Science X Newsletter Week 30

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Here is your customized Phys.org Newsletter for week 30:

	The first direct-diode laser bright enough to cut and weld metal Diode lasers—used in laser pointers, barcode scanners, DVD players, and other low-power applications—are perhaps the most efficient, compact, and low-cost lasers available.
	Suddenly, the sun is eerily quiet: Where did the sunspots go? The sun has gone quiet. Almost too quiet. A few weeks ago it was teeming with sunspots, as you would expect since we are supposed to be in the middle of solar maximum-the time in the sun's 11-year cycle when it is the most active.
	Mysterious dance of dwarfs may force a cosmic rethink (Phys.org) —The discovery that many small galaxies throughout the universe do not 'swarm' around larger ones like bees do but 'dance' in orderly disc-shaped orbits is a challenge to our understanding of how the universe formed and evolved.
	Boosting the force of empty space Vacuum fluctuations may be among the most counter-intuitive phenomena of quantum physics. Theorists from the Weizmann Institute (Rehovot, Israel) and the Vienna University of Technology propose a way to amplify their force.
	How do we terraform Venus? It might be possible to terraform Venus some day, when our technology gets good enough. The challenges for Venus are totally different than for Mars. How will we need to fix Venus?
	Voyager spacecraft might not have reached interstellar space In 2012, the Voyager mission team announced that the Voyager 1 spacecraft had passed into interstellar space, traveling further from Earth than any other manmade object.
	Earth survived near-miss from 2012 solar storm: NASA Back in 2012, the Sun erupted with a powerful solar storm that just missed the Earth but was big enough to "knock modern civilization back to the 18th century," NASA said.
	Self-cooling solar cells boost power, last longer Scientists may have overcome one of the major hurdles in developing high-efficiency, long-lasting solar cells—keeping them cool, even in the blistering heat of the noonday Sun.
	Material generates steam under solar illumination A new material structure developed at MIT generates steam by soaking up the sun.
	Fiber optic light pipes in the retina do much more than simple image transfer (Phys.org) —Having the photoreceptors at the back of the retina is not a design constraint, it is a design feature. The idea that the vertebrate eye, like a traditional front-illuminated camera, might have been improved somehow if it had only been able to orient its wiring behind the photoreceptor layer, like a cephalopod, is folly. Indeed in simply engineered systems, like CMOS or CCD image sensors, a back-illuminated design manufactured by flipping the silicon wafer and thinning it so that light hits the photocathode without having to navigate the wiring layer can improve photon capture across a wide wavelength band. But real eyes are much more crafty than that.
	Synchronization of North Atlantic, North Pacific preceded abrupt warming, end of ice age Scientists have long been concerned that global warming may push Earth's climate system across a "tipping point," where rapid melting of ice and further warming may become irreversible—a hotly debated scenario with an unclear picture of what this point of no return may look like.
	'Shocking' underground water loss in US drought A major drought across the western United States has sapped underground water resources, posing a greater threat to the water supply than previously understood, scientists said Thursday.
	Giant crater in Russia's far north sparks mystery A vast crater discovered in a remote region of Siberia known to locals as "the end of the world" is causing a sensation in Russia, with a group of scientists being sent to investigate.
	Law of physics governs airplane evolution Researchers believe they now know why the supersonic trans-Atlantic Concorde aircraft went the way of the dodo—it hit an evolutionary cul-de-sac.
	Study vindicates climate models accused of 'missing the pause' Climate models can recreate the slowdown in global warming since 1998, as long as they correctly factor in crucial variables such as the state of the El Niño system, new research has shown.
	Hoverbike drone project for air transport takes off What happens when you cross a helicopter with a motorbike? The crew at Malloy Aeronautics has been focused on a viable answer and has launched a crowdfunding campaign to support its Hoverbike project, "The Hoverbike is the result of years worth of research and development," said Chris Malloy of Malloy Aeronautics. "We combined the simplicity of a motorbike and the freedom of a helicopter to create the world's first flying motorcycle."
	World breaks monthly heat record two times in a row (Update) The globe is on a hot streak, setting a heat record in June. That's after the world broke a record in May.
	Global warming 'pause' since 1998 reflects natural fluctuation, study concludes Statistical analysis of average global temperatures between 1998 and 2013 shows that the slowdown in global warming during this period is consistent with natural variations in temperature, according to research by McGill University physics professor Shaun Lovejoy.
	Physicists discuss quantum pigeonhole principle The pigeonhole principle: "If you put three pigeons in two pigeonholes at least two of the pigeons end up in the same hole." So where's the argument? Physicists say there is an important argument. While the principle captures the very essence of counting, the investigators said that they showed that in quantum mechanics it is not true.
	Museum workers pronounce dobsonfly found in China, largest aquatic insect Workers with the Insect Museum of West China, who were recently given several very large dragon-fly looking insects, with long teeth, by locals in a part of Sichuan, have declared it, a giant dobsonfly the largest known aquatic insect in the world alive today. The find displaces the previous record holder, the South American helicopter damselfly, by just two centimeters.

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