#66 Plastic Wastes, Planet 9 and Resurrected Insects
Discover 3 science news from the latest 24 hours in our #PeerusWhatsNew, now on Medium.
1 A Chilean company has developed plastic bags and canvas that dissolve in water in minutes.
To achieve this result, engineers have replaced oil with a derivative of limestone rock. This could be a solution to the waste that poisons the oceans. “Our bags remain in nature only five minutes, compared to 150 to 500 years for traditional plastic bags,” says Roberto Astete, the director of SoluBag.
The company also introduced a more resistant canvas bag, which dissolves in hot water (the plastic one dilutes in cold water). “Now we can recycle the bags in their pan or washing machine,” added Roberto Astete.
2 A star may have wreaked havoc on the edge of the Solar System after several anomalies were discovered for objects beyond Neptune.
To explain the orbital anomalies observed in several Transneptunian objects (Sedna and other sednoid), researchers invoke the existence of a ninth planet.
Maybe this Planet 9 exists. But one team suggests that it is a star that may have disturbed these bodies and also the hypothetical ninth planet. This star could be a sister of the Sun. That would have happened in his early youth, when he was still with his baby siblings in an open cluster.
3 In Siberia, a discovery shows that worms have been resurrected from frozen soil after 42,000 years.
A team of Russian researchers in collaboration with Princeton University (USA) has just brought back two nematodes trapped in ice for more than 40,000 years, the end of the Pleistocene era.
Their discovery comes from two samples of ice, one taken 30 meters deep under the permafrost of the banks of the Kolyma River and estimated at 32,000 years, the other from the Alazeya and 41,700 years old.
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