size of the Sahara Desert, our process could remove enough CO2 to decrease atmospheric levels to those of the pre-industrial revolution within 10 years," he said in a statement.
It should be noted that the system, in its present form, is experimental. Whether it truly could be scaled up to industrial levels has yet to be seen. And it’s probably best to caution against seemingly simply solutions to global warming; drastic reductions in our CO₂ emissions are still needed, and we shouldn’t rely on schemes like this just yet to solve the crisis. But there’s no denying that the research is promising.

2.Human Brain Grown In A Lab Could Be Most Complete Yet

Scientists may have taken yet another step toward growing a fully-formed human brain in the lab. Even though it is only the size of a pencil eraser, this little brain has a mountain of potential uses for future medical research. The new development was announced at the Military Health System Research Symposium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
There have been other miniature brains developed in the lab in the past. However, Rene Anand of Ohio State University, who presented the work, claimed that this was the most complete model yet. The brain was grown from the skin cells of an adult human and, incredibly, boasts 99% of the genes found in a human fetal brain. It also has identifiable structures such as a cerebral hemisphere, spinal cord and even a retina. (See picture below). The main component missing is a circulatory system – veins and arteries that carry blood.
“It not only looks like the developing brain, its diverse cell types express nearly all genes like a brain,” commented Anand. “We’ve struggled for a long time trying to solve complex brain disease problems that cause tremendous pain and suffering. The power of this brain model bodes very well for human health because it gives us better and more relevant options to test and develop therapeutics other than rodents.”
Although the brain took about 15 weeks to grow, it more closely resembles a five-week-old fetus brain. Even being able to grow a brain to this early stage of human development could be an extremely valuable tool for scientists studying developmental diseases. Tests could check how tissue growth at this early stage is affected by conditions such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's and even trial drugs to combat their effects.
Anand emphasized the importance of his lab-grown brain for the future of this sort of research. “Genomic science infers there are up to 600 genes that give rise to autism, but we are stuck there. Mathematical correlations and statistical methods are insufficient to in themselves identify causation. You need an experimental system – you need a human brain.”
Obtaining skin cells to grow a brain like this is the simplest part of the procedure. To turn these into a tiny brain, Anand had to prompt the cells to transform into pluripotent cells, or those that have the ability to grow into any other type of cell. Once induced, these cells are then encouraged to become neural cells.
“We provide the best possible environment and conditions that replicate what’s going on in utero to support the brain,” explained Anand when discussing how to influence the development of neural cells.
Although this all seems very promising, researchers have commented that it is difficult to assess Anand's claims without more access to his data, which is currently unpublished while Anand waits for a patent for his technique to go through.
Zameel Cader, a consultant neurologist at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, told The Guardian that scientists need to be wary. “When someone makes such an extraordinary claim as this, you have to be cautious until they are willing to reveal their data.”

3.Wormhole Illusion Causes Magnetic Field To Move Through Space Undetected

Photo credit: An illustration of a wormhole in action. edobric/Shutterstock.

Scientists have developed a magnetic system that mimics the behavior of a wormhole – theorized to allow space-time to be bent, and vast distances to be traveled in an instant – but it absolutely is not an actual wormhole, so don’t get too excited. However, what they did, which was to make a propagating magnetic field invisible, is actually very interesting. You can get excited again.
The research, by a team from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), was published in the journal Scientific Reports. They describe how they created a small sphere about 45 millimeters (1.8 inches) across, made of a spherical ferromagnetic (one that can become magnetized) surface, a spherical superconducting layer, and an inner ferromagnetic sheet wound in a spiral. The superconducting layer was made of superconducting strips glued to a sphere, and the entire device needed to be submerged in liquid nitrogen for the superconductor to work. The magnetic field was supplied at one end by a current passing through a coil.
When the magnetic field entered the sphere at one end, the researchers showed how it would appear at the other end as an isolated monopolar-like field – but within the sphere itself, there was no trace of the magnetic field. The dual-layered design was responsible for making the magnetic field invisible; the attraction and repulsion of the magnetic field was cancelled out, making it undetectable. “Our wormhole transfers the magnetic field from one point in space to another through a path that is magnetically undetectable,” the researchers wrote in their paper.
“It disappears in one point and reappears in a different point, as if it were travelling through another dimension,” lead researcher Alvaro Sanchez added to IFLScience.

