Ancient Roman Tumulus Discovered in Bavaria

Archaeologists has just uncovered an extremely rare and massive Roman circular monument in Upper Bavaria, shedding new light on Raetia, an ancient Roman province in southern Germany.

The Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation recently announced "a particularly remarkable find," the base of a Roman tumulus off an ancient Roman road near Wolkertshofen, in the district of Eichstätt.

Burial mounds belong to the Roman tradition, but archaeologists discussed how rare it was to find one in the region. However, Ancient Origins noted that they appeared in Raetia from the 1st century onward.

"Discovering a burial monument of this scale and period here was entirely unexpected," said Prof. Mathias Pfeil, General Conservator of the BLfD, to Ancient Origins.

Interestingly enough, the tumulus represents a meeting of Roman and Celtic traditions, though, by the looks of it, this funerary monument, possibly attached to a stately though unknown elite, was a symbolic gesture, piquing intrigue and revealing a slice of Roman life rarely seen.

As per a press release, construction work began in the fall of 2024 to build a stormwater retention basin in the northeast of Wolkertshofen. As the site boasts a long history with settlements dating back to the Bronze and Iron Ages, it necessitated archaeological supervision.

However, once the remains of a massive circular stone foundation came to light, over 29 feet wide, archaeologists were admittedly astonished. On the south side, they uncovered a square extension measuring 6.65 feet by 6.56 feet, which they assume served as a foundation for a statue or stele.

The quality of its construction was notably superior, and the overall appearance of the tumulus signaled to archaeologists that they stumbled upon a stone circle that formed the peripheral wall of a funerary monument.

Ancient Origins continues that archaeologists expected to find human remains or grave goods, the absence of which communicated to researchers that the site was a cenotaph, a symbolic grave for someone who was laid to rest elsewhere.

Often, these monuments, when empty, represent an affluent family aiming to communicate its status in Roman society. Its extraordinary size, even, reflects that objective while simultaneously honoring and remembering a deceased member of the family who may have died far away from home, as per Archaeology News.

And behold, the monument was situated on a Roman road near "villa rustica," a Roman country estate, possibly suggesting a connection, though archaeologists didn’t explicitly state that. Only that, its location on a main road, would indicate that it was meant to be seen.

The press release continued that several Roman burial sites are known in the Augsburg area. Still, tumuli with stone ring walls, and specifically of this size, are "extremely rare to find in the province of Raetia," making the discovery distinguishably significant in advancing research into Bavaria under Roman rule.

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Nuclear Waste Facility Turns Radioactive Materials Into Glass

The work to turn radioactive waste into glass has begun at the Hanford Site in Washington state. Bechtel started the nuclear vitrification operations at the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP).

This milestone marks an important step forward in reducing the long-term environmental risks of legacy tank waste in the Hanford area.

The vitrification process involves removing waste from leaking underground tanks, mixing it with additives, and heating it above 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

"This milestone represents the realization of a vision shared by many. It reflects decades of teamwork, innovation, and partnership with our customer to solve one of the nation’s most complex environmental challenges—safely and permanently," said Dena Volovar, President of Bechtel’s Nuclear, Security & Environmental business.

"Together with the Department of Energy, the state of Washington, our labor partners, local suppliers, subcontractors, and world-class scientific experts, we’ve turned vitrification into a reality at Hanford. It’s an important step forward in protecting the Columbia River, surrounding communities, and future generations."

Bechtel designed, built, and commissioned the WTP for the U.S. Department of Energy. In the vitrification process, tank waste is blended with glass-forming materials and heated to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit inside one of two 300-ton melters before being poured into stainless-steel containers for safe, long-term disposal, according to a press release.

Reports revealed that there was also a sigh of relief from those who had feared federal officials might be planning a last-minute retreat from the technique known as vitrification, in which waste is mixed with molten silicate and other materials to create inert glass logs.

The acting head of DOE’s environmental program was fired in early September, prompting speculation that the agency was trying to shift toward storing the waste by mixing it with a cement-like substance called grout, reported Science.

As the world’s largest radioactive waste treatment facility, the plant’s successful startup represents a crucial achievement at this scale, demonstrating the ability to stabilize nuclear waste for safe, long-term disposal.

In the coming months, Bechtel’s project team will continue feeding waste and glass-forming materials into the melters, filling stainless-steel containers, and transporting them to the Hanford Site’s Integrated Disposal Facility. During operations, the plant will process an average of 5,300 gallons of tank waste per day.

