Science

June's night sky delivers several must-see events, starting with a close encounter between Venus and Jupiter after sunset. Mercury joins the pair to form a rare three-planet lineup, while the Moon puts on a special show by passing in front of Venus for viewers in parts of the Americas. The month also marks the start of astronomical summer and the return of spectacular deep-sky targets like the Ring Nebula and Veil Nebula.

The early Universe is full of massive galaxies that stopped forming stars very early. They're called massive quenchers (MQ) and they're challenging to explain. New research shows that another type of galaxy, dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs) can explain why. It's all about mergers, starbursts, and AGN feedback.

A UN report warns of the rapid growth in AI energy consumption, but suggests users can improve efficiency by making prompts more concise

A quantum computer made from extremely cold atoms can correct its own errors during long computations, an important prerequisite for becoming truly useful

Astronomers studying wind speeds on distant exoplanets have discovered weather systems driven by magnetic fields, rather than the largely hydrodynamic weather patterns observed on Earth. This discovery is among the best evidence yet for the existence of magnetic fields on exoplanets.

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory recreated part of the intense chaos inside a nuclear fireball to better understand how radioactive fallout forms. Their experiments revealed that the way vaporized materials cool can dramatically change the particles that eventually form, especially for volatile elements like cesium.

The new Jesus and Mo strip, called “butt2,” is, as the caption say, “A resurrection from 2006 – Ganesh’s debut appearance in the strip.”

And it has a pretty bad pun!

The strength of gravity is different on every body in the solar system. Whether it's the crushing weight of Jupiter or the miniscule pull of a small asteroid, this fundamental force of physics still has a major impact on the material those bodies are made up of. A new paper from researchers at the University of Duisburg-Essen and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) showcases just how different it can be by letting planetary simulants freefall inside a giant drop tower and measuring how “fluffy” the space dirt got.

Restricting carbohydrates may sound like an unlikely approach to treating anorexia, but following a ketogenic diet was linked to recovery in 3 in 4 people with the eating disorder in a small trial

Researchers discovered a way to reverse the direction of energy flow in turbulence, challenging a theory that has stood for more than 80 years. The finding could open new possibilities for controlling ocean currents, improving medical technologies, and enhancing climate forecasting.

For my entire career as a neurologist the ability to repair an injured spinal cord has been one of the holy grails. There has always been promising new research that definitely increases our knowledge but doesn’t lead to an effective treatment. This is not for lack of trying – I also remember the period when Christopher Reeve was a tireless promoter of […]

The post In Animal Study, Nanobots Repair Spinal Cords first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Researchers studying a 5300-year-old mummified man have identified bacteria that lived in his gut when he was alive, as well as cold-tolerant fungi that colonised his body after death

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is assessing damage to its launch pad after a rocket exploded during a test firing, creating a giant orange fireball seen and felt for miles around.

Galactic collisions are events of breathtaking proportions. The Supermassive Black Holes (SMBHs) at their centers plunge into a chaotic orbital dance that eventually coalesce into a single remnant. On their way to that point, they could eventually get “kicked” out of the center of their galaxy - and finding these “recoiling” black holes has been a challenge of cosmology for decades. A new paper, available on arXiv by an international team, used a novel idea to track down these fast-moving behemoths.

The prototype ngVLA antenna tested its systems by observing and tracking the Crab Nebula, also known as Taurus A (3C144), the remnant of an exploded star.

It might not seem like it, but the Moon is constantly being both sandblasted and baked. Its lack of a thick atmosphere allows micrometeorites to impact the surface at speed, and the solar wind isn’t held back either, baking the regolith with a constant flow of high-energy particles. These processes drive what is called “space weathering”, and it can drastically alter the physical and chemical properties of the lunar dirt over the course of billions of years. And we’re finally getting a better sense of what that means in practice thanks to two new papers from researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Peking University, which used advanced electron tomography and spectroscopic techniques to analyze samples returned from the Chang’e-5 mission to the near side of the Moon.

Ages 40 to 65 see a period of turmoil in the brain that has previously been overlooked. But identifying problems during this time can protect your cognitive health for decades to come

Our understanding of the electromagnetic spectrum goes back to Isaac Newton, but astronomers are still finding new ways to employ it. Astrophysicist Emma Chapman explores how much these invisible waves can reveal to us about the cosmos – and whether they might show us that we’re not alone

Though it's a toxic chemical, hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is also important for the development of life. It's a precursor to things like amino acids and nucleic acids and plays a central role in theories of the origin of life on Earth. Recently, difficult questions have been asked about how it could have formed on the early Earth. But the authors of new research in PNAS seemed to have figured it out.

The search for any sign of life on Mars continues. In the latest update, a new data release from Curiosity’s Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) - essentially the rover’s portable X-ray diffraction lab - and published in a paper in Science, analyzes 20 different rock samples from various elevations of Mount Sharp, the mountain in the center of Gale Crater that Curiosity has been slowly climbing. In the paper, the researchers describe how the size of the crystals in those samples could help scientists determine where to look for evidence that life might have evolved on the Red Planet.