Very little is known about how to properly reuse medical masks to fight infectious diseases. No method is confirmed to work. Still, in a report to doctors, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, some researchers are beginning to point to the best options for decontaminating used masks. Medical professionals are reusing single-use medical masks across […]
Rafi Letzter
Did German physicists accidentally discover dark matter in 2014?
The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search is one of the most sensitive efforts to track down brand-new, never-before-seen dark matter particles. But what if dark matter particles aren’t something new after all? (Credit: SuperCDMS/Slac National Accelerator Laboratory) Could we have already discovered dark matter? That’s the question put forth in a new paper published Feb.12 in the Journal […]
What should we do if a ‘planet-killer’ asteroid takes aim at Earth?
An illustration shows a rocket approaching an asteroid that’s drifted too close to Earth. A scout probe orbits nearby. (Credit: Christine Daniloff, MIT) If a giant object looks like it’s going to slam into Earth, humanity has a few options: Hammer it with a spacecraft hard enough to knock it off course, blast it with nuclear weapons, […]
Saturn’s weird, Earth-like moon just failed a key test for alien life
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured this view of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, with Saturn’s rings in the foreground. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) Saturn’s most Earth-like moon looks a bit less likely to host life, thanks to quantum mechanics, the weird rules that govern subatomic particles. Titan, the second largest moon in our solar system after Jupiter’s Ganymede, is […]
Rosetta’s ‘rubber ducky’ comet changed color as it neared the sun. Here’s why.
A single frame Rosetta navigation camera image of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. (Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM) The Rosetta spacecraft‘s rubber ducky comet has slowly changed color as it moved through space, from red to blueish and then red again. According to a new paper published Feb. 5 in the journal Nature, the color change is a signal of a water cycle […]
This image could help explain the Milky Way’s strange creamy center
A composite image shows infrared light from swirls of gas and dust at the center of the Milky Way. (Full size image below.) (Credit: NASA/SOFIA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/Herschel) A gorgeous, incredibly detailed new image of the Milky Way’s center could help explain one of the enduring mysteries of our galaxy — why its heart is missing stars. The […]
There’s a giant mystery hiding inside every atom in the universe
File photo: A microscopic photo of a sheet of glass only two atoms thick blends with an artist’s conception to show the structural rendering. (Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science) No one really knows what happens inside an atom. But two competing groups of scientists think they’ve figured it out. And both are racing to […]
3 black holes possibly seen cooking their galaxies alive
An image shows how galaxy-sized bubbles shove gas around in the Perseus galaxy cluster. The X at the center of the image shows the location of the supermassive black hole at its center. (Credit: Li et al.) Supermassive black holes at the hearts of galaxies may be blasting hot, turbulent waves of gas through the […]
