Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the stories this week that shook the Earth, birthed a universe, exploded in space, and sought the fountain of lepidopterological youth.First, a wave from a disastrous earthquake journeyed to the center of the Earth and back, revealing a phenomenon that has never been seen before. Then: a recipe for a gravastar, a light shower of heavenly cremation, and the secrets of butterfly elders.As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens, or subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files.\u00a0The wave that literally moved a nationPark, Sunyoung et al. \u201cScS-triggered slip on megathrust interfaces after the 2011 MW 9.0 Tohoku-Oki earthquake.\u201d Science.The devastating Tohoku-Oki earthquake, which struck east of Japan in 2011, generated a seismic \u201cshear\u201d wave so powerful that it bounced off Earth\u2019s core and hit the surface again 13 minutes later, permanently shifting all of mainland Japan about a quarter-inch east of its original position, according to a new study.While it is common for seismic waves to ricochet off Earth\u2019s core, scientists have never detected a wave smashing back into the planet\u2019s crust before. But when global navigation satellite system (GNSS) measurements kept indicating that Japan seemed to have shifted slightly east after the quake, scientists realized with \u201csurprise\u201d that a core-reflected wave was the likely cause of the \u201cslip event,\u201d reports the study.\u00a0\u201cWe report an extraordinary observation of ground motion in Japan after the\u2026Tohoku-Oki earthquake attributed to a multiplate-interface slip event triggered by a shear wave that traveled to the Earth\u2019s core and back,\u201d said researchers led by Sunyoung Park of the University of Chicago.\u201cThis slip event, spanning two plate boundaries, has the broadest rupture area of any single event yet documented,\u201d the team continued. \u201cIts overall length is similar to that of mainland Japan (~3000 km), exceeding the mainshock rupture length by six to seven times and more than doubling that of the 2004 great Sumatra earthquake.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Even though the seismic uppercut was far less intense than the original quake, the near-simultaneous arrival of the wave across such a huge area caused a slip between continental plate boundaries. As a result, mainland Japan moved about six millimeters toward the Pacific Ocean, which doesn\u2019t sound like a lot, but scientists have never observed a single seismic event moving a large landmass in this way.\u00a0The discovery not only reveals a mind-boggling new phenomenon, it serves as a heads-up in preparing for future colossal quakes and assessing their aftermath. The core-reflected wave \u201cis a previously unrecognized source of seismic hazard, which can potentially (re)activate the mainshock area and the broader surrounding megathrust interfaces,\u201d the team concluded.In other news\u2026What else can you make with collapsing matter?Jampolski, Daniel, and Rezzolla, Luciano et al. \u201cFormation of gravastars.\u201d Physical Review D.Just when you thought black holes couldn\u2019t get any trippier, along comes a \u201cgravastar.\u201d These objects are hypothetical alternatives to black holes that do not contain a singularity or an event horizon, beyond which normal physics breaks down. Instead, physicists theorize that a massive star could collapse into a different type of compact object, dominated by dark energy, which could trigger the birth of a mini-universe inside of it, according to a new study.\u201cBecause a gravastar possesses neither a singularity nor an event horizon, and since its compactness can be brought arbitrarily close to that of a black hole, it has long been argued that it would be difficult to distinguish it from a black hole,\u201d said authors Daniel Jampolski and Luciano Rezzolla of the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Germany.A comparison of black holes and gravastars. Image: Finq\u201cWe here present, for the first time, a model for the creation of a static gravastar following a gravitational collapse of a spherical cloud of matter,\u201d the team added.The study models a pathway to the formation of a gravastar by imagining a uniform dust cloud collapsing toward a point at the center called a \u201cde Sitter region,\u201d which begins to expand. The inward collapse of the cloud and the outward repulsion of the de Sitter region, which is essentially an expanding mini-universe, results in an equilibrium state that would be virtually indistinguishable from a black hole to outside observers like us.