Heavens

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of the major greenhouse gases causing global warming. If carbon dioxide could be converted into energy, it would be killing two birds with one stone in addressing the environmental issues. A joint research team led by City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has developed a new photocatalyst which can produce methane fuel (CH4) selectively and effectively from carbon dioxide using sunlight. According to their research, the quantity of methane produced was almost doubled in the first 8 hours of the reaction process.

The research was led by Dr Ng Yun-hau, Associate Professor in the School of Energy and Environment (SEE), in collaboration with researchers from Australia, Malaysia and the United Kingdom. Their findings have been recently published in the scientific journal Angewandte Chemie, titled "Metal-Organic Frameworks Decorated Cuprous Oxide Nanowires for Long-lived Charges Applied in Selective Photocatalytic CO2 Reduction to CH4".

Nature-inspired photocatalysis

"Inspired by the photosynthesis in nature, carbon dioxide can now be converted effectively into methane fuel by our newly designed solar-powered catalyst, which will lower carbon emission. Furthermore, this new catalyst is made from copper-based materials, which is abundant and hence affordable," said Dr Ng.

He explained that it is thermodynamically challenging to convert carbon dioxide into methane using a photocatalyst because the chemical reduction process involves a simultaneous transfer of eight electrons. Carbon monoxide, which is harmful to human, is more commonly produced in the process because it requires the transfer of two electrons only.

He pointed out that cuprous oxide (Cu2O), a semiconducting material, has been applied as both photocatalyst and electrocatalyst to reduce carbon dioxide into other chemical products like carbon monoxide and methane in different studies. However, it faces several limitations in the reduction process, including its inferior stability and the non-selective reduction which causes the formation of an array of various products. Separation and purification of these products from the mixture can be highly challenging and this imposes technological barrier for large scale application. Furthermore, cuprous oxide can be easily corroded after brief illumination and evolve into metallic copper or copper oxide.

Selective production of pure methane

To overcome these challenges, Dr Ng and his team synthesised a novel photocatalyst by enwrapping cuprous oxide with copper-based metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). Using this new catalyst, the team could manipulate the transfer of electrons and selectively produce pure methane gas.

They discovered that when compared with cuprous oxide without MOF shell, cuprous oxide with MOF shell reduced carbon dioxide into methane stably under visible-light irradiation with an almost doubled yield. Also, cuprous oxide with MOF shell was more durable and the maximum carbon dioxide uptake was almost seven times of the bare cuprous oxide.

Carbon dioxide uptake increased

The team encapsulated the one-dimensional (1-D) cuprous oxide nanowires (with a diameter of about 400nm) with the copper-based MOF outer shell of about 300nm in thickness. This conformal coating of MOF on cuprous oxide would not block light-harvesting of the catalyst. Besides, MOF is a good carbon dioxide adsorbent. It provided considerable surface areas for carbon dioxide adsorption and reduction. As it was closely attached to the cuprous oxide, it brought a higher concentration of carbon dioxide adsorbed at locations near the catalytic active sites, strengthening the interaction between carbon dioxide and the catalyst.

Moreover, the team discovered that the cuprous oxide was stabilised by the conformal coating of MOF. The excited charges in cuprous oxide upon illumination could efficiently migrate to the MOF. In this way, excessive accumulation of excited charges within the catalyst which could lead to self-corrosion was avoided, hence extended the catalyst's lifetime.

Electrons stayed in MOF with higher chance of having chemical reactions

Dr Wu Hao, the first author of the paper who is also from SEE, pointed out one of the highlights of this research and said: "By using the advanced time-resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy, we observed that once the electrons were excited to the conduction band of the cuprous oxide, they would be directly transferred to the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) of the MOF and stayed there, but did not return quickly to their valence band, which is of lower energy. This created a long-lived charge separated state. Therefore, electrons that stayed in the MOF would have a higher chance to undergo chemical reactions."

Extends the understanding of relationships between MOFs and metal oxides

Previously, it was generally believed that the improved photocatalytic activities were merely induced by MOF's reactant concentration effect and MOF only served as a reactant adsorbent. However, Dr Ng's team unveiled how the excited charges migrate between cuprous oxide and MOF in this research. "MOF is proven to play a more significant role in shaping the reaction mechanism as it changes the electron pathway," he said. He pointed out that this discovery has extended the understanding of relationships between MOFs and metal oxides beyond their conventional physical/chemical adsorption type of interactions to facilitating charge separation.

The team has spent more than two years to develop this effective strategy in converting carbon dioxide. Their next step will be to further increase the methane production rate and explore ways to scale up both the synthesis of the catalyst and the reactor systems. "In the entire process of converting carbon dioxide to methane, the only energy input we have used was sunlight. We hope in the future, carbon dioxide emitted from factories and transportation can be 'recycled' to produce green fuels," concluded Dr Ng.

The Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) is a carnivorous plant that encloses its prey using modified leaves as a trap. During this process, electrical signals known as action potentials trigger the closure of the leaf lobes. An interdisciplinary team of scientists has now shown that these electrical signals generate measurable magnetic fields. Using atomic magnetometers, it proved possible to record this biomagnetism. "You could say the investigation is a little like performing an MRI scan in humans," said physicist Anne Fabricant. "The problem is that the magnetic signals in plants are very weak, which explains why it was extremely difficult to measure them with the help of older technologies."

Electrical activity in the Venus flytrap is associated with magnetic signals

We know that in the human brain voltage changes in certain regions result from concerted electrical activity that travels through nerve cells in the form of action potentials. Techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can be used to record these activities and noninvasively diagnose disorders. When plants are stimulated, they also generate electrical signals, which can travel through a cellular network analogous to the human and animal nervous system.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), the Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM), the Biocenter of Julius-Maximilians-Universität of Würzburg (JMU), and the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Berlin, Germany's national meteorology institute, has now demonstrated that electrical activity in the Venus flytrap is also associated with magnetic signals. "We have been able to demonstrate that action potentials in a multicellular plant system produce measurable magnetic fields, something that had never been confirmed before," said Anne Fabricant, a doctoral candidate in Professor Dmitry Budker's research group at JGU and HIM.

The trap of Dionaea muscipula consists of bilobed trapping leaves with sensitive hairs, which, when touched, trigger an action potential that travels through the whole trap. After two successive stimuli, the trap closes and any potential insect prey is locked inside and subsequently digested. Interestingly, the trap is electrically excitable in a variety of ways: in addition to mechanical influences such as touch or injury, osmotic energy, for example salt-water loads, and thermal energy in the form of heat or cold can also trigger action potentials. For their study, the research team used heat stimulation to induce action potentials, thereby eliminating potentially disturbing factors such as mechanical background noise in their magnetic measurements.

