The latest star data from the Gaia space observatory has for the first time allowed astronomers to generate a massive 3-D atlas of widely separated binary stars within about 3,000 light years of Earth—1.3 million of them. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-02-binary-stars-solar-neighborhood.html…
Tag: ATLAS
Today in science: A spacecraft obliterated a sundog
On February 11, 2010, a solar observatory launched into space ripped apart a sundog and created a new ice halo that amazed scientists. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/video-when-a-spacecraft-destroyed-a-sundog…
ATLAS finds evidence of a rare Higgs boson decay
Since the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, scientists in the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have been hard at work characterizing its properties and hunting down the diverse ways in which this ephemeral particle can decay. From the copious but experimentally challenging decay to b-quarks, to the exquisitely rare but low-background decay into four…
Vertical Farms Grow Veggies On Site At Restaurants and Grocery Stores
New Atlas reports on ag-tech company Vertical Field’s efforts to produce soil-based indoor vertical farms grown at the very location where food is consumed. From the report: The Vertical Field setup retains many of the advantages of hydroponic vertical farms, but instead of the plants growing in a nutrient-packed liquid medium, the container-based pods treat their crops to real soil, supplemented…
Capella the Goat Star is the brightest star in Auriga
The sixth brightest star in the night sky, Capella, is the brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere constellation Auriga the Charioteer. This star is also one of the points in the Winter Hexagon. Source: https://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/capella-is-the-stellar-beacon-of-auriga-the-charioteer…
Scientists Observe Live Cells Responding To Magnetic Fields For First Time
An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: One of the most remarkable “sixth” senses in the animal kingdom is magnetoreception — the ability to detect magnetic fields — but exactly how it works remains a mystery. Now, researchers in Japan may have found a crucial piece of the puzzle, making the first observations of live, unaltered cells responding to…
Liquid Glass Discovered As New State of Matter
An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: Mundane as it may seem, glass is a surprisingly mysterious material. Now scientists at the University of Konstanz have identified a new state of matter called liquid glass, which has some unusual properties. […] In the new study, the researchers discovered a form of glass where the atoms exhibit a complex behavior…
See Boston Dynamics’ Robots Bust Freakishly Good Moves On the Dance Floor
MojoKid summarizes an article from Hot Hardware: Boston Dynamics made news recently when 80% of the company was acquired by Hyundai. The company’s family of robots is always impressive and now it appears they’re having some fun to celebrate the close of 2020. Boston Dynamics’ robot dog, Spot and its humanoid-like Atlas bot friend, were joined by their oddball sibling Handle…
Bull’s head: The Hyades star cluster
Meet the bright star Aldebaran, part of a V-shaped pattern of stars called the Hyades. This easy-to-find star cluster represents the face of Taurus the Bull. Source: https://earthsky.org/favorite-star-patterns/v-shaped-hyades-star-cluster-easy-to-find…
Biomarker of Alzheimer’s Found To Be Regulated By Sleep Cycles
Following a 2018 study demonstrating how disrupted sleep can accelerate the buildup of toxic plaques associated with the disease, scientists from Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) in St. Louis have now identified a protein implicated in the progression of the disease that appears highly regulated by the circadian rhythm, helping them join the dots and providing a potential new therapeutic…