July 18, 2023: A time capsule from the birth of the solar system, mammals that hunted dinosaurs and the damaging portrayal of women scientists in the media. Read it all below! —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | On Sept. 24 NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will make a parachute landing at the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range. It's bringing back a sample of pebbles and dust from the near-Earth asteroid named Bennu, which it sampled more than three years ago before it turned around to head back to Earth. Using its long robotic arm, it shot a blast of nitrogen gas at the asteroid's surface that kicked up the sediments and shot them into the spacecraft's collection compartment.
Why this is cool: Bennu is like a time capsule of the early solar system, so examining the samples will be like forensics for planetary sciences.
What the experts say: "The questions we're going to answer are extremely diverse," says Amy Hoffman an isotope geochemist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, "everything from understanding the building blocks of the solar system to looking at the physical characteristics of the material." | | | A robotic arm sampled the surface of Bennu and is scheduled to deliver that sample to Earth in September. Credit: Jen Christiansen | | | An ancient fossil discovered in China shows a Cretaceous-period mammal preying on a dinosaur. The two animals were locked in combat when lava from a nearby volcanic eruption flowed over them, pristinely preserving the 125 million-year-old scene. The mammal, a Repenomamus roughly the size of an opossum, is clearly the aggressor as it bites into the ribs of a Psittacosaurus, a dinosaur nearly three times its size.
Why this is cool: This is the first glimpse back in time of a mammal actively hunting a much larger dinosaur. "It's like watching the coyote catch the roadrunner," says Stephen Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh.
What the experts say: This mammal was something of an anomaly for its time—it would take tens of millions of years and an asteroid strike to give mammals the evolutionary advantage on Earth. | | | Entangled Psittacosaurus (dinosaur) and Repenomamus (mammal) skeletons. Scale bar equals 10 cm (top). Life reconstruction showing Psittacosaurus (dinosaur) being attacked by Repenomamus (mammal), 125 million years ago (bottom). Credit: Gang Han (top), Michael Skrepnick (bottom) | | | • Christopher Nolan's highly-anticipated movie "Oppenheimer," set for release this Friday, depicts J. Robert Oppenheimer and his role in the development of the atomic bomb. The project would have been impossible without the contributions of many female scientists, but the only women seen in the movie's trailer are either hanging laundry, crying or cheering the men on, continuing the damaging portrayl of women scientists by the media, write Carl Kurlander and Chandralekha Singh, both at the University of Pittsburgh. | 5 min read | | | We've got several more articles covering the science behind the "Oppenheimer" film coming your way this week, so stay tuned. I'll also be collecting some of our previous coverage about the Manhattan Project and the scientists involved. Are you planning to see the film? | If you have any feedback, suggestions, or spot any errors while reading these newsletters, please email directly: newsletters@sciam.com. | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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