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While T. rex and other large ancient predators had the advantage of size and frankly enormous teeth when it came to intimidating their prey‚ smaller dinosaurs didn’t have quite the same arsenal of claws and fangs to rely on. Instead‚ a new paper has suggested that to source their prey‚ these small feathered dinos used their wings to flush other species out of hiding. The team even recreated a robotic dinosaur to test their theory.Lots of small non-avian dinosaurs possessed feathers‚ but one special feather type‚ known as pennaceous‚ can be seen in only one group dubbed the Pennaraptora. These feathers were present on their proto-wings (primitive wings that are too small for powered flight) and on their tails‚ often colored with contrasting patterns. While the function of these wings is unknown‚ the team thinks that displaying their plumage could have been used to help flush prey species out of their hiding places‚ making them easier to hunt. The dinosaurs would have been insectivores and omnivores‚ driving creatures like insects out to eat. This behavior can still be seen in living bird species‚ such as the greater roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus) and the northern mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos). Plumage displays trigger the prey item out of hiding‚ allowing the animal to then pursue it and attempt to capture and consume it.                                   IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.To test the theory‚ the team developed Robopteryx‚ a robotic dinosaur with proto-wings. The robot was based on the pennaraptoran dinosaur Caudipteryx‚ which lived roughly 124 million years ago and was thought to be around the same size as a peacock. The team then evaluated the escape behaviors of grasshoppers as a response to the robot's wing display‚ using this particular group of insects as they belong to the order Orthoptera‚ which also existed 124 million years ago. Robopteryx was used in several sequences imitating different so-called flush–pursuit displays. Included in these displays were moments when the proto-wings were spread wide‚ the tail was raised and then the wings were folded back and the tail lowered.                                 The results showed that 93 percent of tested grasshoppers fled when the proto-wings were used by the robot‚ compared to only 47 percent when the wings were not used in the display. There was also a significant association between the wings having white patches and the tail having feathers and the chance that the grasshoppers would flee. Overall the team believes this could offer one explanation for how pennaceous feathers on proto-wings and tails were used and why they might have begun to evolve like this in dinosaurs. The study is published in Scientific Reports.

When the doomed submersible the Titan imploded as the crew attempted to explore the wreck of the Titanic in June 2023‚ people began asking a lot of questions about implosions‚ including why the Titanic itself didn't implode despite being at a lower depth.One such question‚ asked a number of times over the last year‚ is why champagne bottles found on the Titanic did not implode. Instead‚ there are bottles that appear to be largely intact.                 IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites."Remember how last year the Titan submersible got insta-crushed when going partway down the journey to see the wreck of the Titanic? For all their poor saftey guidelines and cut corners it was still a titanium case that was designed to handle such depths‚" one such question asked in the highly esteemed Facebook group the Journal of Scientific Shitposting. "So how did a simple glass bottle filled with champagne not shatter?" First up‚ let's look at why implosions occur. Implosions are where objects collapse in on themselves‚ the result of a difference between internal and external pressure. When the pressure becomes too much for say a submarine's hull to withstand‚ the result is a violent implosion‚ equalizing the pressure within and outside the vessel.Implosions can occur at the surface too as long as there is lower pressure on the inside of an object vs the outside‚ e.g. by removing the air inside a tank to create a vacuum.                   There isn't an "except for bottles" or "except for the Titanic" rule. Parts of the Titanic did implode. The parts that did not implode avoided this particularly destructive event as the air had been released from within‚ causing the pressure to be equal on the outside and inside (conditions under which implosion will not occur).So how did the bottle escape this fate? People have suggested that part of the answer is the increased pressure inside the champagne bottle‚ caused by the carbon dioxide within it. The pressure inside a champagne bottle is higher than you'd imagine‚ going up to around 6 bar (90 psi)‚ with 1 bar being around atmospheric pressure at sea level. Today's champagne is kept in bottles that can withstand up to 20 bar (290 psi)‚ while a metal fastener is often used to keep the cork in place.So at the start of the champagne bottle's journey to the bottom of the ocean at least‚ it wasn't at risk of implosion. Old champagne has been found at depths of 50 meters (164 feet) before‚ unbroken and even still drinkable. In fact‚ as it started sinking‚ it was at reduced risk of explosion‚ as the pressure difference between the inside and outside reduced‚ until a depth of about 60 meters (197 feet)‚ where the pressure is around 6 bar (90 psi). Then the pressure difference would begin to increase significantly. The Titanic is about 3‚800 meters (12‚500 feet) deep‚ under around 381 bar (5‚532 psi) of pressure. Unless glass manufacturers of the 19th Century CE created bottles that could withstand such ridiculously high pressures "just for a laugh"‚ there must be another reason why they didn't implode. Even if "strong glass" is part of the answer‚ the cork would be sucked into the bottle by the pressure difference before it reached the Titanic's depths.        