What is your idea of an asteroid? Many people think of them as potato-shaped, inert and perhaps rather dull, pock-marked objects—far away in deep space. But over the last ten years, two Japanese space missions – Hayabusa and now Hayabusa 2 – have dispatched that view to the history books. Asteroids are interesting bodies that may be able to explain how life on Earth came about.

A group of international researchers at The University of Manchester have revealed a novel method that could fine tune the angle—"twist"—between atom-thin layers that form exotic manmade nanodevices called van der Waals heterostructures—and help accelerate the next generation of electronics.

Scientists striving to understand how and when volcanoes might erupt face a challenge: many of the processes take place deep underground in lava tubes churning with dangerous molten Earth. Upon eruption, any subterranean markers that could have offered clues leading up to a blast are often destroyed.

National Geographic magazines and Indiana Jones movies might have you picturing archaeologists excavating near Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge and Machu Picchu. And some of us do work at these famous places.

Scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and Wildlife Computers, Inc. today announced the release of a new activity data product application for marine animal tracking. The technology is designed to remotely track and transmit data gathered on an animal's activity levels over several months along with the temperatures and depths they...

In his first year of graduate school, Rice University biochemist Zachary Wright discovered something hidden inside a common piece of cellular machinery that's essential for all higher order life from yeast to humans.

German divers who recently fished an Enigma encryption machine out of the Baltic Sea, used by the Nazis to send coded messages during World War II, handed their rare find over to a museum for restoration on Friday.

Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen have, in collaboration with Norwegian researchers in the ERC Synergy project, ICE2ICE, have shown that abrupt climate change occurred as a result of widespread decrease of sea ice. This scientific breakthrough concludes a long-running debate on the mechanisms causing abrupt climate change during the glacial period. It also...

Catalytic conversion of molecules with one carbon atom such as methane, carbon dioxide (CO2), methanol (CH3OH) and others into higher-value chemicals is of major importance for a viable and sustainable chemical industry. Ph.D. candidate Miao Yu, of the TU/e Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, explored the synthesis of an alternative building block, methanethiol (CH3SH)—the sulfur...

The group of so-called metal halide perovskites as materials has revolutionized the field of photovoltaics in recent years. Generally speaking, metal halide perovskites are crystalline materials that follow the structure ABX3, with varying composition. Here, A, B, and X can represent a combination of different organic and inorganic ions. These materials have a number of properties that are ideal...

In my career as a marine biologist, I've been fortunate enough to visit some of the most remote islands in the world. These beautiful places continue to remind me why I have this job in the first place, but they also bring home the pervasive influence of human societies. Uninhabited bird colonies on the Canadian West Coast, remote tropical Japanese islands, and tiny bits of land in South East Asia...

If intelligent aliens visit the Earth, it would be one of the most profound events in human history.

Microspheres, microlenses and microfibers can now be produced by irradiating a fluid jet with ultraviolet light. The result is that locally, a polymer of a desired shape is formed. This process, called in-air photopolymerization, enables manufacturing of a wide range of bio-inspired microparticles. The technique is faster than existing techniques and delivers particles of very constant quality....

The DUNE collaboration has published their first scientific paper based on data collected with the ProtoDUNE single-phase detector located at CERN's Neutrino Platform. The results show that the detector is performing with greater than 99% efficiency, making it not only the largest, but also the best-performing liquid-argon time projection chamber to date. Scientists now are using their findings to...

In recent years, the English-speaking world has found two Danish concepts, 'pyt' and 'hygge,' useful for dealing with anxiety and stress.

In the last five decades, we've learned a lot about the secret lives of proteins—how they work, what they interact with, the machinery that makes them function—and the pace of discovery is accelerating.

A new machine learning approach offers important insights into catalysis, a fundamental process that makes it possible to reduce the emission of toxic exhaust gases or produce essential materials like fabric.

Nataliya Matveeva, Ivan Sterligov, and Maria Yudkevich have analyzed the research activity of universities participating in Russia's Academic Excellence Project 5-100. Overall, the quality of publications of these universities has improved. Collectively, participating universities have tripled their number of publications in reputable journals in the past three years, and researchers have begun to...

In a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications Earth and Environment, researchers at the University of Rochester were able to use magnetism to determine, for the first time, when carbonaceous chondrite asteroids—asteroids that are rich in water and amino acids—first arrived in the inner solar system. The research provides data that helps inform scientists about the early origins...

The world's largest solar observatory, the U.S. National Science Foundation's Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, just released its first image of a sunspot. Although the telescope is still in the final phases of completion, the image is an indication of how the telescope's advanced optics and four-meter primary mirror will give scientists the best view of the Sun from Earth throughout the next...

Neutrinos are chargeless particles with about a mass about a millionth that of an electron that are created by the nuclear processes that occur in the Sun and other stars. These particles are often colorfully described as the 'ghosts' of the particle zoo because they interact so weakly with matter. A paper published in EPJ C by the Borexino collaboration—including XueFeng Ding, Postdoc Associate...

The interaction between lasers and matter is at the forefront of new investigations into fundamental physics as well as forming a potential bedrock for new technological innovations. One of the initiatives spearheading this investigation is the Extreme Light Infrastructure Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) project. Here the project's High-Power Laser System (HPLS)—the world's most powerful laser—is...

According to a biologist from RUDN University, fern leaves powder has a positive effect on the immune system, antimicrobial activity, and growth of carps. Based on this data, fish farms can breed big and healthy fish without using any chemical additives. An article about the work was published in the Fish & Shellfish Immunology journal.

Everyone who has had tooth cavities filled knows that the best dental materials stay where the dentist puts them. The adhesion of currently available dental materials to tooth surfaces continues to improve, but what about short-term treatments that are not supposed to adhere indefinitely? TMDU researchers have developed a method of making dental materials easier to remove; their findings are...