Charlie Brown would certainly be proud of this "great pumpkin."
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found a massive nebula in deep space that "looks like a celestial jack-o'-lantern." The study's researchers have given it the nickname "Jack-o'-lantern Nebula," apropos for Halloween.
It's likely that a star, known as an O-type star, approximately 15 to 20 times heavier than our Sun, is "responsible for sculpting this cosmic pumpkin," NASA JPL said in a statement on its website.
This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space telescope shows a cloud of gas and dust carved out by a massive star. A drawing overlaid on the image reveals why researchers nicknamed this region the "Jack-o'-lantern Nebula." Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The GIF was released on Wednesday, with an outline being added around the nebula.
Spitzer detects infrared light, so it was able to see the star "glowing like a candle at the center of a hollowed-out pumpkin," NASA continued. Infrared light is widely assumed to be invisible to the human eye.
"A recent study of the region suggests that the powerful outflow of radiation and particles from the star likely swept the surrounding dust and gas outward, creating deep gouges in this cloud, which is known as a nebula," NASA continued.
In the image, an uncanny pair of glowing eyes glares menacingly in our direction. The piercing "eyes" are the most prominent feature of what resembles the face of an otherworldly creature. But this is no ghostly apparition. Hubble is looking at a titanic head-on collision between two galaxies.
The image shows an outline of a face in a ring of blue stars with further groups of new stars form a nose and mouth.
Each "eye" is the bright core of a galaxy, one of which slammed into another.
The violent encounter gives the system an arresting "ring" structure for only a short amount of time, about 100 million years.
The crash pulled and stretched the galaxies' disks of gas, dust, and stars outward.
This action formed the ring of intense star formation that shapes the nose and face.
The entire system, named AM 2026-424, is 704 million light-years from Earth.
Ring galaxies are rare; only a few hundred of them exist in the large cosmic neighbourhood.
These galaxies have had to collide at just the right orientation to create the ring.
Hubble observed this unique system as part of a "snapshot" program that takes advantage of occasional gaps in the telescope's observing schedule to squeeze in additional pictures.
Astronomers plan to use this innovative Hubble program to take a close look at many other unusual interacting galaxies.
The goal is to compile a robust sample of nearby interacting galaxies, which could offer insight into how galaxies grew over time through galactic mergers.
By analysing these detailed Hubble observations, astronomers could then choose which systems are prime targets for follow-up with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2021.
A stunning image sent back from the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA joint telescope which looks as if an alien face is emerging in deep space. The odd-looking structure is created by blueish hue consisting of gas and faint stars making up the shape of the face while two sets of bright clusters of stars make up the eyes. The “ghostly face” is actually two galaxies on a collision course with one another, with Hubble capturing the moment they are about to merge.
The merger has been assigned the name Arp-Madore 2026-424, and is located a staggering 704 million light-years from Earth.
For reference, one light-year is about 5.88 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).
NASA said on its website: “This new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures two galaxies of equal size in a collision that appears to resemble a ghostly face.
“This observation was made on 19 June 2019 in visible light by the telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
“Residing 704 million light-years from Earth, this system is catalogued as Arp-Madore 2026-424 (AM 2026-424) in the Arp-Madore ‘Catalogue of Southern Peculiar Galaxies and Associations’.”
The Hubble telescope is set to be retired in 2021 after more than 30 years of service having been launched in 1990.
However, its successor, the more powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), will take over.
The infrared machine is so powerful it will reach back to the furthest realms and the earliest moments of the universe.
However, as JWST is much more powerful, it will be able to see just 0.3 billion years after the Big Bang to when visible light itself was beginning to form.
WST will also be situated much farther out in space than Hubble.
Hubble is placed in Earth’s orbit just 570,000 kilometres from the surface, but JWST will be placed an astonishing 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, meaning that if it breaks down while it is up there, it will not be able to be fixed.
Coral reefs in Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea. Credit: T.E. Roberts, Tethys Images
Coral species richness at different depths is unrelated to energy availability, according to a new study analysing diversity across an Australasian reef.