The site became home to tens of thousands of workers recruited nationwide to support the war effort. Many did not know they were building the world’s first full-scale plutonium reactor until after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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Strange Species From The Deep Amazes Scientists

Our ocean covers more than 70 percent of Earth’s surface, yet scientists have formally identified only a small fraction of the life it holds.

Researchers estimate there could be around two million marine species, but many remain unnamed or undiscovered. Often, the official documentation of a new species can take decades, leaving some to vanish before science ever recognizes them.

To tackle this long-standing problem, an international team of researchers has launched the Ocean Species Discoveries project.

The initiative focuses on publishing concise, high-quality species descriptions to shorten the gap between discovery and formal recognition drastically.

By making the process faster and more efficient, it aims to ensure that marine biodiversity is documented before it’s lost to human-driven threats such as deep-sea mining, pollution, and climate change.

"Our shared vision is making taxonomy faster, more efficient, more accessible and more visible," the team said in their paper.

In its second major collection, published in the Biodiversity Data Journal, over 20 researchers from around the world came together to describe 14 new marine invertebrate species and two new genera.

The discoveries span worms, mollusks, and crustaceans collected from habitats ranging from shallow waters to the ocean’s deepest trenches.

Among the most remarkable finds is Veleropilina gretchenae, a new mollusk species retrieved from the Aleutian Trench at a depth of 6,465 meters.

This makes it the deepest-living animal identified in the collection.

It also marks one of the first times a species in the class Monoplacophora has had a high-quality genome published directly from its holotype specimen – the official reference used to define a species.

Another standout discovery is the carnivorous bivalve Myonera aleutiana, found at depths between 5,170 and 5,280 meters. It sets a new depth record for its genus.

Scientists used non-invasive micro-CT scanning to study it, producing over 2,000 tomographic images that revealed intricate details of its anatomy.

This is the first study to present such detailed internal views of any Myonera species.

In the Galápagos Rift hydrothermal vent fields, researchers described a new amphipod, Apotectonia senckenbergae.

The species was named in honor of Johanna Rebecca Senckenberg (1716–1743), a benefactor whose support for science and medicine helped lay the foundation for the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research.

In Australia’s intertidal zone, a parasitic isopod called Zeaione everta drew attention for its unusual appearance.

The female’s back is covered in small protrusions that resemble popped kernels of popcorn, inspiring its genus name Zea, derived from the corn plant.

This species also represents a completely new genus.

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Brown Dwarf Discovery Could Tell Us More About Venus

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was reported to have discovered phosphine in the atmosphere of a brown dwarf — the same chemical that stoked controversy following claims that it had been detected on Venus and could be coming from life.

This new detection on a brown dwarf is predicted by models that simulate alien atmospheres and is a reminder that phosphine is not necessarily a biosignature. However, astronomers remain puzzled about why some objects contain phosphine and others do not, even though theory says it should be there.

The phosphine was identified in the cold atmosphere of a brown dwarf called Wolf 1130C, which exists in a triple system along with a low-mass red dwarf star and a white dwarf. The phosphine exists with an abundance of 0.1 parts per million, which matches what models of the atmosphere of gas giant planets and brown dwarfs predict. Indeed, both Jupiter and Saturn contain a similar abundance of phosphine to Wolf 1130C.

The problem has been that many brown dwarfs that are expected to show detectable abundances of phosphine do not, and scientists don't know why.

Phosphine is a phosphorus-based molecule, composed of one atom of phosphorus and three hydrogen atoms. It is also pretty unstable in atmospheric conditions, and chemical reactions can easily break phosphine molecules apart. We see phosphine in Jupiter and Saturn's clouds because it is formed deep within the hot interiors of the giant planets, and then convection currents carry the phosphine to higher altitudes faster than the rate at which it is destroyed.

This is one of the reasons why the claimed detection of phosphine on Venus is so controversial.

It was in 2020 that a team led by Jane Greaves of the University of Cardiff in Wales detected phosphine in Venus' atmosphere using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. On Earth, phosphine occurs naturally as a product of biological processes, and Greaves' team strongly pushed the biological angle to explain their discovery, leading to speculation that there could be microbes living in Venus' toxic clouds.

