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Explanation: The center of the Lagoon Nebula is a whirlwind of spectacular star formation. Visible near the image center, at least two long funnel-shaped clouds, each roughly half a light-year long, have been formed by extreme stellar winds and intense energetic starlight. A tremendously bright nearby star, Herschel 36, lights the area. Vast walls of dust hide and redden other hot young stars. As energy from these stars pours into the cool dust and gas, large temperature differences in adjoining regions can be created generating shearing winds which may cause the funnels. This picture, spanning about 15 light years, features...

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the polarising director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, slammed everyday Americans for refusing to go along with ‘authority’ on medical matters, and accused people of ‘amazing denial’ when it comes to ‘truth’. Speaking on a podcast called Learning Curve, produced by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Fauci charged that “unfortunately, there is a combination of an anti-science bias that people are — for reasons that sometimes are, you know, inconceivable and not understandable — they just don’t believe science and they don’t believe authority.” “So when they see someone up...

Scientists working on the Xenon1T experiment have detected more activity within their detector than they would otherwise expect. There are three potential explanations for the new signal from the Xenon1T experiment. Two require new physics to explain, while one of them is consistent with a hypothesised dark matter particle called a solar axion. There are several theories to account for what that particle might be like. The most favoured one has been the WIMP, or Weakly Interacting Massive Particle. Physicists working on the Xenon series of experiments have spent more than a decade hunting for signs of these WIMPs. ......

In August 2018 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched an investigation that is shaking up the U.S. biomedical community. A new round of terminations has resulted in 54 scientists losing their jobs with the taxpayer-funded institute. The investigation is on-going. The scientists, all grant recipients, failed to disclose financial ties to a foreign government – mostly China.189 researchers were investigated and 93% were found to be tied to China. So, 54 researchers were terminated or resigned for violating NIH rules against simultaneously receiving funds from the U.S. government and foreign entities. In other words, the scientists aren’t allowed...

On Sunday, June 21, the annular solar eclipse will be visible in parts of Africa, Pakistan, India, and China, according to timeandate.com. Skywatchers in this area will be able to see the ring of fire. In south and east Europe and north Australia, a partial eclipse will be visible. Keep in mind that the sun can burn your retinas, so if you watch the solar eclipse in person, make sure to wear proper eye protection. Want to watch the ring of fire solar eclipse from home? Tune in to this live stream this weekend. You won't want to miss it...

Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken piloted the first manned flight of the Falcon 9 on May 30. Each astronaut had previously been on on two space shuttle missions, and they spoke of their surprise at how comparatively smooth the SpaceX launch was. “From the time the engines lit, the first two-and-a-half minutes to staging was about like we expected, except you can never simulate the Gs, so as the Gs built you could certainly feel those,” Hurley told Spaceflight Now. “What I thought was really neat was how sensitive we were to the throttling of the Merlin engines. That was...

Miners working in the Pilbara region spotted the strange object—which illuminated the clouds as it flew past—around 1 a.m. local time, with the glow lasting for so long that many were able to capture the event on their phones. Experts say that the object was probably not a piece of spacecraft debris falling to Earth, but rather a "fireball," which is a very bright meteor. "What we tend to see—when objects like space debris, or if it's a satellite burning up—what we tend to see is sort of like crackles and sparks. This is due to the fact that there...

A new study... provides an updated estimate of the likely number of alien civilizations that could exist in the Milky Way. The analysis...starts with revising the Drake equation... "The classic method for estimating the number of intelligent civilizations relies on making guesses of values relating to life," said Westby in a press release. "Our new study simplifies these assumptions using new data, giving us a solid estimate of the number of civilizations in our Galaxy." Westby and Conselice...built a key assumption in to their estimate: Life on another planet will arise in a similar way to how it did on...

Earthquakes generate seismic waves below Earth's surface that travel thousands of miles. When the waves encounter changes in rock density, temperature or composition, they change speed, bend or scatter, producing echoes that can be detected. Echoes from nearby structures arrive more quickly, while those from larger structures are louder. By measuring the travel time and amplitude of these echoes as they arrive at seismometers in different locations, scientists can develop models of the physical properties of rock hidden below the surface. This process is similar to the way bats echolocate to map their environment Using a machine learning algorithm called...

The reason that the ocean floor, especially the southern hemisphere oceans, is so poorly charted is that electromagnetic waves cannot penetrate the deep ocean (3-5 km = 2-3 mi). Instead, depths are commonly measured by timing the two-way travel time of an acoustic pulse. However because research vessels travel quite slowly (6m/s = 12 knots) it would take approximately 125 years to chart the ocean basins using the latest swath-mapping tools. To date, only a small fraction of the sea floor has been charted by ships. Fortunately, such a major mapping program is largely unnecessary because the ocean surface has...

