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Cambridge, Massachusetts – The world of astronomy has changed. An astronomer used to have to travel to a remote location and endure long, cold nights, patiently guiding a telescope to collect precious photons of light. Now, a proliferation of online archives allows astronomers to make discoveries from the comfort of their own offices. By mining such archives, a team of astronomers led by Ivana Damjanov of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has found a treasure trove of “red nugget” galaxies....

Extending a helping hand to someone during times of stress is always a wise choice. However, according to a recent study, offering support could be particularly important for individuals who have a genetic predisposition to depression. The study highlights the significance of social support in mitigating the danger of developing depression symptoms, as demonstrated by data obtained from two diverse populations undergoing stress — first-year resident doctors undergoing rigorous training and elderly individuals who recently lost their spouse....

In 2014, NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope handed scientists a smorgasbord of more than 700 brand-new distant planets to study—many of them unlike what we had previously seen. Instead of gas giants like Jupiter, which earlier surveys had picked up first because they are easier to see, these planets were smaller and mostly rock by mass. Scientists noticed that there were lots of these planets about the size of or just larger than Earth, but there was a steep cutoff before planets reached the size of Neptune....

Xiaoyu Niu, from the University of Chinese Academy Sciences, and other researchers studied the sound quality of a 3D-printed ukulele and compared it to a standard wooden instrument. Niu will present the group’s results in a talk, “A Comparison on Sound Quality of PLA 3D Printing Ukulele and Single Board Wooden Ukulele,” at the 178th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, which will be held December 2-6, 2019, at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego....

In a paper published Friday, November 8, 2019, in The Astrophysical Journal, Clemson scientists Marco Ajello, Abhishek Desai, Lea Marcotulli and Dieter Hartmann have collaborated with six other scientists around the world to devise a new measurement of the Hubble Constant, the unit of measure used to describe the rate of expansion of the universe. “Cosmology is about understanding the evolution of our universe – how it evolved in the past, what it is doing now and what will happen in the future,” said Ajello, an associate professor in the College of Science’s department of physics and astronomy....

Scientists are deploying this state-of-the-art X-ray crystallography facility to study biological molecules related to the COVID-19 pandemic. There’s a new bright spot at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource: Beam Line 12-1, an experimental station devoted to determining the structures of biological macromolecules with high brilliance X-rays. Researchers from around the country are using it to examine the atomic structure and function of different components of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19....

Dr. Marie Lewis, principal investigator, and Lecturer in Gut Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Reading, said: “Correct development of the immune system is essential in ensuring it responds appropriately to both harmful and harmless stimulation throughout life, and this development, even during the first days of life, depends on your sex. Although we don’t know why, we know that young girls tend to produce a more protective immune response to vaccination than boys....

Their rapid spin is a result of sitting within an extraordinarily massive cloud, or halo, of dark matter – invisible matter detectable only through its gravity. The largest “super spiral” studied here resides in a dark matter halo weighing at least 40 trillion times the mass of our Sun. The existence of super spirals provides more evidence that an alternative theory of gravity known as Modified Newtonian Dynamics, or MOND, is incorrect....

“The Sombrero has always been a bit of a weird galaxy, which is what makes it so interesting,” said Paul Goudfrooij of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), Baltimore, Maryland. “Hubble’s metallicity measurements (i.e., the abundance of heavy elements in the stars) are another indication that the Sombrero has a lot to teach us about galaxy assembly and evolution.” “Hubble’s observations of the Sombrero’s halo are turning our generally accepted understanding of galaxy makeup and metallicity on its head,” added co-investigator Roger Cohen of STScI....

A multi-institution team of scientists led by Texas A&M University chemist Sarbajit Banerjee has discovered an exceptional metal-oxide magnesium battery cathode material, moving researchers one step closer to delivering batteries that promise higher density of energy storage on top of transformative advances in safety, cost, and performance in comparison to their ubiquitous lithium-ion (Li-ion) counterparts. “The worldwide push to advance renewable energy is limited by the availability of energy storage vectors,” says Banerjee in the team’s paper, published in the journal Chem, a new chemistry-focused journal by Cell Press....

