Debarchan Das

Despite the absence of a bright explosion, failed supernovae can have observable signatures. The energy carried away by neutrinos and by the inefficient accretion onto the newly formed black hole can partially heat the stellar envelope, causing a small amount of material to be ejected from its outer layers. This could produce a faint optical transient. If the ejected material forms a dust shell, this would be accompanied by an observable signal in the mid-infrared regime.

Abstract Strongly correlated electron materials are often characterized by competition and interplay of multiple quantum states. For example, in high-temperature cuprate superconductors unconventional superconductivity, spin- and charge-density wave orders coexist. A key question is whether competing states coexist on the atomic scale or if they segregate into distinct regions.

But what happens to the vast amount of water attached to a slab that descends to the Earth’s core? Yutaro Tsutsumi and colleagues have now answered that question. Their experimental results suggest that the water does not escape from the slabs at the base of the mantle, as commonly thought, even at high temperatures and pressures (Y. Tsutsumi et al. Nat. Geosci. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01464-8; 2024).