Biomagnetism - detection of magnetic signals from living organisms

While biomagnetism has been relatively well-researched in humans and animals, so far very little equivalent research has been done in the plant kingdom, using only superconducting-quantum-interference-device (SQUID) magnetometers, bulky instruments which must be cooled to cryogenic temperatures. For the current experiment, the research team used atomic magnetometers to measure the magnetic signals of the Venus flytrap. The sensor is a glass cell filled with a vapor of alkali atoms, which react to small changes in the local magnetic-field environment. These optically pumped magnetometers are more attractive for biological applications because they do not require cryogenic cooling and can also be miniaturized.

The researchers detected magnetic signals with an amplitude of up to 0.5 picotesla from the Venus flytrap, which is millions of times weaker than the Earth's magnetic field. "The signal magnitude recorded is similar to what is observed during surface measurements of nerve impulses in animals," explained Anne Fabricant. The JGU physicists aim to measure even smaller signals from other plant species. In the future, such noninvasive technologies could potentially be used in agriculture for crop-plant diagnostics, by detecting electromagnetic responses to sudden temperature changes, pests, or chemical influences without having to damage the plants using electrodes.

It all sounds similar to a dance event - but are singles or couples dancing here? This was the question Ali Isbilir and Dr. Paolo Annibale at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association (MDC) were trying to answer. However, their investigation did not involve a ballroom, but the cell membrane. The question behind their investigation: does a particular protein receptor on the surface of cancer and immune cells appear alone or connect in pairs?

The receptor is called "CXCR4" - the subject of heated debate among experts in recent years due to its mysterious relationship status. Does it appear in singles or pairs on the cell membrane? And what makes the difference? The research team of the Receptor Signaling Lab at the MDC, has now solved the puzzle of its relationship status for the first time. Their findings were recently published in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" (PNAS).

CXCR4 is an important receptor on immune and cancer cells

"When CXCR4 is found in large numbers on cancer cells, it also ensures that they can migrate, thereby laying the foundation for metastases," says lead author Isbilir. Metastases are known to be difficult to treat; some patients die as a result of these secondary tumors.

CXCR4 is also involved in inflammations. The center of inflammation releases messenger substances from the chemokine class. In lymph nodes, chemokines ensure that immune cells form many CXCR4 receptors on their membrane. With the help of these receptors, immune cells can locate the center of inflammation and migrate to it. The name CXCR, which stands for "chemokine receptor," also refers to this ability. "Such receptors are the most important target structures in pharmaceutical research," emphasizes Professor Martin Lohse, the last author of the study. "Approximately one-third of all drugs address this class of receptors."

Whether such receptors are present as pairs or singles is therefore not only central to basic research, but also to the pharmaceutical industry. Using new methods of optical microscopy, the team has now been able to answer this question for the first time. Apparently, CXCR4 wants to remain noncommittal - it occurs temporarily in pairs (as a transient dimer), but also alone (as a monomer). The team found that the relationship status depends largely on how many CXCR4 receptors are located on a cell. If the cell surface is densely occupied, more pairs are formed. If only a few receptors are present, they more often appear singly. At the same time, the researchers could show that certain drugs acting as CXCR4 blockers can suppress pair formation. "It is assumed that CXCR4 pairs negatively affect one's health. We can use our new microscopic methods to test whether this is really the case," explains Lohse.

Fluorescent pairs and singles

The scientists combined two recent optical microscopy methods: Using single-molecule microscopy, they were then able to determine the relationship status of individual CXCR4 receptors on the surface of living cells. Fluorescence fluctuation spectroscopy also made it possible to measure the relationship status in cells that had a large number of receptors. The special feature here: to do this, the researchers had to develop a method to efficiently mark all receptors. They also had to develop a highly sensitive microscopy strategy with which they could see individual molecules and their oligomerization. The team will soon present the new methods in a report in the journal "Nature Protocols".

"The exciting thing is that we can now use these fluorescence methods to study living cancer cells. We can find out whether CXCR4 is present in pairs or alone," says Annibale, who is co-head of the Receptor Signaling Lab and also last author of the study in "Nature Protocols". "And then we can apply CXCR4 blockers to singles and pairs and test which are more effective against tumors. This will hopefully lead to more specific cancer drugs with fewer side effects."

Pathologists today are also examining the properties of patients' cancer cells in detail. This allows cancer therapies to be designed in the most personalized and effective way possible. Annibale hopes that the approach could be now used for screening the effects of different drugs on the function of this and similar receptors. This could be helpful in devising new therapies for breast, or lung cancer, for example.

Boulder, Colo., USA: For most of Earth's history, life was limited to the microscopic realm, with bacteria occupying nearly every possible niche. Life is generally thought to have evolved in some of the most extreme environments, like hydrothermal vents deep in the ocean or hot springs that still simmer in Yellowstone. Much of what we know about the evolution of life comes from the rock record, which preserves rare fossils of bacteria from billions of years ago. But that record is steeped in controversy, with each new discovery (rightfully) critiqued, questioned, and analyzed from every angle. Even then, uncertainty in whether a purported fossil is a trace of life can persist, and the field is plagued by "false positives" of early life. To understand evolution on our planet--and to help find signs of life on others--scientists have to be able to tell the difference.

New experiments by geobiologists Julie Cosmidis, Christine Nims, and their colleagues, published today in Geology, could help settle arguments over which microfossils are signs of early life and which are not. They have shown that fossilized spheres and filaments--two common bacterial shapes--made of organic carbon (typically associated with life) can form abiotically (in the absence of living organisms) and might even be easier to preserve than bacteria.

"One big problem is that the fossils are a very simple morphology, and there are lots of non-biological processes that can reproduce them," Cosmidis says. "If you find a full skeleton of a dinosaur, it's a very complex structure that's impossible for a chemical process to reproduce." It's much harder to have that certainty with fossilized microbes.

Their work was spurred by an accidental discovery a few years back, with which both Cosmidis and Nims were involved while working in Alexis Templeton's lab. While mixing organic carbon and sulfide, they noticed that spheres and filaments were forming and assumed they were the result of bacterial activity. But on closer inspection, Cosmidis quickly realized they were formed abiotically. "Very early, we noticed that these things looked a lot like bacteria, both chemically and morphologically," she says.