However, a large section of the astronomical community differed with the team's findings, arguing that there were flaws in the analysis, and other groups have struggled to replicate the findings. In spite of this, Greaves' team has doubled down on their conclusions, and the presence of phosphine on Venus remains fiercely debated and controversial.

Part of scientists' disagreement with the discovery is that they find it hard to see how the phosphine could survive in Venus' atmosphere.

Nevertheless, phosphine is still considered a potential biosignature by astrobiologists in their search for alien life.

However, its existence in the clouds of Jupiter and Saturn, and now on Wolf 1130C, is a reminder that non-biological chemical processes can also produce phosphine. The question is why Jupiter, Saturn and Wolf 1130C have detectable levels of phosphine while other brown dwarfs that have been studied by JWST do not, or at least are so depleted in it that the molecule is not detectable.

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There's A New Formula For Pi

Physicists are now using principles from quantum mechanics to build a new model of the abstract concept of pi. Or, more accurately, they built a new model that happens to include a great new representation of pi. But what does that mean, and why do we need different representations of pi?

The reason is that it is because quantum mechanics looks at the tiniest particles, one at a time, even simple questions can have complex answers that require massive computing power.

Rendering high-tech video games and movies like Avatar can take days or more, and that’s still not at the level of reality. In the new paper, published in the peer-reviewed journal Physical Review Letters, physicists Arnab Priya Saha and Aninda Sinha describe their new version of a quantum model that reduces complexity, but maintains accuracy.

This is called optimization. Think of the way early internet video buffered in chunks of similar colors, or how classic animators painted static bodies with individual moving parts on top. Imagine how people cut the corners of squared-off walking paths until they make a dirt-path shortcut. Everyone is surrounded by optimization and optimizing behaviors.

As detailed in their paper, Saha and Sinha combined two existing ideas from math and science: the Feynman diagram of particle scattering and the Euler beta function for scattering in string theory. What results is a series—something represented in math by the Greek letter Σ surrounded by parameters.

Series can end up generalizing into overall equations or expressions, but they don’t have to. And while some series diverge—meaning that the terms continue to alternate away from each other—others converge on one approximate, concrete result. That’s where pi comes in. The digits of pi extend into infinity, and pi is itself an irrational number, meaning it can’t be truly represented by an integer fraction (the one we often learn in school, 22/7, is not very accurate by 2024 standards).

But it can be represented pretty quickly and well by a series. That’s because a series can continue to build out values well into the tiniest digits. If a mathematician compiles a series’ terms, they can use the resulting abstraction to do math that isn’t possible with an approximation of pi that’s cut off at 10 digits by a standard desk calculator. A sophisticated approximation enables the kind of nanoscopic particle work that inspired these scientists in the first place.

"In the early 1970s," Sinha said in a statement from the Indian Institute of Science, "scientists briefly examined this line of research, but quickly abandoned it since it was too complicated."

But math analysis like this has come a long way since the 1970s. Today, Sinha and Saha are able to analyze an existing model and remodel it with altered terms. They’re able to build a sequence and see that it converges on the value of pi within far fewer terms than expected, making it easier for scientists to run the series and then use that for further work.

All of that requires decades of foundational work in the field and large bodies of work showing that certain mathematical moves work where other ones don’t. It’s a comment on the ongoing and collaborative nature of math theory, even when what results is a working model that might help scientists. Our ability to meaningfully approximate has grown in tandem with our ability to solve complex problems outright.

"Doing this kind of work, although it may not see an immediate application in daily life, gives the pure pleasure of doing theory for the sake of doing it," Sinha said in the statement.

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Bamboo Plastic Showed Exceptional Strength

Some researchers have developed a type of strong, biodegradable plastic from bamboo. Called bioplastic, the material resembles oil-based plastics in strength and shapeability.

It’s also claimed to offer better thermal stability. Developed by researchers from China’s Northeast Forestry University, the material can reportedly biodegrade in soil within 50 days. The new product from Northeast Forestry offers a pathway towards sustainable plastic alternatives.

Researchers have revealed that plastics made from organic biomass (such as bamboo composite plastics) have shown promise in replacing traditional oil-based plastics.

Haipeng Yu, Dawei Zhao, and other researchers revealed that they developed a non-toxic, alcohol solvent-based method to dissolve bamboo cellulose down to a molecular level, then direct the cellulose molecules to reassemble and organise into a tough plastic material.

