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Though stunningly distant, it’s now possible to step inside a virtual-reality (VR) depiction of what followed that explosion. A team led by Kimberly Kowal Arcand from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and the Center for Computation and Visualization at Brown University has made it possible for astronomers, astrophysicists, space enthusiasts, and the simply curious to experience what it’s like inside a dead star. Their efforts are described in a recent paper in Communicating Astronomy with the Public....

Evidence is growing that ‘long Covid’, that is, continued negative health impacts months after apparent recovery from severe Covid-19, is an important risk for some patients. For example, researchers from the University of Florida Gainesville showed last December that hospitalized patients who seemingly recovered from severe COVID-19 have more than double the risk of dying within the next year, compared to people who experienced only mild or moderate symptoms and who had not been hospitalized, or who never caught the illness....

Nature’s strongest material now has some stiff competition. For the first time, researchers have hard evidence that human-made hexagonal diamonds are stiffer than the common cubic diamonds found in nature and often used in jewelry. Named for their six-sided crystal structure, hexagonal diamonds have been found at some meteorite impact sites, and others have been made briefly in labs, but these were either too small or had too short of an existence to be measured....

For Steven Fons, returning home to D.C. in June was like coming back from another planet. “It was totally surreal. The grass and the trees were greener than I remembered,” recalled Fons, an atmospheric and oceanic science Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland. “To see everything in full bloom, to see people outside, it was so weird. It was like coming back to planet Earth from someplace else.” Fons spent the previous five months worlds away from anything even remotely like home....

Scientists have thought that salps — small marine organisms that look like clear, gelatinous blobs — competed for resources with krill, shrimp-like creatures that are an important food source for many marine animals. But new research published in Limnology and Oceanography suggests that salps are actually competing for food with an organism known as a protist. “These fascinating and bizarre animals are becoming more abundant in the vast and warming Southern Ocean, so we sought to understand how their presence changes marine ecosystems,” said Michael Stukel, a researcher with FSU’s Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies and an associate professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science....

With nearly 46,000 people in America dying by suicide in 2020, it is one of the leading causes of death in the US. To decrease the risk of suicide, experts recommend many strategies and treatments including psychotherapy, economic support, peer support, and medications such as antidepressants. Few if any would be likely to put folic acid supplements on that list. However, an eye-opening study recent conducted at the University of Chicago may change that....

In potential superconductors, there may be several ways electrons can arrange themselves. Some of these reinforce the superconducting effect, while others inhibit it. In a new study, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have explained the ways in which two such arrangements compete with each other and ultimately affect the temperature at which a material becomes superconducting. In the superconducting state, electrons join together into so-called Cooper pairs, in which the motion of electrons is correlated; at each moment, the velocities of the electrons participating in a given pair are opposite....

In conducting mass spectrometry research, Richard van Breemen and Luying Chen worked with various biomedical suppliers to purchase 18 batches of supposedly pure human blood serum pooled from multiple donors. Biomedical suppliers get their blood from blood banks, who pass along inventory that’s nearing its expiration date. All 18 batches tested positive for caffeine. Also, in many of the samples, the researchers found traces of cough medicine and an anti-anxiety drug....

Quantum technology, which harnesses the strange rules that govern particles at the atomic level, is normally thought of as much too delicate to coexist with the electronics we use every day in phones, laptops, and cars. However, scientists with the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering announced a significant breakthrough: Quantum states can be integrated and controlled in commonly used electronic devices made from silicon carbide. “The ability to create and control high-performance quantum bits in commercial electronics was a surprise,” said lead investigator David Awschalom, the Liew Family Professor in Molecular Engineering at UChicago and a pioneer in quantum technology....

Surprisingly the new research suggests a slowing of continental plate movement was the critical event that enabled magma to rise to the Earth’s surface and deliver the devastating knock-on impacts. The study will be published today (September 9, 2022) in leading international journal Science Advances. Earth’s history has been marked by major volcanic events, called Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs). The largest of these caused major increases in atmospheric carbon emissions that warmed Earth’s climate, drove unprecedented changes to ecosystems, and resulted in mass extinctions on land and in the oceans....

