Two neutron stars merge into a kilonova. (Credit: Illustration by Robin Dienel, courtesy of the Carnegie Institution for Science)
For hundreds of millions of years, two city-sized stars in a galaxy not-so-far away circled each other in a fatal dance. Their dimensions were diminutive, but each outweighed our sun.
They were neutron stars — the collapsed cores left behind after giant stars explode into supernovas. Closer and closer they spun, shedding gravitational energy, until the stars t ...read more
The Journal of Neuroscience recently featured a debate over the hypothesis that Parkinson’s disease is, at least in some cases, caused by prions – misfolded proteins that spread from neuron to neuron.
A prion is a protein that has taken on an abnormal shape and that can spread itself by making other, healthy molecules of the same protein adopt its abnormal configuration. The best-known prion disease is variant CJD aka “mad cow disease”, but some researchers believe that ...read more
The LIGO detector in Livingston, Louisiana. (Credit: LIGO Collaboration)
The massive collaboration of scientists that’s hunting gravitational waves—with a lot of success—is set to make another big announcement on Monday.
A flurry of press releases this week have teased the news, which is set to break on Oct. 16, although they’ve been short on details. At 10 a.m. Eastern, a team from the groundbreaking gravitational wave detector LIGO will make an announcement at th ...read more
Drones are helping scientists understand Earth’s lava flows, which could tell us more about ancient Mars. (Credit: Shuttershock)
Lava flow: an unstoppable destructive force that burns pretty much everything in its path. When a volcano erupts, it’s important that people in surrounding areas have adequate time to evacuate. To provide those crucial extra hours, or minutes, researchers are using drones to improve hazard predictions, and perhaps tell us something about life on ancient Ma ...read more
Oh, artificial intelligence, how quickly you grow up. Just three months ago you were learning to walk, and we watched you take your first, flailing steps.
Today, you’re out there kicking a soccer ball around and wrestling. Where does the time go?
Indeed, for the past few months we’ve stood by like proud parents and watched AI reach heartwarming little milestones. In July, you’ll recall, Google’s artificial intelligence company in the United Kingdom, DeepMind, developed a ...read more
By: Dr. Libby Ellwood
Each year, millions of people flock to natural history museums to see examples of plants, animals, gemstones and more from places around the world. But what those visitors *don’t* get to see are the countless additional specimens behind the scenes.
These specimen collections, housed at museums, universities, and other institutions, are an invaluable resource for understanding biodiversity around the world over long spans of time. Yet billions of these specimens l ...read more
Artist’s interpretation of a cancer cell. (Credit: Shutterstock)
Bugula neritina is a rather inconspicuous marine organism. It looks like purplish seaweed, but it’s actually a branching colony of individual, tentacled zooids (the technical term for individuals in a colonial invertebrate) that resemble badminton shuttlecocks. It’s abundant, invasive and widely viewed as a pest as it accumulates on ships, dock sides, buoys and intake valves.
It might also contain a cure to some ...read more
