Discovered

This panchromatic view of galaxy cluster MACS0416 was created by combining infrared observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope with visible-light data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. To make the image, in general the shortest wavelengths of light were color-coded blue, the longest wavelengths red, and intermediate wavelengths green. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Jose M. Diego (IFCA), Jordan C. J. D’Silva (UWA), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), Jake Summers (ASU), Rogier Windhorst (ASU), Haojing Yan (University…

A new study of Alzheimer’s disease combines multiple biomarkers to uncover new genetic pathways and sex-specific differences, paving the way for improved early diagnosis and understanding of Alzheimer’s. Dementia, encompassing conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, impacts approximately 1.8 million individuals in Germany. The precise origins of this disease are still not fully understood, though it’s acknowledged that genetics are a major contributor to its development. Historically, most research efforts to discover new…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Scientists exploring the Northern California coast have, for the first time, uncovered a treasure trove of carbon compacted on the seafloor—a discovery that may help unravel the ocean's power to combat climate change. A reserve spanning 6,000 square miles of sanctuary from Point Arena in Mendocino…

Credit: Antiquity (2023). DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2023.160 Just south of the Arctic Circle, within the vast forests of northern Finland, lies a sandy field dotted with dozens of "unusual" pits. Workers stumbled upon the site, known as Tainiaro, six decades ago, and since then, its origins have remained elusive. But now, upon conducting a…

A space telescope scanning the skies for gamma rays has added hundreds of new powerful dead stars to its catalog.The addition of 294 previously unidentified stars means that the Fermi catalog of gamma-ray pulsars now contains more than 340 objects – a significant step up since the Fermi Large Area Telescope started observing in 2008, when there were fewer than 10 known such pulsars.The newly released Third Fermi Large Area Telescope Catalog of Gamma-Ray Pulsars is a real treasure trove of information that will help us…

Generating life out of an organic soup is a complicated business. You need a whole bunch of ingredients, all together in the same place, in the right conditions.While the precise conditions might be is still a matter of debate, we have a decent idea of which items on the periodic table are required.One critical ingredient – phosphorus – has just been found on the outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy; one of the last places scientists expected to see it. That's because the kinds of huge stars responsible for the creation of…

December 1, 20232min readAncient fish followed prey into the crushing pressures of the deep oceanBy Riley BlackA modern-day floor-dwelling fish (Synodus intermedius). Credit: Wild Horizons/Universal Images Group via Getty ImagesThe strange life-forms lurking in Earth's deepest seas may seem primordial, as if they are as old as the oceans themselves. But the truth is that these fish and other animals took hundreds of millions of years to adapt to the pressure, cold and darkness of the depths, and a recent study helps…

Already equipped with an impressive sonar system, new research reveals that dolphins have an extra ability that evolves as they mature in the space where their baby whiskers once were. The super sense may help them navigate and find hidden food sources.Dolphins' sonar ability, known as echolocation, is fairly legendary in the animal kingdom. This ability is so accurate that the mammals, which are technically whales, can use it to distinguish between a golf ball and a ping-pong ball underwater based on the densities of the…

Astronomers have discovered a rotating disk around a forming high-mass star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, marking the most distant such observation. This discovery, made using the ALMA observatory and detailed in Nature, reveals key differences in the star formation process in different galaxies, highlighting the lower dust and metal content in the Large Magellanic Cloud compared to our Milky Way. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada A groundbreaking discovery by astronomers reveals a rotating disk around a high-mass star in the…

Brigham researchers have discovered that a reduction in the INPP5D gene in microglia leads to increased neuroinflammation, potentially contributing to the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, paving the way for targeted treatments. A research study conducted by Brigham researchers has uncovered the way in which genetic alterations in specific brain cell types may play a role in the inflammation observed in Alzheimer’s disease. Microglia, immune-regulating cells in the brain, are known to be involved in the development of…