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Beautiful Geometric Skeletons of Ancient Jellyfish Fossils

The 520-million-year-old fossils reveal that ancient comb jellies had stunning geometric skeletons that have disappeared over the course of evolution, researchers report in a paper published in the journal Science Advances. These strange skeletons contained eight rigid plates that surrounded the jellies’ organs and eight spoke-like structures that radiated outward to surround the soft lobes of their bodies.

The unusual symmetry of these skeletons makes them aesthetically appealing, but it also likely provided mechanical support for the jellies’ squishy bodies. It may have aided in defense against predators or other dangers as well, the researchers suggest.

entire article on techtimes

Images of Jupiter taken by JunoCam on NASA’s Juno spacecraft.

Mission Juno

Juno is a NASA spacecraft. It is exploring the planet Jupiter. Juno launched from Earth in 2011. It reached Jupiter in 2016. That was a five-year trip!

The name “Juno” comes from stories told by the Romans long ago. In the stories, Juno was the wife of Jupiter. Jupiter hid behind clouds so no one could see him causing trouble. But Juno could see through the clouds.

Juno has science tools to study Jupiter’s atmosphere. (The atmosphere is the layer of gases around a planet.) Juno will take the first pictures of Jupiter’s poles. The spacecraft will study the lights around Jupiter’s north and south poles, too.

Juno will help scientists understand how Jupiter was made. The spacecraft will help them learn how Jupiter has changed, too. The new discoveries can help us understand more about our solar system.

Sound of Jupiter’s Magnetosphere: Click here

Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Mission Juno / Jason Major / Luca Fornaciari /  Gerald Eichstädt

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A small Japanese puffer fish is the creator of one of the most spectacular animal-made structures. To impress the female puffer fish, the male labors 24 hours a day for a week to create a pattern in the sand. If the female finds his work satisfactory, she allows him to fertilize her eggs. She then lays them in the middle of the circle, leaving the male to guard the eggs alone.

Life Story (2014)

Tesla at work. (via Reddit)

Physicists resolve long-standing mystery of structure-less transition

We normally associate conduction of electricity with metals. However, some of the high measured conductivities are found in certain organic molecular crystals. Metallic, semiconducting and even superconducting properties can be achieved in these materials, which have interested scientists for decades. Changing temperature or pressure causes phase transitions in the crystal structure of molecular conductors and their related conduction properties. Scientists can usually determine the crystal structure using X-ray diffraction. However, structural change accompanying phase transition in a particular organic crystal (TMTTF)2PF6 has defied examination for almost 40 years.

Now, a research team at Nagoya University has finally explained the mysterious structural changes of this phase transition and its related electronic behavior.

“Researchers have questioned that the TMTTF (tetramethyltetrathiafulvalene) salt shows a charge disproportionation transition at 67 Kelvin but no relevant changes in its crystal structure. This transition is a long-standing mystery known as a ‘structure-less transition’,” explains lead author Shunsuke Kitou.

Read more.