See how we’ve stopped calling this a ‘weekly round-up’. That was an ambition we could never live up to… 🙂
The Parker Solar Probe has been in the news a lot this week. Here’s an article from the New York Times, plus a video explainer.
The probe will reach the melting point of steel, and is protected by a carbon composite shield. From the NYT article: “The foam in the shield is so fluffy — 97 percent empty space — that it adds only 160 pounds of weight.” Sounds like an aerogel, which we wrote about here!
Speaking of aerogels, sciencedaily.com reports the development of a super-insulating aerogel that promises improvements in energy efficiency of buildings, as well as novel smart clothes and protection for fire fighters.
And from one interesting way of packing atoms of a solid to another: here is The Independent on a brand new form of carbon. Whereas fullerenes have positive curvature, and graphene has no curvature at all, these ‘Schwarzites’ have negative curvature. Presumably, this sequence of curvatures was one reason why people imagined they may exist at all? Berkeley News covers the same story in more depth here.
The Guardian’s starwatch series points this week to Jupiter in Libra. With just a pair of binoculars you can see four of Jupiter’s moons in a line in the sky. That’s not all of Jupiter’s moons by any means. Also in the Guardian, a description of the recent discovery of 12 new ones! And none of Jupiter’s moons were visible at all until the invention of the telescope at the start of the 17th Century.
And just to finish off, we suggest you all go and make a scutoid, and send us your photos. Let standupmaths and the New Yorker help you…