"They start just looking like a residue at the bottom of the experimental vessel," researcher Christine Nims says, "but under the microscope, you could see these beautiful structures that looked microbial. And they formed in these very sterile conditions, so these stunning features essentially came out of nothing. It was really exciting work."

"We thought, 'What if they could form in a natural environment? What if they could be preserved in rocks?'" Cosmidis says. "We had to try that, to see if they can be fossilized."

Nims set about running the new experiments, testing to see if these abiotic structures, which they called biomorphs, could be fossilized, like a bacterium would be. By adding biomorphs to a silica solution, they aimed to recreate the formation of chert, a silica-rich rock that commonly preserves early microfossils. For weeks, she would carefully track the small-scale 'fossilization' progress under a microscope. They found not only that they could be fossilized, but also that these abiotic shapes were much easier to preserve than bacterial remains. The abiotic 'fossils,' structures composed of organic carbon and sulfur, were more resilient and less likely to flatten out than their fragile biological counterparts.

"Microbes don't have bones," Cosmidis explains. "They don't have skins or skeletons. They're just squishy organic matter. So to preserve them, you have to have very specific conditions"--like low rates of photosynthesis and rapid sediment deposition--"so it's kind of rare when that happens."

On one level, their discovery complicates things: knowing that these shapes can be formed without life and preserved more easily than bacteria casts doubt, generally, on our record of early life. But for a while, geobiologists have known better than to rely solely on morphology to analyze potential microfossils. They bring in chemistry, too.

The "organic envelopes" Nims created in the lab were formed in a high-sulfur environment, replicating conditions on early Earth (and hot springs today). Pyrite, or "fool's gold," is an iron-sulfide mineral that would likely have formed in such conditions, so its presence could be used as a beacon for potentially problematic microfossils. "If you look at ancient rocks that contain what we think are microfossils, they very often also contain pyrite," Cosmidis says. "For me, that should be a red flag: 'Let's be more careful here.' It's not like we are doomed to never be able to tell what the real microfossils are. We just have to get better at it."

Small-scale optical devices capable of using photons for high-speed information processing can be fabricated with unprecedented ease and precision using an additive manufacturing process developed at KAUST.

Fiber optics are conventionally produced by drawing thin filaments out of molten silica glass down to microscale dimensions. By infusing these fibers with long narrow hollow channels, a new class of optical devices termed "photonic crystal fibers" were introduced. The periodic arrangement of air holes in these photonic crystal fibers act like near-perfect mirrors, allowing trapping and long propagation of light in their central core.

"Photonic crystal fibers allow you to confine light in very tight spaces, increasing the optical interaction," explains Andrea Bertoncini, a postdoc working with Carlo Liberale. "This enables the fibers to massively reduce the propagation distance needed to realize particular optical functions, like polarization control or wavelength splitting."

One way that researchers use to tune the optical properties of photonic crystal fibers is by varying their cross-sectional geometry -- changing the size and shape of the hollow tubes, or arranging them into fractal designs. Typically, these patterns are made by performing the drawing process on scaled-up versions of the final fiber. Not all the geometries are possible with this method, however, due to the effects of forces such as gravity and surface tension.

To overcome such limitations, the group turned to a high-precision three-dimensional (3D) printing technology. Using a laser to transform photosensitive polymers into transparent solids, the team built up photonic crystal fibers layer by layer. Characterizations revealed that this technique could successfully replicate the geometrical pattern of several types of microstructured optical fibers at faster speeds than conventional fabrications.

Bertoncini explains that the new process also makes it easy to combine multiple photonic units together. They demonstrated this approach by 3D printing a series of photonic crystal fiber segments that split the polarization components of light beams into separated fiber cores. A custom-fabricated tapered connection between the beam splitter and a conventional fiber optic ensured efficient device integration.

"Photonic crystal fibers offer scientists a type of 'tuning knob' to control light-guiding properties through geometric design," says Bertoncini. "However, people were not fully exploiting these properties because of the difficulties of producing arbitrary hole patterns with conventional methods. The surprising thing is that now, with our approach, you can fabricate them. You design the 3D model, you print it, and that's it."

A new international study led by astrophysicist Eric Agol from the University of Washington has measured the densities of the seven planets of the exoplanetary system TRAPPIST-1 with extreme precision, the values obtained indicating very similar compositions for all the planets. This fact makes the system even more remarkable and helps to better understand the nature of these fascinating worlds. This study has just been published in the Planetary Science Journal.

The TRAPPIST-1 system is home to the largest number of planets similar in size to our Earth ever found outside our solar system. Discovered in 2016 by a research team led by Michaël Gillon, astrophysicist at the University of Liège, the system offers an insight into the immense variety of planetary systems that probably populate the Universe. Since their detection, scientists have studied these seven planets using multiple space (NASA's Kepler and Spitzer telescopes) and ground-based telescopes (TRAPPIST and SPECULOOS in particular). The Spitzer telescope alone, managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, provided more than 1,000 hours of targeted observations of the system before being decommissioned in January 2020.

Hours of observations that enabled to refine the information we have on the exoplanetary system. "Since we can't see the planets directly, we analyze in detail the variations of the apparent brightness of their star as they 'transit' it, i.e. as they passes in front of it," explains Michaël Gillon." Previous studies had already enabled astronomers to take precise measurements of the masses and diameters of the planets, which led to the determination that they were similar in size and mass to our Earth and that their compositions must have been essentially rocky. "Our new study has greatly improved the precision of the densities of the planets, the measurements obtained indicating very similar compositions for these seven worlds," says Elsa Ducrot, a doctoral student at ULiège. "This could mean that they contain roughly the same proportion of materials that make up most rocky planets, such as iron, oxygen, magnesium and silicon, which make up our planet. "After correcting for their different masses, the researchers were able to estimate that they all have a density of around 8% less than the Earth's, a fact that could have an impact on their compositions.

