Have you ever wondered how long it took our Sun to form in its stellar nursery? An international collaboration of scientists is now closer to an answer. They succeeded in the measurement of the bound-state beta decay of fully-ionised thallium (²⁰⁵Tl⁸¹⁺) ions at the Experimental Storage Ring (ESR) of GSI/FAIR. This measurement has profound effects on the production of radioactive lead (²⁰⁵Pb) in asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars and can be used to help determine the Sun’s formation time. The results have been published in the journal Nature.

SUTD researchers developed a novel bilayer metasurface that enables unidirectional circularly polarised waves to be emitted, opening up possibilities in the fields of biological and chemical sensing, optical communications, and quantum computing.

An asteroid struck Mars 11 million years ago and sent pieces of the red planet hurtling through space. One of these chunks of Mars eventually crashed into the Earth somewhere near Purdue and is one of the few meteorites that can be traced directly to Mars. This meteorite was rediscovered in a drawer at Purdue University in 1931 and therefore named the Lafayette Meteorite. 

During early investigations of the Lafayette Meteorite, scientists discovered that it had interacted with liquid water while on Mars. Scientists have long wondered when that interaction with liquid water took place.  An international collaboration of scientists including two from Purdue University’s College of Science have recently determined the age of the minerals in the Lafayette Meteorite that formed when there was liquid water.  The team has published its findings in Geochemical Perspective Letters.