Chinese Produce Hexagonal Diamonds

 

Vredefort Crater Dome in South Africa seen from space with the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8, 27 June 2018. The largest known meteor crater on earth.

Chinese researchers claim to have made the first samples of pure hexagonal diamond or lonsdaleite. Lonsdaleite is a rare, ultra-hard carbon allotrope found in meteorite impact sites and synthesized in lab. It's hexagonal crystal structure makes it theoretically up to 58% harder than regular cubic diamonds. It is highly prized for potential industrial applications in cutting and drilling due to its superior stiffness, stability, and hardness.

The biggest challenge in identifying lonsdaleite is the lack of pure samples; in many cases, it is mixed with cubic diamond, graphite and other minerals. This makes it difficult ‪—‬ or even impossible ‪—‬ to test and measure its unique properties.

The new study, published March 4 in the journal Nature, addressed this problem by creating several pure hexagonal diamond samples about 0.06 inches (1.5 millimeters) in diameter ‪—‬ big enough to measure the samples' material properties. The team found that hexagonal diamond is both stiffer and harder than cubic diamond, and that it resists oxidation much more than cubic diamond does.

Read more here: Chinese scientists create rare 'hexagonal diamond' that's harder than natural diamond | Live Science

Early Alzheimer's Onset Responds to Single Protein

 

A single gene mutation protects against Alzheimer's disease in people destined to get the disease very young — and now we know why.

The gene mutation affects a protein called reelin that directs brain cells to shred the probable culprits in the disease — toxic amyloid plaques and tau tangles. The mutation makes reelin work much more efficiently, new research reveals.

The finding could point the way towards transformative therapies for the condition, experts said.

The new research, published in December 2025 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, has identified exactly how the COLBOS mutation protected the patient's brain for decades.

Single protein could dramatically alter trajectory of Alzheimer's disease | Live Science

The Brilliant Qanats of Iran

 

Iran has an extensive system of underground irrigation tunnels called "qanats". About 36300 qanats have been found so far. These highlight the resourcefulness and innovation of ancient Persia (Iran). Most are in Isfahan province in the center of the country. Isfahan province is one of the 31 provinces of Iran.

Qanat of Moon

© ICQHS

Author: ICQHS Archive

The qanats are ancient, gravity-fed underground aqueducts that transport water from mountain aquifers to arid plains. They are hand-dug tunnels and vertical shafts and represent a sophisticated, sustainable water management system with several networks now UNESCO World Heritage sites.

These tunnels were made famous by the book Blind White Fish in Persia, a 1953 book by Anthony Smith is which he chronicles a 1950 Oxford University expedition to Iran to find blind, white fish in the country's qanats. While the expedition failed to find the fish, the book became a classic travelogue, detailing the unique qanat system and the rural Persian life encountered by Smith and his companion.

Persian Qanat | Iranian Invention - Iran Safar; The Pigeon Towers of Isfahan Province; The Wind Towers of Persia; Ice Houses in the Persian Desert

The Pigeon Towers of Isfahan Province

 

For centuries the farmers of Isfahan Province in Iran relied on pigeon guano to fertilize their famous melon crops. The towers provided nesting for the pigeons, and their droppings were collected in 3000 squat, circular pigeon towers, each able to house about 14,000 birds. 

Today the pigeon towers are no longer used, but many can be seen along the Zayandeh River south of the Ateshkadeh-ye Esfahan (Fire Temple of Isfahan). Today only around 700 of the pigeon towers remain in the Province.

Read more here: Pigeon Towers of Iran - Everything about Iranian Dovecotes; The Brilliant Qanats of Iran; Ice Houses in the Persian Desert; The Wind Towers of Persia

Christians Who Contributed to Science and Technology

 

Astronomy

Johannes Kepler formulated the three laws of planetary motion. He used Tycho Brahe's Tables to prove the Laws of Planetary Motion.

Kepler believed that science and religion work together. He was a pious Lutheran whose writings include theology. He said, “God is the beginning and end of scientific research and striving.”

"I wanted to become a theologian," he wrote. "For a long time I was restless. Now, however, behold how through my effort God is being celebrated in astronomy."

Kepler said, "We astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature."

Chemistry

Michael Faraday worked on chemistry until 1821 when he began experiments with electricity. He was interested in the work of François Arago and André-Marie Ampère who established a relation between electricity and magnetism. Faraday published on the conversion of electrical into mechanical energy in the Quarterly Journal of Science in October 1821. The mathematical theories developed by another Christian, James Clerk Maxwell, relied on the laws Faraday had established by his experiments.

Genetics

The "father "of modern Genetics was Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian Catholic monk. In a sermon, he preached the following homily, seamlessly intertwining scriptural interpretation with his scientific investigations:

“Jesus appeared to the disciples after the Resurrection in various forms. He appeared to Mary Magdalene so that they might take him for a gardener. Very ingeniously these manifestation of Jesus is to our minds difficult to penetrate. He appears as a gardener. The gardener plants seedlings in prepared soil. The soil must exert a physical and chemical influence so that the seed of the plant can grow. Yet this is not sufficient. The warmth and light of the sun must be added, together with rain, in order that growth may result.

