S104 Exploring Science

Researchers at the OU have devised a new method to understand the processes that happen when atoms cool which could lead to new materials for superconducting power grids and widespread use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

In a paper, Bilayers of Rydberg atoms as a quantum simulator for unconventional superconductors, just published in Physical Review Letters, Dr Jim Hague and Dr Calum McCormick at the OU's Department of Physical Sciences  describe a new method to understand the cooling of atoms, which is to simulate a superconductor using a "quantum simulator" (a kind of bespoke quantum computer for examining specific problems) rather than a supercomputer.

The researchers found that just such a simulator can be built to examine atoms cooled to just a millionth of a degree above absolute zero. The atoms are controlled using laser beams which enhance the electrical forces between the atoms, which are usually weak and unimportant. These forces mimic the physics of the superconductor, and the proposed simulator includes far more physical detail than ever before.

“The problem is that up to now nobody knew how to build such a material because physics of the best superconductors are extremely difficult to understand,” said Dr Hague. “By studying the atoms in the quantum simulator, we expect that it will be possible to make major progress in unravelling the underlying theory of these fascinating materials. A superconductor (a material with no electrical resistance) operating close to room temperature would offer potentially revolutionary technology.”
 
Access the paper Bilayers of Rydberg atoms as a quantum simulator for unconventional superconductors.

 

Claire Turner, a lecturer in analytical science at the OU, talks to the camera about how odours can be used to detect disease and how dogs, rats and bees play their part…

 

Find out more:

• Study with the OU - S240 Analytical science: health, heritage and environments
  
• Study with the OU - Science

 

The popular Open University app, Devolve Me, which was labeled 'coolissimo' by Stephen Fry on Twitter, has hit one million downloads.

The face morph game which was launched as part of the Darwin celebrations, allows people to see how they may have looked as an ancient ancestor from 3.7million years ago to 500,000 years ago.

David Meadows, Head of Marketing Communications for The Open University said: “When we first planned the tool we were keen to capitalise on the interest in the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth. Initially, the app generated a year’s worth of undergraduate science prospectus requests in just a few weeks - which was staggering enough - but three years later we are still seeing around 10,000 visitors every month.

'Part of the appeal is that you can feel that you are coming face to face with your ancestors'

"It’s ironic in a way that an app which shows us devolving as a species should fuel a desire for people to learn, achieve and ultimately evolve to the next part of their lives. Perhaps the next step should be an ‘Evolve me’ App which would give a vision of where you could be in 10 years’ time through studying with The Open University.”

David Robinson, Senior Lecturer in Biological Science at the OU, who provided the scientific advice for the app, said: "The great thing about the application is that while providing a fun way of changing photographs, it also reminds people of the time periods over which humans have evolved and the sort of changes that have taken place in our appearance. Part of the appeal is that you can feel that you are coming face to face with your ancestors.’’

Professor Jonathan Silvertown, who directed the OU's Darwin events, said: “We are one of the youngest species on the planet and without doubt we are still evolving. The Devolve Me app wraps science in a fun package. What could be better than that?”

The app was created by 20:20 Agency, and experienced a surge in traffic when Stephen Fry posted a message on the micro-blogging site Twitter calling it ‘Coolissimo’. This was retweeted across the globe resulting in Devolve Me becoming the OU’s most visited webpage. An unexpected benefit of the app is that schools are also using it as an extra resource in the classroom.

 

Find out more:

• Devolve Me website
• Devolve Me app

                                                      


 

Every astronomer's dream came true for Open University astronomy student Stefan Holmes, when a rare and dramatic star explosion happened on the night he was observing the skies.

Stefan, a PhD student, captured an image of the 'Type 1a'  supernova as it appeared only four hours after the explosion, using the Open University's robotic astronomical telescope, PIRATE. 

The supernova,  which occurred 20 million light-years away in the spiral galaxy M101, (see PIRATE image below) was the closest  explosion of its type observed for decades, and the first to be available for detailed investigations with modern-day astronomical detectors.

 The image of the supernova's early stages, captured by PIRATE at 9pm BST on 23 August 2011, has helped an international team of scientists determine that the exploding star was a 'white dwarf – a star at the end stage of its life.  

“This is a great advancement," said Dr Ulrich Kolb, OU Senior Lecturer and Director of the PIRATE facility."The spectral appearance of type Ia supernovae have long suggested exploding white dwarfs as the culprits responsible for the explosion, but this new research is effectively proof of their white dwarf nature.

“It demonstrates the capabilities of small- to medium-aperture telescopes to contribute to world-leading research.”

Stefan, who is among the team conducting the PIRATE research programme, said: “It was great to have been able to capture this image and be part of such an exciting outcome. It was a case of being at the right place at the right time."

The international team's finding is the subject of an article in the January 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters series (2012, ApJ, Issue 744, L17) and has been presented this week at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas.

For more information see OU news release. 

