The plumbing goes deep.

David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper revealed how amino acids shape protein structure, a finding that could aid in drug discovery.

This has never been seen before.

The Sun has started spooky season with a bang, letting loose on October 1 with a colossal flare and coronal mass ejection headed right for Earth.

The flare clocked in at X7.1 – the second most powerful flare of the current solar cycle, and one of the most powerful solar flares ever measured, sitting within the top 30 flares over the last 30 years.

We’re not in any danger, but the NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center has forecast minor to strong geomagnetic storms over the next few days, from 3 to 5 October, as we await the gust of solar particles as the coronal mass ejection blasts through the Solar System.

TL;DR

Using a precise parallax method, scientists measured the distance to a star-forming region 66,000 light-years away on the far side of the Milky Way. This discovery, using the Very Long Baseline Array, confirmed the existence of the Scutum-Centaurus Arm and uncovered its undulating shape. The interstellar dust obstructing visible light made this feat more challenging, but tracking molecules like methanol and water helped scientists achieve this. This is part of a larger effort to map the entire Milky Way, with about a quarter still unexplored, offering more insights into the galaxy’s true structure.

The European Space Agency (ESA) just launched its much-anticipated effort to explore the wreckage of the asteroid Dimorphos, the cosmic body that NASA successfully obliterated last year during its pioneering planetary defense test in 2022. The “crash scene” surveillance team includes the spacecraft Hera as well as two tiny cubesats,…

New software simulates complex wave scattering for metamaterial design. Could invisibility cloaks become a reality? New research brings this science fiction concept a step closer, with a breakthrough software package that simulates how waves interact with complex materials.

A new software package developed by researchers at Macquarie University can accurately model the way waves — sound, water or light — are scattered when they meet complex configurations of particles.

This will vastly improve the ability to rapidly design metamaterials — exciting artificial materials used to amplify, block or deflect waves.

Disabling a gene involved in metabolism rejuvenates cells’ ability to spin off new neurons.

The Hubbard model is a studied model in condensed matter theory and a formidable quantum problem. A team of physicists used deep learning to condense this problem, which previously required 100,000 equations, into just four equations without sacrificing accuracy. The study, titled “Deep Learning the Functional Renormalization Group,” was published on September 21 in Physical Review Letters.

Dominique Di Sante is the lead author of this study. Since 2021, he holds the position of Assistant Professor (tenure track) at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Bologna. At the same time, he is a Visiting Professor at the Center for Computational Quantum Physics (CCQ) at the Flatiron Institute, New York, as part of a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) grant that encourages, among other things, the mobility of researchers.

He and colleagues at the Flatiron Institute and other international researchers conducted the study, which has the potential to revolutionize the way scientists study systems containing many interacting electrons. In addition, if they can adapt the method to other problems, the approach could help design materials with desirable properties, such as superconductivity, or contribute to clean energy production.

Humanity’s microscopic foes may be to blame for the ABO polymorphism.