Space Littering, Exascale Computing, & Einstein’s Tea Leaves (Patreon)

Dish Gets Served with a Hefty Fine for Space Littering

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has fined Dish, a satellite TV company, $150,000 for violating space safety regulations. Due to technical problems, the company had to leave its EchoStar-7 satellite in a lower orbit than agreed. It’s now posing a collision risk to other spacecraft, and the FCC reprimanded the company for a "failure to properly deorbit." This is the first time a law for the prevention of space debris has ever been enforced. More here.

Europe to Get Its First Exoscale Computer

Europe is getting ready to launch its first exascale supercomputer, JUPITER, which will be able to perform a mind-blowing one million trillion (that’s a 1 followed by 18 zeros) calculations per second. JUPITER is planned to be completed in 2024 and will be used, among other things, for simulating the human brain and designing new materials. The project will cost about 500 million euros and, when completed according to plan, it should slightly outperform the current most powerful supercomputer, Frontiers at Oak Ridge in the United States. More here.

Einstein’s Tea Leaf Paradox on the Nanoscale

Have you ever noticed that when you stir a cup of tea with leaves, the leaves will collect in the middle of the cup and not on the edges, as you might have expected? You’re not the first to notice. The question was famously studied, and the riddle finally solved, in 1926 by none other than Albert Einstein. Einstein figured out that the friction at the bottom of the cup prevents the fluid there from rotating as fast as at the top, creating a secondary circulation that directs the leaves towards the centre.

Photographs of the structures grown by stirring a solution with nanoparticles. Credits: Zhang et al, Science Advances 9, 37 (2023).

Scientists in China have used this phenomenon to create gold aerogels, which are porous materials with high surface area and low density. By stirring a solution containing gold nanoparticles, they collected the gold particles in the middle. When they get too close, they stick to each other and create a type of porous gel that has many applications, such as for sensitive measurements. More here, paper here.