(Courtesy: EHT Collaboration; Los Alamos National Laboratory)
1 When the Event Horizon Telescope imaged a black hole in 2019, what was the total mass of all the hard drives needed to store the data? A 1 kg B 50 kg C 500 kg D 2000 kg
2 In 1956 MANIAC I became the first computer to defeat a human being in chess, but because of its limited memory and power, the pawns and which other pieces had to be removed from the game? A Bishops B Knights C Queens D Rooks
(Courtesy: IOP Publishing; CERN)
3 The logic behind the Monty Hall problem, which involves a car and two goats behind different doors, is one of the cornerstones of machine learning. On which TV game show is it based? A Deal or No Deal BFamily Fortunes CLet’s Make a Deal DWheel of Fortune
4 In 2023 CERN broke which barrier for the amount of data stored on devices at the lab? A 10 petabytes (1016 bytes) B 100 petabytes (1017 bytes) C 1 exabyte (1018 bytes) D 10 exabytes (1019 bytes)
5 What was the world’s first electronic computer? A Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC) B Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer (EDVAC) C Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) D Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM)
6 What was the outcome of the chess match between astronaut Frank Poole and the HAL 9000 computer in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey? A Draw B HAL wins C Poole wins D Match abandoned
7 Which of the following physics breakthroughs used traditional machine learning methods? A Discovery of the Higgs boson (2012) B Discovery of gravitational waves (2016) C Multimessenger observation of a neutron-star collision (2017) D Imaging of a black hole (2019)
8 The physicist John Hopfield shared the 2024 Nobel Prize for Physics with Geoffrey Hinton for their work underpinning machine learning and artificial neural networks – but what did Hinton originally study? A Biology B Chemistry C Mathematics D Psychology
9 Put the following data-driven discoveries in chronological order. A Johann Balmer’s discovery of a formula computing wavelength from Anders Ångström’s measurements of the hydrogen lines B Johannes Kepler’s laws of planetary motion based on Tycho Brahe’s astronomical observations C Henrietta Swan Leavitt’s discovery of the period-luminosity relationship for Cepheid variables D Ole Rømer’s estimation of the speed of light from observations of the eclipses of Jupiter’s moon Io
10 Inspired by Alan Turing’s “Imitation Game” – in which an interrogator tries to distinguish between a human and machine – when did Joseph Weizenbaum develop ELIZA, the world’s first “chatbot”? A 1964 B 1984 C 2004 D 2024
11 What does the CERN particle-physics lab use to store data from the Large Hadron Collider? A Compact discs B Hard-disk drives C Magnetic tape D Solid-state drives
12 In preparation for the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider, CERN tested a data link to the Nikhef lab in Amsterdam in 2024 that ran at what speed? A 80 Mbps B 8 Gbps C 80 Gbps D 800 Gbps
13 When complete, the Square Kilometre Array telescope will be the world’s largest radio telescope. How many petabytes of data is it expected to archive per year? A 15 B 50 C 350 D 700
This quiz is for fun and there are no prizes. Answers will be published in April.
HELSINKI — Chinese commercial launch company iSpace has secured new funding as it prepares for a first launch of its Hyperbola-3 reusable rocket. The company, full name Beijing Interstellar Glory […]
NASA says its program to use commercial spacecraft to deliver payloads to the lunar surface is working well despite just a single fully successful landing in four attempts.
How would the climate and the environment on our planet change if an asteroid struck? Researchers at the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) at Pusan National University in South Korea have now tried to answer this question by running several impact simulations with a state-of-the-art Earth system model on their in-house supercomputer. The results show that the climate, atmospheric chemistry and even global photosynthesis would be dramatically disrupted in the three to four years following the event, due to the huge amounts of dust produced by the impact.
Beyond immediate effects such as scorching heat, earthquakes and tsunamis, an asteroid impact would have long-lasting effects on the climate because of the large quantities of aerosols and gases ejected into the atmosphere. Indeed, previous studies on the Chicxulub 10-km asteroid impact, which happened around 66 million years ago, revealed that dust, soot and sulphur led to a global “impact winter” and was very likely responsible for the dinosaurs going extinct during the Cretaceous/Paleogene period.
