A week ago, on Sunday morning Eastern time, a wave of X-rays and gamma rays passed through the solar system. It triggered detectors aboard NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, and Wind spacecraft, as well as others. Around the world, telescopes were turned to the site to study the aftermath, and new observations continue. Called GRB 221009A, the explosion provided an unexpectedly exciting start to the 10th Fermi Symposium, a gathering of gamma-ray astronomers now underway in Johannesburg, South Africa....

A unique “heart-shape,” with wisps of gas filaments showing an intricate honeycomb-like arrangement, has been discovered at the center of the iconic supernova remnant, the Crab Nebula. Astronomers have mapped the void in unprecedented detail, creating a realistic three-dimensional reconstruction. The new work is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The Crab, formally known as Messier 1, exploded as a dramatic supernova in 1054 CE, and was observed over the subsequent months and years by ancient astronomers across the world....

The color-enhanced image was taken at 2:08 p.m. PDT (5:08 p.m. EDT) on October 29, 2018, as the spacecraft performed its 16th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno was about 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers) from the planet’s cloud tops, at approximately 14 degrees north latitude. In other words, the spacecraft was about as close to Jupiter as San Francisco is to Chicago, which is quite close when racing over a planet that’s 11 times wider than Earth....

Three-quarters of the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy are red dwarfs, which are smaller than the Sun and abundant in the solar neighborhood. They are thus crucial targets in the hunt for nearby extrasolar planets and extraterrestrial life. Red dwarfs are cooler than other kinds of stars and produce less visible light, which makes it challenging to study them. Red dwarfs are more visible at infrared wavelengths. In order to look for evidence of planets surrounding red dwarf stars, the Astrobiology Center in Japan created an infrared observational instrument mounted atop the Subaru Telescope....

There have been many documented cases of COVID-19 “super-spreading” events, in which one person infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus infects many other people. But how much of a role do these events play in the overall spread of the disease? A new study from MIT suggests that they have a much larger impact than expected. The study of about 60 super-spreading events shows that events where one person infects more than six other people are much more common than would be expected if the range of transmission rates followed statistical distributions commonly used in epidemiology....

New research suggests that violence and warfare were widespread in numerous Neolithic communities throughout Northwest Europe during a time period associated with the adoption of agriculture. Bioarchaeologists discovered that more than one in ten of the over 2300 skeletal remains of early farmers from 180 sites dating back to around 8000 – 4000 years ago displayed weapon injuries. Contrary to the view that the Neolithic era was marked by peaceful cooperation, the team of international researchers says that in some regions the period from 6000BC to 2000BC may be a high point in conflict and violence with the destruction of entire communities....

The scientists published their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The sense of well-being in primates in their late 20s to mid-30s, which is the equivalent of middle age, is low before it rebounds in old age. This could indicate that mid-life crises may not only affect humans, and that they could have a biological cause, rather than sociological. Humans, regardless of their wealth or status, experience a dip in happiness at middle age, which occurs during the mid-30s to late 50s....

Learning something that fundamentally changes how we understand our world doesn’t happen very often. But for University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) Earth scientist Matthew Jackson and the thousands of volcanologists across the globe, such a revelation has just occurred. While sampling magma from the Fagradalsfjall volcano in Iceland, Jackson and his colleagues uncovered a process far more dynamic than anyone had assumed in the two centuries that scientists have been studying volcanoes....

The requirement for technology that can capture, eliminate, and recycle carbon dioxide grows more pressing with each additional CO2 molecule that enters Earth’s atmosphere. To address this need, scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which is part of the Department of Energy, have achieved a major breakthrough in their efforts to make carbon capture more accessible and cost-effective. They have developed a novel system that effectively captures CO2, the most affordable to date, and transforms it into methanol, one of the world’s most commonly used chemicals....

Physicists at the University of Basel have developed a minuscule instrument able to detect extremely faint magnetic fields. At the heart of the superconducting quantum interference device are two atomically thin layers of graphene, which the researchers combined with boron nitride. Instruments like this one have applications in areas such as medicine, besides being used to research new materials. To measure very small magnetic fields, researchers often use superconducting quantum interference devices, or SQUIDs....

