Month: December 2023

Enlarge / Density waves in a Bose-Einstein condensate. (credit: NASA)

In the basement of Kirchhoff-Institut für Physik in Germany, researchers have been simulating the Universe as it might have existed shortly after the Big Bang. They have created a tabletop quantum field simulation that involves using magnets and lasers to control a sample of potassium-39 atoms that is held close to absolute zero. They then use equations to translate the results at this small scale to explore possible features of the early Universe.

The work done so far shows that it’s possible to simulate a Universe with a different curvature. In a positively curved universe, if you travel in any direction in a straight line, you will come back to where you started. In a negatively curved universe, space is bent in a saddle shape. The Universe is currently flat or nearly flat, according to Marius Sparn, a PhD student at Kirchhoff-Institut für Physik. But at the beginning of its existence, it might have been more positively or negatively curved.

Around the curve

“If you have a sphere that's really huge, like the Earth or something, if you see only a small part of it, you don't know—is it closed or is it infinitely open?” said Sabine Hossenfelder, member of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. “It becomes a philosophical question, really. The only things we know come from the part of the Universe we observe. Normally, the way that people phrase it is that, for all we know, the curvature in this part of the Universe is compatible with zero.”

Enlarge (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

You win some, you lose some. Earlier this week, observations made by the Webb Space Telescope provided new data that supports what we thought we understood about planet formation. On Thursday, word came that astronomers spotted a large planet orbiting close to a tiny star—a star that's too small to have had enough material around it to form a planet that large.

This doesn't mean that the planet is "impossible." But it does mean that we may not fully understand some aspects of planet formation.

A big mismatch

LHS 3154 is, by any reasonable measure, a small, dim star. Imaging by the team behind the new work indicates that the red dwarf has just 11 percent of the Sun's mass. Temperature estimates place it at about 2,850 K, far lower than the Sun's 5,800 K temperature and barely warm enough to keep it out of ultracool dwarf category. (Yes, ultracool dwarfs are enough of a thing to merit their own Wikipedia entry.)

Among the undisputed highlights of 2015's post-apocalyptic masterpiece Mad Max: Fury Road was Charlize Theron's steely, vengeful Imperator Furiosa, a war captain who turned against the brutal ruler of the Wasteland to free his enslaved "wives." We now have our first look at the younger version of our beloved Imperator with the official trailer for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga—a spinoff prequel film starring Anya Taylor-Joy that traces the origin of this iconic character. It's everything we could want in a Mad Max trailer, and we are so very ready to witness this movie when it hits theaters next spring.

(Spoilers for Mad Max: Fury Road below.)

We met Furiosa early on in Fury Road, working logistics for Immortan Joe (the late Hugh Keays-Byrne), who charged her with ferrying oil from Gas Town to his Citadel with the help of a small crew of War Boys and one of the war rigs—basically tractor trailer trucks souped up with armor and novel weaponry. Furiosa stole the war rig instead, taking Joe's five wives with her. She teamed up with Max to fight off Joe's army as they made their way to the Green Place, where Furiosa grew up. When they finally encountered the Vuvalini of Many Mothers, Furiosa learned that the Green Place was now an uninhabitable swamp. They ultimately returned to the Citadel and overthrew Immortan Joe, and our last image of her was a triumphant Furiosa on a lift rising into the citadel.

Enlarge / X CEO Linda Yaccarino speaks onstage during Vox Media's 2023 Code Conference on September 27, 2023 in Dana Point, California. (credit: Getty Images | Jerod Harris )

X CEO Linda Yaccarino called owner Elon Musk "candid and profound" in a memo to staff addressing the public interview in which Musk told advertisers to "go fuck yourself."

"Elon's interview was candid and profound," Yaccarino wrote in a memo to employees of X (formerly Twitter) yesterday. "He shared an unmatched and completely unvarnished perspective and vision for the future. If you haven't watched it, please take the time to absorb the magnitude and importance of what we're all a part of."

Yaccarino was referring to Musk's on-stage interview at The New York Times' DealBook Summit on Wednesday. Musk spoke about two weeks after he posted a favorable response to an antisemitic tweet, causing an advertiser backlash that added to X's already significant financial struggles.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images )

Earlier this week, we learned of an effort by some auto dealers to pump the brakes on the US government's electric vehicle adoption goals. EVs are sitting too long on dealership lots, they say, and the public just isn't ready to switch. Those fears are overblown says JD Power; it says that 29.2 percent of consumers say they're very likely to buy an EV as their next car, a percentage that grew 3 percent last month alone.

That means EV marketshare should grow to 13 percent by the end of 2024, and to 24 percent in 2026, according to JD Power, which it says places the EV market still in the "early adopter" phase. (Current EV market share is about 8 percent.)

But the industry has some work to do if it wants to smoothly transition from those early adopters to the "early majority" phase, and JD Power's advice sounds a lot like what we constantly hear in the comments: build smaller, cheaper EVs.