The clue is likely the mangled cork at the top of the bottle. For a bottle to survive imploding at this depth‚ like the intact sections of the Titanic‚ water must have got in there to equalize the pressure inside and outside of the bottle."I know you guys have mentioned uncorked champagne bottles discovered in the Titanic wreckage which lies even deeper at 3.8 km‚" YouTube channel The Dropzone explained. "It would be amazing if the seal actually held‚ but I reckon all the seals have already been compromised and the pressure inside equalized with the pressure outside when the ship sank on its way down back in 1912."This could have happened quickly‚ like in the video demonstration‚ or more slowly as the cork headed down and became compressed itself by the enormous pressure.[H/T: Journal of Scientific Shitposting]

Superconductive materials can transmit electricity without resistance‚ making them fundamental for advanced and efficient technologies. The current drawback is that this property is only obtained below a certain temperature‚ often pretty close to absolute zero. Even high-temperature superconductors remain below freezing – but scientists are hunting for the material that would be superconductive at room temperature.The latest “hat in the ring” for this quest is actually a pretty common material in a pretty peculiar configuration: graphite‚ the substance that makes up the writing part of pencils. Not all graphite is created equal – single layers of it‚ called graphene‚ are already been hailed as a miracle material with interesting properties. This work doesn't focus on that‚ but rather on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG).HOPG is a synthetic form of graphite‚ where the crystallites of graphite are aligned with each other so that the angles between them are extremely small. This is crucial for the interesting properties this material possesses beyond what you can get from your pencil. Graphene can be obtained by using scotch tape to remove a single-atom-thick layer of graphite. Even in this work‚ the sticky tape came in handy.“First‚ we realized a scotch tape cleaving of the HOPG samples. The cleaved surface has wrinkles that form something like a set of sheaves. These wrinkles make a home for superconductivity‚” co-author Dr Valerii Vinokur‚ Chief Technology Officer for the US at Terra Quantum‚ told IFLScience.It is in the wrinkles of this material that the team believes Cooper pairs form. These are pairs of electrons that begin interacting and end up bound – the particle underpinning superconductivity. In superconductive materials‚ this happens below a specific temperature‚ called the critical temperature. Researchers in this work couldn’t exactly pinpoint a value for it‚ but it was around room temperature‚ which is 300 Kelvin (27 °C or 80 °F)“Since these HOPGs are very inhomogeneous‚ the critical superconducting temperature varies along the sample. And‚ as we have demonstrated in our work‚ the superconductivity in the region with the best metallicity appears at room temperature‚ 300K‚” Dr Vinokur told IFLScience. The team measured the resistance and magnetization of the material‚ and it is consistent with the behavior seen in other superconductive materials. The importance of having a specific value for the critical temperature is that the changes in the material should happen consistently and sharply after that threshold is crossed. In our investigation into the claim that LK-99 was a room-temperature superconductor last summer‚ we interviewed Professor Susie Speller from the Oxford Centre for Applied Superconductivity. She discussed the importance of evaluating the electrical resistance and magnetic properties of the material. However‚ she also stressed the importance of measuring the heat capacity of the material‚ which should also see a dramatic transition once the critical temperature is crossed. We asked Dr Vinokur why the heat capacity was not included in the analysis. “The two basic ways to confirm superconductivity are to measure the resistance and magnetization. Measuring the change in the specific heat capacity is the more exquisite way that can be used to extract the additional data‚ but this is not the basic way for establishing superconductivity. We did establish superconductivity by measuring the resistance and magnetization‚” Dr Vinokur replied. As is praxis with extraordinary claims‚ the scientific community will need to assemble extraordinary evidence – not just the heat capacity‚ but the many other ways to test superconductivity. Having a material that is superconductive at room pressure and temperature would be a civilization-changing breakthrough‚ bringing forth technologies that are currently only possible in our imagination. A paper discussing this work is published in the journal Advanced Quantum Technologies.

