Curio Cabinet

If three bodies are a problem, how bad are four? Astronomers recently discovered a quadruple star system with some unusual inhabitants. It’s one of the first times a system with four stars orbiting each other has been found. While our own galaxy has just one nearby star, out in the vast cosmos, there are many systems with multiple stars. Most of them are binary systems, where two stars are locked in orbit with each other, engaged in a cosmic dance that will last eons until one of them explodes into a brilliant supernova. More rarely, the two stars combine into a single, more massive star. Lesser known are triple-star systems, also known as ternary or trinary systems. These consist of three stars locked in orbit, usually with two stars orbiting each other and a third orbiting around them both. Just a cosmic stone’s throw away, the Alpha Centauri system is known to contain three stars. To date, there have been multiple-star systems discovered containing up to seven stars, but the recently-discovered quadruple star system has something a little extra that makes it even rarer. Right here in the Milky Way, of all places, astronomers found a quadruple-star system containing two brown dwarfs. A brown dwarf is a rare object, also known as a “failed star.” As its nickname implies, a brown dwarf is a sub-stellar object which is too massive to be considered a planet, yet not massive enough to start and sustain nuclear fusion. Since there is no nuclear fusion taking place, brown dwarfs are cold and emit very little energy, making them difficult to find, let alone study in contrast to their brighter, full-fledged stellar counterparts. Sure, you could make the argument that having two sub-stellar objects disqualifies it from being a quadruple-star system, but who’s going to complain?

 
[Image description: A digital illustration of stars in a dark blue sky with a large, brown star in the center.] Credit & copyright: Author-created image. Public domain.

It seems you can never breathe easy these days. According to a new study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published in ASTM International, air purifiers can sometimes release harmful byproducts into the air, and researchers have figured out a way to measure just how much. It seems paradoxical, but air purifiers aren’t always good for the air. They can use a variety of processes that create toxic byproducts. The most common of these is the ozone produced by UV lights meant to kill pathogens. Normally harmless in low concentrations, the ozone can sometimes accumulate enough to pose a threat to the user’s health. Other byproducts include formaldehyde and ultrafine particles, which are produced by an unintended interaction between the components of the air purifier. To test which air purifier models harm more than they help, the NIST developed a test to measure the pollutants. During the test, the air purifier is left running in a sealed room for four hours. Samples of the air are then taken. Then, a UV light is shone so that researchers can measure the amount of ozone and formaldehyde present in the samples, since both substances absorb UV radiation. To measure ultrafine particles, researchers use a method called scanning mobility particle sizing (SMPS), which passes the samples through an x-ray field. The x-ray imparts an electric charge on any particles that might be present, making it easier to sort ultrafine particles from larger ones, since they hold different amounts of charge. Once the ultrafine particles are isolated, they’re placed in a cool steam bath, which makes them swell in size. Then, lasers can be used to determine how much is present by measuring how much the particles scatter the light. It’s a lot of work to figure out how many impurities these purifiers are leaving behind, but there’s no doubt that it needs doing.

Smell ya later—but not too much later! Millions of people suffer from loss of smell (anosmia) due to a variety of medical causes, but researchers at Hanyang University and Kwangwoon University in South Korea have now discovered a way to restore the lost sense using radio waves.
 
The sense of smell is more important to daily life than most people think. Just ask anyone who took the sense for granted before they lost it due to a sinus infection, brain injury, or COVID-19. The recent pandemic brought the issue to the spotlight, since it caused so many people to either temporarily or permanently lose their sense of smell, along with their sense of taste. With no sense of smell, it’s difficult to enjoy food at the very least, and at the worst, it can lead to danger. Imagine, for instance, not being able to detect spoiled food at a sniff before any visual indications are obvious or not being able to smell a gas leak. Currently, there is no surefire treatment for anosmia. If the cause is something like polyps or a deviated septum, surgery might help. In other cases, olfactory treatment can be used, which involves the use of strong, often unpleasant scents to “retrain” the patient’s nose.
 
Now, researchers claim they have come up with a completely noninvasive, chemical-free method to restore a sense of smell. The treatment makes use of a small radio antenna placed near the patient’s head that send out targeted radio waves at the nerves inside the brain responsible for smell. It sounds almost too good to be true, but the researchers claim that just a week of treatments produced significant improvements. If it really works as they say, then even those who aren’t suffering from anosmia could benefit, as it can potentially enhance a normal sense of smell to be even sharper. It could be the mildest superpower ever!

 
[Image description: A black-and-white illustration of a person in historical clothing smelling a flower next to two flowering plants.] Credit & copyright: Smell, Abraham Bosse, c.1635–38. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1930. Public Domain.