Research from James Cook University, Lancaster University, the University of Copenhagen and Queensland University of Technology, published in Biology Letters, reveals neither energy availability alone, nor in combination with other local factors, accounts for differences in the diversity of coral species across depth.
The research, funded by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence Programme, generated an unprecedented dataset of 8,460 coral colonies across six reefs in Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea.
This allowed the team to conduct a robust test of the drivers that underlie how corals are distributed over depth for the first time, enabling them to test the theory that there will be a greater species diversity where there is greater available energy.
For corals, the highest diversity was expected in the shallows because they depend on energy from sunlight. To test this idea, researchers surveyed diversity at depths of between 0 and 45 metres, reaching significantly deeper than most previous surveys, and covering 98 per cent of the light gradient.
Coral reefs in Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea. Credit: T.E. Roberts, Tethys Images
In contrast to the expectations based on the theory, the research revealed that coral diversity among the team's samples was highest at depths of between 15 and 20 metres.
Lead author Dr. Edward Roberts, of James Cook University, said: "Our understanding of how coral diversity varies across depth has been limited by a lack of high quality data due to the difficulty of deeper surveys.
"We were able to overcome that in our survey in Kimbe Bay. This allowed us to test the classic Species Energy hypothesis that proposes the greater the energy available, the greater the diversity, as theoretically more energy allows more individuals to co-exist. This in turn allows more species to maintain large enough populations to avoid local extinction.
"Our results do not agree with this classic explanation of how diversity changes with energy. Instead, the shallowest depths had fewer species, a pattern also poorly explained by alternative explanations such as competition between corals or environmental disturbance."
Coral species richness at different depths is unrelated to energy availability. Narrated by Dr Edward Roberts. Credit: T.E. Roberts, Tethys Images
The results of the research provide cause to find new theories about diversity distribution.
Co-author Dr. Sally Keith, of Lancaster Environment Centre, said: "Hyper-diverse corals reefs are ideal ecosystems to test theories about how diversity is distributed in nature, so it is really interesting that our results do not support the classic hypotheses."
"More broadly, our analyses cast doubt on the suitability of these hypotheses more generally across terrestrial, marine and freshwater systems, suggesting that ecologists might need to rethink the underlying causes of these fundamental patterns of diversity."
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In this Oct. 27, 2019 photo released by the U.S. Air Force, the Air Force's X-37B successfully lands at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility on Merritt Island in Brevard County, Fla., following a record-breaking two-year mission. (U.S. Air Force via AP)
The Air Force's mystery space plane is back on Earth, following a record-breaking two-year mission.
The X-37B landed at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida early Sunday. The Air Force is mum about what the plane did in orbit after launching aboard a SpaceX rocket in 2017. The 780-day mission sets a new endurance record for the reusable test vehicle.
It looks like a space shuttle but is one-fourth the size at 29 feet.
Officials say this latest mission successfully completed its objectives. Experiments from the Air Force Research Laboratory were aboard.
This was the fifth spaceflight by a vehicle of this sort. No. 6 is planned next year with another launch from Cape Canaveral. According to Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett, "Each successive mission advances our nation's space capabilities."
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The uncrewed plane, which looks like a small space shuttle, conducted in-orbit experiments that could then be brought back to Earth for examination, according to the Air Force.
The exact details of these experiments are a closely guarded secret. In a statement, the Air Force only revealed that the program "performs risk reduction, experimentation and concept of operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies."
This is the fifth X-37B space plane to be launched into orbit over the past decade, with each flight longer than its predecessor.
"Our team has been preparing for this event, and I am extremely proud to see their hard work and dedication culminate in today's safe and successful landing of the X-37B," said Brig. Gen. Doug Schiess in the statement released Sunday.
Each mission has been highly secretive, leading to public speculation that the planes could be used for spying activity or testing space weapons.
The Air Force has provided some hints about its program. In a press release Sunday,it said the latest X-37B mission conducted experiments for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The AFRL develops "warfighting technologies"for the air, space and cyberspace sectors, according to its website — for instance, it's developing laser weapons that eventually may be mounted onto aircraft.