“This winter is characterized by reduced sunlight, because of the dust filtering it out, cold temperatures and decreased precipitation at the surface,” says Axel Timmermann, director of the ICCP and leader of this new study. “Severe ozone depletion would occur in the stratosphere too because of strong warming caused by the dust particles absorbing solar radiation there.”
These unfavourable climate conditions would inhibit plant growth via a decline in photosynthesis both on land and in the sea and would thus affect food productivity, Timmermann adds.
Something surprising and potentially positive would also happen though, he says: plankton in the ocean would recover within just six months and its abundance could even increase afterwards. Indeed, diatoms (silicate-rich algae) would be more plentiful than before the collision. This might be because the dust created by the asteroid is rich in iron, which would trigger plankton growth as it sinks into the ocean. These phytoplankton “blooms” could help alleviate emerging food crises triggered by the reduction in terrestrial productivity, at least for several years after the impact, explains Timmermann.
The effect of a “Bennu”-sized asteroid impact
In this latest study, published in Science Advances, the researchers simulated the effect of a “Bennu”-sized asteroid impact. Bennu is a so-called medium-sized asteroid with a diameter of around 500 m. This type of asteroid is more likely to impact Earth than the “planet killer” larger asteroids, but has been studied far less.
There is an estimated 0.037% chance of such an asteroid colliding with Earth in September 2182. While this probability is small, such an impact would be very serious, says Timmermann, and would lead to climate conditions similar to those observed after some of the largest volcanic eruptions in the last 100 000 years. “It is therefore important to assess the risk, which is the product of the probability and the damage that would be caused, rather than just the probability by itself,” he tells Physics World. “Our results can serve as useful benchmarks to estimate the range of environmental effects from future medium-sized asteroid collisions.”
The team ran the simulations on the IBS’ supercomputer Aleph using the Community Earth System Model Version 2 (CESM2) and the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model Version 6 (WACCM6). The simulations injected up to 400 million tonnes of dust into the stratosphere.
The climate effects of impact-dust aerosols mainly depend on their abundance in the atmosphere and how they evolve there. The simulations revealed that global mean temperatures would drop by 4° C, a value that’s comparable with the cooling estimated as a result of the Toba volcano erupting around 74 000 years ago (which emitted 2000 Tg (2×1015 g) of sulphur dioxide). Precipitation also decreased 15% worldwide and ozone dropped by a dramatic 32% in the first year following the asteroid impact.
Asteroid impacts may have shaped early human evolution
“On average, medium-sized asteroids collide with Earth about every 100 000 to 200 000 years,” says Timmermann. “This means that our early human ancestors may have experienced some of these medium-sized events. These may have impacted human evolution and even affected our species’ genetic makeup.”
The researchers admit that their model has some inherent limitations. For one, CESM2/WACCM6, like other modern climate models, is not designed and optimized to simulate the effects of massive amounts of aerosol injected into the atmosphere. Second, the researchers only focused on the asteroid colliding with the Earth’s land surface. This is obviously less likely than an impact on the ocean, because roughly 70% of Earth’s surface is covered by water, they say. “An impact in the ocean would inject large amounts of water vapour rather than climate-active aerosols such as dust, soot and sulphur into the atmosphere and this vapour needs to be better modelled – for example, for the effect it has on ozone loss,” they say.
The effect of the impact on specific regions on the planet also needs to be better simulated, the researchers add. Whether the asteroid impacts during winter or summer also needs to be accounted for since this can affect the extent of the climate changes that would occur.
Finally, as well as the dust nanoparticles investigated in this study, future work should also look at soot emissions from wildfires ignited by “impact “spherules”, and sulphur and CO2 released from target evaporites, say Timmermann and colleagues. “The ‘impact winter’ would be intensified and prolonged if other aerosols such as soot and sulphur were taken into account.”
Italian smallsat developer Argotec has unveiled a new modular satellite bus design that it believes provides flexibility in accommodating a wide range payloads.
Learn how viruses lingering in sewage can enter bodies of water, posing a public health risk that may be on the rise as climate change brings more rain.
This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features Ileana Silvestre Patallo, a medical physicist at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory, and Ruth McLauchlan, consultant radiotherapy physicist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.
