Category: Science

Physicists are still searching for new heavier elements. They’re up to atomic number 118 and a new labouratory has just started operation that may take us to element number 120.

Remember back in your high school science class how, when your teacher was talking about the periodic table of the elements he told you that Uranium, element number 92, was the heaviest ‘naturally occurring’ element. I bet he then went on to say that all of the elements with a higher atomic number had been artificially created in ‘atom smashers’.

The Periodic Table of the elements all the way up to the latest manufactured, Oganesson, Og number 118. (credit: WUWM)

You may also remember that the atomic number of an atom is simply the number of protons in its nucleus. Uranium has 92 protons so it’s element 92 while carbon on the other hand has 6 protons so it is element number 6. Atoms with the same number of protons have the same chemical properties, which is why we say they are the same chemical element.

A chemically pure disk of the element Uranium. Even heavier than lead Uranium is the heaviest element occurring naturally here on Earth. Because it is radioactive half of our planet’s original supply of Uranium has decayed to other, lighter elements. (Credit: Wikipedia)

The atomic mass of an atom however is the sum of the number of protons plus neutrons in the nucleus. Two atoms can have different numbers of neutrons but still be the same element so long as they have the same number of protons. Atoms with the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons are called isotopes of the same element. For example carbon 12 has 6 protons, which makes it carbon, along with 6 neutrons while carbon 14 has 6 protons, still carbon, but 8 neutrons. The extra two neutrons make carbon 14 unstable, radioactive, which makes it useful for radiocarbon dating.

An Atom of Carbon 12 has 6 protons, making it element 6, plus 6 neutrons in the nucleus giving it an atomic mass of 12. there are also 6 electrons orbiting around the nucleus whose negative charge balances the charge of the protons making the atom electrically neutral. (Credit: Socratic)

Uranium has no stable isotopes, they are all radioactive. Its most stable isotope is U 238 with 92 protons, 146 neutrons and a half-life of about 4.5 billion years, which means that the Earth today has just about half the amount of U 238 it had when the solar system first formed. Elements with higher atomic numbers have much shorter half-lives, the most stable isotope of Plutonium, element number 94, is P 244 with a half-life of 80 million years. Which is why whatever Plutonium the Earth started with 4.3 billion years ago has all decayed away.

A disk of the artificial element Plutonium. Plutonium is not only radioactive it is also chemically toxic making it doubly dangerous. (Credit: Phys.org)

Scientists have been manufacturing ‘Trans-Uranium’ atoms since just a few years after they realized that atomic nuclei were composed of protons and neutrons. Neptunium, number 93, and Plutonium were both first manufactured in the year 1940 at what is now known as Lawrence Berkeley Labouratory by bombarding atoms of Uranium with neutrons. Over the next 34 years another twelve new elements, right up to Seaborgium, number 106, would be developed at the California labouratory.

Physicist Glenn Seaborg led the Lawrence Berkeley team that first manufactured more than a dozen elements. Element number 106 is named for him! (Credit: National Inventors Hall of Fame)
The 60 inch Cyclotron at Berkeley Labouratories, now Lawrence Berkeley, was used to manufacture some of the first artificial elements. (Credit: Department of Energy, Office of Public Affairs)

In the late 1970s a new labouratory, the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) or the Society for Heavy Ion Research in Hessen Germany first began its studies. This team would go on to be the first to manufacture elements 107 to 112 between the years 1980 and 1996. By this time the technique of simply taking the heaviest element yet produced and bombarding it with protons or neutrons was no longer working. You see as the atomic number gets higher the nucleus quickly becomes even more unstable so that the atoms that were produced only lasted for seconds making it virtually impossible to push them up one stage higher before they decayed.

Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung, GSI facility outside of Hessen Germany. (Credit: European Space Agency)

Instead a technique known as ‘cold fusion’ was developed. Cold fusion by the way has nothing to do with the erroneously announced ‘cold fusion’ of hydrogen into helium back in the 1980s. The technique of cold fusion involves slamming a middling sized nucleus into a heavy but fairly stable nucleus. One example is slamming a Neon nucleus into Uranium to produce Nobelium, element 102.

An illustration of a ‘cold fusion’ collision between a nucleus of nickle coming from the right with a nucleus of gold on the left. (Credit: Riken.jp)

Cold fusion is a very delicate technique because you have to use just the right amount of energy. Too little and the electrostatic repulsion of the protons in the two nuclei will keep them from ever touching. Too much and the collision will just obliterate both nuclei.

Throughout this entire period there was also a Russian labouratory that was devoted to the study of trans-uranium elements called the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR). Despite having played an important role in nuclear research for many years, the technique of cold fusion was developed at JINR for example; the Russians had never succeeded in being the undisputed first to develop a new element. That situation lasted until 1999 when JINR became the first labouratory to demonstrate the existence of element Flerovium, element 114.

For many years the bridesmaid rather than the bride, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) was the Soviet Union’s version of Lawrence Berkeley Labouratory. (Credit: www.jinr.ru)

JINR went to produce the next 4 elements with the latest element yet being number 118 in 2010, the element was named Oganesson after Yuri Oganessian the head researcher at JINR. In the ten years since Oganesson research has hit a brick wall as the cold fusion technique has proven unable to produce enough nuclei, that last long enough to be observed sufficiently enough that a new element can be announced.

Physicists Yuri Oganesson has led the team that discovered that latest elements. His facility will begin a new search for even heavier elements this year. Element number 118, the heaviest manufactured so far, is named for him. (Credit: Wikipedia)

But JINR is currently gearing up for a new attempt. A new atom smasher known as the Superheavy Element Factory (SHEF) has been assembled and once a new supply of the element Californium arrives to be used as a target the testing will commence. The Californium itself has to be manufactured at Lawrence Berkeley Labouratory and with a half-life of only approximately 500 years it is both dangerously radioactive and difficult to produce and handle.

Californium, element 98, is the heaviest element to be manufactured in quantities sufficient to be see with the naked eye. (Credit: Ahval)

The new goal at JINR is actually not element 119 but element 120 because calculations indicate that 120 could be a island of stability, lasting perhaps hundreds, possibly even thousands of times longer than elements that are slightly smaller. This stability arises from the laws of quantum mechanics where certain magic numbers of identical particles can arrange themselves in orbitals that produce a degree of permanence. Testing at the SHEF is slated to commence this spring so it’s possible that we may know if the theory is correct before the year is out.

The predicted ‘Island of Stability’ for heavier elements is centered around 120 protons with 180 neutrons. No one actually knows if there is such a thing, yet! (Credit: Physics Central)

So how far can we go, that’s almost impossible to say. With each step higher it not only becomes harder to produce atoms of new elements but harder still to detect them. Still physicists are clever creatures and they’ve always found a way to surmount whatever difficulty arises.

Of Course there are some downsides to being a physicist. (Credit: Foxtrot- Bill Amend)

There is a theoretical calculation, again based in quantum mechanics, which indicates that element 172 might be an impassible brick wall. Any more protons in a nucleus and they will start grabbing electrons to fuse into neutrons until the number of protons is reduced back down to 172. Of course that obstacle, if real is many years away and there’s still more than 50 elements to be manufactured before we reach it.