Related stories

• New remote telescope gives astronomers more viewing time

The Open University’s ambitious virtual microscope project could reveal images of Moon rock (pictured left), Martian meteorites and Darwin’s rock samples to a worldwide audience – possibly in 3D.

The OU’s Centre for Earth and Planetary Science Research (CEPSAR) is to receive a grant from the prestigious Royal Microscopical Society (RMS) towards expanding its web-based virtual microscope facility.

Diane Johnson, who has led the OU Virtual Microscope Project for the past six years, successfully applied for a grant of £3,465 to the Vice President’s Fund of the RMS, of which she is a Fellow, to buy a camera upgrade, professional data storage system, accessories and disposables.

The current internet-based system was launched about two years ago initially just for OU students but now provides free access and has proved very popular attracting visits from people in 105 countries.

The Open University has previously collaborated with organisations worldwide on projects including NASA and its Moon rocks and the Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge with samples collected by Darwin on the HMS Beagle voyages (pictured right).

The grant will allow the development of ‘The RMS Virtual Microscope’ that expands beyond the current optical microscopy projects to include electron microscopy and rotational object imaging.

Some images of samples could be reconstructed as 3D objects at high resolution.

The resulting virtual object can then be ‘handled’ and examined by the virtual microscope user, said Diane.

She said: “We aim to make microscopy techniques accessible, meaningful and at the same time capture the imagination, informing a broad cross section of society in making specialist microscopy and imaging techniques available freely to any web user.”

“The project aims to include something of interest to everyone allowing rare and important materials to be accessible not just to specialists but anyone with a desire to learn,” she said.

Find out more:

• The Virtual Microscope Project
• Collections site
• The Royal Microscopical Society

Scientists believe they have found an explanation for how toads can apparently predict earthquakes.

Research led by the Open University's Dr Rachel Grant, and Dr Friedemann Freund of NASA, suggests that animals may sense chemical changes in groundwater when an earthquake is about to strike.

The research comes out of Dr Grant's observations in 2009, when she was studying breeding toads in the region outside the Italian city of L'Aquila as part of her OU PhD project. She noticed almost all the toads left the site several days  before a devastating earthquake struck on 6 April. 

“One day there were no toads,” she said. “I was actually very annoyed. I thought my research was all going down the drain. And the earthquake happened, and then they all started coming back the day after.”

When Dr Grant and OU amphibian specialist Professor Tim Halliday published a report in the Journal of Zoology they were contacted by scientists at the US space agency NASA who were studying chemical changes in rocks under extreme stress.   

This led to further research  published this month in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

It says laboratory-based tests have now shown that the Earth's crust could have directly affected the chemistry of the water that the toads were living and breeding in.  

When rocks  are under very high levels of stress they release charged particles, starting a chemical chain of events which can lead to a build up of toxins in groundwater.

Charged particles in the air – known as ions – are known to cause headaches and nausea in humans.

The scientists say their theory needs testing, but they hope it will eventually contribute to more accurate forecasting of earthquakes. 

The science of climate change has been much in the headlines again over the last few weeks. COP17 in Durban, climate sceptics questioning the science of global warming and the release of 5,000 further ‘Climategate’ emails have kept the arguments blazing.

Platform asked Dr Mark Brandon, Polar Oceanographer and Senior Lecturer in Environmental Science, to explain what scientists have observed about temperature changes and how it affects the Polar Regions.

Satellite observations show the extent of Arctic sea ice has declined over the last 30 years, but that overall Antarctic sea ice has been expanding over the same period. Is there a problem then?

The changes in the Arctic sea ice are not balanced by the changes in the Antarctic sea ice.

It is the volume of Arctic sea ice that is critical. We have extremely good records of the ice thickness and ice extent. It is a fact that the extent of sea ice in the Arctic is decreasing in both thickness and extent - so the volume of Arctic ice is decreasing – and these changes in the Arctic are huge.

In the Antarctic it is true that the extent of ice has increased – but by a relatively small amount and we don’t know enough about the thickness to derive the volume.

If you combine the Arctic sea ice and the Antarctic sea ice changes to create a record of the total global ice then you get this picture

The global trend of sea ice downwards and about 36,000 km2 per year.

There has been a net loss of over a million square kilometres of global sea ice extent since satellite records began

The mean volume of arctic sea ice has decreased by something around 50% since the start of the satellite record.



Only this week a publication in Nature described the loss of Arctic sea as:
"The duration and magnitude of the current decline in sea ice seem to be unprecedented for the past 1,450 years"

Is it true that polar bear populations are rising, and not falling as reported?

Many bear populations are dropping, as we say.

Longer summers with no ice are probably the main reason why many polar bear populations are dropping. So what is happening to the bears? Different things in different parts of the Arctic, but here is what the Polar Bear Specialist Group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission say about it:

In 2009, of the 19 recognised subpopulations of polar bears, 8 are in decline, 1 is increasing, 3 are stable and 7 don’t have enough data to draw any conclusions. Figure 1 below compares the data for 2005 and 2009.

