- Email: [email protected]
Dark hydrogen may hide inside Jupiter
For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news
L.Xing China U.Geosciences, Beijin/ R.McKellar RSM, Regina, Canada
AROUND 99 million years ago, this tiny dinosaur had a sticky encounter. Today, its feathered wings look almost exactly as they did when it became stuck in resin. Lida Xing at the China University of Geosciences in Beijing, who has led an analysis of two similar partial amber fossils, says these dinosaurs may only have been 3.5 centimetres in length. Their size suggests they were probably juveniles. The wings are so well preserved it’s possible to tell that these dinosaurs were Enantiornithes – a cousin group to today’s birds (Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/ ncomms12089 ). Although this group has a different shoulder structure from birds, their flight feathers are nearly identical, suggesting they flew in the same way birds do today. As fossils like these come to light, we are beginning to understand the origin of flight as a gradual process, with gliding birds giving rise to crude powered flight, followed by skilled powered flight. These new fossils may help us determine when skilled flight began. “It really looks like the common ancestor shared between modern birds and the Enantiornithes is exactly where many of the features that we see in modern bird flight evolved,” says Richard Prum at Yale University.
Shampoo bottles get slippy makeover to squeeze every drop WASH and go. A plastic embedded with nanoparticles repels sludgy shampoo, so that every last drop slides easily out of the bottle. Wasting a bit of hair product might seem like a petty annoyance, but it’s actually a serious environmental problem, says Bharat Bhushan at the Ohio State University in Columbus. “You throw the bottle away and you still have these harsh chemicals [inside],” he says. It’s relatively easy to repel water-based liquids like juice or ketchup from plastic. Their high
surface tension means that the molecules stick to each other instead of to the bottle. But liquids like shampoos, soaps and detergents have low surface tension, so get stuck to the sides. To create a slippery surface, Bhushan and his colleagues put silica nanoparticles into a liquid called xylene and spun and heated it up in a chamber with a piece of plastic to simulate a real bottle. The nanoparticles crashed into the hot plastic and embedded themselves in it, forming hooked structures that rose above the
surface. As the plastic cooled, it reformed around the silica bits. The surface was then treated with UV light and coated with a neutral chemical called fluorosilane. The resulting hooks keep liquids away from the plastic surface so that they slide easily across the bottle (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2016.0135). The technology could also be used for medical supplies or food as bacteria won’t cling to it, says Sushant Anand at the University of Illinois in Chicago. RICHARD NOWITZ/National Geographic Creative
Tiny dinosaurs flew like birds
Dark hydrogen may hide inside Jupiter JUPITER and Saturn could have a layer of darkness beneath their colourful surfaces – previously unseen “dark hydrogen”. The element makes up much of these gas giants and research suggests hydrogen near their centres is a liquid metal. But it’s not clear what happens between there and the wispy clouds at the surface. Experiments involving squeezing hydrogen in a diamond vice and shooting it with lasers can recreate the conditions within the planets, but the small atoms of hydrogen can easily escape. Now Stewart McWilliams at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and his colleagues have used a laser pulse lasting just a few microseconds to heat compressed hydrogen to 3000 kelvin. During this brief window, the team saw the hydrogen enter a phase that doesn’t reflect or absorb light, which they call “dark hydrogen” (Physical Review Letters, doi.org/bkbs). The discovery of this intermediate phase of hydrogen between gas and metal suggests gas giants have a black layer inside, and its thermal properties could explain how they cooled after formation.
Electric fields could mess with pigs WHICH way is north? Ask a pig. They seem to sense Earth’s magnetic field – a finding that could help us win the fight against feral animals. Pascal Malkemper at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, and his colleagues made this discovery by observing more than 1600 wild boar in the Czech Republic, and more than 1300 warthogs in Africa. Estimating the direction each animal was pointing in, the biologists found that, on average, they lined up closely with the north-south axis (Mammal Review, doi.org/bj9f).
“The fact that the animals align with the field lines suggests that they have a magnetic compass which they might use to navigate,” says Malkemper. Wild pigs can migrate over 50 kilometres, so perhaps a magnetic map of the landscape helps them find their way. Feral pigs, descended from escaped farm animals, are a damaging invasive species, causing at least $1.5 billion of damage a year in the US. Malkemper’s finding suggests it may be possible to use electric fields from power lines to disrupt their navigation by skewing their compass.
