This illustration shows Earth’s magnetosphere interacting with the solar wind. The magnetosphere shields the Earth from harmful solar and cosmic radiation. Credit: NASA Goddard/CIL/Josh Masters A new study led by Southwest Research Institute’s Dr. Michael Starkey has provided observational evidence from the SwRI-led Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Mission of pickup ions (PUIs) and associated wave activity…
On September 14, 2015, a signal arrived on Earth, carrying information about a pair of remote black holes that had spiraled together and merged. The signal had traveled about 1.3 billion years to reach us at the speed of light — but it was not made of light. It was a different kind of signal:…
For over a hundred years, schoolchildren around the world have learned that ice melts when pressure and friction are applied. When you step out onto an icy pavement in winter, you can slip up because of the pressure exerted by your body weight through the sole of your (still warm) shoe. But it turns out…
Routine vaccination rates for kindergarten children have declined since the COVID-19 pandemic began, while exemptions from school vaccination requirements, particularly non-medical exemptions, have increased. These trends coincide with shifting attitudes toward childhood vaccination likely fueled in part by vaccine misinformation. The past few years have seen more skepticism and confusion among the public about the…
If you pull an ice core from the outer edges of the Arctic polar cap, you might spot what looks like a faint line of dirt. Those are diatoms – single-celled algae with outer walls made of glass. Their presence in ice isn’t new, but because they seemed trapped and dormant, few bothered to study…
Key Points First observed on September 5, Yurei is a newly emerged ransomware group that targeted a Sri Lankan food manufacturing company as its first leaked victim. The group follows a double-extortion model: they encrypt the victim’s files and exfiltrate sensitive data, and then demand a ransom payment to decrypt and refrain from publishingthe stolen information….
Infamous for their environmental persistence and potential links to health conditions, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), often called forever chemicals, are being discovered in unexpected places, including beer. Researchers publishing in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology tested beers brewed in different areas around the U.S. for these substances. They found that beers produced in parts…
With the declared aim of measuring matter under extreme pressure, an international research collaboration headed by the University of Rostock and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) used the high-performance laser DIPOLE 100-X at the European XFEL for the first time in 2023. With spectacular results: In this initial experiment they managed to study liquid carbon –…
For several decades, a central puzzle in quantum physics has remained unsolved: Could electrons behave like a perfect, frictionless fluid with electrical properties described by a universal quantum number? This unique property of electrons has been extremely difficult to detect in any material so far because of the presence of atomic defects, impurities, and imperfections…
An artist’s impression of the Juno spacecraft over Jupiter’s South Pole NASA/JPL-Caltech Jupiter is not quite as large as astronomers thought, according to the first measurements of its radius taken in more than 40 years. Jupiter is a gas giant and doesn’t have a solid outer surface like Earth. But astronomers can still assess its…