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Finally, a hypothetical object for people who think black holes are not weird enough. Bonus points for the study\u2019s brainy asides, such as this one: \u201cObviously, if a quantum-gravitational description were possible, the zero-size de Sitter bubble would be naturally replaced by a Planck-size bubble.\u201dLike, duh!\u00a0Stardust to stardust, radioactive ashes to radioactive ashesKoll, Dominik et al. \u201cThe timing of the last r-process event near Earth from interstellar 60Fe, 244Pu and 247Cm deposition on Earth.\u201d Nature Astronomy.Speaking of the weird corpses left behind by massive stars, Earth is constantly getting sprinkled with their radioactive remains. That\u2019s the finding of a study about a deep sea rock dredged up from nearly 16,000 feet under the Pacific Ocean that scientists found is bedazzled with the ashes of dead stars.\u00a0The rock is a chunk of ferromanganese crust, which forms on the ocean floor from minerals that precipitate from seawater. The rocks also capture rare heavy elements\u2014such isotopes of plutonium, iron, and curium\u2014that can only be sourced from cataclysmic cosmic events, such as explosive supernovae, or collisions between existing stellar corpses called neutron stars.Lead author Dominik Koll with a sample of the ferromanganese crust. Image: Helmholz Zentrum DresdenUsing this rare record, scientists detected radioactive isotopes that suggest Earth has been passing through the fallout of an ancient \u201ckilonova\u201d that occurred when two neutron stars merged more than 100 million years ago. These kilonova mergers, also known as \u201cr-process events,\u201d leave a distant isotopic signature that includes the radioactive isotope plutonium-244, which the team detected in the rock.\u201cOur measured interstellar signatures suggest the occurrence of an old and rare r-process event leading to a diffuse [plutonium-244] background inside and outside the Local Bubble,\u201d which is the term for our region of the galaxy, said researchers led by Dominik Koll of Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf. \u201cThe trajectory of the Solar System through the Galaxy could impact the recorded r-process radionuclide abundance on Earth or the Moon.\u201d\u00a0In other words, we are all just casually wafting through the smoke of stellar pyres in our orbit around the galactic center. Hope that adds a little cosmic spice to your day.\u00a0May you live to the ripe old age of one year\u00a0Foley, Jessica et al. \u201cEvolution of increased longevity and slowed ageing in a genus of tropical butterfly.\u201d Nature Communications.We\u2019ll close, as all things should, with butterfly Methuselahs. To better understand the processes that drive aging and longevity, scientists looked to the Heliconius family of butterflies, known as heliconians, which are known to live substantially longer than its close relatives, though their lifespans hadn\u2019t been previously examined in depth.Heliconius butterflies. Image: Repeating Patterns of Mimicry. Meyer A, PLoS Biology, Vol. 4\/10\/2006, e341The team was surprised to learn that these butterflies can live for nearly a year whereas their close relatives in their \u201ctribe\u201d live for mere weeks, revealing a \u201c25-fold variation in recorded maximum lifespan across the tribe,\u201d according to a new study.\u00a0\u201cThis range far exceeds previous estimates, and is among the largest ever recorded for such closely-related taxa (with comparable differences reported only for two groups of fish: rockfishes, and roughies,\u201d said researchers led by Jessica Foley of the University of Bristol. Indeed, if humans exhibited this range of lifespan diversity, plenty of us would be living past 1,000 years old.The team also discovered that Myscelia cyaniris, which is not a heliconian, is \u201cthe longest-lived butterfly species to date based on data from butterfly exhibitors with a maximum reported lifespan of 380 days,\u201d confirming that many butterfly families have evolved extreme longevity.Unlike their close relatives, heliconians feed on pollen, which suggests that this special diet is part of the secret to their senescent success. While this discovery sounds like grounds for a grift aimed at the anti-aging movement, let it be known that eating pollen only works as an elixir for butterflies. The pollen can\u2019t make you live forever. Death comes for us all. Happy Summer Solstice!\u00a0Thanks for reading! See you next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"