Charged molecules do not form a boundary layer between saltwater and air as previously thought‚ new research reveals. Indeed‚ they are depleted there relative to their abundance in the liquid as a whole. Instead‚ at a depth of a few molecule’s diameters an ion-enrichment layer lurks‚ like some mythical beast waiting to surprise. The discovery upends perceptions of these boundaries that were viewed with such confidence they were written into scientific textbooks.Life is most abundant where land meets water and sea meets sky. Understanding what occurs at these contact points is critical. Yet when one moves to the world of the very small‚ studying the thinnest borders between these domains‚ our knowledge is scanty‚ leading scientists to make up stories based on what they expected to find. As technology has advanced our capacity to explore these borderlands‚ some of the tales have turned out to be wrong.Salty water produces charged particles. If the salt is the familiar sodium chloride these will be primarily Na+ and Cl-‚ but other salts will produce different positively charged cations and negatively charged anions. Previous studies have reported larger ions are active at the surface. Ions that are easily polarized‚ such as bromine and iodine anions‚ were especially thought to accumulate at the surface. This has led to the conclusion they form a double boundary layer there‚ with the two sets of charges canceling out‚ and orientating the nearby water atoms in a particular direction.“Our work demonstrates that the surface of simple electrolyte solutions has a different ion distribution than previously thought and that the ion-enriched subsurface determines how the interface is organized: going from air into the bulk salt solution‚ one first encounters a few layers of pure water‚ then comes a layer enriched in ions‚ before reaching the bulk‚” Dr Yair Litman‚ of the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research and the University of Cambridge‚ said in a statement.Besides having layers of water above them‚ Litman and colleagues found the ions defy expectations by orientating water molecules both towards and away from the surface‚ rather than pointing them all the same way.The long-standing error occurred because studies of the molecules at the boundary were done using lasers to measure the surface molecules’ vibrations‚ a method known as vibrational sum-frequency generation (VSFG). This reveals changes in vibration intensity at specific wavelengths when salt is added to water‚ which was thought to indicate a build-up of ions there.Although VSFG is effective at measuring the strength of vibrations‚ it can’t detect their orientation – specifically whether the hydrogen atoms in the water molecules point up or down.Using a more advanced version‚ known as heterodyne detected-VSFG‚ the team examined the boundary layers in 11 types of electrolyte solutions at varying concentrations‚ and created computer models to make sense of what they saw.The old models were not entirely wrong‚ however. Two common electrolytes‚ HCl and NaClO4‚ did indeed congregate at the surface. Co-author Professor Mischa Bonn said‚ “These types of interfaces occur everywhere on the planet‚ so studying them not only helps our fundamental understanding but can also lead to better devices and technologies. We are applying these same methods to study solid/liquid interfaces‚ which could have potential applications in batteries and energy storage.”The study is published open access in Nature Chemistry.

