Astronomy & Astrophysics publishes the work of researchers from the University of Vienna, who have found a river of stars, a stellar stream in astronomical parlance, covering most of the southern sky. The stream is relatively nearby and contains at least 4000 stars that have been moving together in space since they formed, about 1 …
Just under three months after the final proton–proton collisions from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)’s second run (Run 2), the CMS collaboration has submitted its first paper based on the full LHC dataset collected in 2018 – the largest sample ever collected at the LHC – and data collected in 2016 and 2017. The findings …
Astronomers have spent decades looking for something that sounds like it would be hard to miss: about a third of the “normal” matter in the Universe. New results from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory may have helped them locate this elusive expanse of missing matter. From independent, well-established observations, scientists have confidently calculated how much normal …
UCLA researchers and collaborators at eight other research institutions have created an extremely light, very durable ceramic aerogel. The material could be used for applications like insulating spacecraft because it can withstand the intense heat and severe temperature changes that space missions endure. Ceramic aerogels have been used to insulate industrial equipment since the 1990s, …
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have used one of the most advanced microscopes in the world to reveal the structure of a large protein complex crucial to photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert sunlight into cellular energy. The finding, published in the journal Nature, will allow scientists …
Proper development of the fetal penis requires not just testosterone from the testes, but a second hormone produced by other tissues, including the placenta, according to a new study publishing February 14 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology from Paul Fowler of the University of Aberdeen, Michelle Bellingham of the University of Glasgow, and colleagues …
Three years ago, when Richard Robinson, associate professor of materials science and engineering, was on sabbatical at Hebrew University in Israel, he asked a graduate student to send him some nanoparticles of a specific size. “When they got to me, I measured them with the spectrometer and I said, ‘Wait, you sent me the smaller …
Researchers have uncovered new evidence about the agriculturally important process of vernalization in a development that could help farmers deal with financially damaging weather fluctuations. Vernalization is the process by which plants require prolonged exposure to cold temperature before they transition from the vegetative state to flower. For decades it’s been a key focus of …
Most schoolchildren learn that the Earth has three (or four) layers: a crust, mantle and core, which is sometimes subdivided into an inner and outer core. That’s not wrong, but it does leave out several other layers that scientists have identified within the Earth. In a study published this week in Science, Princeton geophysicists Jessica …
Measurements of gravitational waves from approximately 50 binary neutron stars over the next decade will definitively resolve an intense debate about how quickly our universe is expanding, according to findings from an international team that includes University College London (UCL) and Flatiron Institute cosmologists. The cosmos has been expanding for 13.8 billion years. Its present …
