Hidden Structure at the Edge of the Universe

If you travel far enough away from the Sun, the Solar System becomes a lot more populated.

Out past the orbit of Neptune lies the Kuiper Belt, a vast, ring-shaped field of icy rocks. This is where Pluto resides, and Arrokoth, and countless other small objects in the cold and the dark.


These are known as Kuiper Belt objects or KBOs, and astronomers have just found hints of an unexpected rise in their density, between 70 and 90 astronomical units from the Sun, separated by a large, practically empty gap between it and an inner population of KBOs closer to the Sun.


It seems, almost, like there are two Kuiper Belts, or at least two components – something nobody was expecting to find.


"If this is confirmed, it would be a major discovery," says planetary scientist Fumi Yoshida of the University of Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences and Chiba Institute of Technology in Japan.


"The primordial solar nebula was much larger than previously thought, and this may have implications for studying the planet formation process in our Solar System."     READ MORE...

New Species of Extinct Walrus

A new discovery by a team of paleontologists, led by Dr. Mathieu Boisville (University of Tsukuba, Japan), has uncovered a new species of the extinct genus Ontocetus from the Lower Pleistocene deposits in the North Atlantic. 

This species, named Ontocetus posti, displays surprising similarities in feeding adaptations to the modern walrus (Odobenus rosmarus), highlighting an intriguing case of convergent evolution. The research is published in the journal PeerJ.         READ MORE...

Magnetic Levitation for Cars

Nowadays, cars use batteries and motors to move, however, this way of movement is very inefficient because overcoming friction and gravity takes most of the energy. But Japan presents a very innovative solution which is magnetic levitation and will be the (supposed) end of hydrogen engines.

Will the use of magnetic levitation do away with the need for batteries and motors?
A group of Japanese researchers attached to the Quantum Machine Unit of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) report having created a track that provides magnetic levitation, which does not need external maintenance power.

By the latter, we mean that it does need power, but only at start-up for the generation of the magnetic field it initially requires. After that, objects, including cars, will operate by moving on it without using any other type of thrust energy such as batteries or motors.     READ MORE...

Railguns

Despite efforts from countries like China, Japan, and the U.S., challenges like the immense energy required and the wear on conductive rails have hindered progress.  The U.S. Navy invested heavily in electromagnetic railguns, but the technology remains mostly in the research stage.  Future success hinges on overcoming power and durability issues, making practical deployment still a distant goal.

Why Railgun Development Faces Immense Hurdles
Among the earliest efforts occurred during the First World War, when French designer Andre Louis Octave Fauchon-Villeplee proposed an electric cannon could fire a projectile further than the explosive ordnance of the era. 

His concept caught the attention of the French military, which was seeking a weapon that could rival such long-range cannons as Germany's so-called "Paris Gun." Under the direction of the Director of Inventions at the French Ministry of Armaments in 1918, Fauchon-Villeplee was charged with developing a thirty to fifty millimeter electricannon based on his simple design.

The First World War ended before Fauchon-Villeplee's design could be perfected – and more than a century later, the development of the weapons has continued with only limited success.     READ MORE...

Motorcycle Without Gasoline or Electricity

Sustainable mobility is not just for cars, although they are the ones we pay most attention to. The key is also for other personal mobility vehicles, even if one of them would never have run on a fuel that now does. We are talking about the first motorcycle that runs without gasoline or electricity, but with something better that will revolutionize transportation.

The new fuel that will revolutionise the roads: goodbye to EVS
Transport is going through a transformational period which will define a new era in vehicle engineering since companies fight for the replacement of cars which run on gas. One of the most attractive technologies is the hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, which hydrogen gas and oxygen and use treatment to produce energy.

Hydrogen has been one of the zero emission fuels widely praised for a long time and could help in addressing Environmental pollution problems like fossil fuel burning emissions which are said to be the main cause of climate change.

One of the latest pushing ahead comes from Japan’s motorbike manufacturer Suzuki. During the last week of September, Suzuki revealed their new hydrogen-powered model, which is a modified version of their popular Burgman scooter.

The hydrogen Burgman shows us a rough patch of what it could be like when electric-powered quiet and clean-scooters and motorcycles powered by hydrogen replace what we now have which are loud and harmful fossil-fuel operated models.     READ MORE...