During dissolution, the cellulose is chemically modified to aid the formation of a strong molecular network upon regeneration. The bamboo plastic was tested against several types of widely used commercial plastics (such as polylactic acid and high impact polystyrene) with the bamboo plastic, according to a press release.

Researchers also highlighted that widespread adoption of bamboo composite plastics has been limited by their inferior mechanical properties, meaning they are unable to be used in demanding applications such as infrastructure.

Additionally, bamboo composite plastics are typically composed of bamboo fibres immersed in a plastic or resin, and thus cannot be completely degraded, undermining efforts to find truly sustainable solutions to oil-based plastics, according to researchers.

Published in Nature Communications, the study represents a molecular engineering strategy to fabricate high-strength bamboo molecular plastics (BM-plastics) through a solvent-regulated shaping process. By employing deep eutectic solvents to disassemble bamboo cellulose’s hydrogen-bond network and ethanol-mediated molecular stimulation to reconstruct dense hydrogen-bond interactions.

The research team achieved a bioplastic with exceptional mechanical strength (tensile strength: 110 MPa, flexural modulus: 6.41 GPa), thermal stability (>180 °C), and versatile processability via injection, molding, and machining techniques.

"The BM-plastic outperforms most commercial plastics and bioplastics in mechanical and thermo-mechanical metrics while maintaining full biodegradability in soil within 50 days and closed-loop recyclability with 90% retained strength," said researchers in the study.

The research team revealed that the bamboo plastic also matched or outperformed traditional plastics in tests of mechanical and thermal stability, and shapeability, presenting it as a viable alternative for use in industry.

Additionally, the bamboo plastic can be degraded in soil within 50 days or closed-loop recycled (where objects are recycled and used to remake similar products) whilst retaining 90 percent of its original strength, demonstrating its potential as a sustainable but high-performing alternative to traditional plastic materials, according to details released by researchers.

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Structural Weakness Doomed HMS Endurance

Polar explorer Ernest Shackleton wrote in his journal entry on 27 October 1915 that, "She was doomed, no ship built by human hands could have withstood the strain."

He was referring to his ship, HMS Endurance. The vessel had been ice-locked since January in the Weddell Sea, and by October’s end, the ice had torn off the rudder, ripped the keel, broken the deck beams in the engine room and punched holes in the sides of the boat.

The harrowing events that followed, with Shackleton successfully leading a daring mission to find help after the crew evacuated to an ice floe and the damaged ship sank, left perhaps the biggest impression on Antarctic exploration history. But new research is rewriting what’s known about the root problem that led to the vessel’s downfall.

Shackleton blamed the sinking of the Endurance on the destruction of its rudder; for more than a century, historians accepted this explanation. Now, an analysis suggests that structural weakness caused the Endurance to sink, and that Shackleton knew about his ship’s failings, according to Dr. Jukka Tuhkuri, a professor in the department of energy and mechanical engineering at Aalto University in Finland. Tuhkuri reported the findings in the journal Polar Record.

Wooden vessels for polar exploration typically reinforced the hulls internally with diagonal support beams, which braced the sides of the ship against lateral compression from powerful sea ice, said Tuhkuri, who researches the mechanics of ice. While Endurance had a sturdy outer shell strengthened for collisions, it lacked internal diagonal beams that would have protected it from sea ice’s squeeze.

"It was not designed to take pressure," Tuhkuri told CNN.

Even after the Endurance sank, Shackleton and others called it "the strongest wooden ship of its time," Tuhkuri wrote. Yet Shackleton’s correspondence indicates he was well aware of the ship’s structural drawbacks and had misgivings about the vessel. Still, that wasn’t enough to stop him from buying it.

"I think that Endurance was the best possible ship he could get when he needed it and at a price he could afford," Tuhkuri said.

Pack ice, a type of free-floating ice that drifts on the open ocean, surrounds Antarctica. Carried by currents and wind, densely compressed stretches of pack ice collide to form even bigger masses, and the force of their slow-motion collisions is considerable.

"When two ice floes collide with each other, they form what we call pressure ridges," Tuhkuri said. "They’re like small mountains, and they can be tens of meters thick."

A ship that became beset — caught between floes and immobilized — was at the mercy of the ice. For early 20th century polar explorers, being beset was an expected hazard that could last for months at a stretch, and the outcome was never certain, said Dr. Ross MacPhee, senior curator in residence at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. MacPhee, who was not involved in the new research, has conducted five scientific expeditions to Antarctica and curated an exhibition on Shackleton’s Endurance voyage at the museum.