So the nuclear physicists will keep on working. If element 120 does turn out to be an island of stability you can bet that it won’t be long before labouratories are using it as springboard to even higher elements. The science of Trans-Uranium elements has not only taught us a great deal about how atoms are composed but at the same time advanced techniques for high-precision, high-sensitivity sensors as well as data collection and analysis. So the periodic table of the elements has grown quite a bit since I first studied it in high school, and I hope that I do live long enough to see a few more elements added to it.

Paleontology News for February 2021.

A lot to talk about today, a couple of topics that I’ve discussed in recent posts have come together in a single story so I think I start there.

The two subjects are bioluminescence; see my post of 8 August 2020, and fossils encased in Burmese amber, see posts of 16 December 2016, 1 June 2019 and 2 September 2020. Well in paleontology if you’re patient, and lucky, spectacular fossils will turn up from time to time including a 99 million year old, exquisitely preserved specimen of a lightning bug encased in amber.

100 million year old Fire Fly encased in amber. (Credit: Phys.org)

  Now insects in general don’t fossilize well, I have none in my collection, and fireflies, fire beetles and glowworms are especially rare since their bodies are softer than those of most beetles. So our knowledge of the evolution of bioluminescence in beetles is largely guesswork. Indeed, the current thinking is that bioluminescence first appeared in the larval stage of beetles as a defensive mechanism. Then, in order to retain the ability as adults the beetles also retained the soft body more typical of a larva.

Evolutionary biologists hypothesize that bioluminescence first developed in the larva of beetles and then was retained in the adult. (Credit: What’s the Bug)

That’s one of the thing’s that makes the specimen from Myanmar, which has been given the name Cretophengodes azari, so valuable. Perfectly preserved in amber the specimen is both clearly an adult, clearly a male and just as clearly possesses the organs necessary for bioluminescence. While it is impossible to say for certain how the animal used its luminous organ the fact that it is a male raises the possibility that the light played a role in mating just as it does for modern species. One more example of how the fossil preservation of soft parts, this time in amber, is answering many of our questions about the past.

It’s all about mating. Evolution had developed numerous techniques just so an animal can find a mate. (Credit: Radim Schreiber)

There are also some types of animals that have a very extensive fossil record but about whom we still have many questions because their hard shells fossilize so much easier than their soft bodies. In other words we know a lot about parts of the animal, and have a lot of questions about other parts.

A beautiful ammonite fossil that you can buy on the internet for only a hundred bucks! (Credit: Wish.com)

A good example of this are the Ammonites, extinct relatives of the modern nautilus. The coiled shells of Ammonites are very common, so common that they are commercially dug up and sold as knick-knacks. Hundreds of species of ammonites have been described based entirely on differences in the shells while paleontologists still argue over the details of the animal inside. Was it like a nautilus, or more like a squid, or maybe a cuttlefish, or something different from them all?

A chambered Nautilus is not an ammonite but obviously they are closely related. How close, well maybe the new fossil from Solnhofen will answer that question. (Credit: Wikipedia)

Such details may seem important only to professionals but remember we are talking about a large group of animals who survived for hundreds of millions of years. The nature of the ammonite animal is very important in the evolutionary history of life.

The Cuttlefish is also a close relative of the ammonites. (Credit: Monterey Bay Aquarium)

So when a fossil of a nearly complete ammonite animal, outside of its shell, is discovered that’s big news. The find comes from the Solnhofen limestone quarry in southern Germany, the same site that has produced those famous fossils of archaeopteryx. The limestone deposits of Solnhofen accumulated at the center of a lagoon some 150 million years ago. Like lagoon’s today the water was very salty, contained little oxygen and was very hot. Little could live there and any creature that died there would not decay but instead be slowly buried in the limestone. Because of this the fossils from Solnhofen retain clear evidence of the soft parts of the animals.

The world famous fossil of archeaopteryx from Solnhofen. The unique preservation of this specimen did much to convince 19th century scientists that evolution was a fact of nature! (Credit: Wikipedia)

Other ammonites have been found at Solnhofen, but always in their shell so that their internal organs are hidden as in life. This specimen however is entirely naked allowing Professor Christian Klug of the University of Zurich and fossil collector Helmut Tischlinger to reconstruct the anatomy of the fossil. In order to discover every detail of the ammonite the researchers even took photographs of the fossil under Ultraviolet light.

The Solnhofen ammonite. It may not look like much to you and me but to a trained expert almost the entire internal anatomy is there to be studied. (Credit: The New York Times)

Nearly the entire anatomy of the animal was there. The paleontologists could distinguish the digestive tract, with fecal matter still in the intestine along with reproductive organs and gills. The only parts that were missing were unfortunately the creature’s tentacles leaving still open the question of whether they resemble those of a nautilus or those of a squid.

How the internal organs in the fossil fit into the shell as reconstructed by Dr. Klug. (Credit: Forbes)

So how did this ammonite come to die outside of it’s shell? We may never know. The likeliest event is that the animal died in its shell but then lost its grip and simply slid out. However Doctor Klug hypothesizes that perhaps a predator pulled the ammonite out of its shell. Then, while munching on the tentacles the attacker lost its grip and the mortally wounded ammonite sank to the bottom. However the ammonite met its fate its survival as a fossil will teach us a great deal about a large and important group of animals.

While it is possible that the ammonite could have been pulled out of its shell by a predator it’s more likely that the animal just died and lost its grip on the shell. (Credit: The New York Times)

While ammonites were one of the most common denizens of the oceans back in the Mesozoic period on land one of the most common types of dinosaurs were the hadrosaurs, those two legged plant eaters often called duckbills because of their long, wide snout. Hadrosaurs were numerous both in terms of the total population of animals; plant eaters always outnumber predators, but also in the number of different species that are known to have existed.

The bones of Hadrosaurus foulkii at the Academy of Naturals in Philadelphia. This was the first dinosaur skeleton complete enough to show that some dinosaurs walked upright. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

For many hadrosaurs the key features that distinguish one species from a closely related one is skull shape and ornamentation. Hadrosaur skulls have been discovered that possess large frills, crowns and bumps. So varied and in some cases bazaar are the shapes of hadrosaur skulls that evolutionary biologists have even suggested that what we are seeing is a seventy million year old version of sexual selection, that hadrosaur skull ornamentation is like a peacock’s tail, having no practical use other than attracting females.

An unadorned Hadrosaurus skull. (Credit: BYU Museum)
A Hadrosaurus skull with a large crest. Probably used both to attract females and impress other males the crest is one way to distinguish one species from another. (Credit: The Natural Historian)

One such hadrosaur species is known as Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus, an animal whose nasal passages start near the animal’s upper lip, extends way up, a meter above their forehead, turns 180º around to come back to just above their eyes. The first skull of P cyrtocristatus was discovered in New Mexico in the year 1923 and dates back to some 75 million years ago.

The face of a Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus. The nasal passages run up and back down the animal’s face and are over two meters in length. (Credit: Sci-News.com)

That first skull sparked a debate about the purpose of P cyrtocristatus’s unusual nose. Ideas ranging from a snorkel to the long nose giving the animal a superb sense of smell have been advanced. The consensus opinion however is that the nose was used for both sexual display and to produce a loud, resonant low pitched roar that could have been heard for kilometers.