The scans for MH370 revealed that the ocean crust rises and falls in waves that start at the Southeast Indian Ridge and continue outward. The ridge spreads about 35 millimeters in opposite directions every year, and the wave crests, where crust grew faster, are more than 100 kilometers long and repeat every 10-14 kilometers. The researchers estimated when each wave formed by comparing the bathymetry maps to independent measurements and models of the crust's magnetic field. ...Crustal rocks record the polarity of Earth's magnetic field as they form, allowing scientists to trace the age of different sections of ocean crust....

Saturn's rings, Titan and the much smaller moon Enceladus. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) ===================================================================== On human timescales, things in the Solar System seem to be pretty set in place. Over cosmic timescales, it's all gradually falling apart. The planets are very, very slowly moving away from the Sun; and most of the moons are slowly moving away from their planets in a process called tidal acceleration. The fact that Titan is slowly moving away from its planet - Saturn - is therefore not at all unusual. But astronomers have found something really surprising: Titan's outward migration is faster than expected -...

Explanation: NGC 2359 is a helmet-shaped cosmic cloud with wing-like appendages popularly called Thor's Helmet. Heroically sized even for a Norse god, Thor's Helmet is about 30 light-years across. In fact, the helmet is more like an interstellar bubble, blown as a fast wind from the bright, massive star near the bubble's center inflates a region within the surrounding molecular cloud. Known as a Wolf-Rayet star, the central star is an extremely hot giant thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova stage of evolution. NGC 2359 is located about 15,000 light-years away in the constellation of the Great Overdog. The...

By harnessing the innovation unleashed by the free enterprise system, private space enterprise is ready to explore the next untapped horizon: asteroids. We’re going to the moon. We’re going to Mars. And, before you know it, we’ll be going to the asteroid belt.Space is back, baby. It’s back in the news, back in our thoughts, and back in the culture. America, and the world, are better for it.Over the past few years, space exploration has returned to public consciousness in ways not since the first shuttle mission in 1981, or even since Americans landed men on the moon then brought...

Complex organic molecules that could serve as building blocks for life are more ubiquitous than previously thought in cold clouds of gas and dust that give birth to stars and planets, according to astronomers at the University of Arizona Steward Observatory. These molecules also appear much earlier than conventional wisdom suggested, hundreds of thousands of years before stars actually begin to form, the researchers found. Published in The Astrophysical Journal, the results challenge existing theories that require an environment heated by proto-stars—stars in the making—for complex organic molecules to become observable. The study is the first to look for the...

Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs)—the existence of which was predicted by Albert Einstein and Indian mathematician Satyendra Nath Bose almost a century ago—are formed when atoms of certain elements are cooled to near absolute zero (0 Kelvin, minus 273.15 Celsius). At this point, the atoms become a single entity with quantum properties, wherein each particle also functions as a wave of matter. BECs straddle the line between the macroscopic world governed by forces such as gravity and the microscopic plane, ruled by quantum mechanics. Creating the fifth state of matter, especially within the physical confines of a space station, is no mean...

More than 5,000 scientists and two prominent scientific journals shut down operations and pledged to use the day to address racial inequalities in science. ----------------------------------------------------------- People on social media are spreading word about the strike with the hashtags #ShutDownAcademia, #ShutDownSTEM and #Strike4BlackLives.

Explanation: In infrared, Jupiter lights up the night. Recently, astronomers at the Gemini North Observatory in Hawaii, USA, created some of the best infrared photos of Jupiter ever taken from Earth’s surface, pictured. Gemini was able to produce such a clear image using a technique called lucky imaging, by taking many images and combining only the clearest ones that, by chance, were taken when Earth's atmosphere was the most calm. Jupiter’s jack-o’-lantern-like appearance is caused by the planet’s different layers of clouds. Infrared light can pass through clouds better than visible light, allowing us to see deeper, hotter layers of...

The probe has been orbiting the asteroid since 2018 and has been preparing to collect a chunk of asteroid rock, which it will bring back to Earth in 2023. OSIRIS-REx is set to take the sample from the site named Nightingale on Oct. 20, 2020, but on May 26 the spacecraft took a dive toward Osprey, the backup sample collection site for the mission. OSIRIS-REx dropped down to just 820 feet (250 meters) above the site, which is the closest the spacecraft has been to Osprey. During the operation, the probe took 347 images from PolyCam, one of three cameras...

Our sun is an incredible fusion engine. From the surface of earth, we see it as a mere ball of light, but through amazing high-res imaging capabilities, we can observe real solar activities thanks to NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.