Bizarre star offers clues to mystery signals

For a fraction of a second in late April, a hyper-magnetized star in the Milky Way suddenly blasted out radio energy. Now scientists say that this sudden, strange blip could help to explain one of astronomy’s biggest puzzles: what powers the hundreds of other mysterious fast radio bursts (FRBs) that have been spotted much farther away in the Universe. Many astronomers think that fast radio bursts — brief but powerful cosmic flashes that flare for just milliseconds — come from magnetars, but haven’t found the link. “Here is something that gets close to the insane intensity of cosmic FRBs, but that is happening not so far away,” says astronomer Sarah Burke. “It’s a fantastic opportunity to learn about at least one of the sources that could be causing FRBs.”

Nature | 5 min read

huge mammoth graveyard has been found under the new Mexico City airport, explore the two very different coronavirus vaccines reporting phase 1 clinical results and question whether the pandemic will make or break research funding.

The bones of roughly 60 mammoths were discovered north of Mexico City during the construction of a new airport. Here, an archaeologist works on one of the specimens. (INAH via AP/Shutterstock)

Dozens of mammoths under new airport At least 60 mammoth skeletons have turned up in excavations for a new airport north of Mexico City — and more are likely to come. “There are too many, there are hundreds,” says archaeologist Pedro Sánchez Nava. The site is on what used to be the shores of a lake called Xaltocan, where a military airport is now being converted to civilian use. The wealth of remains suggests that mammoths died after being chased by prehistoric humans some 15,000 years ago and getting stuck in the mud. Smithsonian | 5 min read

How circuits simulate hyperspace geometry

Physicists have created a virtual crystal with four spatial dimensions that acts as a topological insulator — a material that conducts electricity on only its outer boundary. To do so, the team wired up connections among electrical circuits to simulate those in a four-dimensional (4D) crystal. (Just as cubes have six square faces, hypercubes have eight cubic ‘faces’ — so when hypercubes are stacked in 4D, each one is in contact with eight neighbours.) A similar scheme could extend to even more dimensions of space, leading to the observation of new phenomena. “There are suggestions that some really cool things could happen in 5D and 6D,” says theoretical physicist Hannah Price. Exotic topological insulators could find applications in future quantum computers.

Physics World | 3 min read Source: Nature Communications paper