Here's what we do know about the X-37B: The craft is designed to test new navigation systems, as well as methods to reenter Earth's atmosphere and land safely.
Previous missions have tested technologies for navigation, thermal protection systems, autonomous orbital flight and reusable insulation, according to the Air Force.
The X-37B spacecraft is about 29 feet (8.8 meters) long and 9.5 feet (2.9 meters) high, with a wingspan of nearly 15 feet (4.5 meters).
The planes also have a unique design. They launch into orbit atop powerful rockets and then break away to carry out their mission. When they return to Earth, they touch down horizontally on a runway, like a commercial airplane or space shuttle orbiter coming in for landing.
The plane that just landed was launched to space in September 2017 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. In its Sunday press release, the Air Force announced it was preparing to launch the sixth X-37B mission in 2020.
The uncrewed plane, which looks like a small space shuttle, conducted in-orbit experiments that could then be brought back to Earth for examination, according to the Air Force.
The exact details of these experiments are a closely guarded secret. In a statement, the Air Force only revealed that the program "performs risk reduction, experimentation and concept of operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies."
This is the fifth X-37B space plane to be launched into orbit over the past decade, with each flight longer than its predecessor.
"Our team has been preparing for this event, and I am extremely proud to see their hard work and dedication culminate in today's safe and successful landing of the X-37B," said Brig. Gen. Doug Schiess in the statement released Sunday.
Each mission has been highly secretive, leading to public speculation that the planes could be used for spying activity or testing space weapons.
The Air Force has provided some hints about its program. In a press release Sunday,it said the latest X-37B mission conducted experiments for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The AFRL develops "warfighting technologies"for the air, space and cyberspace sectors, according to its website — for instance, it's developing laser weapons that eventually may be mounted onto aircraft.
Here's what we do know about the X-37B: The craft is designed to test new navigation systems, as well as methods to reenter Earth's atmosphere and land safely.
Previous missions have tested technologies for navigation, thermal protection systems, autonomous orbital flight and reusable insulation, according to the Air Force.
The X-37B spacecraft is about 29 feet (8.8 meters) long and 9.5 feet (2.9 meters) high, with a wingspan of nearly 15 feet (4.5 meters).
The planes also have a unique design. They launch into orbit atop powerful rockets and then break away to carry out their mission. When they return to Earth, they touch down horizontally on a runway, like a commercial airplane or space shuttle orbiter coming in for landing.
The plane that just landed was launched to space in September 2017 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. In its Sunday press release, the Air Force announced it was preparing to launch the sixth X-37B mission in 2020.
The uncrewed plane, which looks like a small space shuttle, conducted in-orbit experiments that could then be brought back to Earth for examination, according to the Air Force.
The exact details of these experiments are a closely guarded secret. In a statement, the Air Force only revealed that the program "performs risk reduction, experimentation and concept of operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies."
This is the fifth X-37B space plane to be launched into orbit over the past decade, with each flight longer than its predecessor.
"Our team has been preparing for this event, and I am extremely proud to see their hard work and dedication culminate in today's safe and successful landing of the X-37B," said Brig. Gen. Doug Schiess in the statement released Sunday.
Each mission has been highly secretive, leading to public speculation that the planes could be used for spying activity or testing space weapons.
The Air Force has provided some hints about its program. In a press release Sunday,it said the latest X-37B mission conducted experiments for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The AFRL develops "warfighting technologies"for the air, space and cyberspace sectors, according to its website — for instance, it's developing laser weapons that eventually may be mounted onto aircraft.
Here's what we do know about the X-37B: The craft is designed to test new navigation systems, as well as methods to reenter Earth's atmosphere and land safely.
Previous missions have tested technologies for navigation, thermal protection systems, autonomous orbital flight and reusable insulation, according to the Air Force.
The X-37B spacecraft is about 29 feet (8.8 meters) long and 9.5 feet (2.9 meters) high, with a wingspan of nearly 15 feet (4.5 meters).
