Galactic magnetic fields may arise surprisingly fast, driven by collapsing plasma and turbulent flows.
Tattoo ink stays with you for life. Researchers are now asking how these pigments interact with the immune system and whether long-term exposure matters.
For the first time, physicists have observed that ‘holes’ in light can move faster than the light itself.
They’re known as phase singularities or optical vortices, and since the 1970s, scientists have predicted that, just as eddies in a river can move faster than the flowing water around them, so too can whirlpools in a wave of light outrun the light they’re embedded within.
This does not break relativity, which states that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. That’s because the vortices carry no mass, energy, or information, and their motion is based on the evolving geometry of the wave pattern rather than any physical motion through space.
The ultimate plan to live forever is a brand new body.
Scientists at NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, jointly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, have submitted an unprecedented set of asteroid detections to the IAU Minor Planet Center, including hundreds of distant worlds beyond Neptune and 33 previously unknown near-Earth asteroids.
Using preliminary data from NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, scientists have discovered over 11,000 new asteroids [1]. The data were confirmed by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center (MPC), making this the largest single batch of asteroid discoveries submitted in the past year. The discoveries were made using data from Rubin’s early optimization surveys and offer a powerful preview of the observatory’s transformative impact on Solar System science.
Rubin Observatory is a joint program of NSF NOIRLab and DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, who cooperatively operate Rubin. NOIRLab is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA).
The research team also wanted to see if survey responses translated to actual scientific output. They received permission from a portion of the participants to securely link their survey answers with their professional publication records.
The team utilized machine learning technology to analyze the text of the scientists’ published abstracts and article titles. The computer algorithms measured how closely the words and phrasing matched among different authors. They also built algorithms to map out who these scientists collaborated with and which older papers they cited as foundational literature.
The algorithms revealed that cognitive traits are associated with differences in real-world publishing activity. This remained true even when controlling for a researcher’s specific subfield and preferred tools. Two psychologists who study the exact same topic using identical methods are still more likely to cite the same reference materials if they happen to share similar internal thinking styles.