Synthetic Antiferromagnets

Researchers have discovered merons in synthetic antiferromagnets, advancing the field of spintronics toward more efficient, compact, and sustainable computing.

For the first time, teams from Germany and Japan have successfully identified collective topological spin formations known as merons within layered synthetic antiferromagnets.

Our everyday electronic devices, such as living room lights, washing machines, and televisions, operate thanks to electrical currents. Similarly, the functioning of computers is based on the manipulation of information by small charge carriers known as electrons. Spintronics, on the other hand, introduces a unique approach to this process.

Instead of the charge of electrons, the spintronic approach is to exploit their magnetic moment, in other words, their spin, to store and process information – aiming to make the computers of the future more compact, fast, and sustainable. 

One way of processing information based on this approach is to use the magnetic vortices called skyrmions or, alternatively, their still little understood and rarer cousins called ‘merons’.   READ MORE...

Nuclear Energy CANNOT Lead Global Energy

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is seen in the background, in Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan on August 24, 2023 [File: Franck Robichon/EPA]

On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9 earthquake and a subsequent 15-metre tsunami struck Japan, which triggered a nuclear disaster at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Three of the six plant’s reactors were affected, resulting in meltdowns and the release of a significant amount of radioactive material into the environment.

Today, 13 years later, Japan is still experiencing the impacts of this disaster. Immediately after the earthquake struck, more than 160,000 people were evacuated. Of them, nearly 29,000 still remain displaced.   READ MORE...

Japan Testing Fusion Laser

In an initiative that could redefine space safety, the Japanese-based startup EX-Fusion plans to test a ground-based fusion laser system to “capture, remove/, or push out” objects operating in Earth’s orbit.

In a statement announcing a partnership with the Australian company EOS Space Systems, EX-Fusion said they aim to use ground-based laser systems to address the mounting problem of space debris, a growing concern for global space agencies and satellite operators.   READ MORE...

First Wooden Satellite

NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) are planning to launch the world's first wooden satellite into space in a bid to make spaceflight more sustainable.


LignoSat, a coffee mug-size satellite made from magnolia wood, is set to launch into Earth's orbit by summer 2024, according to the space agencies.

Wood doesn't burn or rot in the lifeless vacuum of space, but it will incinerate into a fine ash upon reentry into Earth's atmosphere — making it a surprisingly useful, biodegradable material for future satellites. After successfully testing their wood samples aboard the International Space Station (ISS) earlier this year, the scientists believe the test satellite is fit for launch.    READ MORE...

Energy-Efficient Spintronics Computing

Spintronics is a promising approach to computer technology that uses the intrinsic angular momentum of electrons to process information, potentially making computers faster and more energy-efficient. Researchers have been experimenting with magnetic whirls, or skyrmions, and recently enhanced their diffusion rate by tenfold using synthetic antiferromagnets, paving the way for efficient spin-based computing.




Researchers in Germany and Japan have been able to increase the diffusion of magnetic whirls, so-called skyrmions, by a factor of ten.

In today’s world, our lives are unimaginable without computers. Up until now, these devices process information using primarily electrons as charge carriers, with the components themselves heating up significantly in the process. Active cooling is thus necessary, which comes with high energy costs. 

Spintronics aims to solve this problem: Instead of utilizing the electron flow for information processing, it relies on their spin or their intrinsic angular momentum. This approach is expected to have a positive impact on the size, speed, and sustainability of computers or specific components.

Magnetic Whirls Store and Process Information
Science often does not simply consider the spin of an individual electron, but rather magnetic whirls composed of numerous spins. These whirls called skyrmions emerge in magnetic metallic thin layers and can be considered as two-dimensional quasi-particles. 

On the one hand, the whirls can be deliberately moved by applying a small electric current to the thin layers; on the other hand, they move randomly and extremely efficiently due to diffusion. 

The feasibility of creating a functional computer based on skyrmions was demonstrated by a team of researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), led by Professor Dr. Mathias Kläui, using an initial prototype. This prototype consisted of thin, stacked metallic layers, some only a few atomic layers thick.  READ MORE...

India is Growing its Economy

India is poised to become the world’s second-largest economy by 2075, leapfrogging not just Japan and Germany, but the U.S., too, says Goldman Sachs.

Currently, India is the world’s fifth-largest economy, behind Germany, Japan, China and the U.S.