Now a new fossilized skull of P cyrtocristatus has been found in New Mexico not far from where the first skull was unearthed. Although most of the body, and even a portion of the skull had eroded away importantly the long nasal crest was preserved in greater detail than ever before seen. Indeed the new skull has already enabled paleontologists to better understand the relationship between P cyrtocristatus and its closest relatives P walkeri in Alberta Canada and P tubicen from younger rocks in New Mexico. The researchers also hope that the new find will enable them to learn more about how the crest developed as the animal grew.

The fossil skull of Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus found in New Mexico. While the lower portion of the skull is gone importantly the tube like crest is almost intact. (Credit: Sci-News)

The three fossils discussed here come from a very wide variety of animals but they all have one thing in common. By preserving a portion of the soft parts of the animal they have revealed some of the mysteries of life’s history here on Earth.

The Circular Economy, is it a pathway to a sustainable future for our planet or is it just another well-intentioned idea that will end up going nowhere?

I’ve written many times in these posts about the threats that we human beings have created to the very planet on which we live. While the biggest problems maybe carbon emissions causing climate change along with the ever growing piles of plastic trash we generate there are nevertheless many others such as Mercury getting into the food supply, agricultural fertilizer runoff into lakes and streams, ocean acidification etc, etc.

Just a few of the many environmental problems facing the world today. Kinda depressin’ ain’t it! (Credit: Vector Stock)

In those posts I’ve also discussed some of the efforts underway by scientists, engineers and sometimes just regular citizens who are trying to find solutions to those problems. However I freely admit that the solutions I’ve discussed so far were designed to address one environmental issue at a time rather than an overall plan for solving all of our problems. That’s the way I was taught and trained, you break a problem down to its component parts and by studying each part separately you can solve the whole problem. This technique is formally known as ‘Cartesian Reductionism’ after Rene’ Descartes the 17th Century French mathematician and philosopher who first described the technique and is often employed by scientists and engineers.

Rene Descartes (1596-1650) Mathematician, Scientist and Philosopher. (Credit: Sapaviva.com)
The conflict between reductionism and holism has become especially important in the field of medicine. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages so a balance is required. (Credit: ScienceDirect)

The opposite of Cartesian Reductionism is known a Holism, the idea that an organic system is bigger than the sum of its parts and therefore has to be studied in its entirety. Since life on Earth is the biggest organic system we know about maybe we do need to take a more holistic approach to saving the environment and develop overall strategies for living within what the Earth can give us. Today I’d like to discuss one such proposed strategy.

The approach is called ‘The Circular Economy’ but in some respects it’s really just a new term for recycling. However the circular economy is more than just having consumers recycling their plastic or aluminum or other waste. Instead the circular economy is an overall program designed for recycling waste of every kind, industrial as well as consumer.  While this concept has received a good deal of media attention in both Europe and Japan as far as I can tell it is largely unknown in the US.

A diagram of the Circular Economy. The idea is to minimize both the resource input and the disposal output to the circle. (Credit: Kenniskaarten – het Groene Brein)

As an example of what I mean by every kind of waste consider a cheese making company. Now everybody knows that to make cheese you start by separating milk into curds and whey using a coagulant like rennet. The curds go on to become cheese but the whey is generally just tossed out as waste.

The process of cheese making begins with the separation of milk into curds, the more solid part, and whey, the more liquid. The curds become the cheese while the whey is generally tossed out. (Credit: Farm Girl)

Well no more, not if a company called Chemicle succeeds in turning the whey into biodegradable plastic. The small company, which is headquartered in the UK, is investigating techniques for turning whey, which is a complex mixture of organic chemicals, into an alternative for oil in a number of industrial applications. Success would have the twin benefits of both reducing the amount of organic waste we dump into the environment while also reducing our dependence on oil!

The founders of Chemicle the UK company seeking to make biodegradable plastics out of dairy waste. (Credit: Chemicle / R. A. Lawler)

Another small company trying to make a big difference is Traceless, a German company. Traceless has developed a process that is able to convert waste from the agricultural industry into biodegradable cling wrap and other single use packaging products. Again the idea is to kill two birds with one stone by using a material that would otherwise end up in a landfill to manufacture products that we are currently making from petroleum.

Traceless corporation of Hamburg Germany demonstrates how their packaging material, unlike common plastics, biodegrades in just a short period of time. (Credit: Traceless)

In order for companies like Chemicle and Traceless to succeed we also need to coordinate the transfer of one company’s waste to those companies for whom it is a valuable resource. That’s where a company called Excess Materials Exchange will come in. Excess Materials Exchange is a Dutch company that functions as a middlemen, linking those companies trying to get rid of their waste safely with those companies that can use it.

Welcome site for Excess Materials Exchange. I love the slogan ‘A dating site for secondary materials’. (Credit: Medium)

These three companies, and many others are now contestants for an award called the ‘Green Alley Award’ that’s given by the Landbell Group, a German waste management corporation. First awarded in 2014 the € 25,000 award is open to European startup firms who are working to help create the circular economy. The idea of the Green Alley award is to not only provide a bit of cash that any small company can certainly use but to generate some media attention both for the companies involved as well as the entire concept of the circular economy.

The Green Valley Award already boasts a track record of helping small start-ups working to solve the problems of the circular economy. (Credit: Green Alley Award)

Hum! Do you think maybe the US could benefit from an award like the ‘Green Alley Award’?  At least we might learn something about the circular economy.

Movie Review: ‘The Dig’, on Netflix.

Although it was released to a small number of movie theaters in the UK your best chance of seeing ‘The Dig’, the story of the discovery of the Sutton Hoo ship burial in the UK in 1939, is via the streaming service Netflix. In these days of the Covid-19 pandemic many film production companies are either holding on to their products until things return to normal, such as the next James Bond movie, or skipping the theaters to go directly to TV like Godzilla versus Kong. With the latter generally appearing on a subscription movie service like Netflix.

Poster for ‘The Dig’ on Netflix. (Credit: Netflix)

What long-term effect the pandemic is going to have on the movie industry can only be guessed at present. Movie theater corporations have been badly hurt by the loss of revenue due to the pandemic with Regal theaters declaring bankruptcy while AMC is barely holding on. If theaters in general disappear what will happen to the big, and costly blockbuster movies that Hollywood has come to depend on? It’s a good question as to whether a big budget Avengers movie could even make a profit if it’s only going to be seen in people’s homes? Only time will tell us what the answer will be. But for now we do still have movies to watch and review and this review is about ‘The Dig’.

The story of ‘The Dig’ begins as it did in real life, with landowner Edith Pretty, played by actress Carey Mulligan, on whose large property in Suffolk England are a number of earthen mounds that she suspects are archaeological sites. Local landmarks, the mounds even have a name that dates back centuries, Sutton Hoo, a name that in old English roughly translates as southern farmstead hill.

