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Aerosol microdroplets, the tiny particles that linger in the air longest after we talk, cough, or sneeze, do not appear to be extremely efficient at spreading the virus that leads to COVID-19. Modeling of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in confined spaces suggests aerosol transmission is not a very efficient route. The results were published in Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing. Physicists and medical doctors at the University of Amsterdam’s Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute used laser technology to measure the distribution of droplets released when people speak or cough....

“Everyone knows an asteroid the size of Manhattan caused a mass extinction 66 million years ago. The composition and distribution of life on Earth today cannot be understood except in light of this cataclysm,” said Yale professor of geology and geophysics Jacques Gauthier, co-author of a study published May 24 in Current Biology. Gauthier is curator of vertebrate paleontology and vertebrate zoology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History....

Including 94,400 more deaths than expected in the UK alone. Almost 1 million extra deaths relating to the COVID-19 pandemic occurred in 29 high income countries in 2020, finds a study published by The BMJ today. Except for Norway, Denmark and New Zealand, all other countries examined had more deaths than expected in 2020, particularly in men. The five countries with the highest absolute number of excess deaths were the US, UK, Italy, Spain, and Poland....

It is totally worth it! For my whole life, I have wanted this job. I first told my parents that I wanted to be an astronaut when I was three years old. The goal shaped many decisions and sacrifices I made growing up and in adulthood. Thirty-six years after I first told my parents my dream, I got my shot to fly in space. And it was more amazing than I could have ever imagined!...

The annual ozone hole reached its peak extent of 6.3 million square miles (16. 4 million square kilometers) on September 8, and then shrank to less than 3.9 million square miles (10 million square kilometers) for the remainder of September and October, according to NASA and NOAA satellite measurements. During years with normal weather conditions, the ozone hole typically grows to a maximum area of about 8 million square miles (20....

The White Sea Biological Station sits at latitude 66° N, just on the cusp of the Arctic Circle, and on the shores of the White Sea, a lone arctic biologist explores the depths of the waters, photographing stunning pictures of arctic life. The only way to get there is by boat in summer and by snowmobile in winter. Alexander Semenov, a marine biologist, has one of the world’s most unlikely placed photo studios, where he photographs arctic sea creatures and shares them worldwide....

The device, developed by a team from the University of Cambridge, is a significant step toward achieving artificial photosynthesis — a process mimicking the ability of plants to convert sunlight into energy. It is based on an advanced ‘photosheet’ technology and converts sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and formic acid — a storable fuel that can be either be used directly or be converted into hydrogen. The results, reported in the journal Nature Energy, represent a new method for the conversion of carbon dioxide into clean fuels....

Flight Engineers Nicole Mann of NASA and Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) relaxed Friday morning after conducting a six-hour and 41-minute spacewalk on Thursday. The duo completed the installation of hardware on the station’s Starboard-4 truss readying the orbiting lab for its next roll-out solar array. The pair then went into the afternoon with standard post-spacewalk medical checks before cleaning up the Quest airlock where their spacewalking tools and Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMUs), or spacesuits, are stowed....

Mann and Wakata completed work left over from a previous spacewalk for a platform on which a set of International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Arrays (iROSAs) for the station’s 1B power channel will be installed later this year, as well as most of the work to install a similar mounting platform for a set of iROSAs for the 1A power channel. Due to time constraints, plans to bolt a final strut for the second platform were deferred until a future spacewalk....

Two processes in particular are responsible for the enhanced radiation: bursts of star formation or the fueling of the supermassive black hole at a galaxy’s core (an active galactic nuclei – AGN). Although in principle these two processes are quite different and should be readily distinguishable (AGN, for example, produces much hotter ultraviolet and X-ray radiation), in practice the discriminating features can be faint and/or obscured by dust in the galaxies....