A different recipe

The authors of the study put forward three hypotheses to explain this difference in density with our planet. The first involves a composition similar to that of the Earth, but with a lower percentage of iron (about 21% compared to the 32% of the Earth). Since most of the iron in the Earth's composition is found in the Earth's core, this iron depletion of the TRAPPIST-1 planets could therefore indicate cores with lower relative masses. The second hypothesis implies oxygen-enriched compositions compared to that of our planet. By reacting with iron, oxygen would form iron oxide, better known as 'rust'. The surface of Mars gets its red colour from iron oxide, but like its three terrestrial sisters (Earth, Mercury, and Venus), it has a core of unoxidised iron. However, if the lower density of the TRAPPIST-1 planets was entirely due to oxidised iron, then the planets would be 'rusted to the heart' and may not have a real core, unlike the Earth. According to Eric Agol, an astrophysicist at the University of Washington and lead author of the new study, the answer could be a combination of both scenarios - less iron in general and some oxidised iron.

The third hypothesis put forward by the researchers is that the planets are enriched with water compared to the Earth. This hypothesis would agree with independent theoretical results indicating a formation of the TRAPPIST-1 planets further away from their star, in a cold, ice-rich environment, followed by internal migration. If this explanation is correct, then water could account for about 5% of the total mass of the four outer planets. In comparison, water accounts for less than one tenth of 1% of the total mass of the Earth. The three inner planets in TRAPPIST-1, located too close to their stars for water to remain liquid under most circumstances, would need hot, dense atmospheres like on Venus, where water could remain bound to the planet in the form of vapour. But according to Eric Agol, this explanation seems less likely because it would be a coincidence that all seven planets have just enough water present to have such similar densities.

"The night sky is full of planets, and it is only within the last 30 years that we have been able to begin to unravel their mysteries," rejoices Caroline Dorn, astrophysicist at the University of Zurich and co-author of the article. "The TRAPPIST-1 system is fascinating because around this unique star we can learn about the diversity of rocky planets within a single system. And we can also learn more about a planet by studying its neighbours, so this system is perfect for that.

The elusive axion particle is many times lighter than an electron, with properties that barely make an impression on ordinary matter. As such, the ghost-like particle is a leading contender as a component of dark matter -- a hypothetical, invisible type of matter that is thought to make up 85 percent of the mass in the universe.

Axions have so far evaded detection. Physicists predict that if they do exist, they must be produced within extreme environments, such as the cores of stars at the precipice of a supernova. When these stars spew axions out into the universe, the particles, on encountering any surrounding magnetic fields, should briefly morph into photons and potentially reveal themselves.

Now, MIT physicists have searched for axions in Betelgeuse, a nearby star that is expected to burn out as a supernova soon, at least on astrophysical timescales. Given its imminent demise, Betelgeuse should be a natural factory of axions, constantly churning out the particles as the star burns away.

However, when the team looked for expected signatures of axions, in the form of photons in the X-ray band, their search came up empty. Their results rule out the existence of ultralight axions that can interact with photons over a wide range of energies. The findings set new constraints on the particle's properties that are three times stronger than any previous laboratory-based axion-detecting experiments.

"What our results say is, if you want to look for these really light particles, which we looked for, they're not going to talk very much to photons," says Kerstin Perez, assistant professor of physics at MIT. "We're basically making everyone's lives harder because we're saying, 'you're going to have to think of something else that would give you an axion signal.'"

Perez and her colleagues have published their results today in Physical Review Letters. Her MIT co-authors include lead author Mengjiao Xiao, Brandon Roach, and Melaina Nynka, along with Maurizio Giannotti of Barry University, Oscar Straniero of the Abruzzo Astronomical Observatory, Alessandro Mirizzi of the National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Italy, and Brian Grefenstette of Caltech.

A hunt for coupling

Many of the current experiments that search for axions are designed to look for them as a product of the Primakoff effect, a process that describes a theoretical "coupling" between axions and photons. Axions are not normally thought to interact with photons -- hence their likelihood of being dark matter. However, the Primakoff effect predicts that, when photons are subjected to intense magnetic fields, such as in stellar cores, they could morph into axions. The center of many stars should therefore be natural axion factories.

When a star explodes in a supernova, it should churn the axions out into the universe. If the invisible particles run into a magnetic field, for instance between the star and Earth, they should turn back into photons, presumably with some detectable energy. Scientists are hunting for axions through this process, for instance from our own sun.

"But the sun also has flares and gives off X-rays all the time, and it's hard to understand," says Perez.
She and her colleagues instead looked for axions from Betelgeuse, a star that normally does not emit X-rays. The star is among those nearest to Earth that are expected to explode soon.

"Betelgeuse is at a temperature and lifestage where you don't expect to see X-rays coming out of it, through standard stellar astrophysics," Perez explains. "But if axions do exist, and are coming out, we might see an X-ray signature. So that's why this star is a nice object: If you see X-rays, it's a smoking gun signal that it's got to be axions."

"Data is data"

The researchers looked for X-ray signatures of axions from Betelgeuse, using data taken by NuSTAR, NASA's space-based telescope that focuses high-energy X-rays from astrophysical sources. The team obtained 50 kiloseconds of data from NuSTAR during the time the telescope was trained on Betelgeuse.

The researchers then modeled a range of X-ray emissions that they might see from Betelgeuse if the star was spewing out axions. They considered a range of masses that an axion might be, as well as a range of likelihoods that the axions would "couple" to and reconvert into a photon, depending on the magnetic field strength between the star and Earth.

"Out of all that modeling, you get a range of what your X-ray signal of axions could possibly look like," Perez says.

When they searched for these signals in NuSTAR's data, however, they found nothing above their expected background or outside of any ordinary astrophysical sources of X-rays.

"Betelgeuse is probably in the late stages of evolution and in that case should have a big probability of converting into axions," Xiao says. "But data are data."

Given the range of conditions they considered, the team's null result rules out a large space of possibilities and sets an upper limit that is three times stronger than previous limits, from laboratory-based searches, for what an axion must be. In essence, this means that if axions are ultralight in mass, the team's results show that the particles must be at least three times less likely to couple to photons and emit any detectable X-rays.

"If axions have ultralight masses, we can definitely tell you their coupling has to be very small, otherwise we would have seen it," Perez says.

Ultimately, this means that scientists may have to look to other, less detectable energy bands for axion signals. However, Perez says the search for axions from Betelgeuse is not over.

"What would be exciting would be if we see a supernova, which would ignite a huge amount of axions that wouldn't be in X-rays, but in gamma rays," Perez says. "If a star explodes and we don't see axions, then we'll get really stringent constraints on an axion's coupling to photons. So everyone's crossing their fingers for Betelgeuse to go off."