The site of Sutton Hoo as it is today, restored to about as it was in 1939. The ship burial mound is center top. (Credit: history.furman.edu)

Like many members of the English gentry at that time Edith had read about Howard Carter’s excavation of the tomb of the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Wondering what may be hidden in her mounds Misses Pretty, Edith was a widow as the story begins, contacts with a local amateur archaeologist named Basil Brown, played by Ralph Fiennes, to excavate the largest of the mounds, one that she has a feeling about.

The real Edith Pretty (l) and as portrayed by actress Kate Mulligan (r). (Credit: The Telegraph)
The real Basil Brown (l) and as portrayed by actor Ralph Fiennes. (Credit: Heritage.suffolk.gov.uk and Yorkshire Evening Post)

What Basil discovers is the remains of a long wooden ship similar to a Viking dragon ship. He realizes that the mound is a ship burial, an entire ancient ship used as a platform, a coffin in a sense, for the burial of a Viking king or powerful noble. Such burials are known both from historical records as well as archaeological sites in Scandinavia. 

Artists impression of a ship burial. Obviously the departed was a person of great consequence and yes we do know of at least one woman who was so interred. (Credit: Pinterest)
Photograph of the excavation at Sutton Hoo. The remaining wood was so decayed that it could not be removed and really it was more of an impression in the soil than anything else. (Credit: Current Archaeology)

When the ship is about a third excavated and the nature of the find becomes news across the country a professional archaeologist named Charles Phillips from the British Museum arrives to take over. That’s one of the themes of ‘The Dig’, British snobbery. Throughout the first half of the movie anytime Brown wishes to talk to Misses Pretty he has to wait outside while the butler goes to get her, he’s hired help after all. And of course anyone with a university degree should be the one giving the orders rather than someone whom is really only a farmer playing at archaeologist.

By this time however Edith has come to trust Basil and since the mounds are on her land a truce is arranged where professional and amateur work together to complete the dig. As artifacts are discovered it soon becomes obvious that the burial is too old to be Viking. It’s Anglo-Saxon, straight out of the deepest part of the Dark Ages. Artifact after artifact is unearthed from the mound as Basil and the team from London occasionally glance nervously skyward where warplanes are roaring overhead.

A gold shoulder clasp from Sutton Hoo. This is just one part of the treasure discovered. (Credit: Wikipedia)

That’s the second theme of ‘The Dig’ because the excavation of Sutton Hoo took place in the late summer of 1939 as Europe was preparing to plunge into the bloodiest war in history. The professionals know that once the war starts, and in the movie no one has any doubt that the war will soon start, they’ll be ordered to stop their work and so the excavation continues with an air of impeding disaster.

Sutton Hoo was the grave of a warlord, as evidenced by his sword. The fact that the burial site was excavated right at the beginning of WW2 is a testament to our violent nature. (Credit: YouTube)

The team does finish in time however and an inquest decides that the treasure belongs to Edith who decides to donate it to the British Museum where she feels that the greatest number of people will be able see it. Indeed, today the Sutton Hoo treasure has an entire room at the British Museum. And to anyone who may not be familiar with Sutton Hoo treasures I heartily recommend checking out the museum’s site. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/galleries/sutton-hoo-and-europe

The Sutton Hoo helmet (l) and a modern reconstruction (r) shown at the British Museum. (Credit: Wikipedia)

I’m certain that by now you can tell that I’m giving ‘The Dig’ a big thumb’s up. The acting is impeccable and the cinematography is simply gorgeous. Most of all the story, the story of how the English people regained a large part of their history is both interesting as well as important.

A few last remarks. Although the body had long ago decayed away, it is thought that the person buried in the mound was probably King Rӕdwald of East Anglia or perhaps his son. Regardless of who it was, by being buried in such spectacular fashion he left us a great deal of evidence of the world in which he lived.

A map of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms as they would have been at the time of the Sutton Hoo ship burial. (Credit: Totally Timelines)

And the treasures of Sutton Hoo spent the war safely buried at an underground station in London. It wasn’t until nine years later that the British Museum first exhibited the treasure, with no mention being made of the role of Basil Brown in the discovery. After all, an amateur could not possibly have made England’s greatest archaeological discovery. But archaeology has a way of correcting for the prejudges of the past and today Basil Brown’s name is prominently displayed right next to that of Edith Pretty in the exhibit of the treasures of ‘The Dig’.

Hoarding behaviour, it’s not just little old ladies storing used twine and aluminum foil. In fact there are many species of animals that hoard things.

Hoarding, also known as caching is the storing and hiding of uneaten food to be consumed later. As a behaviour hoarding is known to be exhibited by a large number of different types of animal although the details of how the hording is conducted can vary greatly depending on the species.

My kind of hoarding, books! (Credit: Twitter)

Many examples of hoarding are well known even to people who have little knowledge or interest in the natural world. Squirrels hiding nuts for the winter and dogs burying a favourite bone are perhaps the best known examples but many other mammals along with several species of bird and even some insects hoard in one form or another.

Squirrels are certainly one of the most familiar hoarders, storing nuts for food during the winter. (Credit: Sky News)

The length of time that the food is stored can vary from just a few hours to half a year or more. Animals who live in temperate regions and who neither migrate nor hibernate will often store food for the winter; again the squirrel is a well-known example. On the other hand when a Leopard makes a kill they will usually carry the body into a tree in order to eat it in safety away from jackals or hyenas. If the leopard cannot finish it’s kill at one meal, and let’s face it even a baby antelope is more than one meal, they will store it in the tree for several days, coming back to eat some whenever they are hungry. For bees however the amount of time that honey is stored depends on the needs of the hive with some of the honey being used immediately to feed larval bees while some will be stored to feed the hive during the winter.

Leopards are capable of carrying a kill that weighs more than they do into a tree where they will consume it slowly over the course of days! (Credit: Twitter)
Perhaps the best organized hoarders of all are the bees who even build containers for the honey they store. (Credit: Fine Art America)

Naturalists recognize two basic strategies used by the animals who hoard, scatter hoarding and larder hoarding. In scatter hoarding the animal will hide small amounts of food in a great many different places. The upside of this strategy is that if someone else, usually a member of the same species who’s been watching, finds one of your hiding places and pilfers it only a small amount of food has been lost. The downside is that the more hiding places you have, the more likely it is that robbers will find a few of them increasing the odds of some loss. Another disadvantage is that with so many hiding places an animal may end up forgetting about a few of them resulting in further loss. That animal’s loss can be the forest’s gain however as forgotten buried acorns or other seeds can sprout to become new trees, a process known as seed dispersal.

The Scrub Jay is an example of a scatter hoarder. The jay can spread it’s seeds over a very wide area which actually helps the plants to propagate. (Credit: BioOne)

The opposite strategy is for the animal to keep its entire hoard of food in just a few, or even just one hiding place, a behavior known as larder hoarding. The benefits of larder hoarding are that the animal is unlikely to forget the location of any of its hoarded food and there are fewer hoards for a robber to accidentally discover. Of course if a robber does discover an animal’s larder it could mean the loss of everything, a real threat to any animal depending on its hoard to survive through a winter. Because of this threat those species that practice larder hoarding also spend a great deal more effort in guarding and defending their cache.

