Elliptical galaxies tend to contain a larger portion of older stars than spiral galaxies and also lack young blue stars. Messier 49 itself is very yellow, which indicates that the stars within it are mostly older and redder than the Sun. In fact, the last major episode of star formation was about six billion years ago — before the Sun was even born! Messier 49 is also rich in globular clusters; it hosts about 6000, a number that dwarfs the 150 found in and around the Milky Way....

The Universe loves to fool our eyes, giving the impression that celestial objects are located at the same distance from Earth. A good example can be seen in this spectacular image produced by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxies NGC 5011B and NGC 5011C are imaged against a starry background. Located in the constellation of Centaurus, the nature of these galaxies has puzzled astronomers. NGC 5011B (on the right) is a spiral galaxy belonging to the Centaurus Cluster of galaxies lying 156 million light-years away from the Earth....

This object is located in the nebula NGC 1977, which itself is part of a complex of three nebulae called The Running Man. NGC 1977 – like its companions NGC 1975 and NGC 1973 – is a reflection nebula, which means that it doesn’t emit light on its own, but reflects light from nearby stars, like a streetlight illuminating fog. Hubble observed this region to look for stellar jets and planet-forming disks around young stars, and examine how their environment affects the evolution of such disks....

Preclinical models that recapitulate aspects of human airway disease are essential for the advancement of novel therapeutics and vaccines. In the current study published in the journal mBIO, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine report the development of a versatile human nose organoid – a laboratory representation of the cells layering the inside of the nose where the first events of a natural viral infection take place. Using nose organoids, which model the complex interactions between human cells and virus, the team showed key differences between the infection by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and that of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a major pediatric respiratory virus, providing a better understanding of the first steps toward disease and leading to potential new therapies....

One of world’s earliest examples of art, the enigmatic `Venus’ figurines carved some 30,000 years ago, have intrigued and puzzled scientists for nearly two centuries. Now a researcher from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus believes he’s gathered enough evidence to solve the mystery behind these curious totems. The hand-held depictions of obese or pregnant women, which appear in most art history books, were long seen as symbols of fertility or beauty....

Astronomers have redefined one of the most commonly used stellar distances, the astronomical unit (AU). Based on the rough distance from Sol to Earth, AU has been transformed from a confusing equation to a simple number. Astronomers had adopted this simplification at this past summer’s International Astronomical Union meeting in Beijing, China, making the astronomical unit (AU) 149,597,870,700 meters. Previously, the AU was known as the radius of an unperturbed circular Newtonian orbit about the Sun of a particle having infinitesimal mass, moving with a mean motion of 0....

The images were obtained over approximately 14 hours as Cassini’s cameras stared at the active, icy moon. The view during the entire sequence is of the moon’s night side, but Cassini’s perspective Enceladus shifts during the sequence. The movie begins with a view of the part of the surface lit by reflected light from Saturn and transitions to completely unilluminated terrain. The exposure time of the images changes about halfway through the sequence, in order to make fainter details visible....

On a small slice of our planet’s surface, extending from southern and eastern Africa to the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Peninsula, astronomers could actually watch it live with their telescopes. Among those were a half dozen stations joined together for a dedicated observing campaign organized by ESA’s Planetary Defence Office and coordinated by the team of observers of the Agency’s Near-Earth Object Coordination Center (NEOCC). As usual, when such a time-dependent astronomical event happens, not all stations were successful in their observations: clouds, technical problems, and other issues always affect real-life observations....

Physicians may soon have a new way to screen patients for Barrett’s esophagus, a precancerous condition usually caused by chronic exposure to stomach acid. Researchers at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have developed an imaging system enclosed in a capsule about the size of a multivitamin pill that creates detailed, microscopic images of the esophageal wall. The system has several advantages over traditional endoscopy. “This system gives us a convenient way to screen for Barrett’s that doesn’t require patient sedation, a specialized setting, and equipment, or a physician who has been trained in endoscopy,” says Gary Tearney, MD, PhD, of the Wellman Center and the MGH Pathology Department, corresponding author of the report receiving online publication in Nature Medicine....

