Dormant black hole eats star, becomes X-ray flashlight

Roughly 90 percent of the biggest black holes in the known universe are dormant, meaning that they are not actively devouring matter and, consequently, not giving off any light or other radiation. But sometimes a star wanders ...

You'll never be-leaf what makes up this battery

Scientists at the University of Maryland have a new recipe for batteries: Bake a leaf, and add sodium. They used a carbonized oak leaf, pumped full of sodium, as a demonstration battery's negative terminal, or anode, according ...

Study zeros in on plate tectonics' start date

Earth has some special features that set it apart from its close cousins in the solar system, including large oceans of liquid water and a rich atmosphere with just the right ingredients to support life as we know it. Earth ...

Researchers create powerful pseudomagnetic fields in graphene

University of Maryland (UMD) researchers have made a breakthrough discovery in graphene research that could provide a testbed for understanding how electrons move in extremely high magnetic fields. Since its discovery in ...

Salty solution to better, safer batteries

A team of researchers from the University of Maryland (UMD) and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) have devised a groundbreaking "Water-in-Salt" aqueous Lithium ion battery technology that could provide power, efficiency ...

Astronomers catch a black hole shredding a star to pieces

When a star comes too close to a black hole, the intense gravity of the black hole results in tidal forces that can rip the star apart. In these events, called tidal disruptions, some of the stellar debris is flung outward ...

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