Diamond, like graphite, is a special form of carbon. Its cubic crystal structure and its strong chemical bonds give it its unique hardness. For thousands of years, it has also been sought after as both a tool and as a thing of beauty. Only in the 1950s did it become possible to produce diamonds artificially for the first time.

Most natural diamonds form in the Earth's mantle at depths of at least 150 kilometres, where temperatures in excess of 1500 degrees Celsius and enormously high pressures of several gigapascals prevail - more than 10.000 times that of a well-inflated bicycle tyre. There are different theories for the exact mechanisms that are responsible for their formation. The starting material is carbonate-rich melts, i.e. compounds of magnesium, calcium or silicon which are rich in both oxygen and carbon.

A new pathway for the formation of diamonds

Because electro-chemical processes take place in the Earth's mantle and the melts and liquids that exist there can have a high electrical conductivity, researchers led by Yuri Palyanov of the V. S. Sobolev Institute of Geology and Mineralogy SB of the Russian Academy of Sciences Novosibirsk developed a model for the formation of diamonds in which highly localised electrical fields play a central role. According to this concept, applying less than even one volt - a voltage lower than that provided by most household batteries - provides electrons that trigger a chemical transformation process. These available electrons make it possible for certain carbon-oxygen compounds of the carbonates to become CO2 through a series of chemical reactions, ultimately leading to pure carbon in the form of diamond.

To test their theory, the Russian research team developed a sophisticated experimental facility: A millimetre-sized platinum capsule was surrounded by a heating system which in turn was placed in a high-pressure apparatus needed to produce immense pressures of up to 7.5 gigapascals. Tiny, carefully constructed electrodes led into the capsule, which had been filled with carbonate or carbonate-silicate powders. Numerous experiments were run at temperatures between 1300 and 1600°C, some of which lasted for as long as 40 hours.

Diamonds only grow with voltage

The experiments conducted in Novosibirsk showed, as predicted, that tiny diamonds grow in the vicinity of the negative electrode over the course of several hours, but this happened only when a small voltage was applied; half a volt was already enough. With a diameter reaching a maximum of 200 micrometres, i.e. one fifth of a millimetre, the newly created crystals were smaller than a typical grain of sand. Furthermore, as expected, the other pure-carbon mineral graphite was found to form in experiments conducted at lower pressures. Further proof of the new mechanism came when the researcher reversed the voltage polarity - diamonds then grew on the other electrode, exactly as expected. Without any voltage being suppled from outside the capsule neither graphite nor diamonds formed. In the vicinity of the diamonds, other minerals that are associated with the Earth's deep mantle were also found.

"The experimental facilities in Novosibirsk are absolutely impressive," says Michael Wiedenbeck, head of the SIMS laboratory at the GFZ, which is part of Potsdam's Modular Earth Science Infrastructure (MESI). He has been cooperating with the Russian researchers for more than ten years; he along with SIMS laboratory engineer Frédéric Couffignal, analysed diamonds produced by their Russian colleagues. In order to determine whether Yuri Palyanov's theory on diamond formation is completely correct, the isotopic composition of the diamonds had to be characterised very precisely.

Precision analysis "made in Potsdam"

The Potsdam researchers used secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) for this purpose. The Potsdam instrument is a highly specialized mass spectrometer, providing geoscientists from all over the world with high precision data from extremely small samples. "With this technology we can determine the composition of tiny areas on sub-millimetre samples with great precision," says Wiedenbeck. Thus, less than one billionth of a gram from a laboratory produced diamond needed to be removed using a very precisely targeted ion beam. Electrically charged atoms were then injected into a six metre long apparatus which separated each the billions of particles based on their individual mass. This technology makes it possible to separate chemical elements, and in particular it is possible to distinguish their lighter or heavier variants known as isotopes. "In this way we have shown that the ratio between the carbon isotopes 13C to 12C behaves exactly according the model developed by our colleagues in Novosibirsk. With this, we have contributed to the final piece of the puzzle, so to speak, to confirm this theory," says Wiedenbeck. However, it must be noted that this new method is not suitable for the mass production of large artificial diamonds.

"Our results clearly show that electric fields should be considered as an important additional factor that influences the crystallisation of diamonds. This observation may prove to be quite significant for understanding carbon isotope ratios shifts within the global carbon cycle," Yuri Polyanov sums up.

Astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have detected the first Jupiter-like planet without clouds or haze in its observable atmosphere. The findings were published this month in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Named WASP-62b, the gas giant was first detected in 2012 through the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP) South survey. Its atmosphere, however, had never been closely studied until now.

"For my thesis, I have been working on exoplanet characterization," says Munazza Alam, a graduate student at the Center for Astrophysics who led the study. "I take discovered planets and I follow up on them to characterize their atmospheres."

Known as a "hot Jupiter," WASP-62b is 575 light years away and about half the mass of our solar system's Jupiter. However, unlike our Jupiter, which takes nearly 12 years to orbit the sun, WASP-62b completes a rotation around its star in just four-and-a-half days. This proximity to the star makes it extremely hot, hence the name "hot Jupiter."

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, Alam recorded data and observations of the planet using spectroscopy, the study of electromagnetic radiation to help detect chemical elements. Alam specifically monitored WASP-62b as it swept in front of its host star three times, making visible light observations, which can detect the presence of sodium and potassium in a planet's atmosphere.

"I'll admit that at first I wasn't too excited about this planet," Alam says. "But once I started to take a look at the data, I got excited."

While there was no evidence of potassium, sodium's presence was strikingly clear. The team was able to view the full sodium absorption lines in their data, or its complete fingerprint. Clouds or haze in the atmosphere would obscure the complete signature of sodium, Alam explains, and astronomers usually can only make out small hints of its presence.

"This is smoking gun evidence that we are seeing a clear atmosphere," she says.

Cloud-free planets are exceedingly rare; astronomers estimate that less than 7 percent of exoplanets have clear atmospheres, according to recent research. For example, the first and only other known exoplanet with a clear atmosphere was discovered in 2018. Named WASP-96b, it is classified as a hot Saturn.

Astronomers believe studying exoplanets with cloudless atmospheres can lead to a better understanding of how they were formed. Their rarity "suggests something else is going on or they formed in a different way than most planets," Alam says. Clear atmospheres also make it easier to study the chemical composition of planets, which can help identify what a planet is made of.

With the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope later this year, the team hopes to have new opportunities to study and better understand WASP-62b. The telescope's improved technologies, like higher resolution and better precision, should help them probe the atmosphere even closer to search for the presence of more elements, such as silicon.

