Always new things to discover in the sciences!! We need the curious to continue to search and ask questions!

 An article in Science News the other day made me think again about how there have been times when scientists thought a whole field of study may be 'dead', because they knew everything about it! The article was about a massive gas cloud in space that was just discovered and identified - while this sort of thing happens frequently in astronomy, what stands out is it is just 300 light-years from earth. This is like a few doors down the street when it comes to astronomy because this is really close. 

This cloud was hiding right in front of our faces, it appears! It has a mass of about 5500 Suns, and its chemical composition just happens to be one that was difficult to detect. Astronomers have peered through that patch of space countless times over the past few centuries, and still there is something right there! 

In every field of STEM, this is a reminder we will never discover and understand everything, and there will always be a need for the curious and determined minds of youth to come up and keep the quest for knowledge and understanding and curiosity alive! 

'Frustration' objects - mismatched geometric shapes lead to objects with interesting propoerties

 This is a neat study out of the U. of Michigan, where researchers used natural structures made from a variety of different, and often complex, shaped pieces. Interesting properties of the structures result, from really hard shells to flexible, but strong, objects. 

This could be a cool type of study to do for those with 3-D printers, where you can try to find interesting shaped pieces to build complex, but useful, structures and objects.

New Tokamak Fusion Reactor turns on in Japan

 What is now the world's largest tokamak (sort of like a toroid shaped reactor) thermonuclear fusion reactor is now working north of Tokyo, Japan. The continued work towards the 'Holy Grail' of energy production is making progress towards the dream of unlimited energy (can get the 'fuel' from water, which is deuterium and tritium, the isotopes of hydrogen), with no risk of meltdowns, no radioactive waste, and no greenhouse gas emissions. This is a big attempt to show fusion is possible, and can scale up to industrial and commercial production levels. Let's hope this works and shows scientists and engineers the next steps of accomplishing this long-term dream! 

For those interested in this, it is a major multidisciplinary area of research and engineering: nuclear and plasma physics, math modeling, nuclear and plasma engineering, mechanical and electrical and computer engineering, civil engineering, environmental sciences, city planning, eventually governmental energy and patent regulations and policy, and so much more!

                                                            From BYJUs.

A Dangerous Era for Science Funding

 Here is how politics instantly affects science (STEM in general) research. At the professional level, most university funding comes through grants. One must write a proposal to foundations, businesses, individuals, or a huge amount from the federal government. The largest amount of federal funding comes through the National Science Foundation, or NSF. But with new directives from the current administration, and its obsession to get rid of anything that they think smells like 'DEI' (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), one can lose their federal funding, and who knows if other legal consequences will be part of this. 

Check out this article to see a LIST OF WORDS that will get a scientific paper FLAGGED FOR DEI. Apparently, federal agencies like NSF, the CDC, and likely every other one, are scrubbing published papers on their websites to remove these words. This is outright censorship, and we all need to be aware of this in K-12 research because so many programs and opportunities to help all sorts of students may have federal funding behind them. This could include anything a school does with colleges, special education, food programs, different grants or fellowships through the Dept. of Education (which is being significantly downsized, with a stated goal of the president to be eliminated), and anything a school is doing that has to do with helping students of color, girls (yes, FEMALE and WOMEN are on the banned list), LGBTQ kids, or any group that is underrepresented in anything...ALL of this can get your work or funding flagged for DEI. 

This is a new era for science research, and we all need to be aware of it. This is dangerous, and is what authoritarians and dictators do to control countries and its citizens - the notion of any ideas that differ from 'the state' are banned and outlawed, and has been done throughout history by all sorts of regimes. Be safe, be strong, and resist this nonsense! 

Interesting experiment to investigate sound from clapping hands

 This is an interesting study into the sound created when we clap our hands. And what's more, this is a potential project setup for research of your own. The technique used was filming the patterns of air coming out from one's clapping hands by using baby powder. If you have access to any level of high-speed video tools, you could study these patterns, and compare them between various shaped objects coming together in a clapping manner. Investigate similarities and differences as functions of shape, size, mass, size of the cavities formed when the two objects come together, and anything else you can think of! If you have 3-D printers, you can design different shaped objects and cavities, and so on. 

Here's a brief video of this technique. 

Interesting binary star simulator, showing eclipsing data

 This looks like a pretty interesting binary star system simulator, with the added twist that it shows the eclipsing consequences of the radiation flux we observe from earth. 

If we see a system more from a side view of the plane the star's orbits are on, at certain times one of the stars blocks or partially blocks the other, resulting in dips in the light intensity we detect. This is a great way to measure the orbital periods, which are also needed to determine the masses of the stars. Pretty cool! 

                                                             From Tychos.info

South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly being watched

 The Earth's magnetic field is quite complex, and includes global reversals where the north and south magnetic poles flip-flop. While scientists have studied it for centuries, the complexity still holds mysteries about the magnetic field. 

The first thing to note is all magnetism we know of comes from moving electric charges and electric currents. For something like a planet, the question then becomes where are the currents? 

The Earth has a solid inner core, but then a molten iron outer core - that is the key. As my students are well aware, metals are special because they have free electrons moving throughout (the 'electron sea'). Normally these free electrons are moving randomly through the metal. But then, we need to remember that the earth rotates. The rotation causes the molten iron to flow in one direction, and suddenly we have a circular current of electrons, and this contributes to the magnetic field. 

Fluid dynamics is complex and very challenging mathematically. Turbulence happens, and because Earth is spherical, that geometry introduces different rotational velocities in different regions of the molten iron. The complexities of flow and the electric currents that result causes the Earth's magnetic field to be dynamic - it is constantly changing, and on occasion when turbulent regions develop, and sometimes the flow locally can be opposite the main flow, irregularities exist within the global magnetic field. This is likely what is happening in the outer core to cause the South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly. It has grown over the past few decades, and is a region where the magnetic field has already 'flipped' polarity. At some point, perhaps in the coming centuries, the global field may undergo another reversal, where our compass needles will point opposite where it points today. We'll see how this plays out! 

In science, nature always is harder and more complex than what our textbooks tell us, so there are always magnificent mysteries waiting to be solved! Have some fun and take on one of those mysteries that fascinates you!

                                       From Science Alert, 1/29/25