Science News - July 2023

    If you ever took a general science class then you were probably told that the Earth gravity at the surface has a value of 9.81 m/s2 or 32 ft/s2. This is the gravitational acceleration you should experience at sea level of the surface and as you go up in height the gravity goes down following Newton’s law of gravity, or something along those lines. To an extent this can be used as true to make some calculations easy, like measuring the depth of a well if you were that kind of kid, or figuring out which object will touch the ground first, but as an adult now you may think that sea level is not an accurate representation of a distance from the earth’s center and that the feeling of the gravitational acceleration is different on different parts of the world, so the value is more like an average that you should experience across the globe, and this hold mostly true except for one area. 

    In the Indian Ocean there is an area of 3 million square miles where the gravity is so weak that the sea level is 106 meters lower than the global average. That is quite a huge difference that has puzzled scientists since 1948. Just for a little reminder the actual shape of planet Earth is not perfectly spherical, but more approximately like an ellipsoid with the poles being flatten down. For simple calculation in science classes we like to refer to Earth as a sphere as it makes calculations easier (trust me this is a common practice in physics when we are not considering accuracy), and the approximations hold up to a degree, but when precision and accuracy are quite important then those details arise and must be taken seriously to make adequate predictions and the use of Newton’s law of gravity is not as reliable and we apply some general relativity into the mix. Although it could be tedious, it is quite important work to keep in mind if you see yourself dealing with satellites as you will need to make adjustments to their orbit to remain up there, also to make GPS corrections,  otherwise they would end up crashing. Continuing with our narrative.

Map showing the variation of Earth's gravity. The color depict the strength of gravity, the blue dot over India is the gravity hole. Courtesy of ESA's GOCE Satellite (Insider).

    Officially known as the Indian Ocean geoid low, this region has been mapped using computer models of Earth’s gravity and compared with real data to try to understand how the anomaly came to be. After all such a big area could not be a mere coincidence.

    Scientists studying the anomaly have thought that something underneath was causing the strange effect, But a new study suggests that they should have been looking around, and not under, the gravity anomaly to solve the mystery of how it formed.

A team of researchers in India claims that the gravity hole was formed by plumes of low-density magma that rose up from Earth’s mantle generated 50 million years ago from a sunken tectonic plate.

    The new study was conducted using computer simulations at the Indian Institute of Science in the city of Bengaluru. They plotted 19 different scenarios to simulate the movement of the tectonic plates in the past 140 million years, and only a few of these scenarios account for the gravity hole but none of these scenarios showed the low gravity was caused by something directly underneath. Instead they found the hole was likely shaped by plumes of low density magma. 

    “As India separated from Africa and smashed into the European plate, the ocean that used to be there, called Tethys, was split apart and squished between the continental plates.”

    Future ocean surveys can confirm whether these plumes exist or not, but as of now this is the latest and more insightful explanation we have ever received to explain such an anomaly. Maybe this way of thinking can change the perspective on how to proceed with tectonic plates research. 

    If you want to learn more about this you can read these articles. 

• https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12282031/Indian-Ocean-gravity-hole-sea-levels-300ft-lower-experts-think-know-why.html
• https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/mystery-of-gravity-hole-in-indian-ocean-solved/
• https://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-crack-mystery-of-huge-gravity-hole-in-the-indian-ocean-2023-6
• https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-geoid-why-do-we-use-it-and-where-does-its-shape-come

    

Scientific Update

    I have tried to summarize the thoughts in my head for a while on the scientific news I have found recently. They may not be as recent anymore due to how long it has been since I read about them, and when I am posting about them, but they are still important, and I think they deserve more time in the spotlight. This has been a demanding task to do as life happens and one must deal with other stuff aside from just writing, but this is a task that I have chosen so here I have put my thoughts into a concrete script that I present to you now.

Water Hidden Under Earth’s Crust

    I found this information while searching for scientific breakthroughs a while ago. I like to see what news articles I can find and then proceed from there to search on scientific journals. The premise of this article is as follows:

    Scientists found that water is stored inside the mantle’s rock in a unique state, which is not a liquid, solid or a gas. This state is known as the fourth state (I am guessing is plasma water which I never thought about but I kind of want to create on a lab now).

    It all came from a rare piece of diamond found in 2022. When analyzed they were able to determine that this diamond originated 660 km or 410 miles beneath earth surface in the transition zone.

    The unique thing about this diamond is that it contained ringwoodite, a high-pressure phase of Mg2SiO4 (magnesium silicate) formed at high temperatures and pressures of the Earth's mantle, with hydrous phases which means it is rich in water implying that the transition zone is a wet zone, contrary to previous beliefs.

