Best of Last Week – Dark matter exists, using A/Cs to reverse climate change and using sex drugs to treat heart failure
It was another good week for physics, as a team at the International School of Advanced Studies announced that dark matter exists—they claim their observations disprove alternate explanations. Also, a team at the Institute for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago announced two breakthroughs as part of their effort to connect quantum bits with sound over record distances—entangling quantum bits using sound for the first time, and building the highest-quality long-range link between two qubits thus far. And a team at the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory built a machine to determine if lithium can enable nuclear fusion by protecting the walls inside tokamaks.
It was also a good week for space science, as researchers from Columbia University and the University of Florida reported on their observations of two neutron stars that collided near the solar system billions of years ago—and possibly served as the source of some of the most coveted matter on Earth. And researchers at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia reported on their observations of the space rock that hit the moon at 61,000 kilometers an hour, creating a crater 10 to 15 meters across.
In other news, researchers Roland Dittmeyer, Michael Klumpp, Paul Kant and Geoffrey Ozin proposed using air conditioners as a climate-change remedy by attaching CO2 filters to them. And a team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions across the U.S conducted a study showing that a skin microbiome imbalance is likely behind eczema flareups. Also, a team at Tufts University reported that their computer model suggested earthquakes are triggered well beyond fluid injection zones—suggesting that fracking and associated wastewater disposal could create significant, rapidly spreading earthquake activity in more distant places. And a team at MIT announced that they had developed a new polymer film that conducts heat instead of trapping it.
And finally, if you are an older man and have been considering using a drug such as Viagra to enhance your dalliances, you might want to check out a study conducted by a team at the University of Manchester—they found that pharmaceuticals for erectile dysfunction are effective as heart failure treatments.
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