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When the force of a blast shoots a round out of a large-caliber rifle, howitzer or M1 Abrams tank gun, the teams of people operating these weapons are exposed to low-level blasts that can cause traumatic brain injuries. Low-level blasts do not cause visible trauma, such as bleeding from ruptured eardrums, and they don’t cause injury through violent head motion, such as a concussion. Yet, these blasts can cause physical changes in the brain that lead to a host of neuropsychiatric symptoms. The link between the force of a blast and the resulting changes in the brain is not completely understood. So our team of engineers and scientists in the PANTHER program, funded by the Department of Defense, is using physics to elucidate how blasts cause traumatic brain injury. What is a blast? When a weapon like a rifle is fired, the round is initially in its barrel. Pulling the trigger engages a primer that produces a flame, igniting the propellant. This chemical reaction releases store...

A newly discovered comet could be visible to the naked eye as it shoots past Earth and the Sun in the coming weeks for the first time in 50,000 years, astronomers have said. The comet is called C/2022 E3 (ZTF) after the Zwicky Transient Facility, which first spotted it passing Jupiter in March last year. After Travel ling from the icy reaches of our Solar System it will come closest to the Sun on January 12 and pass nearest to Earth on February 1.  It will be easy to spot with a good pair of binoculars and likely even with the naked eye, provided the sky is not too illuminated by city lights or the Moon. The comet "will be brightest when it is closest to the Earth", Thomas Prince, a physics professor at the California Institute of Technology who works at the Zwicky Transient Facility, told AFP. Made of ice and dust and emitting a greenish aura, the comet is estimated to have a diameter of around a kilometre, said Nicolas Biver, an astrophysicist at the Paris Observ...