An international team of leading scientists, headed up by Paderborn physicist Professor Klaus Jöns, has compiled a comprehensive overview of the potential, global outlook, background, and frontiers of integrated photonics. The paper – a roadmap for integrated photonic circuits for quantum technologies – has now been published by renowned journal Nature Reviews Physics. The review outlines underlying technologies, presents the current state of play of research and describes possible future applications....

Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid more than five miles wide smashed into the Earth at 70,000 miles per hour, instantly vaporizing upon impact. The strike obliterated most terrestrial life, including the dinosaurs, in a geological instant: Heavy dust blocked out the sun, setting off a cataclysmic chain of events from the bottom of the food chain to the top, killing off more than three-quarters of Earth’s species — or so the popular theory goes....

The spectacular aurora borealis, or the “northern lights,” over Canada is sighted from the International Space Station near the highest point of its orbital path. The station’s main solar arrays are seen in the left foreground. This photograph was taken by a member of the Expedition 53 crew aboard the station on September 15, 2017.

Imagine, there’s a bus that arrives every 30 minutes on average and you arrive at the bus stop with no idea when the last bus left. How long can you expect to wait for the next bus? Intuitively, half of 30 minutes sounds right, but you’d be very lucky to wait only 15 minutes. Say, for example, that half the time the buses arrive at a 20-minute interval and half the time at a 40-minute interval....

Stephen Higgs, associate vice president for research and director of the university’s Biosecurity Research Institute, or BRI, together with colleagues from the BRI and the College of Veterinary Medicine had the findings published July 17 by Nature Scientific Reports. The article, “SARS-CoV-2 failure to infect or replicate in mosquitoes: an extreme challenge,” details the study’s findings, which provide the first experimental investigation on the capacity of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease, to infect and be transmitted by mosquitoes....

“In this case, first place is the worst place to be,” said NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad, Ph.D. “July is typically the world’s warmest month of the year, but July 2021 outdid itself as the hottest July and month ever recorded. This new record adds to the disturbing and disruptive path that climate change has set for the globe.” July 2021 by the numbers Around the globe: the combined land and ocean-surface temperature was 1....

Since that time, the explosive yield estimates varied widely, and in some cases, were inconsistent with what would be expected based on the amount of ammonium nitrate stored at the Beirut harbor. In addition, the crater size, seismic magnitude and mushroom cloud height seemed to be inconsistent. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) physicist Peter Goldstein has studied how water saturation of the explosive, ground and possibly water and debris from the near-source environment can help reconcile differences in the yield estimates obtained using these different measurements....

Located at the base of the brain above the pituitary gland, the hypothalamus produces hormones and helps regulate essential bodily functions including body temperature, mood, appetite, sex drive, sleep cycles, and heart rate. Structural effects of sex hormones, including oral contraceptive pills, on the human hypothalamus have never been reported, according to the researchers. This may be in part because validated methods to quantitatively analyze MRI exams of the hypothalamus have not been available....

Light-emitting diodes — LEDs — can do way more than illuminate your living room. These light sources are useful microelectronics too. Smartphones, for example, can use an LED proximity sensor to determine if you’re holding the phone next to your face (in which case the screen turns off). The LED sends a pulse of light toward your face, and a timer in the phone measures how long it takes that light to reflect back to the phone, a proxy for how close the phone is to your face....

The research, which was recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine, demonstrates that early intervention using cryoballoon catheter ablation (cryoablation), as opposed to the standard first step of treatment, antiarrhythmic drugs, is more effective at lowering the risk of significant long-term health effects. “By treating patients with cryoablation right from the start, we see fewer people advancing to persistent, more life-threatening forms of atrial fibrillation,” says Dr. Jason Andrade, an associate professor of medicine at UBC and director of Heart Rhythm Services at Vancouver General Hospital....

The research finds that after eBay improved its automatic translation program in 2014, commerce shot up by 10.9 percent among pairs of countries where people could use the new system. “That’s a striking number. To have it be so clear in such a short amount of time really says a lot about the power of this technology,” says Erik Brynjolfsson, an MIT economist and co-author of a new paper detailing the results....