Biology - Volcanic microbes

Oak Ridge National Laboratory contributed to an international study that found almost 300 novel types of microbes living near a deep sea volcano. These microbes, which could be used in biotechnology, reveal new insights about their extreme underwater environment.

Two distinct communities of heat-loving and many acid-loving microbes live near Brother's Volcano, located about 200 miles northeast of New Zealand and 6,000 feet underwater. Known as extremophiles, these microbes thrive in water heated by magma and hydrothermal vents.

Though they live close to one another, the microbial communities reflect differences in water chemistry and temperature from geological features. In analyzing the new bacterial and archaeal families, ORNL's Mircea Podar thinks microbes like these can help better characterize extreme environments.

"We're heading to a point where microbes can be very informative about the environment they came from and even reflect some of the past," Podar said. "With more data, we can use microbes as a proxy to characterize environments where traditional measurements are challenging to capture."

Media Contact: Kim Askey, 865.576.2841, askeyka@ornl.gov

Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/2021-01/Hydrothermal%20vent.jpg

Caption: Deep-sea hydrothermal vent chimneys on Brother's Volcano's northwest caldera wall create a unique environment for microbes. Credit: Anna-Louise Reysenbach/NSF, ROV Jason and 2018 ©Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/2021-01/Magmatic%20vent.jpg

Caption: Magmatic hydrothermal venting at the cone site in Brother's Volcano creates a microbial community distinctly different from those at nearby geological features. Credit: Anna-Louise Reysenbach, NSF, ROV Jason and 2018 ©Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/2021-01/IMG_0546v2.jpg

Caption: ORNL contributed to the international study, which was led by Portland State University, and leveraged submersible technology from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Credit: Anna-Louise Reysenbach

Buildings - The unbreakable bond

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory developed self-healing elastomers that demonstrated unprecedented adhesion strength and the ability to adhere to many surfaces, which could broaden their potential use in industrial applications.

Elastomers, commonly used in the construction industry as sealants, are known for their durability. However, they can develop cracks when exposed to certain environments, leading to air and water leaks.

In a study, ORNL researchers used a blend of a self-healing polymer with curable elastomers to produce a series of self-healable and highly adhesive materials. The team proved that these elastomers can self-repair in ambient temperatures and conditions, as well as underwater, with their adhesive force only minimally impacted by surface dust.

"These tough elastomers can be made simply and efficiently through a scalable process, enabling a wider range of uses for the building, automotive and electronics industries," ORNL's Diana Hun said.

Media Contact: Jennifer Burke, 865.414.6835, burkejj@ornl.gov

Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/2021-01/Buildings%20-%20Unbreakable%20bond-%20lr.png

Caption: ORNL researchers produced self-healable and highly adhesive elastomers, proving they self-repair in ambient conditions and underwater. Credit: ORNL/U.S. Dept. of Energy

Modeling - Mapping the flood

A new tool from Oak Ridge National Laboratory can help planners, emergency responders and scientists visualize how flood waters will spread for any scenario and terrain.

The Two-dimensional Runoff Inundation Toolkit for Operational Needs, or TRITON, leverages the power of modern supercomputing to quickly create detailed flood forecasts based on meteorology, hydrology, terrain and surface conditions.

Free and available for use, TRITON can be downloaded in formats compatible with standard computer systems and with advanced architectures such as ORNL's Summit supercomputer. Running the model on Summit's modern architecture speeds processing by 40 times compared to conventional high-performance computing.

"The ultimate aim of this model is to support operational inundation forecasting for a range of applications, from infrastructure safety to national security," said ORNL's Shih-Chieh Kao who leads the project. "Understanding how a flood wave will propagate across a region or city enables appropriate planning and response."

Media Contact: Kim Askey, 865.576.2841, askeyka@ornl.gov

Video: https://youtu.be/mgo78s7iJ7g
Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/2021-01/TRITON%20screenshot.png

Caption: The TRITON model provides a detailed visualization of the flooding that resulted when Hurricane Harvey stalled over Houston for four days in 2017. Credit: Mario Morales-Hernández/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Physicists at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered how to locally add electrical charge to an atomically thin graphene device by layering flakes of another thin material, alpha-RuCl3, on top of it.

A paper published in the journal Nano Letters describes the charge transfer process in detail. Gaining control of the flow of electrical current through atomically thin materials is important to potential future applications in photovoltaics or computing.

"In my field, where we study van der Waals heterostructures made by custom-stacking atomically thin materials together, we typically control charge by applying electric fields to the devices," said Erik Henriksen, assistant professor of physics in Arts & Sciences and corresponding author of the new study, along with Ken Burch at Boston College. "But here it now appears we can just add layers of RuCl33. It soaks up a fixed amount of electrons, allowing us to make 'permanent' charge transfers that don't require the external electric field."

Jesse Balgley, a graduate student in Henriksen's laboratory at Washington University, is second author of the study. Li Yang, professor of physics, and his graduate student Xiaobo Lu, also both at Washington University, helped with computational work and calculations, and are also co-authors.

Physicists who study condensed matter are intrigued by alpha-RuCl3 because they would like to exploit certain of its antiferromagnetic properties for quantum spin liquids.

In this new study, the scientists report that alpha-RuCl3 is able to transfer charge to several different types of materials -- not just graphene, Henriksen's personal favorite.

They also found that they only needed to place a single layer of alpha-RuCl3 on top of their devices to create and transfer charge. The process still works, even if the scientists slip a thin sheet of an electrically insulating material between the RuCl3 and the graphene.

"We can control how much charge flows in by varying the thickness of the insulator," Henriksen said. "Also, we are able to physically and spatially separate the source of charge from where it goes -- this is called modulation doping."

Adding charge to a quantum spin liquid is one mechanism thought to underlie the physics of high-temperature superconductivity.

"Anytime you do this, it could get exciting," Henriksen said. "And usually you have to add atoms to bulk materials, which causes lots of disorder. But here, the charge flows right in, no need to change the chemical structure, so it's a 'clean' way to add charge."

Data from the DESI (Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument) Legacy Imaging Surveys have revealed over 1200 new gravitational lenses, approximately doubling the number of known lenses. Discovered using machine learning trained on real data, these warped and stretched images of distant galaxies provide astronomers with a flood of new targets with which to measure fundamental properties of the Universe such as the Hubble constant, which describes the expanding Universe.

