New cretaceous predator just dropped; neutron star mountains; a cool ‘living seawall’

This week, scientists with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute reported that a key current, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, has not declined over the last 60 years. An international team of geneticists found evidence of Iron Age social and political empowerment of women. And quantum engineers demonstrated a famous cat-related thought experiment in a silicon chip. Additionally, astronomers speculated on neutron star land forms, paleontologists reported a previously unknown Cretaceous-era predator and a tech start-up is building a living seawall in Florida:

Topology dense

Massive supergiant stars collapse into neutron stars composed entirely of neutrons, supported against further gravitational collapse by neutron degeneracy pressure. They are 1 trillion times denser than lead and once they form, no longer produce heat and ultimately cool over time. Astronomers have fun speculating on the weight of tiny amounts of neutron star material, like “one dishwasher soap receptacle full of neutron star material would weigh about 15 billion tons.”

Though the surface features of neutron stars are unknown, based on the formation of mountains on planets and moons, researchers have long theorized that neutron stars likely have mountains, or in the plain language of the ordinary working man, “nonaxisymmetric deformations.” These mountains would be so massive that they would radiate gravity waves.

A new study by nuclear physicists at Indiana University considers possible features of neutron star mountains that could be analogous to terrain on Europa, Enceladus and other known solar system bodies. Mercury, for example, has thin sheets of crust over a large metallic core, and the mountainous deformations that occur in thin sheets, observed on the planet, could be universal. The researchers propose that these types of features could be inferred by studying the continuous gravitational wave signals of neutron stars; the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory is now searching for the gravitational ripples created by neutron star mountains.

New guy discovered

In a remarkable feat of archival scholarship, a group of paleontologists identified a previously unknown species of predatory dinosaur from the Cretaceous period from photographs of Egyptian fossils that were destroyed during World War II. They were excavated in 1914 in the Bahariya Oasis in Egypt and sent to paleontologist Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach in Munich. The fossils were destroyed with others when the storage site was hit by an allied air raid, and the finds were forgotten.

But a master’s student at LMU München recently found archived photos of the fossil showing the skull, spine and hind limbs as they appeared in an exhibition. Paleontologists analyzed the photo and determined that the remains were an undocumented Cretaceous species. Called Tameryraptor, the dinosaur was 10 meters long and featured a prominent nasal horn.

Maximilian Kellermann, first author of the corresponding paper, says, “What we saw in the historical images surprised us all. The Egyptian dinosaur fossil depicted there differs significantly from more recent Carcharodontosaurus finds in Morocco. Stromer’s original classification was thus incorrect. We identified a completely different, previously unknown predatory dinosaur species here and named it Tameryraptor markgrafi.”

Wall clever

Sea walls along coastlines are becoming essential for climate resilience as climate change melts ice caps and raises sea levels globally. In Florida, where salt water has started infiltrating freshwater in the ground and beach erosion threatens buildings, contractors are now building the next generation of ecology-minded sea wall, and its fabrication is as advanced as its design. The company KindDesigns uses additive manufacturing equipment to 3D-print sections of the wall at a site near Miami Beach.

An example of bio-inspired design, the wall is fabricated with raised areas inspired by mangrove roots, providing crevices for marine life to thrive, and which absorb some of the impact of storm surges and waves. Additionally, these benefits don’t come at a higher cost—the expense of fabricating and building the wall is equivalent to conventional sea walls, according to the developers.

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