It is clear that the area of red (bear population trend decreasing) has significantly increased from 2005 to 2009 and the area of green (bear population trend increasing).

 

 

Recent research findings show that the increased evaporation from the Arctic ocean, as a result of warming, will cause more cloud cover, thus counteracting its adverse effect, so isn’t that good news?

Cloud feedback is not thought to be as strongly negative feedback, so this argument is outdated and fundamentally wrong.

The idea is that clouds reflect the solar radiation from the planet which would mean there would be less reaching the ground to warm up. It is a nice simple idea but this view is outdated and very likely completely wrong.

It depends on where the clouds form. Low altitude clouds will reflect more heat (what he is saying) whereas high altitude ones trap it (which he doesn’t mention). Overall there is an increasing amount of evidence that increasing the overall cloud cover will actually increase the warming.

There have been reports of a modest increase in mean global temperature (about half a degree Centigrade) during the last quarter of the 20th century. For this century, the UK Met Office and World Meteorological Office said there has been no further global warming. Have we stopped the trend?

Global mean temperature is not polar mean temperatures and it is inaccurate to quote the former when referring to the latter

The global mean temperature is derived from averaging data from all over the planet. Some parts are warming and some are cooling. Overall the global trend is relentlessly upwards.

Focussing on a very short timescale, e.g. 10 years, would not be an accurate reflection of the global trend which is relentlessly upwards. So let's look at the Arctic. This is the trend of annual average Arctic temperature for a meteorological data set from the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in the range 80-90N over the last 60 years.

The trend is approximately -32C in 1950 to approximately -25C by 2010.

The winter temperature of the Arctic has warmed by a huge amount since 195.

 

Without a workable nuclear energy policy beyond the next generation Britain will not meet its legal obligation to cut CO2 emissions by 2050 says The Open University’s Professor Mike Fitzpatrick.

Earlier this year Professor Fitzpatrick, Head of Department Materials Engineering, gave evidence to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee looking at the UK’s Nuclear Research and Development Capabilities.

In its conclusions published recently the committee went further saying the government’s nuclear power strategy is complacent and lacks credibility risking Britain losing its once world leading nuclear expertise, industrial base and infrastructure.

Currently 10 nuclear power stations produce 12 GW of electricity, but all but one will go offline in 15 years. Private companies will build new ‘next generation’ power stations delivering up to 16 GW by 2025.

As well as being Lloyd’s Register Educational Trust Chair in Materials Fabrication and Engineering, Professor Fitzpatrick works with the National Skills Academy for Nuclear on the development of their Certificate in Nuclear Professionalism and he leads the EPSRC PROMINENT consortium, a £1.8M grant researching the performance of metallic materials for applications in nuclear power plants.

The committee said Professor Fitzpatrick’s evidence had acknowledged the need to develop the UK nuclear supply chain to support building the new power stations and allow UK businesses to benefit from the opportunities this would create.
 
He and others said real opportunities would come in taking a lead now in the development of some of the technologies for future systems so the UK had an exportable technology in two, three or four decades time and take advantage of the £1.7 trillion of investment worldwide in these technologies.

But the committee found UK investment in nuclear R&D had reduced steadily, its expertise was built on past investments and many of the country’s experts are nearing retirement age.

“As a result we are in danger of placing ourselves in a position where we will be unable to ensure a safe and secure supply of nuclear energy up to 2050,” said committee chair Lord Krebs

Speaking after the committee report was published Professor Fitzpatrick said there had been a ‘de-commitment’ towards nuclear by successive governments.

“Energy supply is of vital national importance but there seems to be a lack of will towards implementing a nuclear energy policy.

It was vital he said given the huge lead times needed to plan, design and build nuclear power stations to look beyond the ‘next generation’ to the generation beyond that.
  
“Nuclear produces about 16 per cent of our electricity now – it used to be 30 per cent,” he said.
 
It had been replaced by gas and coal with implications for the environment. Renewable sources were unlikely to fill the gap Professor Fitzpatrick said.

“We have made a commitment to cut CO2 emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 but we can’t do it without nuclear,” he said.

• Read the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee Report here 
• Materials Engineering at the OU

The National Maritime Museum will preview On Thin Ice, the final programme in the BBC/Open University series Frozen Planet, on Sunday 4 December as part of their High Arctic Film Festival.

On Thin Ice is an environmental special exploring the effects of climate change on the polar regions. Sir David Attenborough journeys to both regions to investigate what rising temperatures will mean for the people and wildlife that live there and for the rest of the planet.

The screening will be followed by a  question-and-answer session with: Dr Mark Brandon, series academic consultant and Open University senior lecturer in Environmental Science; producer Dan Rees and assistant producer Elizabeth White.

The screening is free to attend with a ticket to the High Arctic installation. Seating is limited, so preferred screenings should be booked in advance by phoning 020 8312 6608.

Find out more

• David Attenborough talks to Platform
• Behind the scenes of Frozen Planet with OpenLearn