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Astronomers expect that galaxies grow by swallowing smaller galaxies. But the evidence is usually not easy to see — just as the remains of the water thrown from a glass into a pond will quickly merge with the pond water, the stars in the infalling galaxy merge in with the very similar stars of the bigger galaxy leaving no trace. But now a team of astronomers led by PhD student Alessia Longobardi at the Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Garching, Germany has applied a clever observational trick to clearly show that the nearby giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87 merged with a smaller spiral galaxy in the last billion years....

An innovative biomaterial has been developed that, when injected intravenously, reduces inflammation and stimulates cell and tissue repair. The efficacy of this biomaterial in treating heart attack-induced tissue damage was demonstrated through successful testing on both rodent and large animal models. The researchers also provided proof of concept, based on a rodent study, suggesting that the biomaterial may prove beneficial in the treatment of traumatic brain injury and pulmonary arterial hypertension....

A myriad of equipment including lasers, mirrors, a vacuum chamber, and microscopes assembled in Otago’s Department of Physics, plus a lot of time, energy, and expertise, have provided the ingredients to investigate this quantum process, which until now was only understood through statistical averaging from experiments involving large numbers of atoms. The experiment improves on current knowledge by offering a previously unseen view into the microscopic world, surprising researchers with the results....

Late Monday night, an image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the Curiosity rover and the components that helped it survive its seven-minute ordeal from space to its present location in Mars’ Gale Crater. “This latest image is another demonstration of the invaluable assistance the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter team, and its sister team with the Mars Odyssey orbiter, have provided the Curiosity rover during our early days on the Red Planet,” said Mike Watkins, mission manager for the Mars Science Laboratory mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California....

First, the light bluish boulders on the slope appear to originate at a layer of bedrock (also light blue) near the top of the section. Second, the dark thin lines are recurring slope lineae, probably also due to mass wasting, but composed of finer-grained materials. This image was captured by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

When it comes to predicting disasters brought on by extreme events (think earthquakes, pandemics, or “rogue waves” that could destroy coastal structures), computational modeling faces an almost insurmountable challenge: Statistically speaking, these events are so rare that there’s just not enough data on them to use predictive models to accurately forecast when they’ll happen next. However, a group of scientists from Brown University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests that it doesn’t have to be that way....

How’s the weather on Mars? Tough on rovers, but very good for generating and moving highly reactive chlorine compounds. New research from Washington University in St. Louis planetary scientists shows that Martian dust storms, like the one that eventually shut down the Opportunity rover, drive the cycle of chlorine from surface to atmosphere and may shed light on the potential for finding life on Mars. Recent research from Alian Wang, research professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences, and collaborators at WashU, Stony Brook University, Shandong University and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center builds on a previous examination of Martian dust storms as an essential factor in the chemical evolution of the red planet’s surface....

The way that many of us live has created the “perfect storm” for the evolution and transmission of infectious diseases like COVID-19 according to a researcher at the University of East Anglia. A new editorial published today describes how the world’s vast population of people, pets, and livestock has created an ideal breeding ground for infectious diseases which are passed between humans and animals. It shows how we urgently need to control the transmission of pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 by using vaccination passports, maximizing genetic variation in livestock, and reducing how much meat we eat....

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a crowd of stars that looks rather like a stadium darkened before a show, lit only by the flashbulbs of the audience’s cameras. Yet the many stars of this object, known as Messier 107, are not a fleeting phenomenon, at least by human reckoning of time — these ancient stars have gleamed for many billions of years. Messier 107 is one of more than 150 globular star clusters found around the disc of the Milky Way galaxy....

The prevalent view of white dwarfs as inert, slowly cooling stars has been challenged by observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. An international group of astronomers have discovered the first evidence that white dwarfs can slow down their rate of aging by burning hydrogen on their surface. “We have found the first observational evidence that white dwarfs can still undergo stable thermonuclear activity,” explained Jianxing Chen of the Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna and the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, who led this research....

This sprinkle of cosmic glitter is a blue compact dwarf galaxy known as Markarian 209. Galaxies of this type are blue-hued, compact in size, gas-rich, and low in heavy elements. They are often used by astronomers to study star formation, as their conditions are similar to those thought to exist in the early Universe. Markarian 209 in particular has been studied extensively. It is filled with diffuse gas and peppered with star-forming regions towards its core....

A dying star’s final moments are captured in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The death throes of this star may only last mere moments on a cosmological timescale, but this star’s demise is still quite lengthy by our standards, lasting tens of thousands of years! The star’s agony has culminated in a wonderful planetary nebula known as NGC 6565, a cloud of gas that was ejected from the star after strong stellar winds pushed the star’s outer layers away into space....

Turning its eye to the Tarantula Nebula, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken this close-up of the outskirts of the main cloud of the Nebula. The bright wispy structures are the signature of an environment rich in ionized hydrogen gas, called H II by astronomers. In reality these appear red, but the choice of filters and colors of this image, which includes exposures both in visible and infrared light, make the gas appear green....

Usually, the swirling discs of material surrounding a young star are funneled into twin outflows of gas and dust from the star. In the case of IRAS 05506+2414, however, a fan-like spray of material traveling at velocities of up to 350 kilometers per second (780,000 miles per hour) is spreading outwards from the center of this image. Astronomers turned to Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to measure the distance to IRAS 05506+2414....

Dense cores like CB 130-3 are of particular interest to astronomers because they are the birthplaces of stars. During the collapse of these cores, enough mass can accumulate in one place to reach the temperatures and densities required to ignite hydrogen fusion, marking the birth of a new star. Although it may not be obvious from this image, embedded deep within CB 130-3 is a compact object teetering on the brink of becoming a fully-fledged star....

“We observed that in the last two decades, there has been a significant increase in dryness in the atmosphere as well as in the atmospheric demand for water above the rainforest,” said JPL’s Armineh Barkhordarian, lead author of the study. “In comparing this trend to data from models that estimate climate variability over thousands of years, we determined that the change in atmospheric aridity is well beyond what would be expected from natural climate variability....

Following this advice for two weeks resulted in participants feeling happier, more satisfied, less stressed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and less depressed than participants in a control group. These results persisted even six months after the study’s conclusion. The scientists recently published their findings in the Journal of Public Health. The drawbacks of social media Social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp made sure that we still felt connected to other individuals throughout periods of lockdowns and contact limitations brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic....

The findings were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). VTE, an often fatal condition, affects approximately 900,000 people in the United States annually. This condition is a common complication for those in intensive care, as well as for individuals with medical issues like cancer and COVID-19. VTE includes deep vein thrombosis (a blood clot in a deep vein, typically in the leg) and pulmonary embolism (a blood clot in the lung)....

According to a new study published in PLOS Global Public Health, the use of the plant-based psychoactive substance ayahuasca is associated with a high rate of adverse physical effects and challenging psychological effects. However, these effects are generally not severe. The study, conducted by Daniel Perkins of the University of Melbourne and colleagues, is one of the few to analyze the adverse effects of ayahuasca, which is a traditional South American medicine and ceremonial drink that is gaining popularity for its potential mental health benefits and spiritual and personal growth properties....

Being Clean and Hygienic Need Not Impair Childhood Immunity The theory that modern society is too clean, leading to defective immune systems in children, should be swept under the carpet, according to a new study by researchers at UCL and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. In medicine, the ‘hygiene hypothesis’ states that early childhood exposure to particular microorganisms protects against allergic diseases by contributing to the development of the immune system....