The planes also have a unique design. They launch into orbit atop powerful rockets and then break away to carry out their mission. When they return to Earth, they touch down horizontally on a runway, like a commercial airplane or space shuttle orbiter coming in for landing.
The plane that just landed was launched to space in September 2017 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. In its Sunday press release, the Air Force announced it was preparing to launch the sixth X-37B mission in 2020.
The Air Force's X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle Mission 5 is seen after landing at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility, Fla., on Sunday.
Handout/via Reuters
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Handout/via Reuters
After a record-breaking 780 days circling the Earth, the Air Force's mysterious X-37B unmanned space plane dropped out of orbit and landed safely on the same runway that the Space Shuttle once used.
It was the fifth acknowledged mission for the vehicle, built by Boeing at the aerospace company's Phantom Works.
"Today marks an incredibly exciting day for the 45th Space Wing," Brig. Gen. Doug Schiess, 45th Space Wing commander, said in a statement. "Our team has been preparing for this event, and I am extremely proud to see their hard work and dedication culminate in today's safe and successful landing of the X-37B."
As in previous missions, many of the details about the vehicle's activities in the past two years are being kept under wraps. One experiment was to "test experimental electronics and oscillating heat pipe technologies in the long-duration space environment," according to the Air Force statement.
Randy Walden, the director of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office said the latest X-37B mission "successfully hosted Air Force Research Laboratory experiments, among others, as well as providing a ride for small satellites."
Walden's statement sparked a reaction from some, such as Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who keeps tabs on the registration of satellites.
"The statement that this @usairforce X-37 flight deployed small satellites is alarming, since the US has not reported those deployments in its UN Registration Convention submissions," McDowell wrote in a tweet. "This would be the first time that either the USA or Russia has blatantly flouted the Convention."
The statement that this @usairforce X-37 flight deployed small satellites is alarming, since the US has not reported those deployments in its UN Registration Convention submissions. This would be the first time that either the USA or Russia has blatantly flouted the Convention. https://t.co/mpLWuvsECV
The Air Force is believed to have two of the 29-foot long reusable X-37Bs — which resemble miniature Space Shuttle orbiters — and both have flown multiple flights, according to Space.com. They were originally designed to spend 240 days in orbit, but with the latest flight — and a previous one that went for 718 days — they have tripled their expected endurance. The latest mission, known as OTV-5, was launched into orbit by the SpaceX Falcon 9 on Sept. 7, 2017.
The X-37B was first developed by NASA as a test-bed for future spacecraft, but it was transferred to the Defense Advanced Research Agency (DARPA) in 2004 and then absorbed by the Air Force.
The space agency said the photo was taken on Oct. 8, 2014 by its Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite. The flares that are visible are ultraviolet light from its active regions.
"The active regions in this image appear brighter because those are areas that emit more light and energy," the statement read. "They are markers of an intense and complex set of magnetic fields hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona. This image blends together two sets of extreme ultraviolet wavelengths…typically colorized in gold and yellow, to create a particularly Halloween-like appearance.”
The rover -- the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER for short -- is the size of a golf cart, and will sample the Moon's soil environments to search for evidence of water and ice.
The machine will collect data for about 100 days that will be used to create the first global water resource maps of the Moon, the space agency said on Friday.
Scientists consider the lunar poles as promising places to search for water ice, which could be used to provide oxygen for humans to breathe, and hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel.
NASA directly detected the presence of water ice in 2009, when it crashed a rocket into a large crater near the planet's South Pole, and believes that the Moon has reservoirs that could amount to millions of tons of water ice.
Using scientific instruments including a one-meter drill and a neutron spectrometer system -- apparatus that can detect the presence of hydrogen -- the VIPER will help scientists to understand the location of the water and other resources on the lunar surface and aid in plans to extract it.
"The key to living on the Moon is water -- the same as here on Earth," said Daniel Andrews, the project manager of the VIPER mission and director of engineering at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley said in a statement. "Since the confirmation of lunar water-ice ten years ago, the question now is if the Moon could really contain the amount of resources we need to live off-world. This rover will help us answer the many questions we have about where the water is, and how much there is for us to use."