The iron and nickel rich planetesimal survived a system-wide cataclysm that followed the death of its host star, SDSS J122859.93+104032.9. Believed to have once been part of a larger planet, its survival is all the more astonishing as it orbits closer to its star than previously thought possible, going around it once every two hours. The discovery, reported in the journal Science, is the first time that scientists have used spectroscopy to discover a solid body in orbit around a white dwarf, using subtle variations in the emitted light to identify additional gas that the planetesimal is generating....

The team reconstructed the galaxies’ motions from 13 billion years in the past to the present day. The main gravitational attractor in the mapped area is the Virgo Cluster, with 600 trillion times the mass of the Sun, 50 million light years from us. Over a thousand galaxies have already fallen into the Virgo Cluster, while in the future all galaxies that are currently within 40 million light-years of the cluster will be captured....

Until now, little was known about the precise rotational patterns of Sun-like stars, only that the equator spins faster than at higher latitudes, similar to the Sun. Scientists at the NYU Abu Dhabi Center for Space Science used observations from NASA’s Kepler mission and asteroseismology — the study of sound waves traveling inside stars — to determine with precision how Sun-like stars rotate, which no other scientific method has been able to achieve....

Black widow spiders and their Australian cousins, known as redbacks, are notorious for their tainted love, expressed as an unsettling tendency to kill and devour their male partners. Astronomers have noted similar behavior among two rare breeds of binary system that contain rapidly spinning neutron stars, also known as pulsars. “The essential features of black widow and redback binaries are that they place a normal but very low-mass star in close proximity to a millisecond pulsar, which has disastrous consequences for the star,” said Roger Romani, a member of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, an institute run jointly by Stanford and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California....

A team of scientists from the Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU) under the supervision of the astrophysicist Evgenij Zubko, Ph.D., a lead scientist of the School of Natural Sciences at FEFU is trying to solve a fundamental problem of modern astrophysics which is to assess the reflectivity of cosmic dust particles, their ability to scatter sunlight (or, more generally, star light). To do so, the scientists study the optic characteristics of dust particles in the comae and tails of comets....

The collision could occur much earlier than the predicted impact between the Milky Way and another neighboring galaxy, Andromeda, which scientists say will hit our galaxy in eight billion years. The catastrophic coming together with the Large Magellanic Cloud could wake up our galaxy’s dormant black hole, which would begin devouring surrounding gas and increase in size by up to ten times. As it feeds, the now-active black hole would throw out high-energy radiation and while these cosmic fireworks are unlikely to affect life on Earth, the scientists say there is a small chance that the initial collision could send our Solar System hurtling into space....

The team will continue work on developing and testing changes to instrument software that would allow them to conduct science operations even if they encounter several lost synchronization messages in the future. The first of these changes is scheduled to be installed on the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph in mid-December. The other instruments will receive similar updates in the coming months. Hubble has been operating now for over 31 years, collecting ground-breaking science observations that have changed our fundamental understanding of the universe....

This may be difficult for those following the keto or paleo diets to swallow. According to a recent study from Tulane University, which evaluated the nutritional quality and environmental impact of popular diets, the keto and paleo diets, as consumed by American adults, received the lowest scores for overall nutrition quality and had the highest carbon footprints. The keto diet, which prioritizes high amounts of fat and low amounts of carbs, was estimated to generate almost 3 kg of carbon dioxide for every 1,000 calories consumed....

The International Space Station continues its scientific journey orbiting over 200 miles above the Earth’s surface. Spacecraft carried crew from around the world to and from the space station, where they participated in and supported hundreds of scientific investigations and technology demonstrations this past year. From deploying CubeSats to studying fluid dynamics in space, the orbiting lab expanded its legacy of science and discovery for the benefit of humanity. Look back at some of the best photos of breakthrough science the crew members conducted in 2022....

This component, known as the solid-electrolyte interphase or SEI, has the crucial job of blocking some particles while allowing others to pass, like a tavern bouncer rejecting undesirables while allowing in the glitterati. The structure has been an enigma for scientists who have studied it for decades. Researchers have tapped multiple techniques to learn more but never — until now — had they witnessed its creation at a molecular level....