your science briefing for 01.20.2025
Wiring brains and spines with carbon nanotubes, scientists create real life mithril, the seemingly impossible pulsar that just wants to chill, and more...
A lot of people want to put electronics in your brain these days, but NeuroBionics, a product of MIT research, may actually have a good chance of actually working. Their goal is to use carbon nanotubes to stimulate the spinal cords and brains to treat a wide variety of ailments, and because they can do it far less invasively, without metal electrodes, even more patients can be candidates for the therapy… (TechCrunch)
Imagine coming home to find that something strange slammed into your home at very high velocity and left shards of debris all over your porch. Then imagine learning that the something in question was a meteorite, and that your home security camera just so happened to record the sound of such an impact for the very first time. Well, that’s exactly what happened in Charlottetown, PEI… (AP)
In J. R. R. Tolkien’s fictional universe, armor made of a substance called mithril is very light but virtually impenetrable. And it seems that scientists at Cornell University were able to make a real life version: a flexible crystal-like sheet with 100 trillion interlocking molecules per square centimeter. Added to kevlar and other polymers, it can be used to create immensely strong armor and safety harnesses… (Cornell Chronicle)
Xenon is a colorless, odorless, inert gas used in industrial lamps, general anesthesia, medical imaging, and space travel. Ion engines to be specific. Now, a new clinical trial is trying to find out if it has another use: protecting your brain against Alzheimer’s as part of a therapeutic protocol… (MGB)
When neutron stars emerge from the remains of a supernova, they can emit regular radio pulses from their poles. They’re so regular, in fact, astronomers that discovered them wondered if they found signals from an alien civilization. And one of the reasons why pulsars are so active is their absurdly fast rotation, which they burn off as pulses around their poles. The fastest pulsar rotates at 42,960 rpm, or just under a quarter of the speed of light at the equator. The slowest? Once every six and a half hours. Which is a problem because at that speed, it shouldn’t even be a pulsar and went radio silent a long time ago… (ABC)