If a beset crew was fortunate, winds or currents would eventually shift, the ice would loosen its grip and the ship would break free. The German ship Deutschland, for example, was beset for eight months in the Weddell Sea in 1912 before it finally escaped the pack ice.

But if the crew were unlucky, the ice would squeeze their ship until it shattered, MacPhee told CNN.

"Most of the time you got away," he said. "But sometimes you didn’t."

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Space Delivery Vehicle Is The Future Of Logistics

Inversion may be a young aerospace and defense company based in Los Angeles, but they have already unveiled its first flagship spacecraft, Arc.

The reentry vehicle is designed to deliver up to 500 pounds of mission-critical cargo from orbit to almost any point on Earth in less than an hour. The company revealed the spacecraft during an event at its factory.

Co-founders Justin Fiaschetti and Austin Briggs, who started the company in 2021, presented Arc as a new kind of logistics platform.

"Arc represents the next leap, creating a logistics network in space that will make Earth radically more accessible," Fiaschetti said.

Arc stands about 8 feet tall and 4 feet wide, roughly the size of a large tabletop. It is built to handle deliveries ranging from medical kits to drones.

In an interview with Ars Technica, Fiaschetti said the company plans to keep Arcs in orbit for extended periods, ready to descend when called upon. "The nominal mission for us is pre-positioning Arcs on orbit, and having them stay up there for up to five years ... being able to bring their cargo or effects to the desired location in under an hour," he said.

The spacecraft is a lifting body design, meaning it can maneuver as it reenters the atmosphere.

According to the company, Arc has a cross-range of about 621 miles during reentry, allowing it to steer across wide areas before descent.

Instead of needing a runway, the vehicle lands under parachutes. Its propulsion system uses non-toxic materials, which allows soldiers to handle it safely without protective gear immediately after touchdown.

"We like to describe this as mission-enabling cargo or effects," said Fiaschetti. "This could be a wide variety of specific payloads, anything from medical supplies to drones to what have you. But the key discriminator is, does this make a difference in the moment it’s needed when it gets back down to the ground?"

Beyond delivery, Inversion is pitching Arc as a hypersonic test platform.

The spacecraft can reach speeds above Mach 20, maintain extreme conditions for longer durations, and sustain heavy g-forces. U.S. defense agencies have increased funding and focus on hypersonic research, and Inversion believes Arc offers a cost-effective way to support that work.

"Fully reusable and capable of precise landings for rapid recovery, Arc makes hypersonic testing faster, repeatable, and more affordable," the company said in its announcement. Inversion’s selection to participate in the Kratos-led MACH-TB 2.0 program indicates growing interest in Arc’s role as part of national testing infrastructure.

By combining maneuverability with reusability, Inversion argues that Arc provides both defense logistics and advanced research capabilities in one platform.

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Faces Of Hundred-Year-Old Columbian Mummies Reconstructed

One of the most reputable facial reconstruction labs in the world just brought the faces behind four funerary masks back to vivid life, revealing the extraordinary craftsmanship of Eastern Colombia between the 13th and 17th centuries.

For a new study, archaeologists from Face Lab at Liverpool John Moore University unmasked four mummies from the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History. The way pre-Colombian cultures of South America crafted these masks allowed them to fuse with the remains, so that "the bodies seemed to be alive," according to The Independent.

With their faces so permanently and impressively preserved within the interior of the funerary masks, researchers were able to reconstruct the damaged masks without physically removing them, breathing new life into the unreachable past.

A researcher from Face Lab told The Independent that the project "highlights the cultural practices of the indigenous peoples of South America," and will hopefully draw more interest towards these "incredible civilizations."

Firstly, the masks are extraordinary examples of craftsmanship, "the one ones known to exist in Colombia," The Independent continued, due to their ability to fuse with the face, leaving a permanent imprint that survived the test of time.

Ancient Origins reports that the masks were discovered in graves that had been looted, so they couldn’t provide any context beyond who they belonged to.

The four masks, respectively, sat on the faces of a 6 to 7-year-old child, a female in her 60s, and two young adult males, as per Live Science. These stylized masks were made of resin, clay, and maize with touches of gold and beads around the eyes. They were found in the Eastern Cordillera, a region in the Colombian Andes, and are thought to date between 1216 and 1797 AD.

