Professor Andrew King from the University of Leicester has shown that periodic X-ray eruptions from a galaxy called GSN 069 could result from the core of a red giant star trapped in a very eccentric orbit around the galaxy’s central black hole. Chandra and XMM-Newton data indicate that a white dwarf survived a close call with the central black hole in GSN 069. Image credit: NASA / CXO / CSIC-INTA…

A team of researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey, the Lunar and Planetary Institute and the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology has released a seamless, globally consistent, 1:5,000,000-scale geologic map of the Moon. Orthographic projections of the Unified Geologic Map of the Moon showing the geology of the Moon’s near side (left) and far side (right) with shaded topography from the…

In a study published in the journal Nature Communications, archaeologists analyzed the molecular remains of food preserved in 6,000-7,000-year-old pottery from 246 pottery sherds from 24 Neolithic sites situated between Portugal and Normandy as well as the Western Baltic. An artist’s impression of prehistoric humans in Europe. “Our study is one of the largest regional comparisons of early pottery…

A large number of ferocious predators, including predatory dinosaurs, pterosaurs and crocodile-like creatures, made Sahara the most dangerous place on Earth, according to an analysis of fossils from the Cretaceous-period sediments in eastern Morocco. The giant predatory dinosaur Carcharodontosaurus eyes a group of Elosuchus — crocodile-like hunters — near a carcass. Image credit: Davide…

A team of researchers from South Africa has discovered that the Indo-Pacific undulated moray eel (Gymnothorax undulatus), first described by the French naturalist Bernard Germain de Lacépède in 1803, is in fact two genetically and morphologically distinct species. Gymnothorax elaineheemstrae. Image credit: Dennis King. The moray eels are members of the family Muraenidae, one of the most diverse,…

A team of scientists from the University of the Witwatersrand, Harvard University and the National University of Singapore has come up with a new metasurface-enhanced laser that efficiently produces any desired chiral state of light, with full control over both angular momentum components of light: spin (polarization) and orbital angular momentum. Metasurface laser produces super-chiral light with…

In a paper published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology, a team of researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill review possible strategies against SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV-1, MERS-CoV as well as future coronaviruses; the authors propose that the most promising approaches for fast progress are selected antivirals such as remdesivir, and gene therapy. Colorized scanning electron…

The common view of heredity is that all information passed down from one generation to the next is stored in DNA. But University of Maryland’s Dr. Antony Jose argues that DNA is just the ingredient list and that the instructions needed to build an organism are much more complicated and stored in the molecules that regulate a cell’s DNA and other functioning systems. The research is presented…

An analysis of rocks from the Honeyeater Basalt of the East Pilbara Craton, a stable block of crust in Western Australia, provides strong evidence that Earth’s tectonic plates were already moving 3.2 billion years ago (Archean Eon). An artistic cross-section through forming Earth’s crust approximately 3-4 billion years ago. Image credit: Alec Brenner, Harvard University. Plate tectonics is key…

A team of scientists from the University of the Witwatersrand, Harvard University and the National University of Singapore has come up with a new metasurface-enhanced laser that efficiently produces any desired chiral state of light, with full control over both angular momentum components of light: spin (polarization) and orbital angular momentum. Metasurface laser produces super-chiral light with…