The vehicle, which is due to land on the lunar surface in December 2022, will collect data on different soil environments on the Moon and map out where else water could be found.
"It's incredibly exciting to have a rover going to the new and unique environment of the South Pole to discover where exactly we can harvest that water," Anthony Colaprete, VIPER's project scientist, said in a statement.
"VIPER will tell us which locations have the highest concentrations and how deep below the surface to go to get access to water," he said.
NASA has said that it's ambition is to "achieve a long-term sustainable presence on the Moon -- enabling humans to go on to Mars and beyond."
Lab rats have been trained to do all sorts of things, from running mazes and pushing levers to playing hide and seek. Now, a handful of rats have learned how to drive, with scientists using Froot Loops to encourage the animals' brief outings in a miniature car within a tiny rectangular arena.
What sounds like a stunt is actually part of ongoing research at the University of Richmond, where researchers are exploring how the performance of complex tasks like driving affects the brain — with the ultimate goal of finding better ways to treat anxiety and depression.
“The rat is an appropriate model for the human brain in many ways since it has all the same areas and neurochemicals as the human brain — just smaller, of course,” said Kelly Lambert, professor of behavioral neuroscience at the university and a co-author of a paper about the research published Oct. 16 in the journal Behavioural Brain Research. “Although humans are more complex than rats, we look for ‘universal truths’ about how brains interact with environments to maintain optimal mental health.”
Lambert and the researchers determined that all the rats were more relaxed after learning to drive by measuring the levels of corticosterone, a hormone that denotes stress, and dehydroepiandrosterone, a hormone that counteracts stress, in the rats' feces.University of Richmond
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If humans often find driving stressful, the rats in the study seemed to benefit from the training. A chemical analysis of the animals' poop after four months of training sessions showed lower levels of the stress hormone corticosterone and higher levels of the stress-busting hormone dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA).
"We concluded that the rats that actually learned to drive had a greater sense of control over their environment that was accompanied by increased DHEA — something like a rodent version of what we refer to as self-efficacy or agency in humans," Lambert said in a statement.
For the research, Lambert and her collaborators used a clear plastic food container to make the miniature car, complete with wheels, an aluminum floor and three copper bars that the rats used as a steering wheel. Several rats were trained within a so-called enriched environment, with access to toys, tiny ladders and pine cones. Several others received their training within a traditional enclosure.
A new study details an experiment conducted by researchers in the University of Richmond's Department of Psychology to investigate the effects of an enriched environment and training on emotional responses.University of Richmond
Lambert said the rats in the enriched environment proved better at driving, while the rats in the traditional enclosure “barely made any progress” because their brains “were less engaged.”
“Being in an enriched environment had a positive effect on the mice — it allowed them to master a skill they otherwise wouldn’t have,” Lambert said. “Even after we stopped putting the Fruit Loops out to reward the mice, those in the enriched environment still had positive associations and were able to drive for four days after the experiment ended ... The study suggests that learning a new task and placing oneself in a stimulating environment can advance our health.”
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The findings echo earlier work by Lambert that showed lower stress levels in rats that mastered other difficult tasks, such as digging to find buried food. Lambert said she was planning a series of follow-up experiments to determine how the brain changes in response to learning new skills.
“There are no cures for many psychiatric illnesses like schizophrenia or depression,” Lambert said. “We need to do better to find answers and looking at rats at a larger scale may be a good place to start.”
Researchers at the University of Richmond report that driving an electric car makes lab rats happy. Being driven around in autonomous vehicles makes them apprehensive. The lesson for humanity is clear, is it not? Drive an electric car and be happy! The research findings have been published in the journal Behavioral Brain Research.
Image credit: Kelly Lambert/University of Richmond via New Scientist.
According to New Scientist, the researchers constructed a tiny car out of a clear plastic food container. They gave it wheels, an aluminum floor, and three copper bars that acted as a steering wheel. When a rat stood on the aluminum floor and gripped the copper bars with their paws, it completed an electrical circuit that propelled the car forward. Touching the left, center, or right bar steered the car in different directions. Six female and 11 male rats were trained to drive the car in rectangular areas that measured up to 4 square meters and rewarded with Froot Loops cereal pieces when they drove the car forward.