On top of a burgeoning population, driving the forecast is the country’s progress in innovation and technology, higher capital investment, and rising worker productivity, the investment bank wrote in a recent report.

“Over the next two decades, the dependency ratio of India will be one of the lowest among regional economies,” said Goldman Sachs Research’s India economist, Santanu Sengupta.

A country’s dependency ratio is measured by the number of dependents against the total working-age population. A low dependency ratio indicates that there are proportionally more working-age adults who are able to support the youth and elderly.

Sengupta added that the key to drawing out the potential of India’s rapidly growing population is to boost the participation of its labor force. And Sengupta forecasts that India will have one of the lowest dependency ratios among large economies for the next 20 years.

“So that really is the window for India to get it right in terms of setting up manufacturing capacity, continuing to grow services, continuing the growth of infrastructure,” he said.

India’s government has placed a priority on infrastructure creation, especially in the setting up of roads and railways. The country’s recent budget aims to continue the 50-year interest-free loan programs to state governments in order to spur investments in infrastructure.

Goldman Sachs believes that this is an appropriate time for the private sector to scale up on creating capacity in manufacturing and services in order to generate more jobs and absorb the large labor force.  READ MORE...

Storing Hydrogen

Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS) in Japan have found a simple and affordable way to store ammonia, an important chemical in a range of industries. The discovery could also help in establishing a hydrogen-based economy.

Ammonia, chemically written as NH3, is widely used across industries ranging from textiles to pharmaceuticals and is an important component in the manufacture of fertilizers. For its current use, ammonia is stored in pressure-resistant containers after liquefying it at temperatures of -27 Fahrenheit (-33 degrees Celsius).

Alternate methods of storing ammonia in porous compounds have been explored. The storage and retrieval process can be achieved at room temperature, but the storage capacity of these compounds is limited.

A research team led by Masuki Kawamoto at RIKEN CEMS has now found that perovskites, crystalline structures associated with improving energy conversion efficiencies of solar panels, can also serve as an excellent medium for the storage and retrieval of ammonia.

Perovskite as an ammonia carrier
Kawamoto's team found that the perovskite ethyl ammonium lead iodide (EAPbI3) reacts with ammonia at room temperature and pressure to make lead iodide hydroxide, or Pb(OH)I. Ethyl ammonium lead iodide has a one-dimensional columnar structure but, after reacting with ammonia, forms a two-dimensional layered structure.

Ammonia is a highly corrosive gas, but the chemical reaction with the perovskite allows for its safe storage that does not need any special equipment to store it either. The retrieval process is also very straightforward. Under vacuum, ethyl ammonium lead iodide can be heated to 122 Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius) to release ammonia gas.  READ MORE...

Crowded Tokyo

Japan is upping the ante on its cash incentives to get people to move out of its overcrowded capital, Tokyo, which is home to about 37 million people. For scale, Canada’s population in 2021 was just over 38 million.


Starting in April, families in the greater Tokyo area will be eligible to receive 1 million yen, or just under $10,200, per child if they move to the countryside, in an effort to revitalize less-populated areas, according to reports from CNN and the Guardian.

Previous incentives saw the Japanese government offering 300,000 yen, about $3,000, per child if families relocated. This new measure certainly sweetens the pot, tripling their previous offer.

Tokyo is host to many of Japan’s largest companies and is the centre of its economy, meaning it’s an attractive place to move, especially for young people living in rural areas. This migration pattern has left small towns with fewer and older residents, and millions of unoccupied homes.

According to 2021 government statistics, the number of people moving into Tokyo outnumbered those leaving the city by around 80,000.

The concentration of the Japanese population in Tokyo also poses a problem for the country’s demographic crisis, marked by declining birth rates and an aging population. 

Experts say that the high cost of living in Tokyo, limited space and lack of access to child care makes it difficult to raise children in the dense metropolis. As such, people are having less kids.  Out of Japan’s 47 prefectures, Tokyo has the lowest fertility rate.  READ MORE...

Japanese Military Leader

Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616) was a Japanese military leader who reunified Japan at the beginning of the 17th century after a long period of civil war, known as the Warring States or Sengoku period. He created a new government controlled by the Tokugawa family that ruled Japan until 1868.