^{Shown is an illustration of the field entering the sphere, left, and passing out, right, like a "wormhole." Jordi Prat-Camps and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.}
Why is this important? It means that the magnetic field could travel from one side of the sphere to the other without producing any noticeable effects. If you placed a magnet inside the sphere, it would not be influenced by this propagating field at all. Of course, in this case the magnetic field is actually very much there in the sphere – it’s just not detectable. In an actual theoretical wormhole, an object would disappear at one point in space-time and reappear at another. So this isn’t quite the real deal.
“It can be said to be like an illusion,” said Sanchez. “It’s not an actual wormhole, it’s not creating a real path in space-time that connects two points. It’s a magnetic field that achieves a similar effect.”
On the possible applications for the research, Sanchez said it could be useful for magnetic resonance imagers (MRIs) in medicine. “One could perhaps use this kind of wormhole to do simultaneous imaging,” he said. “You could have three detectors in one MRI scan to take images of the knee, liver and head. They would not interfere, because their magnetic fields would be invisible.”
The team now wants to study the same effect using different geometries. For example, they might try and use a cylinder instead of a sphere to recreate the effect, to highlight some of the more practical applications for the technique.

4.New Brain-Inspired Chip Can Perform 46 BILLION Synaptic Operations Per Second

Photo credit: Chip board. IBM

IBM researchers have been working on building a chip since 2008 that works like the neurons inside your brain. And they’ve just announced an exciting breakthrough. Scientists have developed a system that is made up of 48 million artificial nerve cells, which is about what you'd find in the brain of a small rodent.
The team has been working with DARPA’s Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) for several years now. They showcased the significant progress they’ve made with their TrueNorth system during a three-week educational boot camp for researchers and government officials. According to Wired, the TrueNorth system is a network of chips that has 48 million artificial nerve cells, with each chip containing 1 million artificial cells each. These chips are “neuromorphic,” which means they’re designed to behave like organic brains.
IBM researchers suggest that traditional computers work like the left side of our brain, similar to a fast number-crunching calculator. They compare TrueNorth to right side of our brain, likening the system to "slow, sensory, pattern recognizing machines.”
IBM researchers note that they “have not built the brain, or any brain” but have built “a computer that is inspired by the brain.” The TrueNorth system has been developed to run deep-learning algorithms, which is similar to the AI technology used for Facebook's facial recognition or Skype’s instant translate mode.
The key difference is that IBM’s chips are a lot smaller, use less electricity and are cheaper to run. The TrueNorth system can therefore insert this AI technology into a much smaller package, such as a phone or wristwatch. TrueNorth’s 5.4-billion transistor chip uses 70 milliwatts of power, Wired reports. In comparison, a standard Intel processor with 1.4 billion transistors uses about 35 to 140 watts.
“What does a neuro-synaptic architecture give us? It lets us do things like image classification at a very, very low power consumption,” Brian Van Essen, a computer scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, told Wired. “It lets us tackle new problems in new environments.”
It will take several more years before the chip will be available on the market, but according to IBM its unique architecture could solve “a wide class of problems from vision, audition, and multi-sensory fusion, and has the potential to revolutionize the computer industry by integrating brain-like capability into devices where computation is constrained by power and speed.”

5.CERN Symmetry Measurement Confirms Matter And Antimatter Are Mirrors Of Each Other

Photo credit: The ALICE instrument, shown, was used to make the discovery. A Saba/CERN.

In physics, symmetry is a big deal, specifically with regards to matter and antimatter. If both were created in equal quantities in the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, why has matter prevailed, but antimatter (which has the same mass but opposite charge) has not?
This is a continuing problem in physics, and while several models have been proposed, none have solved it. This latest research adds another piece to the puzzle.
Using the ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) instrument at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) at CERN, a team of scientists has confirmed the prediction that matter and antimatter are an exact mirror of each other. In particular, the mass difference of light nuclei and their antinuclei were found to be almost identical. In short: They should completely annihilate each other. Another study, using CERN’s BASE (Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment) instrument, came to the same conclusion last week.
While the result, published in Nature Physics, is welcome for providing further proof that matter and antimatter are opposites, it complicates things when it comes to understanding the cosmos.
Physicists have been trying to work out if all physical laws show a type of symmetry called CPT (charge, parity and time reversal) symmetry, or invariance. The three tenets of this are that a particle has a reversed charge, is replaced by a mirror image and undergoes a reversal of time in its antimatter form. “The key here is all fundamental forces known today must fulfil CPT invariance,” Constantinos Loizides of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in California, who works on the ALICE instrument and was involved in the research, told IFLScience. “They are the same when applied to an antiparticle instead of a particle, traversing in a mirrored space backwards instead of forwards in time.”