“The seed of supernatural life, of sanctifying grace, cleanses from sin, so preparing the soul of man, and man must seek to preserve this life by his good works. He still needs the supernatural food, the body of the Lord, which received continually, develops and brings to completion of the life. So natural and supernatural must unite to the realization of the holiness to the people. Man must contribute his minimum work of toil, and God gives the growth.

“Truly, the seed, the talent, the grace of God is there, and man has simply to work, take the seeds to bring them to the bankers. So that we ‘may have life, and abundantly.’”

Physics

The "father" of the Big Bang theory of universe expansion was Georges Lemaître, a Roman Catholic priest. Newspapers described Lemaître as the leader of the new cosmological physics, and Einstein recommended Lemaître for the Francqui Prize, the most prestigious Belgian scientific distinction, which King Léopold III awarded to him in 1934.

Lemaître viewed religion and science as distinct ways of interpreting the world, both of which are equally valid. Lemaître once said, “God cannot be reduced to the role of a scientific hypothesis.”

He wrote, “Once you realize that the Bible does not purport to be a textbook of science, the old controversy between religion and science vanishes."

Lemaître  wrote, "We may speak of this event as of a beginning. I do not say a creation. Physically it is a beginning in the sense that if something happened before, it has no observable influence on the behavior of our universe, as any feature of matter before this beginning has been completely lost by the extreme contraction at the theoretical zero. Any preexistence of the universe has a metaphysical character...The question if it was really a beginning or rather a creation, something started from nothing, is a philosophical question which cannot be settled by physical or astronomical considerations."

He said, “The doctrine of the Trinity is much more abstruse than anything in relativity or quantum mechanics; but, being necessary for salvation, the doctrine is stated in the Bible. If the theory of relativity had also been necessary for salvation, it would have been revealed to Saint Paul or to Moses.”

Computers

The "mother" of combinatorial identities for computers was a Roman Catholic sister. Her name was Mary Celine Fasenmyer. The research she did during her doctoral studies gained the attention of mathematicians in the early 1990s when advances in computer technology made her research practical.
Sister Celine was told by her community of nuns to go to the University of Michigan for her doctorate, which she did in 1942, earning her degree in 1946. Her thesis - "Some Generalized Hypergeometric Polynomials" - was written under the direction of Dr. Earl D. Rainville who dedicated a chapter in his textbook entitled, "Sister Celine's Technique". 

Sister Caline's research is the intellectual progenitor of the computerized methods used to prove hypergeometric identities. The Israeli mathematician Doron Zeilberger recognized that her method can be adapted to prove such identities. The hypergeometric polynomials she studied are called Sister Celine's polynomials.

Related reading:  Charter: Christian Women in Science - American Scientific Affiliation; Christians in Science and Math

Healthcare Among Archaic Humans

 

The skull of a child of around 12 years of age at time of death found among other human remains at Qafzeh in Israel. This individual - Qafzeh 11 - suffered a compound cranial trauma, indicated with arrows, with signs of healing. This individual was buried after people cared for him, possibly for an extended period of time.

Dr. Johnn Hawks, a world renown paleoanthropologist, has written:

There is growing evidence of healthcare in the archaeological and skeletal record of hominins. In our article we point to some of the famous cases, like the KNM-ER 1808 individual, who lived around 1.6 million years ago and survived for some time with debilitating and painful periosteal reaction and cortical bone thickening. In the Middle Pleistocene, the case of craniosynostosis of the Cranium 14 individual from Sima de los Huesos is notable; in the Late Pleistocene record, Neanderthals with evidence of extensive osteoarthritis, losses of limbs, and near-complete loss of teeth are also very well known.

Some of the humans buried at Qafzeh Cave were covered with red ocher, a symbolic blood covering, suggesting the hope for life after death.

Read more here:  Bringing emotional cognition to deep time - John Hawks

The Glow of Life

 

Biophotons (from the Greek βίος meaning "life" and φῶς meaning "light") are photons of light in the ultraviolet and visible light range that are produced by a biological system.

Catalina Curceanu is a nuclear and quantum physicist at Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics–National Laboratories of Frascati. She has been studying biophotons, a by-product of normal cellular processes, though it’s unclear how they form. 

Normal cellular processes create biophotons, though the light is not visible to the naked eye. These spontaneous emissions are thought to be associated with generation of free radicals due to energy metabolic processes.

Quantum physicist Christoph Simon, of the University of Calgary in Canada, believes that when these reactive molecules attack lipids — long links of fatty acids — they produce “a kind of a chain reaction” and energy is released. Some biophotons escape, “about 1,000 photons per square centimeter per second” from our skin, Simon says. It’s about a millionth the intensity of a firefly and can’t be seen with the naked eye.

As early as in 1923, Gurwitsch, a Russian scientist, observed optical radiation during mitosis in onion roots and called it "mitogenetic radiation". Modern biofield theory has extended this hypothesis to postulate electromagnetic interactions between cells for control and for information transfer. 


Read more here: We all have a (very tiny) glow of light, no movie magic needed; Biophotons as Subtle Energy Carriers; Humans Actually Glow With Our Own Form of Bioluminescence : ScienceAlert