Rise to Power
Ieyasu, whose real name was Matsudaira Takechiyo, was born in 1543 in Okazaki Castle near the modern city of Nagoya. The Matsudaira were a warrior family that claimed ancestry back to the Minamoto clan that had ruled Japan in the Kamakura period (1185-1333). 

The 16th century is referred to as the Warring States or Sengoku period, as it was a time of civil war in which local warrior leaders called daimyo competed for power and control of land. Treachery was common not only between families but even within them. 

To cement alliances, families would often swap hostages, and for that reason, Ieyasu spent many years away from his family as a child.

Following his first battle in 1558, he gradually strengthened his family's position through an alliance with Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), a powerful warrior who was taking the first steps to reunify Japan.

Ieyasu engaged in a long series of campaigns against the rival Takeda family, and this led to their eventual defeat in 1582. In the same year, Oda Nobunaga was murdered by one of his own retainers and, in the confusion that followed, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598) emerged as the strongest military leader in Japan. 

Although initially hostile to Hideyoshi, in 1590, Ieyasu formed an alliance with him in order to attack the Hojo family, a powerful clan that controlled a lot of land in the Kanto area in eastern Japan.  READ MORE...

Secret Hidden Images

Windows and mirrors embedded with liquid crystals can hide images that appear only when the right kind of light is shined on them. The technique, inspired by a 4000-year-old trick for building “magic mirrors”, may be a step towards developing better displays for 3D images.

A magic mirror or window looks transparent until a light is shined onto it to reveal a secret image. Craftspeople in ancient China and Japan made magic mirrors out of bronze that similarly hid images, but physicists only began to understand how they work around 15 years ago.


Felix Hufnagel at the University of Ottawa in Canada and his colleagues used those insights to build a new type of magic mirror and window. Their versions contain a state of matter known as a liquid crystal. While liquids flow freely and crystal atoms are organised in stiff grids, liquid crystals split the difference: their molecules are both fluid and arranged in patterns.  READ MORE...

Waiting For A Star To Explode

Supernova 1987A appears as a bright spot near the centre of this image of the Tarantula nebula, taken by the ESO Schmidt Telescope.Credit: ESO

Masayuki Nakahata has been waiting 35 years for a nearby star to explode.

He was just starting out in science the last time it happened, in February 1987, when a dot of light suddenly appeared in the southern sky. This is the closest supernova seen during modern times; and the event, known as SN 1987A, gained worldwide media attention and led to dramatic advances in astrophysics.

Nakahata was a graduate student at the time, working on what was then one of the world’s foremost neutrino catchers, the Kamiokande-II detector at the Kamioka Underground Observatory near Hida, Japan. He and a fellow student, Keiko Hirata, spotted evidence of neutrinos pouring out of the supernova — the first time anyone had seen these fundamental particles originating from anywhere outside the Solar System.

Now, Nakahata, a physicist at the University of Tokyo, is ready for when a supernova goes off. He is head of the world’s largest neutrino experiment of its kind, Super-Kamiokande, where upgrades to its supernova alert system were completed late last year. The improvements will enable the observatory’s computers to recognize when it is detecting neutrinos from a supernova, almost in real time, and to send out an automated alert to conventional telescopes worldwide.

Astronomers will be waiting. “It’s gonna give everybody the willies,” says Alec Habig, an astrophysicist at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. Early warning from Super-Kamiokande and other neutrino observatories will trigger robotic telescopes — in many cases responding with no human intervention — to swivel in the direction of the dying star to catch the first light from the supernova, which will come after the neutrino storm.

But when the light arrives, it could be too much of a good thing, says Patrice Bouchet, an astrophysicist at the University of Paris-Saclay who made crucial observations of SN 1987A, from the La Silla Observatory in Chile. The brightest events, which would shine brighter than a full Moon and be visible during the day, would overwhelm the ultra-sensitive but delicate sensors in the telescopes used by professional astronomers.

Japan's Blue Hydrogen

Activists looking out over Tokyo Bay at a new coal-fired power station under construction


It's a glorious autumn afternoon and I'm standing on a hillside looking out over Tokyo Bay. Beside me is Takao Saiki, a usually mild-mannered gentleman in his 70s.  But today Saiki-San is angry.  "It's a total joke," he says, in perfect English. "Just ridiculous!"

The cause of his distress is a giant construction site blocking our view across the bay - a 1.3-gigawatt coal-fired power station in the making.