Astronomers hunting for gravitational lenses utilized machine learning to inspect the vast dataset known as the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys, uncovering 1210 new lenses. The data were collected at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) and Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), both Programs of the National Science Foundation's NOIRLab. The ambitious DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys just had its ninth and final data release.

Discussed in scientific journals since the 1930s, gravitational lenses are products of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. The theory says that a massive object, such as a cluster of galaxies, can warp spacetime. Some scientists, including Einstein, predicted that this warping of spacetime might be observable, as a stretching and distortion of the light from a background galaxy by a foreground cluster of galaxies. The lenses typically appear in images as arcs and streaks around foreground galaxies and galaxy clusters.

Only 1 in 10,000 massive galaxies are expected to show evidence of strong gravitational lensing [1], and locating them is not easy. Gravitational lenses allow astronomers to explore the most profound questions of our Universe, including the nature of dark matter and the value of the Hubble constant, which defines the expansion of the Universe. A major limitation of the use of gravitational lenses until now has been the small number of them known.

"A massive galaxy warps the spacetime around it, but usually you don't notice this effect. Only when a galaxy is hidden directly behind a giant galaxy is a lens possible to see," notes the lead author of the study, Xiaosheng Huang from the University of San Francisco. "When we started this project in 2018, there were only about 300 confirmed strong lenses."

"As a co-leader in the DESI Legacy Surveys I realized this would be the perfect dataset to search for gravitational lenses," explains study co-author David Schlegel of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). "My colleague Huang had just finished teaching an undergraduate class on machine learning at the University of San Francisco, and together we realized this was a perfect opportunity to apply those techniques to a search for gravitational lenses."

The lensing study was possible because of the availability of science-ready data from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys, which were conducted to identify targets for DESI's operations, and from which the ninth and final dataset has just been released. These surveys comprise a unique blend of three projects that have observed a third of the night sky: the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS), observed by the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at CTIO in Chile; the Mayall z-band Legacy Survey (MzLS) [2], by the Mosaic3 camera on the Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope at KPNO; and the Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey (BASS) by the 90Prime camera on the Bok 2.3-meter Telescope, which is owned and operated by the University of Arizona and located at KPNO.

"We designed the Legacy Surveys imaging project from the ground up as a public enterprise, so that it could be used by any scientist," said study co-author Arjun Dey, from NSF's NOIRLab. "Our survey has already yielded more than a thousand new gravitational lenses, and there are undoubtedly many more awaiting discovery.

The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys data are served to the astronomical community via the Astro Data Lab at NOIRLab's Community Science and Data Center (CSDC). "Providing science-ready datasets for discovery and exploration is core to our mission," said CSDC Director Adam Bolton. "The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys is a key resource that can be used for years to come by the astronomy community for investigations like these."

To analyze the data, Huang and team used the National Energy Research Scientific Computer Center's (NERSC) supercomputer at Berkeley Lab. "The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys were absolutely crucial to this study; not just the telescopes, instruments, and facilities but also data reduction and source extraction," explains Huang. "The combination of the breadth and depth of the observations is unparalleled."

With the huge amount of science-ready data to work through, the researchers turned to a kind of machine learning known as a deep residual neural net. Neural nets are computing algorithms that are somewhat comparable to a human brain and are used for solving artificial intelligence problems. Deep neural nets have many layers that collectively can decide whether a candidate object belongs to a particular group. In order to be able to do this, however, the neural nets have to be trained to recognize the objects in question [3].

With the large number of lens candidates now on hand, researchers can make new measurements of cosmological parameters such as the Hubble constant. The key will be to detect a supernova in the background galaxy, which, when lensed by a foreground galaxy, will appear as multiple points of light. Now that astronomers know which galaxies show evidence for strong lensing, they know where to search. New facilities such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory (currently under construction in Chile and operated by NOIRLab) will monitor objects like these as part of its mission, allowing any supernova to be measured rapidly by other telescopes.

Undergraduate students played a significant role in the project from its beginning. University of California student Andi Gu said, "My role on the project has helped me develop several skills which I believe to be key for my future academic career."

Earth gets blasted by mild short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) most days. But sometimes a giant flare like GRB 200415A arrives at our galaxy, sweeping along energy that dwarfs our sun. In fact, the most powerful explosions in the universe are gamma-ray bursts.

Now scientists have shown that GRB 200415A came from another possible source for short GRBs. It erupted from a very rare, powerful neutron star called a magnetar.

Previous detected GRB's came from relatively far away from our home galaxy the Milky Way. But this one was from much closer to home, in cosmic terms.

GRB explosions can disrupt mobile phone reception on earth, but they can also be messengers from the very early history of the universe.

A different end game

"Our sun is a very ordinary star. When it dies, it will get bigger and become a red giant star. After that it will collapse into a small compact star called a white dwarf.

"But stars that are a lot more massive than the sun play a different end game," says Prof Soebur Razzaque from the University of Johannesburg.

Razzaque lead a team predicting GRB behavior for research published in Nature Astronomy on January 13, 2021 .

"When these massive stars die, they explode into a supernova. What's left after that is a very small compact star, small enough to fit in a valley about 12 miles (about 20km) across. This star is called a neutron star. It's so dense that just a spoonful of it would weigh tons on earth," he says.

It's these massive stars and what's left of them that cause the biggest explosions in the universe.

A telling split second

Scientists have known for a while that supernovas spout long GRB's, which are bursts longer than two seconds. In 2017, they found out that two neutron stars spiralling into each other can also give off a short GRB. The 2017 burst came from a safe 130 million light years away from us.

But that could not explain any of the other GRBs that researchers could detect in our sky on almost a daily basis.

This changed in a split of a second at 4:42am U.S. Eastern Time on April 15, 2020.

On that day, a giant flare GRB swept past Mars. It announced itself to satellites, a spacecraft and the International Space Station orbiting around our planet.

It was the first known giant flare since the 2008 launch of NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray space telescope. And it lasted just 140 milliseconds, about the blink of an eye.

But this time, the orbiting telescopes and instruments captured way more data about the giant flare GRB than the previous one detected 16 years previously .

Bursts from another source

The elusive cosmic visitor was named GRB 200415A . The Inter Planetary Network (IPN), a consortium of scientists, figured out where the giant flare came from. GRB 200415A exploded from a magnetar in galaxy NGC 253, in the Sculptor constellation, they say.

All the previously known GRB's were traced to supernovas or two neutron stars spiralling into each other.