In this particular research, CPT invariance was found to hold true for deuterons and antideuterons, and helium-3 and antihelium-3 nuclei – within the uncertainties of the measurement. These light nuclei were formed in the ALICE instrument by smashing lead nuclei together at high energies. By measuring how long it took for the resulting light nuclei to travel to a detector, their mass-to-charge ratios could be worked out, which were found to be the same for the nuclei and antinuclei. In addition, the binding energies holding together all the nuclei were deduced to be the same across the matter/antimatter pairs
These results, which are up to 100 times more precise than previous similar measurements, confirmed CPT invariance. Had CPT not been true for these lighter nuclei, it would have clearly hinted at unknown physics beyond the Standard Model – which explains most of subatomic physics as we know it to date.
The Standard Model is limited – it cannot explain dark matter, for example – so physicists have been trying to create new models to explain these more exotic phenomena. While not unexpected, this measurement constricts the possible theories that could explain what’s going on in the universe beyond the Standard Model.
And such measurements may have also implications for the Big Bang. “How is it possible, when every law in nature is almost equal between particles and anti-particles, that matter was left from the Big Bang?” said Loizides.
But, as Loizides notes, this is just one small piece in the much larger cosmic puzzle. “It will take a lot of measurements to understand better what made the universe as we see it today,” he said. "So, it's not expected that a single measurement can make an incredible difference."

6.Record-Breaking Superconductor Works At Highest Temperature Yet

Photo credit: Image concept of a cooled superconductor levitating a magnet. ktsdesign/Shutterstock.

The dream of superconductors – materials that transmit electricity with no resistance – at room temperature is inching closer toward reality. Traditionally, superconductors need to be cooled to almost absolute zero (–273.15°C, −459.67°F) for their zero-resistance effects to be felt. However, scientists are slowly pushing this limit to higher temperatures, and this newest method works at the highest temperature yet: –70°C (–94°F). This is still extremely chilly for humans, but for superconductors the temperature is positively balmy.
This superconducting material, developed by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, is made out of something that might leave a bad taste in your mouth: hydrogen sulfide, commonly associated with the smell of rotten eggs. It was crushed in a diamond anvil with up to 1.6 million times atmospheric pressure to turn it into a superconducting material.
And the research might mean the start of "spring" for the progress of superconductors. In fact, the temperature at which the material displays superconductive properties is nearly twenty degrees warmer than the lowest recorded natural temperature on Earth: –89.2°C (–129°F) in Antarctica. The nearest high temperature for a functioning superconductor was –110°C (–166°F), but the new material smashes this record. You can see these "cool" results published in Nature.
A superconductor is a material that loses all of its electrical resistance when it is cooled down. This is because the natural kinetic motion of warm atoms in the superconductor disrupts the flow of electrons and, therefore, the electricity flow. However, when these atoms are cold, they stop vibrating around quite as vigorously, and electrons are free to zoom along the material. Superconductivity is a desirable property because it reduces input energy for electricity being wasted as heat. The new material isn't a superconductor in its own right, but has the properties of one.
Now that scientists are starting to produce these low-resistance conditions at warmer and warmer temperatures, the technology becomes more accessible to wider and more commercial fields. A common example is in computing. Computer components with low electrical resistance would make computers faster and, therefore, more powerful. It's completely unrealistic to consider using computers cooled down to near absolute zero, but –70°C starts to become feasible. We might need to wait for an even warmer superconductor before we start seeing them in our laptops though.
Christoph Heil, from the Graz University of Technology in Austria, who was not part of the study, believes that it is the immense pressure that "locks" the otherwise jiggling atoms into place. This may be the reason that the compound has similar properties to a low-temperature superconductor at higher temperatures.
Another theory explaining the low resistance in the material involves something called "Cooper pairs", which are created when a superconductor cools down. This is where the material pairs up its electrons in a sort of long-distance bond. The result is that the electrons flow without resistance through the material. The hydrogen atoms in this compound material provide the perfect platform to form strong Cooper pairs at temperatures greater than ever before.
Admittedly, further research will be needed to confirm the findings. But in the meantime, this result has rustled up a lot of interest in the scientific community. The next step will be to repeat the results, and maybe to explore other avenues for warm, superconducting compounds, such as hydrogen mixed with platinum, potassium or selenium.

7.Oldest Modern-Looking Human Hand Bone Could Shed Light On Our Evolution

Photo credit: The bone is thought to have come from a little finger. Jason Heaton.

