X-rays from nuclear explosions can protect Earth from asteroids
An asteroid heading toward Earth can be deflected without ever touching a spacecraft. The trick is to use X-rays to deflect the space rock, researchers report Sept. 23 Nature Physics. In laboratory experiments, scientists heated the surfaces of free-falling artificial asteroids with X-ray radiation, producing steam plumes that blew the objects away. Later computer simulations […]
Barnard’s star has at least one planet orbiting it
A red dwarf star known as Barnard’s Star, located just six light-years from our solar system, has at least one — and possibly a handful — of small rocky planets orbiting it, a new study suggests. . Barnard’s Star, which is about one-sixth the mass of our sun, is the closest individual star to our […]
Some fleas do not poop for weeks. This keeps their pools clean
Some tadpoles do not poop in the first weeks of their lives. At least, this is the case for Eiffinger’s tree frogs (Kurixalus eiffingeri), scientists report on September 22 at Ecology. Eiffinger tree frogs are small frogs that live in Taiwan and two Japanese islands: Ishigaki and Iriomote. Tree-dwelling amphibians lay their eggs in small […]
50 years ago, satellites threatened astronomers’ view of the cosmos
Satellites interfere with radio astronomy – Scientific news, October 5, 1974 In the past, satellites and probes launched by NASA and others successfully avoided conflict with the radio frequency bands reserved for radio astronomy. But now there is trouble. The offenders are two large US satellites launched in May…. When one of the satellites is […]
A neutrino mass mismatch could shake cosmology’s foundations
As the youthful universe congealed under the pull of gravity, matter knotted itself into galaxies, galaxy clusters and filaments, weaving a dazzlingly intricate cosmic web. This web’s structure is thanks, in part, to the handiwork of neutrinos — lightweight, subatomic particles that surge through the cosmos in unimaginable numbers. Because they streak about at high […]
This engineer’s light-based computers take inspiration from the brain
Bhavin Shastri still gets excited when he sees a laser pointer, and he’s been fascinated by them since he was about 10 years old. “I was amazed that a light beam could maintain its brightness, centered in a tiny spot even after traveling a great distance,” Shastri says. “A laser pointer in my hand felt like a […]
A brain network linked to attention is larger in people with depression
Symptoms of depression fluctuate over time, but many brain imaging studies of the condition only study one point in time. That’s made it hard to connect networks of brain activity to various symptoms and mood changes. Now, a new study using long-term brain imaging data shows one brain network involved in guiding attention is nearly […]
How did dark matter shape the universe? This physicist has ideas
At age 12, Tracy Slatyer felt sorry for a book. She read a newspaper article about how lots of people were buying A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. “But then … nobody was actually reading it,” she says. “People were just leaving it on their coffee tables.” Determined to rectify this wrong, Slatyer […]
A materials scientist seeks to extract lithium from untapped sources
Electric vehicles promise to help wean us off of fossil fuels, but they introduce a new problem: how to get enough of the lithium that EV batteries require (SN: 5/7/19). Materials scientist Chong Liu of the University of Chicago has some ideas. Existing technology can extract lithium only from sources with highly concentrated ions, like […]
A study in mice hints at a new way to treat spinal cord injuries
After a devastating spinal cord injury, mice’s nerve cells balloon up in size. Some of these neurons stay swollen longer than expected and begin to die, a study published September 25 in Science Translational Medicine shows. A drug that brought this swelling down improved the mice’s recovery, though it’s not yet known if the approach […]