    It has been known that water can fall to the mantle through the tectonic plates and make its way back through volcanic activity in something known as the deep water cycle but this discovery is something else we did not expect. If this zone contains at least 1% of the total water then it implies that there must be more water than the one available in the surface, and if that is the case our models on how water appear on earth might need revisions.

    The team that made the discovery also found ferropericlase (Mg,Fe)O and enstatite MgSiO3, using X-ray diffraction and micro-Raman spectroscopy. This discovery aligns with another discovery made that the earth’s core is cooling down and it may be due to this appearance of water in the Earth mantle, but further research needs to be done on the subject.

 

Room Temperature Superconductor Research

    The next one I found it on a video on TIK TOK and decided to find the article and read it.  The article “Evidence of near-ambient superconductivity in a N-doped lutetium hydride” talks about the first ever discovered room temperature superconductor. If you are not familiar with the term, a superconductor is a material that can conduct electricity without any resistance. The reason why the wires get hot when you use a hair blower for an extended period of time, or your phone, or any other electrical device you may think of is because of the resistivity of copper and other materials to conduct electricity. This causes a loss of energy in the form of heat, but in the case of a superconductor this will not occur as electricity will freely flow without any resistance.

    MRIs, levitated trains, even the particle accelerator at CERN, are possible due to superconductivity, but as of now those devices depend on one big factor. To create superconductivity in materials such as mercury, lead, indium, and tin, the temperatures must be extremely cold, we are talking about 7 kelvin and lower, and they must be kept at that temperature because once the material starts to heat up it loses it superconductivity properties. Therefore, creating a material that sustains its superconductivity at room temperature has been researched for decades.

    During the experiment described in the article. The researchers squeezed together carbon and sulfur at extreme pressures, exposed them to hydrogen gas and shot it with a laser until a crystal substance was made and this crystal conducts electricity with zero resistance, a superconductor. This superconductor works at temperatures as high as 287 kelvin or about 15 degrees Celsius. While this is a great step in the right direction there is still a trick to this. The pressure at which this material can exist is about 267 gigapascals, two and a half million times the atmospheric pressure, so there is still a milestone to conquer. The interesting part about this article lies in the material used that made the discovery, nitrogen doped lutetium hydride (LuH2±xNy) indicating that new combinations of elements may hold the key to unlocking a feasible superconductor in the future.

The James Webb Space Telescope Has Done It Again 

    Finally, the one that knocked the socks off (figuratively) of many physicists in the last few weeks. My boy, once again, the JWST found what is being classified as the oldest known galaxies thus far. These galaxies date back to a time when the universe was only 2 percent of its current age, approximately 300 to 500 million years after the big bang.

    The discovery was made using faster photometry-based techniques that essentially use obvious variations in galaxies’ brightness to estimate their redshift rather than pining down cosmic coordinates to measure their redshift.

    The JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) confirmed estimates for the four new galaxies. Of the four, the most distant is one with the name JADES-GS-z13-0. It has a redshift value of 13.2, meaning we are seeing the galaxy as it appeared just 320 million years after the big bang. 

    While the galaxies don’t yet pose problems for leading models of cosmology, they suggest galactic formation began earlier and proceeded faster than expected in the universe, this could revolutionize the field of cosmology and modification to the theory of the big bang may need to be made.

    Some science popularizers deem this discovery as the beginning of the end for the theory of the Big Bang, others simply claim that the model may need to make some adjustments, I think that it is just astounding to see how much the JWST has contributed to the field of cosmology and astronomy since its launch. This may create more opportunities for the field of astronomy and cosmology as more people get interested in learning about the new discoveries the JWST will continue to bring in the years to come.

    When I started this, I did not expect to find this many exciting news so often. People tend to say that science is dead and not many discoveries occur often as the news is constantly bombarded with other kind of news, but I keep finding interesting articles and discoveries every day, and as you see I have only covered the ones related to the field of physics and geology but there are more news in the fields of biology, chemistry and medicine that if I find anything that catches my eyes I will write about it.

To learn more:

• https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.08759
• https://www.quantamagazine.org/room-temperature-superconductor-discovery-meets-with-resistance-20230308/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JADES-GS-z13-0
• https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.04568
• https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/jwsts-newfound-galaxies-are-the-oldest-ever-seen/
• https://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/56052/20230402/ocean-under-the-crust-massive-water-formation-found-beneath-the-planet.htm
• https://www.samaaenglish.tv/news/40031004