At what point in human history did we switch from tree-swingers to ground-dwellers? A new discovery published in Nature Communications could help to answer this question, and also provide further information on how we began to use stone tools.
Humans and chimpanzees are believed to have shared a common ancestor up to 13 million years ago, but the specifics regarding our separate evolution remain a bit of a mystery. One key tool in working this out has been studying the hands of humans and chimps, to see how they have differed over time.
This latest discovery by a team from the Institute of Evolution in Africa (IDEA), based in Madrid, reveals the earliest modern-human-like hand bone known of so far, dating back 1.84 million years. It was found at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. The bone is thought to be from an unidentified modern-looking hominin (human ancestor) lineage, similar to Homo erectus, that originated in East Africa and lived alongside other ancient hominins called Paranthropus boisei and Homo habilis. But this hand is more similar to modern humans than any other.
Called Olduvai Hominin (OH) 86, the finger bone (phalanx) suggests that human hands took their present form early in our evolution – but have barely changed since. It is thought to be from the little finger of a hand, and its importance is due to the bone being straight. Older hand bones have been discovered, but they are curved – and thus more suited for living in trees. “The discovery shows the species was 100% committed to living on the ground,” lead researcher Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo from IDEA told IFLScience.
 
It is thought that human ancestors started to use tools around 2.6 million years ago (although some research pushes that back to 3.3 million years), so one would expect hands to have adapted by then. Finding evidence for this, though, has been difficult, making this discovery of great significance.
Its similarity to modern human hands also supports previous research that our hands are relatively primitive. “If we judge from this fossil, we can basically say in almost two million years at least, the human finger has not evolved at all,” said Domínguez-Rodrigo.
Evolving straight hand bones likely allowed our ancestors to use their fingers to more easily grip objects, alongside the evolution of opposable and elongated thumbs.
To further solve the mystery of how human hands evolved, Domínguez-Rodrigo said the team needed to find more bones from the same hand, or another older than two million years, to understand when the bones began to lose their curvature.

7.IceCube Observatory Confirms The Discovery Of Cosmic Neutrinos

Photo credit: The IceCube Observatory and a representation of the detection. IceCube Collaboration.

Millions of light-years away, a star explodes as a supernova and sends a host of subatomic particles called neutrinos in all directions. One of these heads towards our Solar System and, after millions of years, this tiny neutrino enters Earth’s atmosphere and collides with an atom inside a detector below the ice of Antarctica. The detectable signal produced not only confirms the neutrino’s existence, but also indicates where it has come from.
This is the amazing process that has now been confirmed to be taking place by the IceCube Collaboration in Antarctica. Neutrinos, nearly massless high-energy particles with no charge, are known to have sources here on Earth and in the Solar System, such as the Sun. But astronomers wanted to prove that they were also created elsewhere in the universe, covering vast distances of the cosmos. Now, they have that proof – and these neutrinos could act as subatomic signposts to exotic phenomena. The results are published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
The existence of cosmic neutrinos was hinted at in 2013 when two – dubbed Bert and Ernie – were found by the IceCube Observatory. However, astronomers needed to confirm that these were definitely not coming from a source in the Solar System. So they fired up the detector again and recorded 35,000 more neutrinos. Twenty-one of these were confirmed to have an energy high enough to indicate they came from beyond the Solar System – and possibly beyond the Milky Way.
“It is sound confirmation that the discovery of cosmic neutrinos from beyond our galaxy is real,” said Albrecht Karle, a professor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a senior author on the study, in a statement.



The neutrinos were found by detecting 21 ultra high-energy muons. These are secondary particles created when neutrinos bump into other atoms. As neutrinos are almost massless, they are incredibly hard to detect aside from spotting these muons.
To detect them, the IceCube Observatory uses thousands of optical sensors beneath the ice at the South Pole. It can spot the muons because they move faster than the speed of light in a solid. Note that the speed of light isn’t being broken here – rather, light changes speed depending on what medium it is traveling through. In a vacuum it travels at its limit, but in things like glass and ice it travels slower. But muons are not limited in this way; they travel faster through matter, producing noticeable Cherenkov radiation – a light wave produced in their wake, similar to a boat moving through water.
The importance of finding the cosmic neutrinos is that they might point towards exotic phenomena in the universe. While we mentioned that they can form in supernovae, they are also thought to orginate in black holes, during star formation and elsewhere. But no single source has been found as the main culprit of neutrinos, something that might be discovered with future research.
“Cosmic neutrinos are the key to yet unexplored parts of our universe and might be able to finally reveal the origins of the highest energy cosmic rays,” said collaboration spokesperson Olga Botner of Uppsala University in Sweden in a statement. “The discovery of astrophysical neutrinos hints at the dawn of a new era in astronomy.”