In a wide-ranging conversation with Physics World’s Tami Freeman, Patallo and McLauchlan explain how ionizing radiation such as X-rays and proton beams interact with our bodies and how radiation is being used to treat diseases including cancer.
This episode was created in collaboration with IPEM, the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine. IPEM owns the journal Physics in Medicine & Biology.
Europe’s investment in HydRON, a multi-orbit optical data relay network, signals a pivotal shift in how data is moved across Earth and beyond. The program aims to transform satellite connectivity, […]
Helium deep with the Earth could bond with iron to form stable compounds – according to experiments done by scientists in Japan and Taiwan. The work was done by Haruki Takezawa and Kei Hirose at the University of Tokyo and colleagues, who suggest that Earth’s core could host a vast reservoir of primordial helium-3 – reshaping our understanding of the planet’s interior.
Noble gases including helium are normally chemically inert. But under extreme pressures, heavier members of the group (including xenon and krypton) can form a variety of compounds with other elements. To date, however, less is known about compounds containing helium – the lightest noble gas.
Beyond the synthesis of disodium helide (Na2He) in 2016, and a handful of molecules in which helium forms weak van der Waals bonds with other atoms, the existence of other helium compounds has remained purely theoretical.
As a result, the conventional view is that any primordial helium-3 present when our planet first formed would have quickly diffused through Earth’s interior, before escaping into the atmosphere and then into space.
Tantalizing clues
However, there are tantalizing clues that helium compounds could exist in some volcanic rocks on Earth’s surface. These rocks contain unusually high isotopic ratios of helium-3 to helium-4. “Unlike helium-4, which is produced through radioactivity, helium-3 is primordial and not produced in planetary interiors,” explains Hirose. “Based on volcanic rock measurements, helium-3 is known to be enriched in hot magma, which originally derives from hot plumes coming from deep within Earth’s mantle.” The mantle is the region between Earth’s core and crust.
The fact that the isotope can still be found in rock and magma suggests that it must have somehow become trapped in the Earth. “This argument suggests that helium-3 was incorporated into the iron-rich core during Earth’s formation, some of which leaked from the core to the mantle,” Hirose explains.
It could be that the extreme pressures present in Earth’s iron-rich core enabled primordial helium-3 to bond with iron to form stable molecular lattices. To date, however, this possibility has never been explored experimentally.
Now, Takezawa, Hirose and colleagues have triggered reactions between iron and helium within a laser-heated diamond-anvil cell. Such cells crush small samples to extreme pressures – in this case as high as 54 GPa. While this is less than the pressure in the core (about 350 GPa), the reactions created molecular lattices of iron and helium. These structures remained stable even when the diamond-anvil’s extreme pressure was released.
To determine the molecular structures of the compounds, the researchers did X-ray diffraction experiments at Japan’s SPring-8 synchrotron. The team also used secondary ion mass spectrometry to determine the concentration of helium within their samples.
Synchrotron and mass spectrometer
“We also performed first-principles calculations to support experimental findings,” Hirose adds. “Our calculations also revealed a dynamically stable crystal structure, supporting our experimental findings.” Altogether, this combination of experiments and calculations showed that the reaction could form two distinct lattices (face-centred cubic and distorted hexagonal close packed), each with differing ratios of iron to helium atoms.
These results suggest that similar reactions between helium and iron may have occurred within Earth’s core shortly after its formation, trapping much of the primordial helium-3 in the material that coalesced to form Earth. This would have created a vast reservoir of helium in the core, which is gradually making its way to the surface.
However, further experiments are needed to confirm this thesis. “For the next step, we need to see the partitioning of helium between iron in the core and silicate in the mantle under high temperatures and pressures,” Hirose explains.
Observing this partitioning would help rule out the lingering possibility that unbonded helium-3 could be more abundant than expected within the mantle – where it could be trapped by some other mechanism. Either way, further studies would improve our understanding of Earth’s interior composition – and could even tell us more about the gases present when the solar system formed.
While Starlink’s broadband contract wins often grab the spotlight, a panel of multi-orbit operators at the Satellite Conference here highlighted how they are also gaining significant traction with enterprise and government customers.
Connexion
