Science news this week: Time emerges inside a mini-universe, scientists thicken Arctic ice, and one of the oldest graves of a free Black person in the US found
The experiment was conducted using a Bose–Einstein condensate – a strange state of matter in which thousands of atoms are mixed into a single quantum object at absolute zero (minus 273.15 degrees Celsius, or minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit). The system showed time speeding up, slowing down, and even stopping, depending on what the system was doing.
Researchers conducted the first real-life sea ice thickening experiment in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.
(Image credit: arctic-images/Getty Images)
The Arctic is the fastest warming region of the world, with sea ice disappearing at a rate of 12.2% per decade.
Ice is important for maintaining sea levels and the flow of marine nutrients, and for reflecting solar radiation away from our planet, so its rapid decline is extremely worrying. That’s why a team of researchers turned to a surprisingly simple method to halt ice loss: flooding ice sheets with seawater to thicken them.
Despite some major caveats, the results showed a lot of promise.
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Some types of batteries charge more quickly than others.
(Image credit: TFilm via Getty Images)
If you’re as unashamedly attached to your devices as I am, you’ve probably wondered about the wildly varying times they take to charge. So what’s the science behind fast charging, and does it cause more damage to a device’s battery than regular charging?
One of the oldest burials of a free black person in America discovered
The gravesite of “Boston”, a former enslaved person who died in Boston, Massachusetts in the 18th century.
(Image credit: Boston Parks and Recreation Department)
It was found among photographs of headstones during a restoration project in Boston’s Granary Burying Ground – a gravestone with only one name, “Boston.”
Similarly a team of conservationists chanced upon the grave of Sebastian, a former enslaved man who died free in 1729 and chose the town’s name as his own.
Searches of historical records have yielded much information about Boston’s past, including his reputation as a hard-working servant throughout the city and his emancipation after the death of the man who enslaved him.
“It’s always been there. We just had to go and share the story,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said in a July 4 speech.
A medical sociologist points out that decisions regarding antibiotic prescribing are not driven by medical knowledge alone – emotions also play a role.
If you’re looking for things to keep you busy over the weekend, here’s a selection of our best opinion pieces, interviews, clinical dilemmas and crosswords we’ve published this week.
China’s Tianwen-2 spacecraft captured this photo of crescent moon Kamo’olewa (aka 2016 HO3) at a distance of about 12.5 miles (20 kilometers) from the near-Earth asteroid.
(Image credit: CNSA)
It doesn’t look like much, but this blurry, gray image is the first close-up photo of one of Earth’s temporary “half-moons” – a rapidly spinning asteroid temporarily orbiting the Sun alongside our planet.
The subject of equal intrigue is the spacecraft that took the image: a secret Chinese probe that is presumably preparing to land on the space rock and take a sample — though an unexpected hiccup will make that more difficult.