According to Ancient Origins, they were formed directly on the anterior of the skull, and covered the entire face and jaw. Given that they were crafted on their faces, it attests to the skill that the funerary artist possessed.

The Face Lab team digitally "peeled back" the masks to reveal the face and used CT X-ray scans to capture 3D images of it.

The Independent explained that they took 2D images of each sample and then analyzed the scans to reconstruct their faces. A software enabled them to add facial tissue, and "a haptic touch stylus pen," Live Science said, allowed them to "virtually sculpt" muscles onto the digital skulls.

Ancient Origins added that they went so far as to utilize facial measurements of Colombian men living today, which they couldn’t do for the female or child, so they had to use their own expertise in anatomy, which the craftsmen did, to fill in the missing details.

"We used a digital sculpting process to rebuild each face. With the help of a stylus and specialized software, we digitally recreated muscle, skin, and fat onto the skulls." Dr. Jessica Liu, project manager at Face Lab told Ancient Origins.

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Can Science Explain Déjà Vu or Gut Feel?

All of us once had this weird feeling where we just know something’s going to happen? Turns out, science might actually have an explanation for it. And it’s weirder than anything you’ve seen in a sci-fi movie.

In one of Popular Mechanic’s most-read stories of the year, "Your Consciousness Can Jump Through Time—Meaning 'Gut Feelings' Are Memories From the Future, Scientists Say," researchers explore the idea that what many have long dismissed as a gut feeling or coincidence might be called "precognition," which is when your brain remembers an event before it’s happened.

Some scientists now believe consciousness doesn’t necessarily follow a linear timeline, and that it may be possible to entangle with your own future memories.

If you visit Popular Mechanics, you can watch John Gilpatrick and Andrew Daniels dig into the wild world of time-slipping minds, including a landmark 1990s study that made scientists start to take precognition seriously. They break down quantum theories, reveal why the CIA got involved in precognition research, and wrestle with the possibility that time just might not work the way we think it does.

John and Andrew also discuss why your brain may be more like a walkie-talkie to your future self, and what that means for déjà vu, free will, and the fabric of reality itself. You know, totally normal stuff.

Watch the full episode above now, and find more installments of "The Astounding Pop Mech Show" on PopularMechanics.com.

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Scientists Are Transforming Styrofoam Into Something Useful

Each year, more than 20 million tons of polystyrene, or Styrofoam, accumulate on earth. It's being used as a take-out container, food packaging, and shipping packing that cushions any online purchase. Once it’s thrown away, it persists for centuries.

Unlike some plastics, polystyrene is recalcitrant and doesn’t usually find its way into recycling. But a recent report shows a light of hope: instead of letting it clog landfills and waterways, scientists are discovering how to break it down and remake it into brand-new materials.

The process, called biological upcycling, doesn’t merely shatter foam into pieces and re-form them into lower-quality products. It actually recycles the waste into the exact same high-value building blocks that produce brand-new plastics, fibers, and coatings. It’s sort of giving trash a second life—without oil.

Polystyrene is made up of very long chains of styrene molecules. They are hard to disassemble. Saarland University professor of biotechnology Christoph Wittmann put together a team that met the challenge with the help of bacteria and enzymes. After years of laboratory tinkering, they trained a bacterium, Pseudomonas putida, to "digest" fragments of polystyrene and transform them into valuable chemical compounds.

"The real break-through," Wittmann said, "is that our research collaborators at INM led by Professor Aránzazu del Campo were able to demonstrate that the materials made with our process possess the same properties as the materials made from virgin petroleum-based feedstocks." That is to say, the recycled materials are just as strong and as dependable as plastics made directly from oil.

The team didn’t do it alone. They partnered with polymer chemists from Markus Gallei’s research group, scientists from the Leibniz Institute for New Materials, and collaborators in Dortmund and Vienna. The project received support from the European Union’s Repurpose program, which focuses on creative ways to cut plastic waste.

One of the most surprising products is chemicals used to make nylon. By inducing bacteria to make muconic acid, researchers could then chemically convert it into adipic acid and hexamethylenediamine. Each has six-carbon chains, one ending in acid groups and the other capped with amine groups. Blend them together, and you have nylon—a substance that shows up in stockings, carpets, car seats, zip ties, and millions of other items.

