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This artist’s impression shows how the newly discovered belts of dust around the closest star to the Solar System, Proxima Centauri, may look. ALMA observations revealed the glow coming from cold dust in a region between one to four times as far from Proxima Centauri as the Earth is from the Sun. The data also hint at the presence of an even cooler outer dust belt and indicate the presence of an elaborate planetary system. These structures are similar to the much larger belts in the Solar System and are also expected to be made from particles of rock and ice that failed to form planets. Note that this sketch is not to scale — to make Proxima b clearly visible it has been shown further from the star and larger than it is in reality. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the Sun. It is a faint red dwarf lying just four light-years away in the southern constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur). It is orbited by the Earth-sized temperate world Proxima b ...

Khufu’s pyramid is the largest in the Giza pyramid complex.  Ricardo Liberato/wikipedia ,  CC BY-SA Harald Fox , Lancaster University Particle physicists have uncovered a large, hidden void in Khufu’s Pyramid, the largest pyramid in Giza, Egypt – built between 2600 and 2500 BC. The discovery, published in Nature , was made using cosmic-ray based imaging and may help scientists work out how the enigmatic pyramid was actually constructed. The technology works by tracking particles called muons . They are very similar to electrons – having the same charge and a quantum property called spin – but are 207 times heavier. This difference in mass is quite important as it turns out it determines how these particles interact when hitting matter. Highly energetic electrons emit electromagnetic radiation, such as X-rays, when they hit solid matter – making them lose energy and get stuck in the target material. Due to the muon’s much higher mass, this emission of electromagne...

Beacons of life could help researchers identify potentially habitable worlds. Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Mary Pat Hrybyk Some exoplanets shine brighter than others in the search for life beyond the solar system. New NASA research proposes a novel approach to sniffing out exoplanet atmospheres. It takes advantage of frequent stellar storms — which hurl huge clouds of stellar material and radiation into space — from cool, young dwarf stars to highlight signs of habitable exoplanets. Traditionally, researchers have sought potential biosignatures as ways of identifying inhabited worlds: byproducts from life as we know it such as oxygen or methane that over time accumulate in the atmosphere to detectable amounts. But with current technology, according to Vladimir Airapetian, lead author of a Nature Scientific Reports study published on Nov. 2, 2017, identifying these gases on distant terrestrial exoplanets is time-consuming, requiring days of observation time. The ne...

Cosmic Web. Credit: NASA Astronomer Gregory Rudnick sees the universe crisscrossed by something like an interstellar superhighway system. Filaments — the strands of aggregated matter that stretch millions of light years across the universe to connect galaxy clusters — are the freeways. “Galaxies will flow along filaments from less dense parts of the universe to more dense parts of the universe, kind of like cars flowing down a highway to the big city. In this case, they are going toward big clusters, being pulled by the gravity of those large concentrations of matter,” he said. “I’m interested in how galaxies are affected by the regions in which they live,” Rudnick said. “Filaments are the first place where galaxies come into contact with higher density regions of the universe. If a galaxy in a ‘rural’ part of the universe enters a dense part, I want to know how its properties change — for example, does it change the number of stars it forms, or does its shape get altered? Us...

From Wikimedia Commons Harriet Dempsey-Jones , University of Oxford Wouldn’t it be great to be able to hear what people whispered behind your back? Or to read the bus timetable from across the street? We all differ dramatically in our perceptual abilities – for all our senses. But do we have to accept what we’ve got when it comes to sensory perception? Or can we actually do something to improve it? Differences in perceptual ability are most obvious for the more valued senses – hearing and vision. But some people have enhanced abilities for the other senses too. For example, there are “ supertasters ” among us mere mortals who perceive stronger tastes from various sweet and bitter substances (a trait linked with a greater number of taste receptors on the tip of the tongue). It’s not all good news for the supertasters though – they also perceive more burn from oral irritants like alcohol and chilli. Women have been shown to be better at feeling touch than men . Interestin...

Artist’s illustration of a "hot Jupiter". Image Credit: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss A new research presents the discovery of NGTS-1b, a hot-Jupiter transiting an early M-dwarf host in a P~2.6 days orbit discovered as part of the Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS). The planet has a mass of M~0.8 M(jupiter) making it the most massive planet ever discovered transiting an M-dwarf. NGTS-1b is the third transiting giant planet found around an M-dwarf, reinforcing the notion that close-in gas giants can form and migrate similar to the known population of hot Jupiters around solar type stars. The existence of the 'monster' planet, 'NGTS-1b', challenges theories of planet formation which state that a planet of this size could not be formed around such a small star. According to these theories, small stars can readily form rocky planets but do not gather enough material together to form Jupiter-sized planets. Such massive planets were not thought to exist ar...

A nutrient mix based in part on research from the lab of MIT Professor Emeritus Richard Wurtman has shown promise in treating the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Image: Donna Coveney Studies by Richard Wurtman have led to development of nutrient mix shown to slow cognitive impairment in early stages of the disease. Rob Matheson | MIT News Office Much of Professor Emeritus Richard Wurtman’s career in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences revolved around developing new treatments for diseases and conditions by modifying chemicals produced in the brain. Since coming to MIT in 1970, Wurtman and his research group have generated more than 1,000 research articles and 200 patents, laying the groundwork for numerous successful medical products. For example, the 3 million people in the United States who take melatonin as a sleeping aid are using a product that derives from research in Wurtman’s lab. “I’m very interested in using basic knowledge to am...

This artist’s concept shows a black hole with an accretion disk -- a flat structure of material orbiting the black hole – and a jet of hot gas, called plasma.  Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech Black holes are famous for being ravenous eaters, but they do not eat everything that falls toward them. A small portion of material gets shot back out in powerful jets of hot gas, called plasma, that can wreak havoc on their surroundings. Along the way, this plasma somehow gets energized enough to strongly radiate light, forming two bright columns along the black hole’s axis of rotation. Scientists have long debated where and how this happens in the jet. Astronomers have new clues to this mystery. Using NASA's NuSTAR space telescope and a fast camera called ULTRACAM on the William Herschel Observatory in La Palma, Spain, scientists have been able to measure the distance that particles in jets travel before they "turn on" and become bright sources of light. This distance is call...

Credit: ESO/B. Tafreshi Brilliant blue stars litter the southern sky and the  galactic bulge  of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, hangs serenely above the horizon in this spectacular shot of ESO’s Paranal Observatory. This image was taken atop Cerro Paranal in Chile, home to ESO’s  Very Large Telescope  (VLT). In the foreground, the open dome of one of the four 1.8-metre  Auxiliary Telescopes  can be seen. The four Auxiliary Telescopes can be utilised together, to form the  Very Large Telescope Interferometer  (VLTI). The plane of the Milky Way is dotted with bright regions of hot gas. The very bright star towards the upper left corner of the frame is  Antares  — the brightest star in  Scorpius  and the fifteenth brightest star in the night sky. Text Credit:  ESO Resources Antares overlooking an Auxiliary Telescope Next Post Small Asteroid or Comet 'Visits' from Beyond the Solar System