SciGlow | All Science News In One Place
SciGlow is a newsletter of science stories from the major research labs. Headlines link to in-depth articles and editorials. SciGlow keeps scientists and others up-to-date on current research.
Using sophisticated computer simulations and observations, a team led by researchers from the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Tokyo Institute of Technology has shown how the so-called trans-Neptunian Objects (or TNOs) may have formed. TNOs, which include the dwarf planet Pluto, are a group of icy and rocky small bodies—smaller than planets but larger than … Read more
Researchers in Korea reported in 2019 June 24th issue of Nature Astronomy that a giant smash of two clusters of galaxies can form bar structure, an important structure inside many spiral galaxies. It has been known that galaxies, systems made of hundreds of billions of stars, can take many different shapes. The reason why galaxies … Read more
For the first time, astronomers have found two giant clusters of galaxies that are just about to collide. This observation can be seen as a missing ‘piece of the puzzle’ in our understanding of the formation of structure in the Universe, since large-scale structures—such as galaxies and clusters of galaxies—are thought to grow by collisions … Read more
Dying stars that cast off their outer envelopes to form the beautiful yet enigmatic “planetary nebulae” (PNe) have a new heavy-weight champion, the innocuously named PNe “BMP1613-5406”. Massive stars live fast and die young, exploding as powerful supernovae after only a few million years. However, the vast majority of stars, including our own Sun, have … Read more
Salt-tolerant bacteria grown in brine were able to revive after the brine was put through a cycle of drying and rewetting. The research has implications for the possibility of life on Mars, as well as for the danger of contaminating Mars and other planetary bodies with terrestrial microbes. The research is presented at ASM Microbe … Read more
Astronomers have long observed clouds in Mars’ middle atmosphere, which begins about 18 miles (30 kilometers) above the surface, but have struggled to explain how they formed. Now, a new study, which will be published on June 17 in the journal Nature Geoscience, examines those wispy accumulations and suggests that they owe their existence to a … Read more
On June 10, 2019, the British academic journal Nature Astronomy published a major breakthrough in the measurement of interstellar magnetic field: “Magnetic Field Morphology in Interstellar Clouds with the Velocity Gradient Technique”. The result came from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Alex Lazarian Professor’s research team, including UW-Madison physics graduate student Yue Hu and astronomy graduate student … Read more
Evidence for the ancient, 1.2 billion years old, meteorite strike, was first discovered in 2008 near Ullapool, NW Scotland by scientists from Oxford and Aberdeen Universities. The thickness and extent of the debris deposit they found suggested the impact crater – made by a meteorite estimated at 1km wide – was close to the coast, … Read more
Astronomers have directly imaged two exoplanets that are gravitationally carving out a wide gap within a planet-forming disk surrounding a young star. While over a dozen exoplanets have been directly imaged, this is only the second multi-planet system to be photographed. (The first was a four-planet system orbiting the star HR 8799.) Unlike HR 8799, … Read more
A paper published today in the Journal of Geology makes the case: Supernovae bombarded Earth with cosmic energy starting as many as 8 million years ago, with a peak some 2.6 million years ago, initiating an avalanche of electrons in the lower atmosphere and setting off a chain of events that feasibly ended with bipedal hominins such … Read more