The team also showed that it is possible to make other significant chemicals, like hexanediol, from waste polystyrene. These kinds of chemicals are normally made from petroleum. Now that they have some microbial help, they can be made from waste foam cups and trays.

Proof-of-concept experiments like these are never perfect. The yields — the amount of product extracted from waste — are still low relative to industrial chemical plants. Certain enzymes lose their activity after being used many times, and separating pure products out of reaction residue remains expensive and technically difficult.

Though, the presence of microbes that can be convinced to recycle trash into nylon products is a giant step. The scientists assert their products are chemically no different from conventional options, which would enable industries to adopt them without altering manufacturing processes.

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Venus' "Coronae" Spurred Interest From Some Scientists

The surface of Venus is scoured with strange, quasi-circular features called coronae. Unlike anything seen on Earth today, they can stretch hundreds of miles in diameter, even going past the thousand mark. Or they can be as little as a few dozen miles across. In images taken from orbit, they look like chaotic scribbles etched into the rock, surrounding a partially collapsed center.

Large or small, their origins have long been a mystery to planetary scientists. It’s especially puzzling since Venus is a terrestrial world much like Earth, so much so that it’s considered to be our planet’s "twin," at nearly the same size and density. We’re also neighbors, putting both worlds at similar distances from the Sun. So why are there coronae all over Venus, but none on Earth?

A new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers an intriguing explanation — and it could give us a major clue to how Venus and Earth’s paths diverged. Today, one is dominated by volcanoes with hellish temperatures more than 860 degrees Fahrenheit; the other is a temperate ocean world brimming with life.

"We get to have this solar system-sized laboratory," study lead author Madeleine Kerr from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC California, San Deigo, said in a statement. "We have a front row seat to see why these planets are so different."

The geography of Venus and Earth are fundamentally different in one major way: Venus’s surface is made of a single giant crust, while the Earth is a jigsaw puzzle of moving tectonic plates, which over eons are sucked into the mantle and recycled. But that wasn't always the case. The Earth got its start as a single unbroken shell, too, and scientists still don’t agree when it first fractured into tectonic plates.

In a sense, Venus, having never grown out of that phase, offers a window into the Earth’s history. Previous research using data from NASA’s Magellan mission suggested that the planet wasn’t as geologically "dead" as once believed, and that the coranae may be evidence of ongoing tectonic activity.

One leading theory of corona formation suggests that they’re produced by a blob of hot material from Venus’ mantle bubbling to the surface and pushing against the bottom of the crust.

In this latest study, the researchers built on that idea by mapping the convection of the planet’s mantle, modeling how these bursts of magma travel thousands of miles from the core. Their findings added to the theory that these hot blobs are running into a "glass-ceiling" roughly 400 miles beneath the surface, where the mantle’s shifting crystal structure blocks some of the rising material. So instead of one huge blob, a grapeshot of smaller blobs trickle to the surface, creating the oddly shaped corona. This could also explain why they vary wildly in size.

There’s still a lot of work to be done to verify this hunch, but the researchers think they’re on the verge of a breakthrough akin to how the theory of plate tectonics upended our understanding of Earth’s history in the not-so-distant past.

"The current state of knowledge of the planet Venus is analogous to the 1960’s pre-plate tectonic era because we currently lack an equivalent unifying theory capable of linking how heat transfer from the planet’s interior gets manifested into the tectonics and magmatic features observed on Venus’ surface," coauthor David Stegman, a Scripps geophysicist, said in the statement. "With this new explanation for Venus’ surface features, we feel a revolution has begun and even more exciting discoveries are just around the corner."

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A Cleaner Way To Produce Iron And Steel

Steel has underpinned modern life for centuries, but it comes at an expensive cost. The industry is responsible for nearly 7 percent of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions, driven by blast furnaces fueled by coke, a form of coal, to extract oxygen from iron ore.

For decades, most attempts at cleaner steel-making, though, have been dashed on the problem of doing it large-scale. Scientists may now have an answer.

