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The highest-resolution photo NASA’s Juno mission has ever taken of a specific portion of Jupiter’s moon Europa reveals a detailed view of a puzzling region of the moon’s heavily fractured icy crust. The image covers about 93 miles (150 kilometers) by 125 miles (200 kilometers) of Europa’s surface, revealing a region crisscrossed with a network of fine grooves and double ridges (pairs of long parallel lines indicating elevated features in the ice)....

Over the course of these tests, TESS took images of C/2018 N1, a comet discovered by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) satellite on June 29. The comet, located about 29 million miles (48 million kilometers) from Earth in the southern constellation Piscis Austrinus, is seen to move across the frame from right to left as it orbits the Sun. The comet’s tail, which consists of gases carried away from the comet by an outflow from the Sun called the solar wind, extends to the top of the frame and gradually pivots as the comet glides across the field of view....

Since its arrival on April 29, the Psyche spacecraft has moved into the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where technicians removed it from its protective shipping container, rotated it to vertical, and have begun the final steps to prepare the spacecraft for launch. Over the next few months, crews will perform a range of work including reinstalling solar arrays, reintegrating a radio, testing the telecommunications system, loading propellants, and encapsulating the spacecraft inside payload fairings before it leaves the facility and moves to the launch pad....

A bright eruption of solar material surges into space as captured by NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory — Before satellite, which currently has a view of the far side of the sun. The inner image of the sun was provided by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. This video shows a time-lapse of the event and then a slowed-down version, and loops 5 times. Credit: NASA/STEREO NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory witnessed a dramatic solar eruption on August 24, 2014 — even with one of its “eyes” partially closed....

NASA’s Swift satellite has uncovered the previously unknown remains of a shattered star. Designated G306.3–0.9 after the coordinates of its sky position, the new object ranks among the youngest-known supernova remnants in our Milky Way galaxy. “Astronomers have previously cataloged more than 300 supernova remnants in the galaxy,” said lead scientist Mark Reynolds, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “Our analysis indicates that G306.3–0.9 is likely less than 2,500 years old, making it one of the 20 youngest remnants identified....

Scientists using data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, have uncovered new clues in the ongoing mystery of the Jovian Trojans — asteroids that orbit the sun on the same path as Jupiter. Like racehorses, the asteroids travel in packs, with one group leading the way in front of the gas giant, and a second group trailing behind. The observations are the first to get a detailed look at the Trojans’ colors: both the leading and trailing packs are made up of predominantly dark, reddish rocks with a matte, non-reflecting surface....

Fungi in the soil cause a significant number of serious lung infections in 48 out of 50 states and the District of Columbia, including many areas long thought to be free of deadly environmental fungi. This is according to a recent study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Studies from the 1950s and 60s indicated that fungal lung infections were a problem only in certain parts of the country....

A CALCR cell found in mice may stop feeding without subsequential nauseating effects as well as influence the long term intake of food. Conventional wisdom renders there’s one circuit in the brain that suppresses eating — it comes from the stomach and makes you feel sick if you activate it too hard. Eating a portioned meal makes your body happy, though, even while stimulating a signal to the brain to stop eating, according to Michigan Diabetes Research Center’s director, Martin Myers Jr....

Scientists have measured thousands of nearby stars and far away galaxies that have never been identified before at radio wavelengths, while studying a galactic body that neighbors our own Milky Way galaxy – the Large Magellanic Cloud. Led by Keele University PhD student Clara M. Pennock and Reader in Astrophysics, Dr. Jacco van Loon, the international team of researchers used the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope to “photograph” the Cloud at radio wavelengths and study the stellar structures within, taking some of the sharpest radio images of the Cloud ever recorded....

These materials are predicted to show a phenomenon called the quantum spin Hall (QSH) effect, and belong to a class of materials known as transition metal dichalcogenides, with layers a few atoms thick. The findings are detailed in a paper appearing this week in the journal Science, co-authored by MIT postdocs Xiaofeng Qian and Junwei Liu; assistant professor of physics Liang Fu; and Ju Li, a professor of nuclear science and engineering and materials science and engineering....