Linguists have documented what they believe to be a new language that’s been quietly blooming in Lajamanu‚ a remote village in the Northern Territory of Australia predominately inhabited by Warlpiri people.Known as Light Warlpiri or Warlpiri rampaku‚ it’s a mixed language created by blending different elements of standard Australian English with Warlpiri – an Aboriginal language spoken by a few thousand Indigenous people in northern Australia – and Kriol – an English-based creole developed in the late 19th century/early 20th century.This cultural curiosity has been deeply studied by Carmel O'Shannessy‚ a linguistics professor at the Australian National University‚ who first reported the "new language" in 2005.She believes that it surfaced in the 1970s and '80s when some of the Warlpiri adults started using the occasional English or Kriol word in the middle of Warlpiri sentences. This is what’s known as code-switching‚ essentially when a speaker alternates between two or more languages as they speak. When the children heard these mashed-up sentences being spoken‚ they processed it as a single language and developed it from there. “For a mixed language to develop you have to have bilinguals or multilinguals‚ who code-switch a lot‚ in a very systematic pattern‚ and who have some kind of social reason to create their own way of speaking‚” O’Shannessy told Atlas Obscura in 2018. “Code-switching doesn’t usually lead to this kind of outcome‚ it’s fairly rare‚” she explained.Years on‚ the system of language has continued to evolve naturally and has even become the mother tongue of some people in Lajamanu. Even traditional Warlpiri is considered to be "highly endangered" and spoken by just 4‚000 people‚ but Light Warlpiri is even more obscure‚ spoken and understood by just 350 people or so‚ the majority of whom are under the age of 40.                         Lajamanu is incredibly remote. The closest community is Daguragu‚ about 110 kilometers (68 miles)‚ while the nearest town of significant size is Katherine‚ which is over 560 kilometers (350 miles) and takes around 6 hours to drive to. Much of this journey is along “unsealed” dirt roads that are in poor repair. This intense isolation is‚ in part‚  what allowed Light Warlpiri to emerge‚ a bit like how secluded islands see some of the most unique animals evolve. It isn’t just odd words and phrases that are switched out and borrowed. As O’Shannessy explains‚ the fundamental structure of the language is influenced by different elements from Warlpiri‚ English‚ and Kriol. In most languages‚ it is uncommon to hear structures of the verb system and noun system from different‚ distant languages. However‚ in Light Warlpiri‚ the verbs mainly come from English or Kriol‚ while most of the other grammatical components in the sentence stem from Warlpiri.“The structure of Light Warlpiri overall is that of a mixed language‚ in that most verbs and some verbal morphology are drawn from English and/or Kriol‚ and most nominal morphology is from Warlpiri. Nouns are drawn from both Warlpiri-lexicon and English-lexicon sources‚” she wrote in a paper about Light Warlpiri published in 2013. “The restructuring of the auxiliary system draws selectively on elements from Warlpiri and several varieties and styles of English and/or Kriol‚ combined in such a way as to produce novel constructions‚”  O’Shannessy added.If you want to hear what it sounds like‚ you can listen to the clip above which features a young girl telling a story about a monster in Light Warlpiri.

Children ask a lot of fun questions‚ often quite persistently and while you are trying to cook food. One such question comes from the 9-year-old child of a Reddit user‚ who asked: "If helium is lighter than air‚ would a balloon with a vacuum in it‚ also float?"An excellent and enjoyable question. First‚ sorry 9-year-old‚ let's look at why helium balloons float. Buoyancy is an upwards force in a fluid (any flowing substance‚ including air) exerted on all bodies within it. The force comes from the pressure within the fluid being greater the further down the fluid you go. The pressure on the bottom of an object within the fluid is higher than at its top‚ causing the upwards force.If the buoyant force of a fluid is greater than the weight of an object placed within it‚ the object will float. Helium‚ being lighter than the other elements in our atmosphere‚ rises. It's the same when air is heated inside a hot air balloon‚ making it less dense per volume inside the balloon than it is outside‚ causing it to rise.A vacuum is a volume that is empty of matter‚ so it's less dense (and lighter) than the air in our atmosphere. So‚ if you could fill a balloon with a vacuum (or really‚ draw out the membrane of a balloon so that it contains a vacuum and is stable)‚ then it wouldn't just rise – it would float better than helium balloons. Helium is so light it floats to the edge of our atmosphere to sit until it is blown away by solar winds‚ so presumably any perfect vacuum balloon would sit on top of any helium and hydrogen it encountered‚ being lighter than anything inside our atmosphere.The idea of making transport using vacuums goes back a surprisingly long way. In 1690‚ following the recent invention of the vacuum pump‚ priest and mathematician Francesco Lana-Terzi proposed the idea of a vacuum airship‚ a conventional wooden ship held aloft by several vacuum balloons.It would have been impossible back then to make a vacuum large‚ empty‚ and rigid enough to achieve liftoff‚ and the story is the same today. The problem in building it is the same thing that would help lift it – the pressure outside of a vacuum is higher than the inside of a vacuum. When the pressure becomes too much for the surrounding material to withstand‚ the result is a violent implosion‚ equalizing the pressure within and outside the object.           As yet‚ we haven't made ships that can float through the air carried by vacuums. Here's hoping the material scientists pull through.