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Science news this week: Time emerges inside a mini-universe, scientists thicken Arctic ice, and one of the oldest graves of a free Black person in the US found
The experiment was performed using a Bose-Einstein condensate — a strange state of matter that consists of thousands of atoms blended into a single quantum object at near absolute zero (minus 273.15 degrees Celsius, or minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit). The system showed time speeding up, slowing down and even stopping, depending on what the system was doing.
Researchers conducted the first real-life sea ice thickening experiments in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.
(Image credit: Arctic-Images/Getty Images)
The Arctic is the world's fastest-warming region, where sea ice is rapidly disappearing at a rate of 12.2% per decade.
The ice is crucial for maintaining stable sea levels and marine nutrient flows, and for reflecting solar radiation away from our planet, so its precipitous decline is deeply concerning. That's why one team of researchers turned to a surprisingly simple method to stem the ice loss: flooding ice sheets with seawater to thicken them.
The results, despite some major caveats, showed a lot of promise.
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Some types of batteries charge faster than others.
(Image credit: Tfilm via Getty Images)
If you're as shamefully attached to your devices as I am, you may have wondered about the wildly differing times it can take for them to charge. So what's the science behind fast charging, and does it damage a device's battery more than regular charging does?
One of the oldest gravestones of a free Black person in the U.S. found
The gravestone of "Boston," a formerly enslaved man who died in the 18th century in Boston, Massachusetts.
(Image credit: Boston Parks and Recreation Department)
It was found amid photos of headstones during a restoration project at Boston's Granary Burying Ground — a gravestone with only one name, "Boston."
That's how a team of conservationists chanced upon the tombstone of Sebastian, a formerly enslaved man who died free in 1729 and chose the city's name as his own.
A search through the historical archives has produced a wealth of information about Boston's past, including his reputation as a hardworking handyman throughout the city, and his emancipation following the death of the man who held him in slavery.
"It's been there all along. We just had to go look and share the story," Michelle Wu, the mayor of Boston, said in a July 4 speech.
If you're looking for things to keep you busy over the weekend, here's a selection from our best opinion pieces, interviews, diagnostic dilemmas and crosswords that we published this week.
China's Tianwen-2 spacecraft captured this photo of the quasi-moon Kamo'oalewa (a.k.a. 2016 HO3) at a distance of around 12.5 miles (20 kilometers) from the near-Earth asteroid.
(Image credit: CNSA)
It doesn't look like much, but this blurry, gray image is the first-ever close-up photo of one of Earth's temporary "quasi-moons" — a fast-spinning asteroid temporarily orbiting the sun in sync with our planet.
Of equal intrigue is the spacecraft that took the image: a secretive Chinese probe that is likely gearing up to land on the space rock and snag a sample ?—? although an unexpected hiccup will make that more difficult.
