Good morning. It's Tuesday, Sept. 8, and welcome to this week's Science & Technology newsletter. First time reading? Sign up here or forward to share with friends.
After covering calculators, the launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, tsunamis, and eclipses in recent weeks, we're circling back to biology to feature one of its most illuminating topics: biofluorescence. Rest assured that following this week's links to our resources is worth it for the photographs alone, much less the insights our team found for our readers.
We're also exploring the closure of the oldest natural history museum in the Americas, the decision-making of self-driving cars, fire ant rafts, and so much more.
Want to share your thoughts on this newsletter? Whether it's something you enjoyed learning about, something you want improved, or a suggested topic for a future issue, simply reply to this email or send a message to [email protected].
—Marco Daniel Machado, 1440 Science & Technology Section Editor |
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Biofluorescence is the emission of light by an organism after it has absorbed a different type of light. Biofluorescent organisms typically absorb high-energy light and almost immediately emit lower-energy light, resembling the phosphorescence of glow-in-the-dark objects but on much shorter timescales. The phenomenon is sometimes mistaken for bioluminescence, in which an organism produces its own light due to a chemical reaction.
> Like bioluminescence, biofluorescence has been around for over 100 million years.
> Watch a breakdown of bioluminescent and biofluorescent organisms.
Unlike pigments, which absorb specific wavelengths of light and reflect others to give organisms their coloration, biofluorescence arises from electron transitions in molecules called fluorophores. Incoming light is first absorbed by an electron, which pushes it to a higher energy level for a few nanoseconds. During that time, the fluorophore loses some energy through vibration. With less energy available, the electron emits lower-energy, longer-wavelength light as it drops to its previous energy level.
> View an animation of the fluorescent process at the molecular level.
> Blacklights reveal the presence of fluorophores in biological substances.
Thousands of animals exhibit biofluorescence, which is thought to be involved in courtship, communication, attracting prey, and environmental defense. The chlorophyll in photosynthetic plants also fluoresces a soft red after absorbing ultraviolet radiation, such as from sunlight. Since the first fluorophore was isolated in 1962, scientists have tagged proteins with fluorophores to observe biochemical processes, including gene expression and the spread of disease.
> Biofluorescent animals include some squirrels, sea turtles, scorpions, and frogs.
> The biofluorescent glow of plants can be detected from outer space.
> ... and see how a chlorophyll solution can be made to glow red at home.
Discover more:
> The discovery of a biofluorescent jellyfish from the Pacific Northwest led to the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2008.
> View a mesmerizing gallery of biofluorescent plants activated by ultraviolet light.
> Through biofluorescence, some corals may serve as "sunscreen" for algae.
Keep learning by exploring all our findings on Biofluorescence here. |
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1440 brings you the knowledge and context behind the week's stories:
Major climate goals will be missed, according to a UN report that warned that avoiding catastrophic warming is now only possible with carbon removal. (More)
> Why was keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius so important?
> How do direct air capture systems pull carbon dioxide from the air?
The oldest natural history museum in the Americas, Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences, announced it will close this month after almost 200 years. (More)
> What happens to the collections in a museum when it closes?
> As of 2023, there are about 1.1 billion objects stored in 73 of the world's largest natural history museums.
The 2026 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded, and the winners included a citizen science project where volunteers buried their underwear to study soil decomposition rates. (More)
> The Ig Nobel Prize is named after the fictional cousin of the Nobel Prize's founder.
> View how long it takes to decompose various everyday plastic products.
NASA enhanced the Deep Space Network by adding a new radio-frequency antenna at one of its facilities as part of its Aperture Enhancement Project. (More)
> The DSN enables NASA to communicate with spacecraft billions of miles away.
> How does the DSN help scientists and engineers determine where spacecraft are? |
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Like all great researchers, we love spending time learning about the latest breakthroughs across science and technology. Here's what we found this week.
A new method can provide explanations for the decisions made by self-driving cars.
MIT | Adam Zewe. Working with technicians at an autonomous vehicle technology company, researchers developed the Concept-Wrapper Network, which provides easy-to-understand explanations of the reasoning process in a self-driving car's AI system. CW-Net provides real-time feedback that engineers can use to troubleshoot inexplicable decisions made by these systems, thereby improving safety. (More)
> Used to verify that you're human on websites, CAPTCHA puzzles provide training data for the algorithms in self-driving cars.
> ... and some of these algorithms make decisions based on data collected by lasers.
A galaxy's chemical evolution may be traced through light from certain elements.
Ohio State University | Tatyana Woodall. Because stars form certain heavy elements when they explode, the elements' increasing abundances across successive generations of stars can be used as "cosmological clocks" of a galaxy's life. Researchers predict that certain elements, such as manganese, are particularly sensitive to changes in temperature and density, making their emission spectra useful for analyzing supernova remnants and large molecular clouds. (More)
> Watch a video explainer of why every element emits a unique light signature.
> By mass, more than 90% of the elements in the human body were forged in stars.
Evidence suggests that sea spray does not increase exposure to forever chemicals.
York University | Sandra McLean. Previous international studies involving modeling and lab work suggested that sea spray is a significant source of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. However, fieldwork in areas affected by sea spray from the Atlantic Ocean found no major contribution, with findings suggesting that the detected PFAS originated from atmospheric precursor compounds. (More)
> Slow to break down, forever chemicals have been used since the 1940s.
> Explore an interactive map of forever chemical testing results in public water systems.
Novel speakers create sound that is audible only to a specific person.
Pohang University of Science & Technology | Staff. Traditionally, directional audio systems rely on arrays of tens to hundreds of ultrasonic emitters, with interactions between these inaudible sound waves generating audible sound in a specific direction. Instead of these complex, costly systems, scientists integrated two types of metamaterials into a single ultrasonic emitter, which behaved like a lens for sound and produced a laser-like audio beam that did not leak out from the sides. (More)
> View how every sound imaginable can be created by overlapping sound waves.
> The human auditory system, which includes the three smallest bones in the human body, prevents airborne ultrasound from being audible. |
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> Watch water simultaneously boil, freeze, melt, condense, deposit, and sublimate at its triple point.
> The solar system's largest volcano is three times taller than Mount Everest.
> To survive rising water, fire ants can interlock and form living rafts.
> Why does Bluetooth technology owe its name to a 10th-century Danish king?
> Earth isn't on a diet, but it does lose a little mass every year.
> Check out these periodic table alternatives, including a tower, a spiral, and a snail.
> When bleach comes into contact with oily skin, it creates soap.
> The world's first text message was a holiday greeting sent in 1992.
> Why do metals become heavier after being burned?
> While sleeping, sea otters may hold paws to prevent floating away.
> Sharks do not have bones; their skeletons are instead composed of cartilage.
> Ever seen a faint triangle of light above the horizon at night? Blame cosmic dust. |
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