The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter made the observations on multiple dates from landing to last month. After fading for about two years, the pace of change slowed and some of the scars may have even darkened again. The images track changes in blast zones at four locations caused by different pieces of Curiosity hardware, such as the heat shield and the descent stage....
A new vaccine trial has revealed a weak spot in HIV, which could lead to an effective vaccine against AIDS. The vaccine turns the immune system against the virus, and offers more protection from infections. The scientists published their findings in the journal Nature. The results were also presented at the AIDS Vaccine 2012 Conference in Boston, Massachusetts earlier this week. Three years ago, the RV144 trial was somewhat successful in dealing with AIDS....
Using the Microsoft Hololens Kinect camera and a personal computer with custom software from Aexa, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet had a two-way conversation with live images of Schmid and De La Pena placed in the middle of the International Space Station. This was the first holoportation handshake from Earth in space. Holoportation is a type of capture technology that allows high-quality 3D models of people to be reconstructed, compressed and transmitted live anywhere in real time, Schmid said....
The finding published in Environmental Science and Technology indicates that some fish in the region may experience harmful levels of selenium. Selenium is a naturally occurring mineral that is essential to life but turns toxic and can cause deformities at high levels. Deformities were also found in birds exposed to selenium concentrated in agricultural runoff in the same area in the 1980s. Biologists collected the juvenile fish, minnows known as Sacramento splittail, from a pumping station in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in 2011....
The origin of the universe started with the Big Bang, but how the supernova explosion ignited has long been a mystery — until now. In a new paper appearing today (November 1, 2019) in Science Magazine, researchers detailed the mechanisms that could cause the explosion, which is key for the models that scientists use to understand the origin of the universe. “We defined the critical criteria where we can drive a flame to self-generate its own turbulence, spontaneously accelerate, and transition into detonation,” says Kareem Ahmed, an assistant professor in UCF’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and co-author of the study....
On the surface, that activity appears to be a relatively benign one. What could be more innocent than cute youngsters collecting sweets? Halloween, however, is actually one of our only holidays based on extortion. When children scream “trick or treat,” they are essentially demanding candy in exchange for not doing a prank or something else that is nasty. Some children on Halloween are learning how to ask strangers for candy....
Some people are in great shape at the age of 90, while others are decrepit before they’re 50. We know that how fast people age is only loosely linked to how old they actually are — and may have more to do with their lifestyle. A new study using both the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals that the same is true of star clusters....
Previous research on the formation and evolution of star clusters has suggested that these systems tend to be compact and dense when they form, before expanding with time to become clusters of both small and large sizes. New Hubble observations in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) galaxy have increased our understanding of how the size of star clusters in the LMC changes with time [1]. Star clusters are aggregates of many (up to one million) stars....
However, seen almost face on, NGC 4689 appears less like a majestic spiral and more like a smudged fingerprint on the sky. No matter how good the image quality, there is little contrast between the spiraling arms of stars, gas, and dust, and the less dense areas in between. This is because NGC 4689 is something known as an “anemic galaxy,” a galaxy that contains only quite small quantities of the raw materials needed to produce stars....
The faint blue haze across the frame shows what remains of a star like the sun after it has depleted most of its fuel. When this happens, the outer layers of the star are ejected, and get excited and ionized by the energetic ultraviolet light emitted by the bright hot core of the star, forming the nebula. NGC 6153 is a planetary nebula that is elliptical in shape, with an extremely rich network of loops and filaments, shown clearly in this Hubble image....
Visible as a small, sparkling hook in the dark sky, this beautiful object is known as J082354.96+280621.6, or J082354.96 for short. It is a starburst galaxy, so named because of the incredibly (and unusually) high rate of star formation occurring within it. One way in which astronomers probe the nature and structure of galaxies like this is by observing the behavior of their dust and gas components; in particular, the Lyman-alpha emission....
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced this beautiful image of the globular cluster Messier 56 (also known as M 56 or NGC 6779), which is located about 33,000 light years away from the Earth in the constellation of Lyra (The Lyre). The cluster is composed of a large number of stars, tightly bound to each other by gravity. However, this was not known when Charles Messier first observed it in January 1779....
The supernova discovery paper appears in a special issue of Science celebrating the centenary of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Whilst looking closely at a massive elliptical galaxy and its associated galaxy cluster MACS J1149+2223 — whose light took over 5 billion years to reach us — astronomers have spotted a strange and rare sight. The huge mass of the galaxy and the cluster is bending the light from a much more distant supernova behind them and creating four separate images of it....
Just in time for the 26th anniversary of Hubble’s launch on April 24, 1990, the telescope has photographed an enormous, balloon-like bubble being blown into space by a super-hot, massive star. Astronomers trained the iconic telescope on this colorful feature, called the Bubble Nebula, or NGC 7635. “As Hubble makes its 26th revolution around our home star, the sun, we celebrate the event with a spectacular image of a dynamic and exciting interaction of a young star with its environment....
The Atacama Rover Astrobiology Drilling Studies, or ARADS, project is designing tools and techniques that could be used to search for life one day on Mars or other places in the Solar System. The team’s prototype rover combines the ability to move across the surface, drill down to collect soil samples, and feed them to several life-detection instruments on board. The extreme conditions of Chile’s Atacama Desert provide one of the most Mars-like environments on Earth, where the team can test and refine these technologies and methods....
Pandemics are fueled, in part, by dense populations in large cities where networks of buildings, crowded sidewalks, and public transportation force people into tighter conditions. This contrasts with conditions in rural areas, where there is more space available per person. According to common sense, being in less crowded areas during a pandemic is safer. But small town mayors want to keep people safe, too, and migration of people from cities to rural towns brings concerns....
New ages for fossilized vertebrates that lived just after the demise of the fauna that dominated the late Permian show that the ecosystem changes began hundreds of thousands of years earlier on land than in the sea, eventually resulting in the demise of up to 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species. The later marine extinction, in which nearly 95% of ocean species disappeared, may have occurred over the time span of tens of thousands of years....
Using combined data from a trio of orbiting X-ray telescopes, including NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Japan-led Suzaku satellite, astronomers have obtained a rare glimpse of the powerful phenomena that accompany a still-forming star. A new study based on these observations indicates that intense magnetic fields drive torrents of gas into the stellar surface, where they heat large areas to millions of degrees. X-rays emitted by these hot spots betray the newborn star’s rapid rotation....
On April 30, the Food and Drug Administration approved VITAL for a ventilator Emergency Use Authorization. Developed in just 37 days by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in response to the coronavirus pandemic, VITAL (short for Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally) wouldn’t replace current hospital ventilators, which can treat a broader range of medical issues. Designed specifically for COVID-19 patients, the prototype is composed of far fewer parts than traditional ventilators and is intended to last three to four months....
Jayakrishna Ambati, MD, and Shao-bin Wang, Ph.D. of UVA, along with their colleagues, have pinpointed a new target in their efforts to halt the development of abnormal blood vessel tangles associated with eye conditions like neovascular age-related macular degeneration, proliferative diabetic retinopathy, and ischemic retinal vein occlusion. “Our study has opened up the possibility of mitigating aberrant blood vessel growth in eye diseases by targeting the epigenetic machinery,” said Ambati, the founding director of UVA’s Center for Advanced Vision Science and a member of the University of Virginia School of Medicine’s Department of Ophthalmology....
