What the scientists are saying…
Heat turned man’s brain to glass
The heat produced by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79 was so extreme, it turned a man’s brain to glass. Vitrification, the process by which glass is produced, occurs when a material is heated until it liquifies before being rapidly cooled. It is known that human tissue can be vitrified (the process is used in some forms of cryopreservation), but it has never been found to have occurred accidentally. Yet researchers believe that this is exactly what happened to a man who was trapped in a house in Herculaneum when Vesuvius erupted, and whose face-down body – he is thought to have been sleeping – was unearthed in the 1960s. When scientists at the University of Naples Federico II recently re-examined his remains, they observed a glassy black substance inside his brain. Tests revealed that it contained proteins present in brain tissue, along with fatty acids found in hair. The substance wasn’t present in any surrounding material, nor were other potential sources for it located nearby. “Thus it had to be the vitrified remains of the brain,” said lead researcher Pier Paolo Petrone. An analysis of charred wood from the building suggests that as it was engulfed by pyroclastic surges from the eruption, temperatures reached 528°C – enough to liquify human tissue. But what then caused the sudden cooling of the brain matter remains a mystery.
Ants farm their own “livestock”
Ants have been found “farming” a species of tree-dwelling aphid, a phenomenon never previously observed in Britain, reports The Guardian. Pale giant oak aphids are one of several species of aphid that live in a symbiotic relationship with brown ants. The ants feed on the honeydew that the aphids produce, and to safeguard this food source, they take care of the aphids, shielding them from predators. They house them in “barns” constructed from moss and lichen, and if these tree trunk shelters are disturbed, the ants shunt their “flock” down to their underground nests. “It is farming,” said Matthew Shardlow, chief executive of the charity Buglife. “They are milking the animals, moving them from high to low pastures and building shelters for them when there’s not enough protection.” While pale giant oak aphids are found across Central and Eastern Europe, Britain was thought to be outside their range. However, a number of recent sightings in Cambridgeshire have raised the possibility that they are widespread here. Because they are mostly nocturnal – and fiercely protected by ants – naturalists say they are easily overlooked, and could have been living in the UK for millennia.
A new glimpse of the Sun
The world’s most powerful solar telescope has revealed the most detailed images yet of the surface of the Sun. The new Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope is located at the top of a 10,000ft high volcano on the island of Maui, and has twice the resolution of any equivalent telescope. Opened last month, it’s first images reveal that beneath its turbulent exterior the Sun has a surprisingly structured surface. Scattered across it in a honeycomb pattern are what look like gold nuggets: each roughly the size of France, these cells are made up of roiling plasma. At the centre of each is a bright point where columns of superheated plasma burst out from the star’s interior, before cooling and descending back below the surface through the dark channels between the cells. “What we previously thought looked like a bright point – one structure – is now breaking down into many smaller structures,” said Dr Thomas Rimmele, the director of the project.
A robot that sweats to keep cool
Like humans, robots can get too hot. Now, roboticists have borrowed a human attribute to keep them cool: our sweat glands. A three-fingered robot hand produced at Cornell University has a reservoir of water within each of its digits, connected to the surface via ducts made of heat-sensitive plastic. When the robot senses that the gripper is overheating, it opens the “pores” and pushes water to the surface, where it evaporates and so cools the hand down. “The ability to perspire is one of the most remarkable human features,” said material scientist T.J. Wallin. “We’re not the fastest animals,” but thanks to their ability to stay cool while running, early humans were able to keep going until they physically exhausted their prey.