"In the Milky Way there are tens of thousands of neutron stars," says Razzaque. "Of those, only 30 are currently known to be magnetars.

"Magnetars are up to a thousand times more magnetic than ordinary neutron stars. Most emit X-rays every now and then. But so far, we know of only a handful of magnetars that produced giant flares. The brightest we could detect was in 2004. Then GRB 200415A arrived in 2020."

Galaxy NGC 253 is outside our home, the Milky Way, but it is a mere 11.4 million light years from us. That is relatively close when talking about the nuclear frying power of a giant flare GRB.

A giant flare is so much more powerful than solar flares from our sun, it's hard to imagine. Large solar flares from our sun disrupt cell phone reception and power grids sometimes.

The giant flare GRB in 2004 disrupted communication networks also.

Second wave nabbed for the first time

"No two gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are ever the same, even if they happen in a similar way. And no two magnetars are the same either. We're still trying to understand how stars end their life and how these very energetic gamma rays are produced, says Razzaque.

"It's only in the last 20 years or so, that we have all the instruments in place to detect these GRB events in many different ways - in gravitational waves, radio waves, visible light, X rays and gamma rays."

"GRB 200415A was the first time ever that both the first and second explosions of a giant flare were detected," he says.

Understanding the second wave

In 2005 research, Razzaque predicted a first and second explosion during a giant flare.

For the current research in Nature Astronomy, he headed a team including Jonathan Granot from the Open University in Israel, Ramandeep Gill from the George Washington University and Matthew Baring from the Rice University.

They developed an updated theoretical model, or prediction, of what a second explosion in a giant flare GRB would look like. After April 15, 2020 , they could compare their model with data measured from GRB 200415A.

"The data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (Fermi GBM) tells us about the first explosion. Data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope (Fermi LAT) tells us about the second," says Razzaque.

"The second explosion occurred about 20 seconds after the first one, and has much higher gamma-ray energy than the first one. It also lasted longer. We still need to understand what happens after a few hundred seconds though."

Messengers about deep time

If the next giant flare GRB happens closer to our home galaxy the Milky Way, a powerful radio telescope on the ground such as MeerKAT in South Africa, may be able to detect it, he says.

"That would be an excellent opportunity to study the relationship between very high energy gamma-ray emissions and radio wave emissions in the second explosion. And that would tell us more about what works and doesn't work in our model."

The better we understand these fleeting explosions, the better we may understand the universe we live in.

A star dying soon after the beginning of the universe could be disrupting cell phone reception today.

"Even though gamma-ray bursts explode from a single star, we can detect them from very early in the history of the universe. Even going back to when the universe was a few hundred million years old," says Razzaque.

"That is at an extremely early stage of the evolution of the universe. The stars that died at that time... we are only detecting their gamma-ray bursts now, because light takes time to travel.

"This means that gamma-ray bursts can tell us more about how the universe expands and evolves over time."

What The Study Did: Variations and changes in national and state rates of neonatal abstinence syndrome and maternal opioid-related diagnoses were examined in this observational study.

Authors: Ashley H. Hirai, Ph.D., of the Health Resources and Services Administration in Rockville, Maryland, is the corresponding author.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jama.2020.24991)

Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

In 2020, astronomers added a new member to an exclusive family of exotic objects with the discovery of a magnetar. New observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory help support the idea that it is also a pulsar, meaning it emits regular pulses of light.

Magnetars are a type of neutron star, an incredibly dense object mainly made up of tightly packed neutron, which forms from the collapsed core of a massive star during a supernova.

What sets magnetars apart from other neutron stars is that they also have the most powerful known magnetic fields in the universe. For context, the strength of our planet's magnetic field has a value of about one Gauss, while a refrigerator magnet measures about 100 Gauss. Magnetars, on the other hand, have magnetic fields of about a million billion Gauss. If a magnetar was located a sixth of the way to the Moon (about 40,000 miles), it would wipe the data from all of the credit cards on Earth.

On March 12, 2020, astronomers detected a new magnetar with NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Telescope. This is only the 31st known magnetar, out of the approximately 3,000 known neutron stars.

After follow-up observations, researchers determined that this object, dubbed J1818.0-1607, was special for other reasons. First, it may be the youngest known magnetar, with an age estimated to be about 500 years old. This is based on how quickly the rotation rate is slowing and the assumption that it was born spinning much faster. Secondly, it also spins faster than any previously discovered magnetar, rotating once around every 1.4 seconds.

Chandra's observations of J1818.0-1607 obtained less than a month after the discovery with Swift gave astronomers the first high-resolution view of this object in X-rays. The Chandra data revealed a point source where the magnetar was located, which is surrounded by diffuse X-ray emission, likely caused by X-rays reflecting off dust located in its vicinity. (Some of this diffuse X-ray emission may also be from winds blowing away from the neutron star.)

Harsha Blumer of West Virginia University and Samar Safi-Harb of the University of Manitoba in Canada recently published results from the Chandra observations of J1818.0-1607 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

This composite image contains a wide field of view in the infrared from two NASA missions, the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), taken before the magnetar's discovery. X-rays from Chandra show the magnetar in purple. The magnetar is located close to the plane of the Milky Way galaxy at a distance of about 21,000 light-years from Earth.

Other astronomers have also observed J1818.0-1607 with radio telescopes, such as the NSF's Karl Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), and determined that it gives off radio waves. This implies that it also has properties similar to that of a typical "rotation-powered pulsar," a type of neutron star that gives off beams of radiation that are detected as repeating pulses of emission as it rotates and slows down. Only five magnetars including this one have been recorded to also act like pulsars, constituting less than 0.2% of the known neutron star population.

The Chandra observations may also provide support for this general idea. Safi-Harb and Blumer studied how efficiently J1818.0-1607 is converting energy from its decreasing rate of spin into X-rays. They concluded this efficiency is lower than that typically found for magnetars, and likely within the range found for other rotation-powered pulsars.

The explosion that created a magnetar of this age would be expected to have left behind a detectable debris field. To search for this supernova remnant, Safi-Harb and Blumer looked at the X-rays from Chandra, infrared data from Spitzer, and the radio data from the VLA. Based on the Spitzer and VLA data they found possible evidence for a remnant, but at a relatively large distance away from the magnetar. In order to cover this distance the magnetar would need to have traveled at speeds far exceeding those of the fastest known neutron stars, even assuming it is much older than expected, which would allow more travel time.