The study examined 160 material entries: 85 manuscripts, and 75 modern reference materials. The materials came from different collections and regions across South and Southeast Asia. The team investigated whether their material properties could help distinguish the palm genera used, identify different stages of leaf processing and reveal possible links to geographical provenance.

One key advantage of the method is that the analyses are non-destructive. No samples need to be removed from fragile historical objects. Instead, different X-ray techniques provide information about the leaves’ internal structure and chemical composition.

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Laura Gallardo, first author of the study and scientist at Hamburg University of Technology (TU Hamburg), emphasises the importance of the non-destructive approach: “For rare and fragile cultural artefacts, the ability to obtain rich structural and chemical information without taking a sample is essential. By combining several synchrotron techniques, we can read different layers of a manuscript’s material history in a single experiment and compare large numbers of objects in a systematic way.”

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The researchers combined three techniques, each of which captures different properties of the palm leaves. Small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) provides information about the structure and orientation of fibre networks. Wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS) provides information on the relative contributions of crystalline cellulose and amorphous substances. X-ray fluorescence (XRF) maps the distribution of chemical elements within the material.

The team used machine learning to analyse the measurement data together. Rather than relying on a single measurement, the approach draws on combinations of structural and chemical characteristics to distinguish between materials.

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The samples examined from Sri Lanka and southern India showed substantial material similarities, which may be associated with related processing traditions. The Thai samples displayed a comparatively distinct material profile in the dataset, which may be related to the unique processing traditions in some areas of Thailand. Systematic material differences identified between the groups suggest material fingerprints related to regional processing practices, but reliable geographical attribution is not yet possible, as some provenance groups were represented by relatively few samples and the influence of ageing and preservation conditions on the material properties could only be partially assessed.

Patrick Huber, Director of the Institute of Materials and X-ray Physics at TU Hamburg and head of the “High-Resolution X-Ray Analytics of Materials” research group at DESY, explains this limitation: “The material data alone cannot yet establish geographical provenance with certainty. The properties of the leaves are shaped by several interacting factors, and the available sample groups are not equally large. The findings therefore need to be interpreted alongside historical and codicological evidence.”

The post X-rays and computers study palm-leaf scriptures. first appeared on The Guild of Scientific Troubadours.

This illustration depicts NASA’s Psyche spacecraft. Launched in October 2023, the Psyche mission will explore a metal-rich asteroid of the same name that lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The spacecraft will arrive in mid 2029 and orbit the asteroid – also shown in this illustration – for nearly two years to investigate its composition.

Scientists think Psyche may be the core of a planetesimal, one of the building blocks of the terrestrial (rocky) planets in our solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. If so, it could provide a unique opportunity to study how planets like our own formed. But scientists are also prepared to be surprised and may find that Psyche is some other type of primordial solar system object never before studied.

The post Science Art: Psyche Spacecraft at the Asteroid Psyche, 2026 first appeared on The Guild of Scientific Troubadours.

It’s by Wikimedia Commons user Solid State, who apparently also called it “Kubisch-raumzentrierte Elemntarzelle eines Eisenkristalls.”

The post Science Art: Body-centered cubic (bcc) unit cell of iron, 2009 first appeared on The Guild of Scientific Troubadours.

The post No song… yet first appeared on The Guild of Scientific Troubadours.

For decades, experiments and computer simulations of Earth’s inner core, an alien world of solid iron some 5000 kilometers below the surface, suggested the iron atoms there form close-packed hexagons. But word of the new result has quietly roiled the small community of inner-core researchers. If the structure is instead what is commonly called body-centered cubic (BCC), it could change how heat is conducted, altering when in geological history the inner core began to solidify and how heat and elements were released into the molten outer core. Those processes affect how the outer core churns, powering the dynamo that generates Earth’s magnetic field. “If the structure is different, then the properties will be different,” says Shuai Zhang, a high-pressure researcher at the University of Rochester.

The finding was difficult to publish. It finally appeared in August in the journal Physical Review B, after several high-profile journals turned it down, Merkel says. The delays may reflect resistance to reopening a question many researchers thought was settled. Yet to Jon Eggert, a materials physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, “The data is very clear. I’m convinced they see BCC.”

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Yet Maurizio Mattesini, a geophysicist at the Complutense University of Madrid, feels vindicated by the result. “I’ve been suffering for such a long time,” he says. Mattesini argues that only cubic iron can explain some features seen in the seismic waves from earthquakes that pass through the inner core, such as a surprisingly slow speed. BCC, with a more loosely packed, less rigid structure than hexagonal iron, would hamper the waves, like soft sand slowing a runner.

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While for most stars, colour is temperature-dependent and limited to a few hues, white dwarfs, which are the dense remnants of sun-like stars that have died, can glow in an incredible range of colours, said lead study author Mark Hollands, an astrophysicist at the University of Warwick, England, on Thursday.

“The colours that normal stars can have are pretty much only orange, white or blue,” Hollands told CNN.

“What we found is, for most white dwarfs, that’s the same as well. But there are some special cases where the physics in the outer layers of these stars are sufficiently strange that it causes actually quite big deviations in terms of their spectrum,” he said.

The post The first green star first appeared on The Guild of Scientific Troubadours.

I’m not sure what these posters were *for* in a more direct way, other than promoting NASA’s work, but I found it on Wikimedia Commons.

The post Science Art: MOON: For the Benefit of Humanity, 2023 first appeared on The Guild of Scientific Troubadours.

locking an impressive 45.22 kilometers (28.10 miles), it has surpassed the previous record established by Opportunity of 45.16 kilometers.

Perseverance is currently traveling to an area called “Idubi”, which is part of the wider western rim of the Jezero Crater.

The wider area has been nicknamed “Lac de Charmes”, and it might have some of the oldest terrain ever directly explored in the solar system.

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Perseverance has been on Mars for roughly 5 and a half years now, with the distance record being broken during the rover’s 2006th Martian day, or sol. This was way faster than Opportunity managed the same distance.

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In summer 2025, JPL certified that the rover actuators – the parts that turn the wheels – will perform optimally for at least another 60 kilometers (37 miles). The goal of driving 100 kilometers (62 miles) on Mars is very possible.

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The post Perseverance beats Opportunity on Mars first appeared on The Guild of Scientific Troubadours.

This artistically-enhanced image shows the tracks of real particles produced when a neutrino interacted in a liquid mixture of neon and hydrogen inside the Big European Bubble Chamber (BEBC) during the 1960s. The tracks become visible when bubbles form along the paths of the particles as a piston expands the liquid. A magnetic field is produced in the detector causing the particles to travel in spirals, allowing charge and momentum to be measured.

Found via Ms. Dramko, who used this image as inspiration for her own art. Clouds and cloud chambers.

The post Science Art: Bubble chamber with colour enhanced tracks, 2026 first appeared on The Guild of Scientific Troubadours.

The team at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, looked at 309 couples across three studies. They asked all 618 people about their musical preferences – across genres and artists – and had them complete questionnaires about their personal values and traits.

They then shuffled the respondents and created thousands of random ‘pseudo-couples’. The findings, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, were clear: “couples consistently demonstrated greater similarity in music preferences than pseudo-couples”.

Dr Julia Vigl, a co-author of the study, said it “adds another piece to the puzzle” of what makes couples click.

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You can read more about the compatibility study here, in Social Psychological and Personality Science.

The post The couples that rock together, stay together…. first appeared on The Guild of Scientific Troubadours.