Brain fluid surgery to a world-first lunar-Earth flyby: News from Imperial

A long corridor with solver pipes down one side

The LCLS X-ray Free Electron Laser

Here’s a batch of fresh news and announcements from across Imperial.

From brain fluid surgery to a lunar-Earth flyby from the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), here is some quick-read news from across Imperial.

Spacecraft slingshot success

The European Space Agency (ESA) Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), with Imperial kit on board, has successfully completed a world-first lunar-Earth flyby.

The purpose of the flyby was to re-route JUICE’s path through space, using the gravity of the Moon and the Earth to change the spacecraft’s speed and direction, on a shortcut to Jupiter through the inner Solar System.

JUICE snapped images with its onboard monitoring cameras during the flyby and collected scientific data with eight of its ten instruments, including the Imperial-built magnetometer, J-MAG.

Video placeholder image — Timelapse of Juice’s lunar-Earth flyby

The flyby saved the mission around 100–150 kg of fuel, and, combined with a perfect launch in April 2023, means JUICE has a little extra propellant in its tanks to get closer to Jupiter’s moon Ganymede than originally planned.

Catch up on the manoeuvre in ESA’s story, and relive the Moon flyby on ESA’s YouTube channel.

Brain fluid surgery

Shunt surgery to divert excess fluid away from the brain improves walking speed and disability in the short term in idiopathic Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (iNPH) according to a Cochrane review led by Imperial experts.

Gloved hand pointing to a screen showing a brain scan iNPH is a condition where normal fluid-filled structures in the brain expand over time, leading to symptoms like the inability to walk and dementia.

Since 1965, there have been reports of patients improving when surgery is performed, but evidence to support this was of low quality, leading to conflicting views among medical practitioners about its benefits.

Dr Chris Carswell, Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer from our Department of Brain Sciences, said: “iNPH is an extremely disabling condition but by analysing the highest quality trials, we can see that surgery can improve walking and disability levels. Both outcomes are important to patients. These results will give clinicians the confidence to consider iNPH as a treatable disease and allow them to have better informed discussions with patients."

Read more about the research in Cochrane.

Solar wind origins

Astronomers have long wondered how the Sun’s solar wind, a stream of energetic particles, continues to receive energy once it leaves the Sun. Now, thanks to a lucky line up of two spacecraft, researchers including Professor Tim Horbury from the Department of Physics may have discovered the answer.

one spacecraft in front of the sun and one in front of the Earth — Parker Solar Probe (left) and Solar Orbiter (right)

The observations provide conclusive evidence that the fastest solar winds are powered by magnetic ‘switchbacks’, or large kinks in the magnetic field, near the Sun.

This discovery was made possible because of a coincidental alignment in February 2022 that let both the Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter measure the same solar wind stream within two days of each other. The magnetic field measurements by Solar Orbiter were made using an instrument called a magnetometer, designed and built at Imperial.

The new knowledge is a crucial piece of the puzzle that will help scientists better forecast solar activity between the Sun and Earth as well as understanding how Sun-like stars and stellar winds operate everywhere.

Read the full paper in Science.

Global grasslands

A long-term field experiment at Imperial’s Silwood Park campus has been part of a global study called Nutrient Network (NutNet), covering 84 grasslands on six continents.

Grass with shrubs in the background under a partly cloudy sky — Grasslands at Silwood Park. Credit: Dan Weill

A recent study using NutNet data and historic satellite observations looked at how grasslands have diverged since the 1980s, finding that plant biomass production has undergone sizable changes, which has major implications for food security, biodiversity and carbon storage.

This global phenomenon affects grasslands with diverse outcomes. In the case of arid regions, declines in grassland productivity are accelerating. However, the study also showed areas where productivity is increasing, particularly in warmer, wetter and species-rich sites with longer growing seasons.

Scientists say knowing how different types of grasslands respond to changes will help mitigate the worst losses and protect this important habitat.

Imperial co-author Dr Catalina Estrada from our Department of Life Sciences said: “This study highlights the importance of supporting long-term, collective ecological field studies to detect changes in ecosystems at appropriate time and spatial scales.”

Read the full study in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Prize-winning paper

Dr Andrew Duncan, a senior lecturer in our Department of Mathematics, has been awarded the 2023 Hojjat Adeli Award for Innovation in Computing. This award, established in 2010 by publisher Wiley-Blackwell, is given annually to the most innovative research paper or author in the field.

A wind farm The paper, published in 2022, was a collaborative effort involving teams from the University of Cambridge, the Alan Turing Institute, the University of Glasgow, and industry partner Scania. The research uses ideas from social sciences, ecology and epidemiology to understand and improve how machines work together.

By studying how a ‘fleet’ of machines – like vehicles in a road network – perform together, the team was able to make predictions about their performance more accurate. The team applied their method to predicting failures in heavy-duty truck fleets as well as power generation in wind farms.

Their method could now be used to help engineers make better decisions about maintenance and operations, making these systems more reliable and efficient.

Read more about the research in Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering.

Electron emissions

Shining light on molecules can cause them to emit electrons, in a process known as photoionization. Measuring the time it takes for electrons to exit the molecule can reveal information about interactions of the electrons themselves, which occur at the speed of attoseconds (millionths of a billionth of a second).

Illustration of a molecule being struck by light and emitting photos While techniques have been created to measure these movements, until now they were unable to probe the states of deep electrons that are tightly bound to the nucleus of the molecule.

A large international team, led by Stanford University and involving scientists from our Department of Physics, has now overcome this problem using attosecond pulses from the LCLS X-ray Free Electron Laser and converting time information into angular projections of the electrons at the detector.

Using this technique, the deep photoemission from the oxygen atom in a nitric oxide molecule was read out and found to show large photoemission delays. Theoretical modelling helped the team unravel the complex dynamics of core-level photoionization.