The team encouraged the rats to advance their driving skills by placing the food rewards at increasingly distant points around the arena. “They learned to navigate the car in unique ways and engaged in steering patterns they had never used to eventually arrive at the reward,” says head researcher Kelly Lambert.
Being A Lab Researcher Ain’t For Sissies
Just how do researchers determine whether rats are happy? By analyzing chemicals in their feces, of course. Here’s more from New Scientist.
“Learning to drive seemed to relax the rats. The researchers assessed this by measuring levels of two hormones: corticosterone, a marker of stress, and dehydroepiandrosterone, which counteracts stress. The ratio of dehydroepiandrosterone to corticosterone in the rats’ feces increased over the course of their driving training. The researchers found that rats who drove themselves had higher dehydroepiandrosterone levels and were less stressed than rats that were driven around as passengers in remote controlled cars.”
Lambert has shown in previous research studies that rats become less stressed after they master difficult tasks like digging up buried food, suggesting they may get the same kind of satisfaction as people do when they acquire a new skill. “In humans, we call this self-efficacy or agency. I do believe that rats are smarter than most people perceive them to be, and that most animals are smarter in unique ways than we think,” she says.
Her team is designing new experiments to see how rats learn to drive, why it seems to reduce stress, and which brain areas are involved. Maybe driving electric cars will reduce the incidence of road rage on public highways?
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Steve Hanley Steve writes about the interface between technology and sustainability from his home in Rhode Island and anywhere else the Singularity may lead him. His motto is, "Life is not measured by how many breaths we take but by the number of moments that take our breath away!" You can follow him on Google + and on Twitter.
A stunning time-lapse captured by the International Space Station shows the Earth, stars and even events like thunderstorms and wildfires.
The time-lapse was created from a total of 400 photographs over the course of 11 minutes as the ISS traveled from Namibia toward the Red Sea, according to NASA.
NASA astronaut Christina Koch, who tweets about her experiences on the International Space Station and recently partook in the first all-women spacewalk, captured the images.
The circular streaks in the image are star-trails, while the thinner dotted lines with darker orange hues are fires burning across Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Toward the north, one can see thunderstorms covering much of central Africa.
According to NASA, one of the most striking features of the image are the star trails encircling the background around a point in the upper left corner of the image.
“This point is essentially normal (perpendicular) to the ISS orbital plane, directly out of the port side of the vehicle based on the spacecraft silhouettes,” said Matthew Osvog of NASA Johnson Space Center’s ISS Flight Operations Pointing console, in a statement.
The faint greenish-yellow tracing of the upper atmosphere, which is seen above the horizon, is known as airglow.
All of that acclaim comes from a few skulls and plant fossils found in the Corral Bluffs out near DragonMan's east of Colorado Springs. But these fossils open a window into 65 million years ago, after the KT mass extinction event when an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs.
Paleontologist Tyler Lyson told 11 News the moment he found the first fossil along the plains of eastern Colorado Springs, he just started yelling and high fiving everyone around him.
"And then we found more," Lyson added, chuckling.
Lyson attributes a lot of this find to a large team of individuals, but is credited with thinking to use tactics normally used in underwater searches.
They started looking for concretions instead of just bones.
Concretions are a hard rock shell built around something over time. Lyson says usually, it's nothing important, but every so often, it can be something incredible like a fossil.
That is how they were able to find the skulls of mammals of different sizes going from raccoons to wolves and things similar to crocodiles and turtles. They are still figuring out what classification those new animals could belong to.
This find was actually three years ago, but scientists needed to keep this a secret until they were able to present their findings all at once.
Stay with 11 News as we learn more about the fossils in our own back yard and what it will mean for our understanding of the Earth and its' rich history. .
We've known for decades that catalysts speed up the reaction that reduces harmful industrial emissions. And now, we know exactly how they do it.
A recent paper by Israel Wachs, the G. Whitney Snyder Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Lehigh University's P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, describes the mechanism, and was the inside back cover story of the September 2, 2019, issue of Angewandte Chemie, a journal of the German Chemical Society.