2 July 2016 | NewScientist | 15
L.Xing China U.Geosciences, Beijin/ R.McKellar RSM, Regina, Canada
AROUND 99 million years ago, this tiny dinosaur had a sticky encounter. Today, its feathered wings look almost exactly as they did when it became stuck in resin. Lida Xing at the China University of Geosciences in Beijing, who has led an analysis of two similar partial amber fossils, says these dinosaurs may only have been 3.5 centimetres in length. Their size suggests they were probably juveniles. The wings are so well preserved it’s possible to tell that these dinosaurs were Enantiornithes – a cousin group to today’s birds (Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/ ncomms12089 ). Although this group has a different shoulder structure from birds, their flight feathers are nearly identical, suggesting they flew in the same way birds do today. As fossils like these come to light, we are beginning to understand the origin of flight as a gradual process, with gliding birds giving rise to crude powered flight, followed by skilled powered flight. These new fossils may help us determine when skilled flight began. “It really looks like the common ancestor shared between modern birds and the Enantiornithes is exactly where many of the features that we see in modern bird flight evolved,” says Richard Prum at Yale University.
Shampoo bottles get slippy makeover to squeeze every drop WASH and go. A plastic embedded with nanoparticles repels sludgy shampoo, so that every last drop slides easily out of the bottle. Wasting a bit of hair product might seem like a petty annoyance, but it’s actually a serious environmental problem, says Bharat Bhushan at the Ohio State University in Columbus. “You throw the bottle away and you still have these harsh chemicals [inside],” he says. It’s relatively easy to repel water-based liquids like juice or ketchup from plastic. Their high
surface tension means that the molecules stick to each other instead of to the bottle. But liquids like shampoos, soaps and detergents have low surface tension, so get stuck to the sides. To create a slippery surface, Bhushan and his colleagues put silica nanoparticles into a liquid called xylene and spun and heated it up in a chamber with a piece of plastic to simulate a real bottle. The nanoparticles crashed into the hot plastic and embedded themselves in it, forming hooked structures that rose above the
surface. As the plastic cooled, it reformed around the silica bits. The surface was then treated with UV light and coated with a neutral chemical called fluorosilane. The resulting hooks keep liquids away from the plastic surface so that they slide easily across the bottle (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2016.0135). The technology could also be used for medical supplies or food as bacteria won’t cling to it, says Sushant Anand at the University of Illinois in Chicago. RICHARD NOWITZ/National Geographic Creative
Tiny dinosaurs flew like birds
Dark hydrogen may hide inside Jupiter JUPITER and Saturn could have a layer of darkness beneath their colourful surfaces – previously unseen “dark hydrogen”. The element makes up much of these gas giants and research suggests hydrogen near their centres is a liquid metal. But it’s not clear what happens between there and the wispy clouds at the surface. Experiments involving squeezing hydrogen in a diamond vice and shooting it with lasers can recreate the conditions within the planets, but the small atoms of hydrogen can easily escape. Now Stewart McWilliams at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and his colleagues have used a laser pulse lasting just a few microseconds to heat compressed hydrogen to 3000 kelvin. During this brief window, the team saw the hydrogen enter a phase that doesn’t reflect or absorb light, which they call “dark hydrogen” (Physical Review Letters, doi.org/bkbs). The discovery of this intermediate phase of hydrogen between gas and metal suggests gas giants have a black layer inside, and its thermal properties could explain how they cooled after formation.
Electric fields could mess with pigs WHICH way is north? Ask a pig. They seem to sense Earth’s magnetic field – a finding that could help us win the fight against feral animals. Pascal Malkemper at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, and his colleagues made this discovery by observing more than 1600 wild boar in the Czech Republic, and more than 1300 warthogs in Africa. Estimating the direction each animal was pointing in, the biologists found that, on average, they lined up closely with the north-south axis (Mammal Review, doi.org/bj9f).
“The fact that the animals align with the field lines suggests that they have a magnetic compass which they might use to navigate,” says Malkemper. Wild pigs can migrate over 50 kilometres, so perhaps a magnetic map of the landscape helps them find their way. Feral pigs, descended from escaped farm animals, are a damaging invasive species, causing at least $1.5 billion of damage a year in the US. Malkemper’s finding suggests it may be possible to use electric fields from power lines to disrupt their navigation by skewing their compass.
2 July 2016 | NewScientist | 15