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Astronomers Find a Blazing Hot Planet That Orbits Its Star in Just 16 Hours!

The newly discovered planet is relatively close to its star, at a distance of only about 1.5 million miles out. Credit: NASA, ESA and G. Bacon Mercury is the speed champion in our Solar System. It orbits the Sun every 88 days, and its average speed is 47 km/s. Its average distance from the Sun is 58 million km (36 million miles), and it’s so fast it’s named after Mercury, the wing-footed God. But what if instead of Mercury, Jupiter was closest to the Sun? And what if Jupiter was even closer to the Sun than Mercury and far hotter?…

Scientists Have Created Ice-19, A Brand New State of Matter

A new study by a team at the University of Chicago, published in the October 14, 2021 issue of the journal Nature Physics, reports on the creation of a new phase of ice called “superionic ice”. Turns out, the ice that tinkles in our glasses of Coke, known as Ih, is actually just one of at least 19 different phases of ice. Formed from water, ice is comprised of only hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the famous H2O configuration of two hydrogen atoms attached to one oxygen atom. One intriguing idea is that ice may become superionic when heated at very high…

Can Transient Plasma Ignition Save the Internal Combustion Engine?

What does the future of automobiles look like? The answer, it turns out, varies wildly from expert to expert. Some say that the cars of tomorrow will be fitted with hydrogen engines. Others say that the coming years will be characterized by the slow and steady transition from the internal combustion engine to the more traditional electrical vehicles being developed by Tesla and others. But whatever path we take as we transition from internal combustion engines, it needs to be a long one. If we try and transition too quickly, it could prove to be incredibly destructive (to put it very…

Artificial Intelligence That Understands Object Relationships – Enabling Machines To Learn More Like Humans Do

Lead Image: MIT researchers have developed a machine learning model that understands the underlying relationships between objects in a scene and can generate accurate images of scenes from text descriptions. Credit: Jose-Luis Olivares, MIT, and iStockphoto A new machine-learning model could enable robots to understand interactions in the world in the way humans do. When humans look at a scene, they see objects and the relationships between them. On top of your desk, there might be a laptop that is sitting to the left of a phone, which is in front of a computer monitor. Many deep learning models struggle…

Here’s Why We Will Never Run Out of Crude Oil

Lead Image: Multiple blue oil barrels, credit: iStock Crude oil is one of the most important resources we have ever discovered. Oil and the many products made from it have literally and figuratively transformed the world beyond all recognition. However, as we are constantly reminded, crude oil is not in infinite supply. After all, it took millions of years to “brew”. Estimates vary, but if our current consumption continues apace, we may well see a time in the near future when it is completely exhausted. But, are such claims true? Have we reached what is commonly referred to as “peak…