An exceptionally close stellar explosion discovered on January 21 has become the focus of observatories around and above the globe, including several NASA spacecraft. The blast, designated SN 2014J, occurred in the galaxy M82 and lies only about 12 million light-years away. This makes it the nearest optical supernova in two decades and potentially the closest type Ia supernova to occur during the life of currently operating space missions. To make the most of the event, astronomers have planned observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and Swift missions....

Exploding stars called Type 1a supernova are ideal for measuring cosmic distance because they are bright enough to spot across the Universe and have relatively the same luminosity everywhere. Although astronomers have many theories about the kinds of star systems involved in these explosions (or progenitor systems), no one has ever directly observed one—until now. In the August 24 issue of the journal Science, the multi-institutional Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) team presents the first-ever direct observations of a Type 1a supernova progenitor system....

The Webb Telescope is so large; it must be folded like origami to fit inside its rocket fairing for the ride into space. Once in space, unfolding and readying Webb for science is a complex process that will take about six months. Webb is designed to see the most distant galaxies in the Universe and study how galaxies evolved over cosmic time. Webb will study planets orbiting other stars looking for the chemical signatures of the building blocks of life....

Experiments in recent years have shown that the behavior of animals is accompanied by the sequential activity of neurons in different areas of the brain. In the context of that finding, researchers worldwide have developed several models of possible mechanisms to explain how these ordered sequences come into existence. They are based primarily upon methods of supervised learning, in which the desired sequential activity is generated by means of a learning rule....

Space station research heads back to Earth … And highlighting new science from NASA missions … A few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA! US, Japan Sign Space Agreement at NASA Headquarters On January 13 at NASA Headquarters, administrator Bill Nelson, Japan’s prime minister Kishida Fumio, and others were on hand as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Japan’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Hayashi Yoshimasa signed an agreement for a continued collaboration in space exploration between the two nations....

When we look in a mirror, we are used to seeing our faces looking back at us. The reflected images are produced by electromagnetic light waves bouncing off of the mirrored surface, creating the common phenomenon called spatial reflection. Similarly, spatial reflections of sound waves form echoes that carry our words back to us in the same order we spoke them. Scientists have hypothesized for over six decades the possibility of observing a different form of wave reflections, known as temporal, or time, reflections....

An unexpected approach blurs the line between synthetic drug molecules and natural products, with the goal of achieving higher quality compounds for medicines. In a study with implications for the future of drug discovery, Scripps Research scientists showed they were able to turn simple chemicals into unique 3-D structures resembling those found in nature—structures with desirable properties for medicines. In the process, they found a potential drug lead for inflammatory disease, which is now being investigated further....

Now, an enlightening new scientific study explains why the mosquito’s sense of smell is so difficult to disrupt. The research, published recently in the journal Cell, reveals an exquisitely complex olfactory system that empowers Aedes aegypti mosquitoes to specialize in hunting humans and spread viruses such as dengue, Zika, chikungunya, and yellow fever. Longstanding assumptions about how mosquitoes sense and interpret odors are upended by data presented in the paper....

While breathing is often taken for granted as an involuntary process, it is actually a complex mechanism. Biologists are now gaining a deeper understanding of the intricacies of breathing in plants, with important implications for meeting the future food needs of the world. A team of researchers from the University of California San Diego, in collaboration with scientists from Estonia and Finland and funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, have discovered a previously unknown molecular pathway that plants use to control their intake of carbon dioxide....

The study, which provides new details about sea levels in the past, concludes that sea levels in the central Indian Ocean have risen by close to a meter in the last two centuries. Prof. Kench says, “We know that certain types of fossil corals act as important recorders of past sea levels. By measuring the ages and the depths of these fossil corals, we are identifying that there have been periods several hundred years ago that the sea level has been much lower than we thought in parts of the Indian Ocean....