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Powerful radio pulses originating deep in the cosmos can be used to study hidden pools of gas cocooning nearby galaxies, according to a new study appearing in the journal Nature Astronomy.

So-called fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are pulses of radio waves that typically originate millions to billions of light-years away (radio waves are electromagnetic radiation like the light we see with our eyes but have longer wavelengths and frequencies). The first FRB was discovered in 2007, and since then, hundreds more have been found. In 2020, Caltech’s STARE2 instrument (Survey for Transient Astronomical Radio Emission 2) and Canada’s CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) detected a massive FRB that went off in our own Milky Way galaxy. Those earlier results helped confirm the theory that the energetic events most likely originate from dead, magnetized stars called magnetars.

As more and more FRBs roll in, researchers are now asking how they can be used to study the gas that lies between us and the bursts. In particular, they would like to use the FRBs to probe halos of diffuse gas that surround galaxies. As the radio pulses travel toward Earth, the gas enveloping the galaxies is expected to slow the waves down and disperse the radio frequencies. In the new study, the researchers looked at a sample of 474 distant FRBs detected by CHIME, which has discovered the most FRBs to date, and showed that the subset of two dozen FRBs that passed through galactic halos were indeed slowed down more than non-intersecting FRBs.

Using NASA’s Fermi space telescope, Chinese astronomers have investigated a newly discovered millisecond pulsar known as PSR J1835−3259B. As a result, they identified gamma-ray pulsations from this source. The finding is reported in a paper published June 27 on the arXiv pre-print server.

Pulsars are highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars emitting a beam of electromagnetic radiation. The most rapidly rotating pulsars, with rotation periods below 30 milliseconds, are known as millisecond pulsars (MSPs). Astronomers assume that they are formed in binary systems when the initially more massive component turns into a neutron star that is then spun up due to accretion of matter from the secondary star.

PSR J1835−3259B is a recently discovered MSP in the globular cluster NGC 6652. It has a spin period of approximately 1.83 milliseconds and is in a nearly circular orbit of about 28.7 hours within the cluster. The distance to the pulsar is estimated to be some 32,600 light years.

Today marks 28 years since Amazon was founded in Bellevue, Washington. The company’s presence in the region now spans numerous facilities, including corporate o… See more.

Seattle is home to teams conducting research across the breadth of Amazon businesses, from locker and counter pickups at Amazon Hubs to last-mile routing and driver support to research for a wide variety of Amazon initiatives.

The two tetraquarks, T^a_cs0 (2900)⁺⁺ and T^a_cs0 (2900)⁰, are observed in joint analysis of the B⁰→ D⁰D_s⁺π^– and B⁺→D^– D_s⁺ π⁺ decays. The new tetraquarks are observed with masses around 2.9 GeV in both the D_s⁺π⁺ and D_s⁺π^– mass spectra. The former corresponds to the first observation of a doubly charged open-charm tetraquark with minimal quark content csud and the latter is a neutral tetraquark composed of csud quarks. The D_s⁺π⁺ and D_s⁺π^– mass spectra in the top images above indicate that the sum of contributions from conventional resonances (particles) cannot explain experimental distribution around the mass of 2.9 GeV. On the other hand, the experimental distributions are well understood when the contributions of the two new teraquarks are included in the analysis as shown in the two bottom images above. The mass and the width are determined to be 2.908±0.011±0.02 GeV and 0.136±0.023±0.011 GeV, respectively. The quantum numbers are determined to be J^P=0⁺. In the language of particle physics the two tetraquarks are isospin partners.

In the conventional quark model, strongly interacting particles known as hadrons are formed either from quark-antiquark pairs (mesons) or three quarks (baryons). Particles which cannot be classified within this scheme are referred to as exotic hadrons. In their fundamental 1964 papers [1] and [2], in which they proposed the quark model, Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig mentioned the possibility of adding a quark-antiquark pair to a minimal meson or baryon quark configuration. It took 50 years, however, for physicists to obtain unambiguous experimental evidence of the existence of these exotic hadrons. In April 2014 the LHCb collaboration published measurements that demonstrated that the Z(4430)^– particle, first observed by the Belle collaboration, is composed of four quarks (ccdu).

It’s time to #UnfoldTheUniverse. Watch as the mission team reveals the long-awaited first images from the James Webb Space Telescope. Webb, an international collaboration led by NASA with our partners the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, is the biggest telescope ever launched into space. It will unlock mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it.

All about Webb: https://webb.nasa.gov/

According to the study, smart TV sets surpassed personal computers in 2021. After smartphones, TVs are the most used device to access the Internet — from 37% of users in 2019 to 50% last year. This increase was observed in almost all analyzed demographic strata, mainly among those aged 35 to 44 (59%), users from the North Region of Brazil (45%), and women (51%). In total, 74 million individuals accessed the Internet using their television sets, an increase of 25 million users during last year.

The survey also revealed the prevalence of exclusive smartphone use to access the Internet (64% of users). According to the research, smartphones have been the main Internet access device in Brazil since 2015, and between 2019 and 2021 there was an increase of 6 percentage points in the exclusive use of phones to go online.

The exclusive use of smartphones to access the web is higher among Brazilians living in rural areas (83%), in the Northeast Region of the country (75%), black individuals (65%), those aged 60 years and over (80%), and the poorest segments of the population (89%). Among lower middle class users, access to the Internet exclusively via smartphones increased from 61% in 2019 to 67% in 2021, reaching 51 million people.

Meet Daniela de Paulis, the newest member of the SETI Institute’s Artist in Residence program. Daniela is a media artist who is also a licensed radio operator and radio telescope operator at the Dwingeloo radio telescope in the Netherlands. Fusing radio technologies, neuroscience, and space research, Daniela creates pioneering art-science projects that include live performances, virtual reality (VR), electroencephalograms (EEG), and audience participation. During this SETI Live chat with SETI AIR Director Bettina Forget, Daniela will discuss her recent works COGITO in Space and OPTICKS, and give us a sneak peek of the project she has planned to complete during her time at the AIR program.

A microbial organism pulls electricity from water in the air.