ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Solving Saturn’s 2-billion-year age problem
• Project to 3-D print houses begun
• Unexpectedly little black-hole monsters rapidly suck up surrounding matter
• Rats 'dream' paths to a brighter future
• 'Hydrothermal siphon' drives water circulation through seafloor
• The quantum spin Hall effect is a fundamental property of light

Solving Saturn’s 2-billion-year age problem Posted: 26 Jun 2015 06:57 AM PDT Experiments at Sandia's Z machine have provided data may help explain why Saturn is two billion years younger than Jupiter on some computer simulations, supporting a prediction first made in 1935.

Project to 3-D print houses begun Posted: 26 Jun 2015 06:56 AM PDT Scientists are developing a technology to make full-scale 3D prints of cellulose based material. It is not a matter of small prints – the objective is to make houses.

Unexpectedly little black-hole monsters rapidly suck up surrounding matter Posted: 26 Jun 2015 05:41 AM PDT Researchers have found evidence that enigmatic objects in nearby galaxies -- called ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) -- exhibit strong outflows that are created as matter falls onto their black holes at unexpectedly high rates. The strong outflows suggest that the black holes in these ULXs must be much smaller than expected. Curiously, these objects appear to be "cousins" of SS 433, one of the most exotic objects in our own Milky Way Galaxy. The team's observations help shed light on the nature of ULXs, and impact our understanding of how supermassive black holes in galactic centers are formed and how matter rapidly falls onto those black holes.

Rats 'dream' paths to a brighter future Posted: 26 Jun 2015 05:34 AM PDT When rats rest, their brains simulate journeys to a desired future such as a tasty treat. Researchers monitored brain activity in rats, first as the animals viewed food in a location they could not reach, then as they rested in a separate chamber, and finally as they were allowed to walk to the food. The activity of specialized brain cells involved in navigation suggested that during the rest the rats simulated walking to and from food that they had been unable to reach.

'Hydrothermal siphon' drives water circulation through seafloor Posted: 26 Jun 2015 05:34 AM PDT Vast quantities of ocean water circulate through the seafloor, flowing through the volcanic rock of the upper oceanic crust. A new study explains what drives this global process and how the flow is sustained. About 25 percent of the heat that flows out of Earth's interior is transferred to the oceans through this process.

The quantum spin Hall effect is a fundamental property of light Posted: 25 Jun 2015 11:48 AM PDT Scientists have demonstrated that the quantum spin Hall effect -- an effect known to take place in solid state physics -- is also an intrinsic property of light.

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