Category Uncategorized

The Sun’s magnetic field, which is embedded in the solar wind, permeates the entire solar system. The current sheet — where the magnetic field changes polarity —spirals out from near the solar equator like a wavy skirt around a ballet dancer’s waist.
Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Combined observations of Comet McNaught – one of the brightest comets visible from Earth in the past 50 years – have revealed new insights on the nature of comets and their relationship with the Sun. Engineers and scientists gathered around a screen in an operations room at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., eager to lay their eyes on the first data from NASA’s STEREO spacecraft...

Snapshots of the 120 million particle simulation of two merging dwarf galaxies, which each contain a blackhole, between 6 and 7.5 billion years. Credit: UZH

Black holes colliding, gravitational waves riding through space-time – and a huge instrument that allows scientists to investigate the fabric of the universe. This could soon become reality when the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) takes up operations. Researchers have now found that LISA could also shed light on the elusive dark matter particle.

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will enable astrophysicists to observe gravitational waves emitted by black holes as they collide with or capture other black holes. LISA will consist of three spacecraft orbiting the sun in a constant triangle formation...

Ames Laboratory has developed a method to measure magnetic properties of superconducting and magnetic materials that exhibit unusual quantum behavior at very low temperatures in high magnetic fields, by placing a tunnel diode resonator, an instrument that makes precise radio-frequency measurements of magnetic properties, in a dilution refrigerator, a cryogenic device that is able to cool samples down to milli-Kelvin temperature range.
Credit: Ames Laboratory, US Department of Energy

Scientists have developed a method to measure magnetic properties of superconducting and magnetic materials that exhibit unusual quantum behavior at very low temperatures in high magnetic fields...

Researchers found large amounts of viral DNA in key areas of the brains of Alzheimer’s patients CREDIT: REDHEAD ET AL

Decades of research show a striking correlation between Alzheimer’s disease risk and infection with Herpes Simplex Virus 1 (HSV1) in people carrying a specific gene. Now, newly-available epidemiological data provide a causal link between HSV1 infection and senile dementia – raising the tantalizing prospect of a simple, effective preventive treatment for one of humanity’s costliest disorders.

Professor Ruth Itzhaki. Her latest paper presents a lifetime of research evidence that the herpes virus responsible for cold sores can also cause Alzheimer’s – and new data which show antiviral drugs drastically reduce risk of senile dementia in patients with severe herpes infections...