Scientists have long dreamed of using hydrogen as a cleaner alternative to coke. Theoretically, if hydrogen gas is used to smelt iron ore, the waste product would be nothing but water. But the method has languished behind thermodynamic hurdles. Smelting magnetite, the most common iron ore, with hydrogen alone demands extremely high temperatures above 900 Kelvin and then even hotter stages to complete the reaction. The result is substantial cost and substantial energy usage.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, working in partnership with Hummingbird Scientific, have now shown how hydrogen plasmas that are not thermal can change the paradigm. As opposed to reactions from heat, these plasmas form fleeting but highly energetic hydrogen radicals—atoms so reactive that they can smelt iron ore at room temperature.

Until recently, no one had seen what these reactions looked like on the tiniest scales. Other experiments employed bulk samples that masked the fine details within disordered structures. To get around this problem, researchers developed a new device called operando plasma transmission electron microscopy, or TEM.

This instrument can image magnetite nanoparticles directly upon exposure to hydrogen plasma at a resolution of around one nanometer. That’s ten times better than earlier optical methods and allows researchers to watch the process in real-time.

"We developed a new technique that allows us to probe plasma-material interactions at the nanometer scale, which has not been achievable so far," said Jae Hyun Nam, lead author of the paper and graduate student in the mechanical engineering department at the University of Minnesota.

What the researchers saw was a drama. In ten seconds of exposure, magnetite particles began shrinking and developing cracks. At an atomic level, hydrogen radicals were stripping oxygen from the crystal structure, leaving metallic iron behind.

The particles followed a shrinking-core model, where the reaction initiated on the surface and propagated inward, relentlessly dissolving away the oxide. That meant that the reaction rate was governed by surface chemical steps rather than by transport across the particle. Scaling up is good news, as it suggests the focus should be put on controlling plasma radical density rather than worrying about diffusion through large chunks of ore.

"Plasma formation can be energetically much more efficient than heating the material," said Andre Mkhoyan, lead author on the paper and professor in chemical engineering and materials science at the University of Minnesota. "This technology has the potential to enable materials to be altered with lower energy consumption, ultimately making processes economically more efficient."

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Space Camp Offers Program For Visually Impaired Kids

The U.S. Space and Rocket Center is hosting over 100 visually impaired students from 6 different countries this week. News 19 spoke with organizers from Space Camp for Interested Visually Impaired Students, or SCIVIS, about their 35-year program.

SCIVIS brings kids from all over the world to Huntsville to experience Space Camp in a way that is safe and accessible to them.

Coordinator Dan Oats says kids with visual impairments can feel isolated from their peers at school because they’re different. At Space Camp, it’s a level playing field, and cadets form lifelong bonds.

The program focuses on building confidence, fostering friendships, and providing a positive, accessible environment where participants can explore careers in aviation, robotics, and space exploration alongside peers.

SCIVIS provides tailored activities and support, including role models and accessible materials, to ensure that visually impaired students can fully participate in the same immersive and inspiring experience as their sighted peers.

Oates was one of the original chaperones who brought students from the West Virginia School for the Blind to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center.

"The first floor was virtually empty," Oates recalled. "There were very few simulators around and computer equipment wasn't like it is today."

SCIVIS started after an adult applied to Space Camp and was turned down because of his blindness. Ed Buckbee, founder and director of Space Camp, decided to end the discrimination by tailoring an entire week of Space Camp for children with special needs.

"We had 20 kids that first year," Oates said. "Now we have 200."

In 1991, the program began adding students from others schools for the blind, and in 1992, added public school students.

The first international student came from Australia in 2006. Since then, students from more than 20 countries have traveled to Huntsville for SCIVIS. This year there are 206 students—the largest group ever.

"We have students from 23 states and 11 countries," Oates said. "New Zealand, Ireland, Israel, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago ... We also have children who live in the United States but are citizens of China, Nepal, Egypt."

The entire Space Camp is retro-fitted to meet the needs of the visually impaired students. Materials are translated into Braille as well as magnified into large print. Various electronics are brought in such as telescopes, iPads, Bluetooth technology, and extra lighting. Computer monitors in the mission control room have been removed from the Plexiglass so they're eight inches closer to the children.

Oates says the children gain confidence they've never had after completing the tasks, making friends, and achieving the previously unfathomable.

"They're given responsibility which is unusual for a lot of kids with disabilities," Oates said. "You know, they're not asked to take out the garbage or mow the lawn or do things that sighted kids do. Here they're given positive peer pressure to achieve things that the rest of the team is achieving."

SCIVIS takes place this week once a year. To register a child for next year’s camp or learn more about accommodations, visit the SCIVIS website.

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