Yekaterina “Kate” Shulgina was a first year student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, looking for a short computational biology project so she could check the requirement off her program in systems biology. She wondered how genetic code, once thought to be universal, could evolve and change. That was 2016 and today Shulgina has come out the other end of that short-term project with a way to decipher this genetic mystery....

Using aluminum battery technology could offer several advantages, including a high theoretical energy density, and the fact that there already exists an established industry for its manufacturing and recycling. Compared with today’s lithium-ion batteries, the researchers’ new concept could result in markedly lower production costs. “The material costs and environmental impacts that we envisage from our new concept are much lower than what we see today, making them feasible for large-scale usage, such as solar cell parks, or storage of wind energy, for example,” says Patrik Johansson, Professor at the Department of Physics at Chalmers....

The research was led together by Professor Wang Zuankai from CityU’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, Professor Zeng Xiao Cheng from University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Professor Wang Zhong Lin, Founding Director, and Chief Scientist from Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems of Chinese Academy of Sciences. Their findings were published in the latest issue of the highly prestigious scientific journal Nature, titled “A droplet-based electricity generator with high instantaneous power density....

Now that New Horizons has sent those stored flyby images back to Earth, the team can enthusiastically confirm that its ambitious goal was met. These new images of Ultima Thule – obtained by the telephoto Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) just six-and-a-half minutes before New Horizons’ closest approach to the object (officially named 2014 MU69) at 12:33 a.m. EST on Jan. 1, 2019 – offer a resolution of about 110 feet (33 meters) per pixel....

This newly released image shows a frozen, former lake of liquid nitrogen, which is located in a mountain range just north of Pluto’s informally named Sputnik Planum. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft spied several features on Pluto that offer evidence of a time millions or billions of years ago when – thanks to much higher pressure in Pluto’s atmosphere and warmer conditions on the surface – liquids might have flowed across and pooled on the surface of the distant world....

Scientists discovered that high levels of NR could not only increase someone’s risk of developing triple-negative breast cancer, but also could cause the cancer to metastasize or spread to the brain. The international team of researchers was led by Elena Goun, an associate professor of chemistry at MU and the corresponding author on the study. She said that once the cancer reaches the brain, the results are deadly because no viable treatment options exist at this time....

Researchers at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and the Florida State University-headquartered National High Magnetic Field Laboratory have developed a new tool to help meet that challenge — a novel design for a low-gravity simulator that promises to break new ground for future space research and habitation. Their new design for a magnetic levitation-based low-gravity simulator can create an area of low gravity with a volume about 1,000 times larger than existing simulators of the same type....

Scientists have developed a new technique that allows microscopic fluorescence imaging at four times the depth limit imposed by light diffusion. Fluorescence microscopy is often used to image molecular and cellular details of the brain in animal models of various diseases but, until now, has been limited to small volumes and highly invasive procedures due to intense light scattering by the skin and skull. “Visualization of biological dynamics in an unperturbed environment, deep in a living organism, is essential for understanding the complex biology of living organisms and progression of diseases,” said research team leader Daniel Razansky from the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, both in Switzerland....

That’s now possible thanks to research by Rice University scientists who used the light-emitting properties of particular molecules to create a fluorescent nano-thermometer. The Rice lab of chemist Angel Martí revealed the technique in a Journal of Physical Chemistry B paper, describing how it modified a biocompatible molecular rotor known as boron dipyrromethene (BODIPY, for short) to reveal temperatures inside single cells. The molecule is ideally suited to the task....

NASA trained several pairs of eyes on Saturn as the planet put on a dancing light show at its poles. While NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, orbiting around Earth, was able to observe the northern auroras in ultraviolet wavelengths, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, orbiting around Saturn, got complementary close-up views in infrared, visible-light and ultraviolet wavelengths. Cassini could also see northern and southern parts of Saturn that don’t face Earth. The result is a kind of step-by-step choreography detailing how the auroras move, showing the complexity of these auroras and how scientists can connect an outburst from the sun and its effect on the magnetic environment at Saturn....