Acorn Woodpeckers are Cache Hoarders. Obviously such a rich hoard needs to be protected. (Credit: FISHBIO)

Naturalists have even observed a few species of animal that gather and hide food before it has ripened sufficiently to eat and then return later when the food has ripened. An example of this is the Central American Tayras, a relative of the weasel, who is known to hide green plantains for several days before retrieving and consuming them.

The Central American Tayra has been observed to gather unripened plantains, hide them and then return to eat them after they have ripened. (Credit: Reddit)

Hoarding is for the most part a selfish behavior with each animal keeping its own hiding places secret even from family members. In fact there are only two species, and very different species at that, who are known to share a communal larder, beavers and acorn woodpeckers. During the summer and fall beavers as a family will gather up a large stockpile of twigs and branches near their lodge that they then consume during the winter. Acorn woodpeckers are also different in that the community makes little attempt to hide their large larder at all.

Beavers place their cache of wood for the winter near the entrance to their lodge. The entire family will cooperate in both the gathering and eating of the stored food. (Credit: Hamilton College)

Most species that hoard also pilfer from their neighbors and other species as well. Food items that are stolen are then often hidden by the thief, a process known as reciprocal pilfering. In an experiment Jeffery pine seeds that had been exposed to a mild dose of radioactivity to make them identifiable, where given to yellow pine chipmunks. When some of the seeds were then pilfered it was discovered that 75% of the time the robber cached the ill-gotten seeds. Obviously hoarding is a complex form of behaviour that requires an animal with a considerable degree of intelligence.

Hoarding as a behavior is one of the reasons that squirrels have acquired so much intelligence, and dexterity! (Credit: Nautilus / Science Connected)

Any homeowner with a birdfeeder or a garden can testify as to what ingenious little devils squirrels are. But at the same time the advantages to be gained from hoarding have helped spur the evolution of intelligence in many animals. And not just animals, we humans are certainly hoarders, and I’m not just talking about the food in my refrigerator.  

Book Review: ‘The Riddle of Resurrection’ by Tryggven D. Mettinger.

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain,” wrote Ben Franklin, “except death and taxes.” Putting aside taxes it is undeniable that death is the final end for each and every one of us in this world. Or is it? Many people believe in ghosts and stories abound of ‘undead’ creatures such as vampires and zombies. However generally such beings are believed to have died but not yet left this world.

The Ghost of Barbara Radziwitt by Wojciech Gerson. Despite thousands of ghost stories dating back thousands of years there is no reliable evidence for anyone coming back from the dead! (Credit: Wikipedia)

At the same time the mythologies of many cultures also contain stories about heroes or demigods who have entered the underworld and returned. In Greek legends both Orpheus and Odysseus descend to Hades while alive and manage to return. Other figures in other cultures make similar journeys.

Not all versions of the Orpheus myth are serious, Jacques Offenbach turned the story into a risque operetta for which he invented the dance the Can-Can. (Credit: Twitter)

About a hundred and thirty years ago the anthropologist Sir James Frazier collected and analyzed an enormous amount of mythological material from dozens of different cultures. In 1890 he published the first edition in a series of volumes he entitled “The Golden Bough” detailing the results of his studies. I have a copy of the abridged edition, abridged at 827 pages so the entire work is enormous! Sometimes considered the foundation of the study of comparative religion, ‘The Golden Bough’ has always been a very controversial book.

Cover of the third edition, first volume of Farzier’s ‘Golden Bough’ (Credit: The List)
Frazier got his title from a painting by William Turner that shows an ancient Roman ritual Frazier used as a starting point for his investigations. (Credit: Arnold Arboretum)

Much of the controversy arose due to Frazier’s definition of a class of deities that he called ‘The Dying and Resurrecting Vegetative Gods’. The basic story for each of these gods contained a violent death of the god that led to a descent to the underworld that was then followed by a return to life for the god. This motif, Frazier maintained, was a mythologized version of the yearly cycle of agriculture with the grain being cut down at harvest, then seeds are planted, then buried from which new plants will sprout. Thus the stories explained the yearly course of the seasons and since the stories are all cyclical you can of course start anywhere in the cycle and still get back to where you started.

Actually the evidence about any of these figures is scant and contradictory. (Credit: Elpidio Valdes)

The worship of these gods featured a period of morning for the god’s death at the end of harvest time, whenever harvest time occurred in a particular culture, along with a festival of rejoicing for the god’s resurrection when the first sprouts appeared. Frazier identified quite a few gods that he thought belonged to this group including well-known deities such as Adonis, Osiris and the Norse Balder along with many lesser-known mythological figures. The earliest, and therefore the type specimen for the group was a Sumerian god called Dumuzi who is also known by the name Tammuz given to him in the Hebrew scripture.

The Shepard Dumuzi (r) was the consort of Inanna (l) the Goddess of the Moon. At the end of the story Dumuzi spends half the year in the Underworld and half in the natural world. (Credit: Pinterest)

The whole idea of ‘dying and resurrecting corn gods’ was quite controversial but Frazier went further by linking them directly to the Christian Jesus. So dangerous were Frazier’s ideas that in the years following his death a reaction set in with many scholars criticizing Frazier’s entire category. The critics were aided by the archaeological discovery of the final chapter of the Dumuzi myth at a dig in Iraq, which was translated and first published in 1951. You see the first discovered cuneiform tablets to contain the Dumuzi story were missing the conclusion and to be honest Frazier had merely constructed an ending based on his study of other myths.

When the actual ending was discovered it bore little resemblance to Frazier’s ideas and this, along with other inaccuracies in Frazier’s work led to the category of ‘dying and resurrecting corn gods’ falling into disfavour. Still there was just so much evidence in both myths and rituals that the concept refused to go away.

The Greek demigod Adonis (r) bears many resemblances to Dumuzi. He is the consort of Aphrodite (l), he dies a violent death and is brought back to life by his beloved. (Credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art and the artist Titian)

‘The Riddle of Resurrection’ by Tryggven D. Mettinger, Professor of the Hebrew bible at Lund University in Sweden, is a recent attempt to cut through all of the noise and just answer the question, is their even such a class of mythological figures as ‘dying and resurrecting gods’ that can be studied. Unlike Frazier, whose work examined scores of gods from cultures around the World, Professor Mettinger concentrates on just a few mythological figures from the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, primarily Adonis, Dumuzi-Tammuz, Osiris, along with the Semitic gods Baal and Melqart. In this way Professor Mettinger can examine the latest evidence for the myths and rituals concerning each deity. Also unlike Frazier, who at times would leap back and forth with evidence from Babylon to the Norse Eddas to ancient Sanskrit, Professor Mettinger sticks to one subject at a time making it much easier to follow his arguments.

Cover of ‘The Riddle of Resurrection’ by Tryggven Mettinger. (Credit: Amazon)

Mettinger also examines the evidence much more critically than Frazier did, at times even discussing the differing translations of critical words found in ancient texts. This makes ‘The Riddle of Resurrection’ a more technically demanding book, it is written primarily for experts in the field, but it also provides greater confidence in Professor Mettinger’s conclusions.

