The Peculiar Dispatch #005

Diamonds apparently have another trick up their sleeve…

For more than a century, diamond has generally been considered non-piezoelectric — meaning that unlike certain crystals, bending or squeezing it shouldn't generate an electrical voltage. Now researchers have demonstrated that ultrathin, flexible diamond membranes can produce a strong and repeatable piezoelectric effect when mechanically deformed.

That's particularly interesting because diamond is extremely durable, chemically stable and biocompatible. They think the discovery could eventually contribute to things such as tiny sensors, energy-harvesting devices and even self-powered medical implants.

Imagine a future implant where movement of the body helps generate the electricity needed to operate it. Turns out diamonds aren't just forever.

They might also be tiny power generators. Which is just wild!

Bones tell us what ancient creatures were. Footprints can tell us what they were doing.

Researchers studying fossil tracks preserved near ancient Lake Turkana in northern Kenya have identified footprints attributed to Paranthropus boisei, an extinct relative on the human family tree. The remarkable part is that the trackway appears to contain footprints from eight individuals occupying the area at roughly the same time. Some of the tracks also suggest these hominins could reach surprisingly large, human-like body sizes.

Rather than a collection of bones accumulated across thousands of years, these footprints preserve something much more intimate, a moment.

Around 1.4 million years ago, a group of our distant evolutionary relatives walked across wet ground beside a lake. The mud hardened. And their footsteps survived for us to find.

Our universe is about 13.8 billion years old. But new simulations suggest the ingredients needed to begin building rocky planets could have appeared only around 100 million years after the Big Bang, less than 1% of the universe's current age.

The problem with making planets early in cosmic history is that the Big Bang mostly produced hydrogen and helium. The heavier elements needed for rocky worlds. Such as carbon, oxygen, silicon and iron had to be manufactured inside stars.

But the universe's first enormous stars lived fast and died spectacularly.

The researchers modelled how one of these early supernovae could enrich surrounding material with heavy elements. Their simulations produced enough solid material and even water for the building blocks of rocky planets to form. That raises a wonderful possibility:

Worlds resembling Earth may have been possible when the universe itself was still practically a newborn.

Today, 31 August, one of ESA's Cluster satellites. Samba. It is scheduled to plunge into Earth's atmosphere.

Tomorrow, its companion Tango follows, but scientists don't just want to dispose of them. They want to watch them die.

A research aircraft is being positioned near the re-entry region over the South Pacific so scientists can observe Samba breaking apart as it hits the atmosphere. They'll then return and do it again the following day for Tango. During re-entry, temperatures soar, components melt, materials vaporise and eventually the spacecraft disintegrates.

Surprisingly, scientists still have plenty to learn about exactly how satellites break apart during this process. Understanding that could help engineers design future spacecraft that burn up more completely, reducing debris reaching Earth and potentially reducing atmospheric pollution from re-entries.

So somewhere above the Pacific today, scientists will essentially be chasing a falling spacecraft in an aeroplane to watch it explode through the atmosphere.

A) Venezuela
B) Zambia
C) Under the ocean
D) Iceland

C — Under the ocean.

Hidden beneath the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland is an enormous underwater waterfall.

Cold, dense water plunges beneath warmer water over a huge drop in the seafloor. The resulting Denmark Strait Cataract drops around 3.5 km (11,500 ft) — more than three times the height of the tallest waterfall on land.

A) Capybara
B) Wombat
C) Koala
D) Platypus

B — Wombat.

Wombats are famous for producing actual cube-shaped droppings.

Researchers discovered that different regions of the wombat's intestine have different elastic properties. As waste travels through, these contractions gradually form its distinctive flat sides and corners.

A wombat can produce up to around 100 little cubes a day. Scientists think the shape may help their territorial markers stay in place rather than rolling away.

A) Sahara Desert
B) Arabian Desert
C) Gobi Desert
D) Antarctica

D — Antarctica.

This one's a great trick question.

A desert doesn't have to be hot or covered in sand. What matters is how little precipitation it receives.

Antarctica receives so little that it qualifies as a polar desert, covering roughly 14.2 million km².

So the world's largest desert is actually mostly covered in ice.

:D