Experts in Japan have devised a simple way to glean more detailed information out of standard medical imaging scans. A research team made up of atomic physicists and nuclear medicine experts at the University of Tokyo and the National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS) has designed a timer that can enable positron emission tomography (PET) scanners to detect the oxygen concentration of tissues throughout patients’ bodies. This upgrade to PET scanners may lead to a future of better cancer treatment by quickly identifying parts of tumors with more aggressive cell growth....

Carbonics, Inc., partnered with the University of Southern California to develop a carbon nanotube technology that, for the first time, achieved speeds exceeding 100GHz in radio frequency applications. The milestone eclipses the performance — and efficiency — of traditional Radio Frequency Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor, known as RF-CMOS technology, that is ubiquitous in modern consumer electronics, including cell phones. “This milestone shows that carbon nanotubes, long thought to be a promising communications chip technology, can deliver,” said Dr....

In a discovery that could derail the popular “Hangover” movie franchise, a team of researchers led by engineer from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has identified a method for speeding up the body’s reaction to the consumption of alcohol. In a paper published online on February 17 in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Nanotechnology, Yunfeng Lu, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, and his colleagues describe successfully placing two complementary enzymes in a tiny capsule to speed up the elimination of alcohol from the body....

Imagine swarms of robotic insects moving around us as they perform various tasks. It might sound like science fiction, but it’s actually more plausible than you might think. Researchers at EPFL’s School of Engineering have developed a soft robotic insect, propelled at 3 cm (1.2 in) per second by artificial muscles. The team developed two versions of this soft robot, dubbed DEAnsect. The first, tethered using ultra-thin wires, is exceptionally robust....

Furthermore, this membrane was shown to be versatile; it was able to separate water from a wide variety of different oily substances. These results were published online in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A on October 3, 2019. Introduction The development of technology to separate oil from water is crucial for dealing with oil spills and water pollution generated by various industries. By 2025, it is predicted that two-thirds of the world’s population won’t have sufficient access to clean water....

When two neutron stars slam together, the result is sometimes a black hole that swallows all but the gravitational evidence of the collision. However, in a series of simulations, an international team of researchers including a Penn State scientist determined that these typically quiet—at least in terms of radiation we can detect on Earth—collisions can sometimes be far noisier. “When two incredibly dense collapsed neutron stars combine to form a black hole, strong gravitational waves emerge from the impact,” said David Radice, assistant professor of physics and of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State and a member of the research team....

USC researchers have potentially uncovered the major driving force behind the proliferation of fake news: the structure of social platforms that incentivize users to habitually share information. The team’s findings, recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, challenge common misconceptions that the spread of misinformation is due to a lack of critical thinking skills in discerning truth from falsehood or biases in political beliefs. Just 15% of the most habitual news sharers in the research were responsible for spreading about 30% to 40% of the fake news....

Gravitational waves and light were first witnessed in the same event in 2017. This second event in 2019, called GW190425, did not result in any light being detected; however, researchers have learned that the collision resulted in a merged object with an unusually high mass. OzGrav postdoctoral researcher Simon Stevenson says: “This event is a perfect example of how gravitational-wave astronomy is a completely new and unique way of looking at the Universe....

A study into the impact of flavored e-cigarettes, on allergic airways disease, suggests that some flavors may worsen the severity of diseases such as asthma. A study into the impact of flavored e-cigarettes, on allergic airways disease, suggests that some flavors may worsen the severity of diseases such as asthma. For the first time, a model of asthma was used to investigate the effect of a range of popular e-cigarette flavors, with and without nicotine....

The researchers carried out a new type of pollution analysis, using magnetism to study dust samples from Underground ticket halls, platforms, and operator cabins. The team found that the samples contained high levels of a type of iron oxide called maghemite. Since it takes time for iron to oxidize into maghemite, the results suggest that pollution particles are suspended for long periods, due to poor ventilation throughout the Underground, particularly on station platforms....