‘The Rape of Persephone’ by Charles Antoine Coypel. Persephone is the dying and resurrecting goddess who is carried down to the underworld by Hades and spends half the year with him the other half with her mother Ceres making plants grow! (Credit: Pictorem.com)

I do have a few criticisms of ‘The Riddle of Resurrection’, most notably the lack of a more thorough treatment of Persephone, the best known ‘dying and resurrecting goddess’. While the Greek queen of the underworld is mentioned several times in the book her myth not only deserves more examination but it could help to illuminate the latest understanding of Dumuzi’s fate. At the same time Mettinger also pretty much ignores the completely human characters in mythology who journey to the underworld and return, like Orpheus and Odysseus. In his conclusions Professor Mettinger decides that the category of ‘dying and resurrection gods’ is a valid one, one worthy of study. And if you’re interested in mythology and ancient cultures, in the way that old beliefs have evolved into our current religions then you’ll certainly find ‘The Riddle of Resurrection’ to be worth reading.  

Which species of animal is the best flyer? Here are a few words on behalf of flies.

For thousands of years human beings looked with envy on those living creatures that could take to the air and fly. The advantages that an animal can gain from flying are so numerous that many different kinds of creature have evolved one way or another to take flight.

Being able to fly is such an advantage to a creature that flight has evolved many times in the history of life! (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

Now the question of who is the best flier depends a lot on what criteria you’re looking at. In terms of long distance fliers there are several species of bird that fly thousands of kilometers without ever touching the surface. (Notice how I said surface there rather than ground. That’s because those extended flights are mostly over water.) But if you want to talk about maneuverability or a quick takeoff you can’t argue against the animals whose very name means aviation, the insect members of the order Diptera, the flies!

The Albatross is the king of long-range flying. There are actually over twenty different species all of whom are capable of flying hundreds of kilometers without touching the surface. (Credit: Britannica Kids)
While there are about 100,000 known species of the order Diptera, the flies, the common housefly Musca domestica is perhaps the best known. (Credit: University of Nebraska)

While many types of insects fly, some, like many species of beetle are rather clumsy, using flight mainly for escape from predators. Others, like bees, use flight as transportation, going from flower to flower or back to the hive in a straight line without any fancy flying.

In the Beetles, order coleoptera, the front wings have evolved into a hard casing that protects the rear wings which are still used for flying short distances. (Credit: The Guardian)
Dragon and Damsel Flies are not true flies because they still possess two pairs of wings. The pairs beat out of synch with the fore wings beating up while the rear wings beat down. (Credit: National Wildlife Federation)

Flies seem to have evolved just to be able to fly. They are capable of performing the most incredible acrobatic feats in mid air while the speed with which they can take off is quicker than the human eye can follow.

The compound eye of a fly is also a miracle of evolution. The thousands of separate light sensors may not give the fly as clear a vision as our eyes do but they give nearly 360 degree vision and are especially sensitive to motion. Another reason it’s so hard to catch a fly. (Credit: Phys.org)

Unlike most flying insects who have four wings, true flies have only two. The name Diptera in fact means two wings. Flies retain their original front pair of wings but the rear wings have evolved into long thin rods with knobs at the end called halteres. Instead of providing lift as a normal wing would it is the halteres that enable the fly to perform their amazing aero-athletics.

In flies the rear wings have evolved into structures called halteres that the fly uses for balance and control in flight. (Credit: Animalogic)

In straight line flight the halteres beat up and down in exactly the opposite motion of the wings. In other words when the wings go up the halteres go down and vice versa, this gives the fly great stability. Then, when the fly wants to change direction it does so by using the moment of inertia of the halteres. Because of their halteres some flies are able to completely reverse course in a single wing beat, less than ten milliseconds.

Flies are more than just a minor nuisance, they are carriers of many diseases and they will often lay their eggs, which develop into maggots, in our food ruining it. (Credit: BBC)

Flies of the family Calyptratae, which includes houseflies and fruitflies, are considered the best of the best. In order to discover how they use their halteres scientists Gwyneth Card and Michael Dickinson of the California Institute of Technology first used high-speed cameras that could record at as much as three thousand frames per second to get baseline measurements of fly performance. They found that by using their halteres members of Calyptratae could take off or change course in as little as a single wing beat, around seven milliseconds.

Fruit Flies destroy billions of dollars of agricultural products every year. (Credit: The Home Depot)

The scientists then removed the halteres from their test subjects and measured the reduction in performance. Without their halteres to provide balance the insects become much clumsier, like a tightrope walker without their pole, sometimes with disastrous result. Not only did takeoff now require an average of four wing beats instead of the previous one, but also one species of fly, known as blow flies became so awkward that their takeoffs usually resulted in a crash. At the same time the fly’s performance while in the air also deteriorated markedly. While it’s true that flies may not be the best long-distance flies, when it comes to maneuverability and a quick take off members of the order Diptera are capable of aerial acrobatics that would make a jet fighter pilot’s head swim. We all know how difficult it is to catch a fly in the air or swat them when they’re on the ground and halteres are one big reason why!   

Space News for January 2021.

It’s the start of a brand new year and unfortunately 2021 is not off to a good start for space exploration. Two stories in particular illustrate the difficulties that often arise whenever we try to do something for the first time.

One story that didn’t get a lot of coverage but is nevertheless a big disappointment concerned NASA’s Insight Mars Lander. Insight touched down on the Martian surface almost two years ago, on the 26th of November 2018 with big hopes for discovering a great deal about conditions on the Red Planet. Insight was equipped with numerous instruments for observing the Martian weather and seismic activity, that is Marsquakes. The showpiece of the mission however was a robotic arm with a drill, known as the ‘Mole’, which it was hoped would drill down three meters into the Martian soil.

NASA’s Insight lander. The failed drill, the ‘Mole’ is foreground right while the seismograph is foreground left. (Credit: ABC News)

There were problems right from the start. As described by NASA engineers the Martian soil had an ‘unexpected tendency to clump’. Because of this the lander’s drill never got the leverage it needed to penetrate down more than a few centimetres despite the engineers trying every trick they could think of. The last attempt was made on January 9th to no avail. With no prospect of a successful resolution the Insight program managers have decided to cancel any further efforts.

But that doesn’t mean that the Insight lander is a total failure, its seismograph has already detected several Marsquakes and should continue working until at least the end of 2022. And once NASA’s Perseverance rover lands on Mars on the 18th of February NASA plans to use the weather instruments on the two spacecraft to establish the first ever weather network on another planet.

NASA’s Perseverance rover and it’s main scientific instruments. Perseverance will join the Curiosity rover on the Martian surface next month! (Credit: NASA Mars Exploration Program)

The big news however comes from back here on planet Earth where NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) suffered a ‘Major Component Failure’ during a critical ‘Hot Fire Test’ of its first stage on the 16th of January. The SLS, whose main contractor is Boeing corporation, is the big rocket launch vehicle that is the foundation of NASA’s Artemis program with a goal of returning American astronauts to the Moon in the next half dozen years or so. NASA has already spent $18 billion over the last ten years on development of the SLS and the program is more than three years behind schedule.

