A long time ago gravity drew the two galaxies together into the chaotic state we now observe. Stars from within both of the original galaxies now follow new trajectories caused by the new gravitational effects. However, actual collisions between stars themselves are very rare as stars are very small relative to the distances between them (most of a galaxy is empty space). Eventually things will settle down and one day the two galaxies will have fully merged to form a single, stable galaxy....

Utilizing Hubble’s past observations of six massive galaxy clusters in the Frontier Fields program, astronomers demonstrated that intracluster light — the diffuse glow between galaxies in a cluster — traces the path of dark matter, illuminating its distribution more accurately than existing methods that observe X-ray light. Intracluster light is the byproduct of interactions between galaxies that disrupt their structures; in the chaos, individual stars are thrown free of their gravitational moorings in their home galaxy to realign themselves with the gravity map of the overall cluster....

The right side of the galaxy is ablaze with star formation, shown in the plethora of young blue stars and star-incubating pinkish nebulas. The left side, however, looks intact. It contains hints of the galaxy’s previous spiral structure, which, at one time, was undergoing normal galactic evolution. The larger culprit galaxy, NGC 4490, is off the bottom of the frame. The two galaxies sideswiped each other millions of years ago and are now 24,000 light-years apart....

Climate change associated with emerging disease spread. Humans are creating or exacerbating the environmental conditions that could lead to further pandemics, new University of Sydney research finds. Modeling from the Sydney School of Veterinary Science suggests pressure on ecosystems, climate change, and economic development are key factors associated with the diversification of pathogens (disease-causing agents, like viruses and bacteria). This has the potential to lead to disease outbreaks. The research, by Dr....

While hyenas have often been depicted as slobbering, dim-witted fools in animated movies, a new study shows that the African carnivores are adept at problem-solving, and can even count. This makes scientists believe that Hyaenidae could have comparable intelligence levels to some primates. The scientists published their findings in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Hyaenidae are highly social animals, competing with each other and other packs that invade their territories....

The warmer the air, the more water can evaporate: a simple relationship familiar to us from everyday life. Researchers from Germany and the Netherlands have now established that this is not always the case: although an increase in the greenhouse gas CO2 makes the climate warmer, it also allows less water to evaporate. Plants, with their billions of tiny leaf pores, are the cause of this apparent contradiction. They influence the gas and moisture content of the air around them....

A team of international researchers from Canada, Colombia, and Germany has discovered a new extinct marine reptile. The specimen, a stunningly preserved meter-long skull, is one of the last surviving ichthyosaurs – ancient animals that look eerily like living swordfish. “This animal evolved a unique dentition that allowed it to eat large prey,” says Hans Larsson, Director of the Redpath Museum at McGill University. “Whereas other ichthyosaurs had small, equally sized teeth for feeding on small prey, this new species modified its tooth sizes and spacing to build an arsenal of teeth for dispatching large prey, like big fishes and other marine reptiles....

Geoscientists from Goethe University have found the largest extraterrestrial diamonds ever discovered – a few tenths of a millimeter in size nevertheless – inside meteorites. Together with an international team of researchers, they have now been able to prove that these diamonds formed in the early period of our solar system when minor planets collided together or with large asteroids. These new data disprove the theory that they originated deep inside planets – similar to diamonds formed on Earth – at least the size of Mercury....

Although the COVID-19 pandemic caused many disruptions across the educational system, it also led to some surprising benefits. In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) describe their work with students on an at-home study of complex fluid behavior. The course covers rheology, a type of physics that is used to study the way non-Newtonian liquids or semisolid substances flow. Newtonian fluids have a constant viscosity, but non-Newtonian fluids can deform when force is applied....

Radiation can damage the genetic material of living organisms and generate undesirable mutations. However, one of the most interesting research topics in Chernobyl is trying to detect if some species are actually adapting to live with radiation. As with other pollutants, radiation could be a very strong selective factor, favoring organisms with mechanisms that increase their survival in areas contaminated with radioactive substances. Melanin protection against radiation Our work in Chernobyl began in 2016....

