This experiment will let us 'see' gravity

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In this newsletter

• New experiment will let us ‘see’ gravity

• Mars lost a Moon says an astronomer

• Why Iceland Police Shot a Polar Bear

• Scientists want to turn the Sun into a telescope

New experiment will let us ‘see’ gravity

Einstein is at it again. More than a century after the genius told us about the photoelectric effect, scientists will now use his idea to ‘see’ gravity for the first time. 

In 1905, Einstein theorized that light was made up of smaller packets that we now call photons. When a photon interacts with a metal, its energy is transferred to the electron, which can leave the metal's atomic structure and even as some kinetic energy. 

This is the photoelectric effect, which was initially dismissed by the scientific community but later accepted as it improved our understanding of the physical world. 

Now more than a century later, scientists are adapting the same principle to measure gravitational waves passing by Earth. 

Scientists at Stockholm University plan to use an ultracooled bar of aluminum weighing 1,800 kilograms and connect it to quantum sensors. When a gravitational wave passes through the bar, it will vibrate at tiny scales, causing a shift in energy levels and observed by the sensors. 

Each major jump in energy level would be the detection of each graviton- the hypothetical particle that carries gravitational force. 

The research study was published in Nature. 

An equally fascinating concept is the ‘PhotoMolecular Effect,’ which shows how light evaporates water without heat. Gang Chen, a professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, coined it only a few years ago. 

Coffee Table Science spoke to Prof Chen and here’s the link to the interview on our site. 

Mars lost a Moon says an astronomer

Earth’s neighborly Red Planet isn’t a perfect sphere as it is seen in photos. Rather, its height, width, and length measurements can only be put together to describe a wonky shape. 

While NASA’s rovers seem to be busy exploring the Red Planet, they also stay away from the deepest crevasses and tallest mountains. On close examination, one realizes that Mars has some strange bulges, such as Tharsis, the one near its equator. 

Tharsis is also home to three of the largest volcanoes not just on Mars but the entire Solar system. Astronomers have attributed the shapes to lava flows and strong forces in the region. 

However, other research findings have also found that even in the absence of the volcanoes, Tharsis would still have a similar shape, prompting US astronomer, Michael Efroimsky to come up with a hypothesis - that the bulge is the result of a moon. 

Efroimsky has dubbed this moon Nerio and estimates its size to have been about a third of our own Moon. The volcanoes could also have been caused by the Moon and formed as the planet cooled down into a solid form. 

Where did Nerio go then? Efroimsky thinks, something smashed into Nerio and broke it into pieces, which are now called Phobos and Deimos today. 

He has published this in a non-peer-reviewed paper on arxiv.

If you want to know what else is being published on arxiv, subscribe to Arxiv Weekly Insights.

Why Iceland Police Shot a Polar Bear

Polar bears are a protected species in Iceland and killing one is forbidden by law. But only at sea. They can be killed if they are a threat to humans or livestock, and so Iceland Police shot a polar bear when it was close to the summer house of an elderly woman. 

Polar bear attacks are rare but the loss of sea ice has led to more human-polar bear encounters in recent times. In this case, a polar bear likely turned up in a remote village in Iceland and was going through the garbage at the house. 

The elderly woman locked herself up in the house and sought help over the phone. The police contacted the national environment agency on what to do next. However, the agency deemed it too expensive to capture the bear and transfer it to Greenland, about 180 miles (290 km) away. 

So, the young bear was shot instead. 

A full report is available with The Guardian. 

If you are environmentally conscious and would like to make better sense of the complex world of climate and conservation, consider subscribing to Greener and work toward making a sustainable future.

Scientists want to turn the Sun into a telescope

Images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) enthrall us all. The decades of work, billions of dollars, and even the delays are all worth it when the telescope sends us some of the best views of space we have ever seen. 

Now, scientists want to take imagery to the next level and build a better telescope, this time using the Sun as a lens. 

Telescopes like JWST work on a large mirror that can converge light to a point where an image can be captured. The size of the mirror determines the resolution of the image, and to make a better telescope, one would have to build something with an even larger mirror. 

However, according to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, massive objects like the Sun bend space-time and light that comes from distant objects. This is called gravitational lensing and is already being used to study distant stars. 

But if we had to capture light bent by our Sun, the focal point is about 11 times the distance between the Sun and Pluto, or thrice the distance traveled by the Voyager-1 spacecraft. 

Scientists are now figuring out how to send a spacecraft further than we have ever been and then set it up to send back images to the Earth. When it is done, it will indeed be the most powerful telescope built by humans ever. 

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Thanks for reading.
Until next time,
Ameya