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In 1999 Mysterious Finger-Like Features Were Spotted on the Sun — Now Scientists Have an Explanation

In January 1999, scientists observed mysterious motions within a solar flare.

Unlike typical flares that showed bright energy erupting outwards from the Sun, this solar flare also displayed a downward flow of motion, as if material was falling back towards the Sun. Described as “downward-moving dark voids,” astronomers wondered what exactly they were seeing.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has reached its final destination. Let’s celebrate the team that got it there (op-ed)

Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen is associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. He contributed this article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

There is a new speck of light in the sky right now, best observable from Earth around midnight. This blurry speck — dim as it may be, small as it may be — represents the grit and unity of thousands of people who worked together to place it in the heavens.

Scientists Create Synthetic Dimensions To Better Understand the Fundamental Laws of the Universe

Humans experience the world in three dimensions, but a collaboration in Japan has developed a way to create synthetic dimensions to better understand the fundamental laws of the Universe and possibly apply them to advanced technologies.

They published their results today (January 28, 2022) in Science Advances.

“The concept of dimensionality has become a central fixture in diverse fields of contemporary physics and technology in past years,” said paper author Toshihiko Baba, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Yokohama National University. “While inquiries into lower-dimensional materials and structures have been fruitful, rapid advances in topology have uncovered a further abundance of potentially useful phenomena depending on the dimensionality of the system, even going beyond the three spatial dimensions available in the world around us.”

Shining a light on synthetic dimensions

Humans experience the world in three dimensions, but a collaboration in Japan has developed a way to create synthetic dimensions to better understand the fundamental laws of the universe and possibly apply them to advanced technologies.

They published their results on January 28, 2022 in Science Advances.

“The concept of dimensionality has become a central fixture in diverse fields of contemporary physics and technology in past years,” said paper author Toshihiko Baba, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Yokohama National University. “While inquiries into lower-dimensional materials and structures have been fruitful, rapid advances in topology have uncovered a further abundance of potentially useful phenomena depending on the dimensionality of the system, even going beyond the three available in the world around us.”

USRA-Rigetti-NASA team advances to DARPA ONISQ Phase 2

Columbia, Maryland — January 27, 2022. Universities Space Research Association (USRA) today announced the start of operations for phase-2 of DARPA’s Optimization with Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum devices (ONISQ) program. This award follows the ONISQ phase 1 launch in 2020, in which USRA was selected to lead the “Scheduling Applications with Advanced Mixers” (SAAM) project, in collaboration with Rigetti Computing and, through DARPA, under DARPA-NASA Interagency agreement (IAA) 8,839 Annex 114, with the NASA Quantum AI Laboratory.

Astronomers Discover Mysterious Object in Our “Galactic Backyard” — Unlike Anything Seen Before

A team mapping radio waves in the Universe has discovered something unusual that releases a giant burst of energy three times an hour, and it’s unlike anything astronomers have seen before. The team who discovered it think it could be a neutron star or a white dwarf—collapsed cores of stars—wi…


Electric bicycle sales have been on a skyward trajectory since early in the pandemic, and new numbers show they are selling more units than electric cars and plug-in hybrids combined. Those figures recently released by the Light Electric Vehicle Association trade group help bolster the case for personal electric vehicles as alternatives to larger cars […].