Ignition of the ‘Hot Fire’ test of the first stage of the Space Launch System (SLS). (Credit: SpaceNews)

The hot fire test, performed at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, was intended to be the last test of the SLS’s first stage prior to its being sent to the Kennedy Space Center. Once at Kennedy the rocket will be assembled with its upper stages and the Orion crew capsule in preparation for a first, unmanned lunar mission scheduled for sometime late this year. The plan of the test at Stennis was to completely fuel the first stage and, after clamping the rocket tight to the facility’s B-2 test stand, ignite the four main RS-25 engines, the same engines that powered the space shuttle. The length of the test was designed so that the engines would carry out an entire launch profile, about eight minutes firing.

At this moment all four first stage engines are firing perfectly. (Credit: SpaceFlight Insider)

For the first minute everything was proceeding well, the engines where producing 109% of nominal thrust and preparing to throttle down to 95% when a flash of light was seen near the thermal protection blanket on engine number 4. These blankets are designed to prevent engine parts from overheating due to the exhaust of the other three engines. Seconds later the rocket’s on-board computer system detected an as yet unknown fault and the computer ordered all four engines to shut down. The entire test lasted only 67 seconds.

While the post mortem is just underway and the precise cause of the shutdown still unknown the fact is that the test fell far short of a success and at the very least will have to be repeated. That means at least another month’s delay along with its associated cost on a program that is way over budget and behind schedule. And if it should turn out that there is a real design flaw that would certainly kill any chance of a launch later this year.

So far the SLS has gotten plenty of press coverage but the question is when will it finally launch! (Credit: Autoevolution)

Also, the multiple delays and cost overruns of the SLS are causing some members of Congress and even scientists at NASA to question the entire Artemis program given its dependence on an SLS that seems to be going nowhere. NASA has already spent $18 billion on the SLS along with another $18 billion on the Orion Space Capsule that will carry the astronauts to the Moon and back. Will we ever actually see a mission performed with those two very expensive pieces of equipment? Not at the rate we’re going.

The Orion capsule has cost as much as the SLS but at least it’s ready to go! Without a launch vehicle however it’s going nowhere fast. (Credit: Space.com)

And there is one last piece of bad news, for Boeing at least. In funding NASA’s Europa Clipper robotic space probe to that icy moon of Jupiter Congress had mandated that the launch vehicle for the space probe had to be the SLS. Well in NASA’s 2021 fiscal budget there was a slight change in those orders to only require that the SLS be used ‘if available’.

Now the Europa Clipper isn’t scheduled to launch until the mid-2020’s so the rocket’s current problems will hopefully be solved by then. Nevertheless the SLS will still be very costly and presumably every rocket will be needed for Artemis. In fact a cost analysis by NASA has indicated that if the Clipper were to be launched by the Space X Falcon Heavy it could save the space agency $1.5 billion!

Space X’s Falcon Heavy has only had one launch so far but it’s ready to start launching heavy space probes like the Europa Clipper. (Credit: SpaceNews)

Maybe for once the officials at both NASA and in Congress will do the right thing. The Space Launch System may be necessary to get us back to the Moon this decade but any attempt to use it in other space missions would simply be tossing good money after bad.

I’ll end today with a bit of administrative news. With the end of the Trump administration NASA director Jim Bridenstine has tendered his resignation and been temporarily replace by his deputy Steve Jurczyk until the position can be permanently filled. Although Bridenstine did a better job of running the space agency than I’d expected (feared?) nevertheless he was a politician taking a job that had always gone to a scientist.

NASA’s Deputy Administrator Steve Jurczyk has been chosen by President Biden as a temporary Director. With a long history of working for the space agency he might be a good choice for permanent director. (Credit: NASA)

Hopefully the new Biden administration’s choice for NASA director will return to the idea of science over politics. It’s worth noting that two decorations that President Biden has chosen for the oval office are a portrait of America’s founding scientist Ben Franklin and a Moon rock. Our new President certainly wants to promote truth and science over lies and conspiracy theories and that can only be a good thing!

Better Living through Chemistry. New research is discovering more sustainable materials and energy sources that can help solve our environmental issues.

Over the last two hundred years the science of chemistry has been so successful in developing new energy sources like coal and oil along with new materials like plastics that it has entirely changed the way people live. Seriously just consider all of the materials around your home that did not exist back in the 1820s and you’ll realize just how successful chemistry has been.

Did you have a Gilbert Chemistry set when you were a kid. I think this is the very set I had! (Credit: Pinterest)

But as the old saying goes, “too much of anything isn’t a good thing,” so that today the ‘scientific miracles’ of a few generations ago are now more trouble than they’re worth. The two biggest problems caused by our success with chemistry are undoubtedly climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels and the enormous amount of trash being generated by single use plastics.

It just occurred to me that in this Blog I’ve shown a lot of images of exhaust pollutants. (Credit: Clean Wisconsin)
And plastic trash! (Credit: USA Today)

If we’re going to find solutions to these problems then we’re going to need chemists to work on alternative, more sustainable ways of generating power and performing the many tasks to which we put plastic. And in fact such research is being conducted in labouratories around the world this very moment. In this post I’ll discuss some of the results of those efforts.

Right now all over the World Chemists are working hard to find solutions to the problems that ironically they helped to create. (Credit: Pomona College)

Sustainable sources of power, such as solar panels or wind turbines are problematic in that while they produce large amounts of energy at certain times, when the Sun is out for solar panels, they produce very little energy at other times, at night for solar panels. The problem therefore is how to store the energy generated at peak production hours so that it can be used when production is low.

The amount of energy being generated by solar arrays is increasing rapidly but we need a more efficient method of storing that energy. (Credit: KATV)

One method of storing the energy is to use it to split water molecules into their constituent oxygen and hydrogen atoms. Then the hydrogen produced can be stored in gas cylinders for use in a fuel cell to generate electricity at a later time. Unfortunately the process of breaking down water in the first place requires a catalyst and even with the best-known catalysts the method is very inefficient, wasting large amounts of the energy we’re trying so hard to generate.

The basic operation of a fuel cell. Hydrogen and Oxygen go in and Water and Electricity come out. Couldn’t be cleaner! (Credit: Intelligent Energy)

 Now a team of scientists at UVA and the California Institute of Technology along with the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Labouratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Labouratory and Brookhaven National Labouratory has developed a unique catalyst that they hope will greatly increase the efficiency of the process. Unlike most catalysts, which are simply salts dissolved in the water, the chemists have developed titanium oxide nanocrystals that contain literally zillions of active catalytic sites on their surfaces. These sites operate at the atomic level to trigger what is known as the oxygen evolution reaction that separates the water molecules into their component gasses.

The definition of a catalyst is a substance that takes part in a chemical reaction, usually speeding it up, but is not consumed at the end of the reaction. (Credit: Slideshare)

While the titanium oxide nanocrystals themselves were developed at UVA the Argonne and Lawrence Berkeley Labouratories contributed to the project with the use of their synchrotron X-ray spectroscopy facilities that allowed the chemists to see the catalytic sites in action so that they could more accurately measure their performance.

Nanocrystals are a fascinating new field of study. Chemists have only begun to discover the many uses that they can be put to! (Credit: Researchgate)

The physicists at Cal Tech then analyzed those measurements using newly developed quantum mechanical methods. While large-scale implementation is still in the future the results of this team effort have already advanced the drive toward clean, sustainable energy storage.

