Supermassive black holes lurk in the hearts of every large galaxy. Some blast out jets that can spill into its host galaxy or even beyond. The energy carried by the jets is deposited in the surrounding material, playing a crucial role in the evolution of the galaxy and, in extreme cases, other galaxies nearby. And thanks to recent observations of the famous galaxy Cygnus A with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have gotten a closer glimpse at just how those jets work — and ho ...read more

Tears often leave our faces feeling (and tasting) salty, but a closer look reveals the intricate patterns they can leave behind. Norm Barker, director of pathology photography at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, focused his microscope on a human teardrop, using a lighting technique to enhance contrast. Barker saw that as it started to dry, the salt and other substances in the teardrop bunched together and crystalized in these intricate, snowflakelike shapes. The picture ran ...read more

As technology advances, so do our fears about it. Socrates himself didn’t care for the new advancement of writing. And my parents were always on me to watch less TV. Yet now as a parent, I’m always trying to limit how much screentime my 3-year-old spends with a phone or tablet. After all, everyone knows little kids are drawn to those portable devices like moths to a touch-sensitive flame, right? Not so fast, suggests a study this week in JAMA Pediatrics. De ...read more

The town of Kabwe sits about 70 miles north of Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, as the crow flies. Just over 200,000 people live in this major transportation crossroads. Like most of this south-central African nation, Kabwe is perched on a high and vast plateau, a land of red soils dotted with shrubby legumes and canopies of small, spindly miombo trees. Kabwe’s story is defined in part by a mine that opened in the early 1900s after rich deposits of lead and zinc were discovered on the edge ...read more

Consider the humble grape. Small, spheroid, with pleasantly taut skin, leaving a burst of sweetness on the tongue. Hardly a fruit you'd need to defend yourself against. Put a gently touching pair in the microwave, though, and the inoffensive fruit turns into a literal firecracker. Within just a few seconds, microwaved grapes will begin sparking as if electrified, and in some cases they'll even produce a flash of plasma bright enough to make the microwave glow from the inside out. ...read more

For the first time ever, astronomers think they've discovered an exoplanet that survived a catastrophic collision with another planet. And according to the new research, which was published Feb. 4, in the journal Nature Astronomy, the evidence for the impact comes from two twin exoplanets that seem to be more fraternal than identical. Mass Matters The pair of planets in question orbit a Sun-like star (along with two other planets) in the Kepler-107 system, which is located roughly 1,700 li ...read more

In the quest to fend off forgetfulness, some people build a palace of memory. It’s a method for memorizing invented in ancient times by (legend has it) the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos, more recently made popular by multiple best-selling books (and the “mind palace” of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes). Memory palaces provide imaginary architectural repositories for storing and retrieving anything you would like to remember. Sixteen centuries ago, St. Augustine spo ...read more

Valentine cards are filled with expressions of unequivocal adoration and appreciation. That’s fitting for the holiday set aside to express love and reaffirm commitment to one’s romantic partner. But what if there’s more going on below the surface of these adoring declarations? How might thoughts and feelings that people are not even aware of shape their romantic relationships? We are two psychology researchers interested in how the mind works, and how it affects a variety o ...read more

The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa 2 is ready to touch down on asteroid Ryugu and should do so later this week. On Monday morning, Japanese officials confirmed that the spacecraft will attempt to land at 6 p.m. EST on Thursday, Feb. 21. The spacecraft has been in orbit around Ryugu since June of 2018. Once it reaches the surface, it will start its main mission of collecting samples from Ryugu’s surface. Eventually, it will return those samples to Earth for study. Originally, ...read more

(Inside Science) – New research suggests that megaliths -- monuments such as Stonehenge created from large rocks during the Stone and Copper Ages in Europe -- owe their origins to a mysterious culture from northwest France with advanced seafaring technology. Roughly 35,000 megaliths are known throughout Europe, including standing stones, stone circles and megalithic tombs. Most megaliths date from 4500 to 2500 B.C., are concentrated in coastal areas along the Atlantic and Mediterranean an ...read more