Power plants are a major source of toxic emissions associated with climate change. When fossil fuels like coal and natural gas are burned, they produce dangerous contaminants, in particular, a group of harmful gases called nitrogen oxides (or NOx) that contribute to acid rain, ground-level ozone formation, and greenhouse gases.
"The combustion process to generate energy requires very high temperatures that cause molecular nitrogen (N2) and oxygen (O2) present in air to disassociate or crack," says Wachs. "The N and O atoms then recombine and make NOx, which is considered the biggest pollution problem today because it's very hard to control."
Back in the 1970s, the Japanese developed a technology to control NOx emissions by reacting NOx with ammonia to form harmless nitrogen (N2) and water (H2O).
"It's a beautiful chemical reaction, converting something very harmful to something very benign," says Wachs, who directs Lehigh's Operando Molecular Spectroscopy and Catalysis Research Lab.
NOx emissions are now strongly regulated and one common abatement strategy is the selective catalytic reduction (SCR) of nitrogen oxides by ammonia. Catalysts both speed up the SCR reaction and control the reaction products (such as forming N2 and H2O), meaning the catalyst ensures the reaction produces no undesirable harmful gases (hence "selective").
One SCR catalyst widely used by power plants is titania-supported vanadium oxide.
"The catalyst consists of vanadium oxide and tungsten oxide dispersed on the surface of a titania (TiO2) support. The vanadium oxide is the active component performing the selective catalytic reduction towards N2 formation and not the undesirable reaction products that can be toxic," says Wachs. "There's been a big debate raging in the literature for 40 years, right from the beginning of the development of this technology, around the question of what exactly does the tungsten oxide component do?"
The research community knew from experience that tungsten oxide thermally stabilizes the titania support, which is vital as these catalysts can spend years at high temperatures during operation. They also knew that adding tungsten oxide makes the vanadium oxide much more active, which is also important as the more active a catalyst is the less of it you need. But why did tungsten oxide have such an effect on the reactivity of vanadium oxide?
Three theories have dominated over the years, says Wachs. One claimed that tungsten oxide has an acidic character that enhances the chemical reaction. The second said tungsten oxide was somehow sharing electrons with vanadium oxide, and the third stated that the tungsten oxide was changing the structure of the vanadium oxide.
Wachs and his collaborators used a cutting-edge instrument called a High Field (HF) Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrometer in conjunction with reaction studies to test each theory.
"There are only a few of these HF NMR spectrometers in the world, and their magnetic fields are so sensitive that it gives all the subtle molecular details of what was going on in the material," he says.
Those molecular details appear as signals that Wachs and his team then interpreted using theoretical calculations (Density Functional Theory).
"It turns out that the amount of vanadium oxide is very low in the catalyst making the vanadium oxide present as isolated species, or monomers," says Wachs. "When you add the tungsten oxide, vanadium oxide changes from monomers to oligomers or polymers, so now all the vanadium oxide is connected as a chain or an island on the titania support. We performed independent studies and found that these oligomers of vanadium oxide are 10 times more active than in the isolated vanadium oxide sites. So the tungsten oxide really does change the structure of vanadium oxide, from a less active form to a highly active form."
This fundamental understanding of how the catalyst works will help guide future designs of improved SCR catalysts, says Wachs, who was recently elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and has been recognized internationally for his innovative contributions to fundamental catalysis that have been applied in the manufacture of chemicals and control of air pollution.
"Now that we know what's going on, it won't be trial and error in terms of making it better since we take a scientific approach to the catalyst design."
And that will have huge ramifications for industry and air pollution control, he says.
"A more active catalyst has significant benefits. First of all, these systems are huge, almost the size of a small house, and a lot of these plants were built before this technology was mandated, so space at the plants is limited. So if you have a more active catalyst, you need a smaller footprint. They're also expensive, so if the catalyst is more active, you don't need as much. And finally, since we also think they'll last longer, it will limit the amount of time a plant has to shut down to install a new catalyst."