And new methods are storing power are urgently needed because the installation of solar panels onto homes, businesses and other buildings is now one of the fastest growing industries in the world. And that growth could become even greater if researchers at Incheon National University in Korea are successful in developing transparent solar cells that can double as windows!

Transparent Solar Panels could be a real breakthrough. Imagine how much more power we could generate if every window produced electricity! (Credit: The Verge)

In order to develop their transparent solar cell the scientists needed to find two semiconductor materials that are clear in the optical portion of the spectrum but will absorb non-visible wavelengths of light in order to capture their energy. It’s at the junction of the two semiconductors that the absorbed light is converted into electricity.

Basic diagram of a solar cell. It’s at the interface of the n-type and p-type materials that the sunlight is absorbed and electricity is generated. (Credit: Energy Education)

The two materials that the researchers, led by Professor Joondong Kim, settled upon are titanium dioxide (TiO2) already widely used in the manufacture of solar cells and Nickel Oxide (NiO). Both are nearly transparent at visible wavelengths but readily absorb ultraviolet (UV) light. And on top of their optical properties both materials are relatively cheap, non-toxic, and environmentally friendly.

Titanium Dioxide is already a very useful chemical and a multi-billion dollar a year industry. Yes, we even eat some of it! (Credit: Food Additives.net)

Think about it, in addition to covering the roofs of buildings with solar panels now all of the building’s windows can add their area to producing more energy, and you know the sides of some of those big office are nearly all window! The amount of electricity generated by solar panels could almost double making a real impact in the drive to eliminate fossil fuels.

Replacing fossil fuels with cleaner, more sustainable energy sources may solve one of our environmental troubles but that still leaves the problem of what to do with all of the plastic we keep producing. It’s a real dilemma because plastic is so very useful that we really do need it. When we dispose of it however, it really doesn’t go away. Plastics can take centuries or more to degrade so all the bags, containers, utensils and almost everything you can think of just keeps on piling up until now they are a major environmental threat. What we need therefore is a material that can replace plastic but which is easily biodegradable.

Doctor Antoine Buchard of the Centre for Sustainable and Circular Technologies at the University of Bath in the UK has been investigating that very possibility. Dr. Buchard’s research centers around the sugar xylose that is readily available in wood and is actually the second most common sugar found naturally, in other words it’s cheap!

Xylose is a sugar and one of the most abundant chemicals in nature. (Credit: Science Direct)

Dr. Buchard has succeeded in using xylose to create long molecular chains similar to those in plastics called polymers. The polymer, which belongs to the family of chemicals known as polyether, can be manufactured as either a flexible or crystalline material. So far the material has shown that it can used to replace both polyurethane and polyethylene but Dr. Buchard hopes to also find entirely new uses for his discovery.

Polymers are simply long chains of smaller identical chemicals like xylose. (Credit: Live Science)

Presently the chemists at Bath are producing the new polymer in small quantities but anticipate that production could be easily scaled up to industrial quantities. Replacing fossil fuel derived polymer plastics with polymers obtained from naturally occurring sugars will go a long way toward reducing the amount of plastic trash that’s choking our planet more and more everyday.

Chemistry got us into these problems by ironically giving us very useful things that we really liked! And chemists are now working hard to find new materials to help solve those very same problems.

Glass is a material that we Humans have used for millennia but a new study illustrates how much we still don’t completely understand it.

One of the key measures of human progress surely must be a simple counting of the number of different materials that humans have been able to produce and use. Back in the Stone Age, stones were pretty much all our ancestors had to work with, along with wood and some animal bones.

The Pyramids are built of limestone, that’s it. Just one kind of material. I think if aliens had built them they’d have used some other metals or plastics or even something beyond our current technology. But one material only, that says primitive to me! (Credit: Wikipedia)

Then during the copper and bronze ages mankind first succeeded in acquiring the skills to use metals, ceramics and textiles. Then came paper, iron and the first use of chemicals such as tannic acid for making leather. The increase in the sheer number of materials used accelerated thereafter so that today we have plastics, semi-conductors, ferrites and petroleum products along with many others.

Sophisticated technology requires a wide variety of different materials! (Credit: Slideplayer)

Glass is one material that we first began to use more than two thousand years ago and today we use it in a thousand different ways. It may come as a surprise therefore to hear that we don’t really know what it is, is it a solid or a liquid! Seriously, when I took inorganic chemistry I learned that glass was an extremely, extremely viscous liquid. You know, something that flowed like a liquid but slowly like honey or molasses only glass is much, much more viscous. In a true solid on the other hand the molecules arrange themselves in a crystalline structure, something that is completely absent in glass.

The earliest evidence we possess for glass making comes from ancient Egypt as long ago as 3500 BCE. (Credit: Geology.com)

I’ve seen evidence for this. When I visited the Tower of London in the UK, during the tour I passed by a window whose glass panes were more than 500 years old. Well I could easily see how the glass in those panes was now much thicker at the bottom than they were at the top. The glass was flowing under gravity just like a liquid but it had taken centuries in order to see any visible sign of that flow.

View through old, distorted window panes. (Credit: Great Big Canvas)

Now describing glass as an extremely viscous liquid may be good enough for a freshman chemistry class. Real chemists however want to understand exactly what is going on, if only because there are a large number of other materials such as proteins, plastics and even some metals that exhibit the same borderline solid-liquid behavior.

A new study by Professors Andreas Zumbusch and Matthias Fuchs at the University of Konstanz and published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science has revealed new details about the behavior of glass like substances. The researchers carried out their experiments with a class of substances known as colloidal suspensions where very large ‘molecules’, usually formed from long chains of polymer plastics, are suspended in fluids. Now, colloidal suspensions are nothing new to chemists but in most experiments the polymer particles are spherical in shape and about a micrometer in diameter (1μm). What’s different about the experiments at Konstanz is that the polymer particles were especially made with an elongated shape of about 4μm in length by 1μm in width rather than being spherical.

The polymer particles used in the experiments at University of Konstanz. (Credit: Medium)

As you might imagine that change in shape of the polymer particles has little effect on the properties of the solution when there are only a very few of them in suspension.  In such low densities the solution continues to behave like a liquid, able to flow easily in any direction.

As the researchers increased the density of the polymer particles however the solution soon reached a critical point at which the particles were so close together that while they could still move they could no longer rotate. As Professor Zumbusch put it. “At certain particle densities orientational motion froze whereas translational motion persisted, resulting in glassy states where the particles clustered to form local structures with similar orientation.

As more polymer particles are suspended in a fluid they begin to interfere with each other’s movements. (Credit: University of Konstanz)

Zumbusch and Fuchs have named their material, actually class of materials, as ‘Liquid Glass’ and are currently busy investigating the properties of Liquid Glass. Their twin goals are to both relate it to more familiar materials such as proteins, plastics and of course glass itself, but also to find more practical, commercial uses.

An artists impression of ‘Liquid Glass’. (Credit: SciTechDaily)

Human progress has always relied on the discovery and development of new materials. Liquid glass is an entirely new class of materials so it’s strange, fascinating properties hold great promise of future progress.