Men with high levels of body fat have lower bone density and may be more likely to break a bone than those with normal levels of body fat, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. Most studies have shown positive or neutral effects of body fat mass—the weight of fat in your body—on bone health. Lean mass is the entire weight of your body, including organs, skin and bones, minus fat....

The closest planet to the sun appears to get hit by a periodic meteor shower, possibly associated with a comet that produces multiple events annually on Earth. The clues pointing to Mercury’s shower were discovered in the very thin halo of gases that make up the planet’s exosphere, which is under study by NASA’s MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) spacecraft. “The possible discovery of a meteor shower at Mercury is really exciting and especially important because the plasma and dust environment around Mercury is relatively unexplored,” said Rosemary Killen, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study, available online in Icarus....

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard Suomi NPP provided a visible image of the storm on August 26, 2019. The VIIRS image showed the storm had taken on somewhat of a comma shape. That shape and the storm’s thunderstorm pattern changed over the course of the day because dry air moved into mid-level areas of the storm, suppressing thunderstorm development. A tropical cyclone is made up of hundreds of thunderstorms, so when development is inhibited, it affects the storm’s strength and sometimes the shape of the storm, depending on the direction from which the dry air comes....

While Callie’s story is fictional, the first woman and the first person of color will walk on the Moon, achieving these historic milestones as part of NASA’s Artemis missions. Through this graphic novel, NASA aims to inspire the next generation of explorers – the Artemis Generation. Download, read, and interact with “First Woman” or listen to the audio version exclusively on NASA’s SoundCloud. “The story of Callie captures how passion, dedication, and perseverance allow us to turn our dreams into reality,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy....

NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover has reached the Red Planet’s Mount Sharp, a Mount-Rainier-size mountain at the center of the vast Gale Crater and the rover mission’s long-term prime destination. “Curiosity now will begin a new chapter from an already outstanding introduction to the world,” said Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “After a historic and innovative landing along with its successful science discoveries, the scientific sequel is upon us....

The map is projected here at a scale of 50 centimeters (19.7 inches) per pixel. The original image scale is 61.5 centimeters (24.2 inches) per pixel (with 2 x 2 binning); objects on the order of 185 centimeters (72.8 inches) across are resolved. North is up. An enhanced-color image cutout shows recent gullies with bright colors.

TESS Object of Interest (TOI) 270 is a faint, cool star more commonly identified by its catalog name: UCAC4 191-004642. The M-type dwarf star is about 40% smaller than the Sun in both size and mass, and it has a surface temperature about one-third cooler than the Sun’s. The planetary system lies about 73 light-years away in the southern constellation of Pictor. “This system is exactly what TESS was designed to find — small, temperate planets that pass, or transit, in front of an inactive host star, one lacking excessive stellar activity, such as flares,” said lead researcher Maximilian Günther, a Torres Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research in Cambridge....

“Archaeologists have long been asking questions about the character and temporal depth of human intervention in our planet’s ecosystems. We are increasingly seeing very early, generally weak signs of this,” says Wil Roebroeks, Archaeology professor at Leiden University. These signs proved much stronger in research at a lignite quarry near Halle in Germany. Archaeological research has been carried out at this quarry, Neumark-Nord, in the last few decades, and alongside a huge amount of data about the early environment, abundant traces of Neanderthal activities have been found....

More than forty existing brain maps have now been collected in one place by a team from The Neuro. Called neuromaps, the database will help researchers find correlations between patterns across different brain regions, modalities, spatial scales, and brain functions. To assist researchers in differentiating between a relevant association and a random pattern, it offers a standardized space to see each map in comparison to one another and evaluates the statistical significance of these comparisons....

In a new study, theoretical physicists report that materials made from tapered chains of spherical beads could help dampen sounds that lie at the upper range of human hearing or just beyond. The impacts of such noises on health are uncertain. But some research suggests that effects could include nausea, headaches, dizziness, impaired hearing, or other symptoms. “There is a fair amount of ultrasonic stuff around us, and much of it has effects that are unknown....