But for Wachs, the effect on public health is the most meaningful—and gratifying—result.
"Easily, 40,000 to 50,000 people in the United States die annually due to complications from poor air quality. So catalysis, and the research around it, has tremendous societal impact. It's very satisfying when you're able to solve a problem that's been around for 40 years, that will improve the technology, and address these health issues."
More information:
Nicholas R. Jaegers et al, Inside Back Cover: Mechanism by which Tungsten Oxide Promotes the Activity of Supported V2 O5 /TiO2 Catalysts for NO X Abatement: Structural Effects Revealed by 51 V MAS NMR Spectroscopy (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 36/2019), Angewandte Chemie International Edition (2019). DOI: 10.1002/anie.201908846
Nicholas R. Jaegers et al. Mechanism by which Tungsten Oxide Promotes the Activity of Supported V2 O5 /TiO2 Catalysts for NO X Abatement: Structural Effects Revealed by 51 V MAS NMR Spectroscopy, Angewandte Chemie International Edition (2019). DOI: 10.1002/anie.201904503
Citation:
Finally, the answer to a 'burning' 40-year-old question (2019, October 24)
retrieved 24 October 2019
from https://phys.org/news/2019-10-year-old.html
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part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
The largest fish to walk on land, the voracious northern snakehead, will flee water that is too acidic, salty or high in carbon dioxide—important information for future management of this invasive species.
Snakeheads eat native species of fish, frogs and crayfish, destroying the food web in some habitats. They can survive on land for up to 20 hours if conditions are moist.
In a new study published Oct. 21 in the peer-reviewed journal Integrative Organismal Biology, Wake Forest researcher Noah Bressman reported for the first time the water conditions that could drive snakeheads onto land.
Earlier this month, wildlife resources officials in Georgia advised anglers to kill the fish on sight after one was caught in a Gwinnett County pond, and the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission confirmed that a 28-inch northern snakehead was caught in the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh.
Bressman also observed the fish moving in a way no other amphibious fish do: It makes near-simultaneous rowing movements with its pectoral fins while wriggling its axial fin back and forth. These combined motions could help the snakehead travel across uneven surfaces such as grass.
"Snakeheads move more quickly and erratically than once believed," said Bressman, a Ph.D. candidate and the corresponding author of Emersion and terrestrial locomotion of the northern snakehead on multiple substrates. "The fish we studied moved super quickly on rough surfaces such as grass, and we think they use their pectoral fins to push off these three-dimensional surfaces."
Native to Asia, the northern snakehead was first found in the United States in 2002, in a Maryland pond. Since then, the fish have been discovered in the Potomac River, Florida, New York City, Philadelphia, Massachusetts, California and North Carolina.
Bressman studied snakehead populations in Maryland, where the fish is considered a threat to the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources collected snakeheads by electrofishing in tributaries of the Potomac River and adjacent drainage ditches. The fish, which ranged in size from about 1 inch to 27 inches, were subjected to poor water conditions including high salinity, high acidity, stagnation, crowding, high temperatures, pollution and low light.
The fish tolerated all conditions but high salinity and acidity, and stagnant water with too much carbon dioxide.
Although it is unclear how often snakeheads leave water voluntarily and cross over land to invade other waterways, Bressman said these findings can inform how natural resources agencies plan to contain the fish.
"When snakeheads were discovered on land, it caused a lot of fear because not much was known about them," he said. "Sure, they can move fairly quickly on land, and they have sharp teeth. But you can easily outrun them, and they won't hurt you, your children or your pets.
"But having a better understanding of how amphibious they are can help us better manage their population."
Bressman's current research focuses on invasive walking catfish in Florida.
More information:
N R Bressman et al, Emersion and terrestrial locomotion of the northern snakehead (Channa argus) on multiple substrates, Integrative Organismal Biology (2019). DOI: 10.1093/iob/obz026
Citation:
Poor water conditions drive invasive snakeheads onto land (2019, October 23)
retrieved 23 October 2019
from https://phys.org/news/2019-10-poor-conditions-invasive-snakeheads.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
