Best of Last Week: Universal expansion mystery solved, iron rain on exoplanet, and asymptomatic COVID-19 infection

It was another good week for physics as a team of engineers at the University of New South Wales cracked a 58-year-old puzzle on their way to a quantum breakthrough—by controlling the nucleus of a single atom using only electric fields, they found a way to manipulate atoms with much more precision. And a team at the University of Geneva claimed to have solved the mystery of the expansion of the universe without making use of any "new physics."

In technology news, a team of engineers at the University of California, Riverside claimed that fast-charging damages electric car batteries. The report that charging stations with fast-charging capability expose the batteries to damaging high heat and resistance. Also, a team at RIKEN, in Japan, and international partners developed an ultrathin organic solar cell that is both highly efficient and durable. And financial think tank, Carbon Tracker issued a report suggesting that the world had frittered away a half-trillion dollars propping up the coal industry instead of investing in more environmentally friendly resources. Also, a team at cyberthreat research group SafetyDetectives.com reported that the Brazilian security firm Antheus Tecnologia, exposed more than 2 million bits of data, including 76,000 fingerprints, by leaving them unsecured on their servers.

It was also a big week for health news, of course, with the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the health of millions and economies around the world. One group in particular at the University of Texas announced that SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the pandemic, spreads quickly and that people infected with it can pass it on before they even have symptoms.

In other news, a combined team from George Washington University and the Rockefeller University reported findings on soldier ants that revealed evolution can go in reverse—the ants were found to revert to previously evolved head shapes. And an international team working with data from the ESO's Very Large Telescope made observed an exoplanet where it rains iron.

And finally, if you are one of the billions around the world trying to keep yourself and your loved ones from being infected with COVID-19, you may want to check out the results of a study done by a team working at the National Institutes of Health's Rocky Mountain Lab—they found that the SARS-CoV-2 virus can live on some surfaces for up to three days.

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