Their work, reported on December 31, 2019 in the journal Neuron, reveals that different classes of neurons control positive and negative motivation, sending opposing signals along a shared motivation-processing brain circuit. Ultimately, the balance of activity between these two groups of cells may determine whether a person acts to seek out pleasurable experiences or avoid negative ones, says CSHL Professor Bo Li, who led the study. Li wants to understand the brain’s motivation-processing circuits because the behaviors they control are often disrupted in people with mental illness....

This quiet period, likely caused by the total global effect of social distancing measures, closure of services and industry, and drops in tourism and travel, is the longest and most pronounced quiet period of seismic noise in recorded history. The new research, led by the Royal Observatory of Belgium and five other institutions around the world including Imperial College London, showed that the dampening of ‘seismic noise’ caused by humans was more pronounced in more densely populated areas....

But a UC Berkeley mathematician has found some types of black holes in which this law breaks down. If someone were to venture into one of these relatively benign black holes, they could survive, but their past would be obliterated and they could have an infinite number of possible futures. Such claims have been made in the past, and physicists have invoked “strong cosmic censorship” to explain it away. That is, something catastrophic – typically a horrible death – would prevent observers from actually entering a region of spacetime where their future was not uniquely determined....

Nature clearly likes symmetry. Look at your own hands, for example. But sometimes nature produces asymmetric things, and the reasons aren’t always clear. Rice University chemist Matthew Jones and his team have been seeking answers to such questions about useful nanoparticles — and now appear to have one. Video of a growing gold nanoparticle captured at Rice University through liquid cell transmission electron microscopy shows the particle’s transformation into a tetrahedron....

The scientists’ first thought was that the laser was broken and, in addition to infrared (light wavelength similar to that used in old TV remote controls) generated green light. So they dismantled the laser and meticulously checked what could have broken down. They found nothing. Then someone came up with the simple but ingenious idea to put a filter in front of the eye of the observer, which would cut off visible light....

Additionally, this theory may also provide insight into why super-Earths within a single planetary system tend to exhibit a similar size, as though each system is limited to producing only one type of planet. “As our observations of exoplanets have grown over the past decade, it has become clear that the standard theory of planet formation needs to be revised, starting with the fundamentals. We need a theory that can simultaneously explain the formation of the terrestrial planets in our solar system as well as the origins of self-similar systems of super-Earths, many of which appear rocky in composition,” says Caltech professor of planetary science Konstantin Batygin (MS ’10, Ph....

Findings suggest epidemiological models should account for problems with diagnosis and data reporting practices. As data accumulates on COVID-19 cases and deaths, researchers have observed patterns of peaks and valleys that repeat on a near-weekly basis. But understanding what’s driving those patterns has remained an open question. A study published this week in mSystems reports that those oscillations arise from variations in testing practices and data reporting, rather than from societal practices around how people are infected or treated....

This two minute video shows images taken by ESA’s Huygens probe when it made its descent to the surface of Titan. After a two-and-a-half-hour descent, the metallic, saucer-shaped spacecraft came to rest with a thud on a dark floodplain covered in cobbles of water ice, in temperatures hundreds of degrees below freezing. The alien probe worked frantically to collect and transmit images and data about its environs — in mere minutes its mothership would drop below the local horizon, cutting off its link to the home world and silencing its voice forever....

New observations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile have revealed alignments over the largest structures ever discovered in the Universe. A European research team has found that the rotation axes of the central supermassive black holes in a sample of quasars are parallel to each other over distances of billions of light-years. The team has also found that the rotation axes of these quasars tend to be aligned with the vast structures in the cosmic web in which they reside....

Numerous questions remain unanswered as to how the planet’s species will respond to climate change. A new paper in the journal Frontiers in Physiology suggests that at least one species of marsupial “mice” may struggle to adapt to a warming world. The study found that changes in ambient temperatures experienced during the development and growth of yellow-footed antechinus (Antechinus flavipes) can influence their behavioral and physiological traits. “This has important implications in terms of how this species will respond to changes in the climate,” said lead author Dr....