"I don't understand why we still have to burn coal to generate electricity," says Saiki-San's friend, Rikuro Suzuki. "This plant alone will emit more than seven million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year!"


Suzuki-San's point is a good one. Shouldn't Japan be cutting its coal consumption, not increasing it, at a time of great concern about coal's impact on the climate?  So why the coal? The answer is the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.


In 2010 about one third of Japan's electricity came from nuclear power, and there were plans to build a lot more. But then the 2011 disaster hit, and all Japan's nuclear power plants were shut down. Ten years later most remain closed - and there is a lot of resistance to restarting them.  READ MORE...

Turning Boeing Airplane Into Home

Bruce Campbell and his Boeing 727. REUTERS/Steve Dipaola


Most people might dread spending their entire lives on an airplane, but not Bruce Campbell. That's because his airplane, which stays on the ground, is his home.

The former electrical engineer turned a Boeing 727 he bought in 1999 into a home in Portland, Oregon. Reuters has photos of the space. After modifications, 65-year-old Campbell's aircraft dream home cost him $220,000. He spends six months out of the year living there, alternating between Portland and Japan.

In addition to his current home, Campbell is hoping to buy a bigger Boeing 747-400 to convert into his home in Miyazaki, Japan.

"I don't mean to offend, but wood is in my view a terrible building material," Campbell wrote on his website. "But retired airliners can withstand 575 mph winds ... are highly fire-resistant, and provide superior security. They're among the finest structures that mankind has ever built."

Keep scrolling to see more pictures of Campbell's Boeing 727 home.  READ MORE...

Removing Toxins

At one period, Dennis started distancing himself from the office and our team. He suffered from severe stress and anxiety, and the signs were showing — he started having grey hairs, developing acne breakouts, and experiencing back pain. He was successful, but the side effects of working long hours were catching up.

Now, Dennis is a close friend of mine, so we kept in touch. He knew the problem was in his lifestyle. He switched careers to a more relaxed position in a local publishing house, started doing yoga, eating healthy. But his problems didn’t stop.

Dennis spent two months trying to get back to his old self, but it was all the same — grey hairs, acne breakouts, and back pain. After much he decided he had enough and started visiting various doctors.

Some doctors tried doing tests, C-Scans, and biopsies, but not one could pinpoint why Dennis was experiencing his symptoms.

Nothing seemed to work. But Dennis always had an interest in traditional traditional wisdom. And he decided to give an alternative approach a try by going to Japan.

One morning in Hokkaido, talking to a farmer in a local market, he expressed his concerns for his wellness.

“You must go to this hidden Ryokan (a spiritual retreat) where many famous Japanese go to find solutions to their problems.” The farmer said.

And so Dennis did — he went to this hidden spiritual retreat for a week.

For a week, Dennis learned from the local monks — he cleaned the common spaces with the monks, picked natural food, did yoga, and he started feeling a bit better.  READ MORE...

Japans Aircraft Carrier

When Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro returned from his trip to Japan, he fired off a tweet that touted his tour of that country's "Aircraft Carrier Izumo." It was a short comment that recognized an important new naval reality for the longtime ally.

Japan's pacifist constitution meant its naval forces have relied on ships carrying helicopters for self-defense, not fighter jets — and it avoided using the term aircraft carrier — since the end of World War II.

Del Toro, whether intentionally or not, gave a public US acknowledgment of a historic shift by Tokyo toward its past as a carrier power. Late in 2018, the Japanese announced plans to refit two helicopter carriers including the Izumo for U.S.-built F-35B Lightning II fighters, part of an increasingly urgent effort to counter growing Chinese sea power.

A Navy spokesman said, "The tweet does not signal a change in how the US officially recognizes the ship."

Japan has a self-defense force, what most outsiders would recognize as a military, but its constitution proclaims that "land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained," meaning that it has historically avoided any military action or buildup considered offensive.

JS Izumo approaches the harbor at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Japan, September 30, 2021. US Marine Corps/Lance Cpl. Darien Wright

"Governments have argued that Japan has the right to maintain capabilities and use the 'minimum necessary level of self-defense,'" explained Jeffrey Hornung, a scholar on Japan at Rand Corp. "Historically, anything that exceeds that is considered war potential, and therefore it violates the Constitution."   READ MORE...