New Material Nearly as Tough as Diamonds

Photographs of the three variants of carbon nitrides created. Laniel, et al., Advanced Materials, 2023

A team of materials scientists, based at the University of Edinburgh in the U.K., have synthesized a nearly unbreakable substance that could soon usurp diamond as the hardest material on Earth. They heated carbon and nitrogen to extremely high temperatures and then put it under high pressure, creating several carbon nitride materials. Upon inspection with X-ray diffraction, some of the products proved tougher than cubic boron nitride, the second-hardest material after pure diamond. The researchers say the new material has many potential applications, including protective coatings for use in the automobile and aerospace industries, high-endurance cutting tools, solar panels, and photodetectors. Check out the press release here and the full paper here.

Black Hole Singularities "Faith, not science!" Prominent Physicist Claims

This episode of Science News covers a well-renown physicist who says that there’s a mistake in a proof that dates back half a century, and black holes might not actually contain singularities.

New Science App Brings Galactic Exploration to Your Desktop

Screen capture from the EXPLORE lunar exploration interface of the Explore Toolkit.

A team of scientists and application designers has just announced their completion of a new toolkit for astronomers and planetary scientists. The toolkit, which has not yet been publicly released, is aimed at researchers and will allow users to explore, visualize, and map various types of astrophysical data. The kit includes data of the moon, stars, and the Milky Way.Giacomo Nodjoumi, one of the developers, said in a press release: “These new tools for the scientific community are completely open source, modular, expandable and scalable, with no installation required.” While you wait to get your hands on it, you can watch a video about it here.

Child’s Birthday is More Likely to be the Same Month as Mom’s

Researchers from Spain and the U.S. have examined official data on more than 10 million births and have found that mothers are 4.6% more likely to share their birth month with their children than statistically expected. For fathers and their children, the chance was 2% higher than expected. The study confirms the results of previous research indicating that family members’ birth season somehow correlates with a child’s birth season, but reasons have remained unclear. The authors speculate that the similarity of birth months between family members may be explained by socio-demographic groups with differentiated birth patterns. FWIW, my birthday is in the same month as my mom’s. Press release here, full article here.

Everyone loves to talk about complex problems and complex systems, but no one has any idea what it means. I think that understanding complexity is THE biggest gap in science today. What do we even mean by complexity? What do we know about it? And what’s the problem with trying to explain it? That’s what this week’s video is about. You can take the quiz here.

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