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An artist’s impression shows a very distant quasar powered by a black hole with a mass two billion times that of the Sun. CREDIT: ESO/M. KORNMESSER

Astronomers have linked extremely reddened quasars to strong galactic outflowing winds that inhibit star formation in the early universe. Galaxies formed and grew billions of years ago by accumulating gas from their surroundings, or colliding and merging with other young galaxies. These early stages of galaxy assembly are believed to be accompanied by episodes of rapid star formation, known as starbursts, and rapid growth of a single super-massive black hole in the galactic centers.

A popular paradigm for this evolution has the black holes growing mostly in obscurity, buried deep within the dusty gas...

The GRAPES-3 muon telescope, the largest and most sensitive cosmic ray monitor recorded a burst of galactic cosmic rays that indicated a crack in the Earth’s magnetic shield. Credit: TIFR

The GRAPES-3 muon telescope located at TIFR’s Cosmic Ray Laboratory in Ooty recorded a burst of galactic cosmic rays of about 20 GeV, on 22 June 2015 lasting for 2 hours. The burst occurred when a giant cloud of plasma ejected from the solar corona, and moving with a speed of about 2.5 million km/h struck our planet, causing a severe compression of Earth’s magnetosphere from 11 to 4 times the radius of Earth. It triggered a severe geomagnetic storm that generated aurora borealis, and radio signal blackouts in many high latitude countries.

Earth’s magnetosphere extends over a radius of a million kilometers...

Image1: A map of Mars that includes the unually high elevation region LSU researchers are studying called Thaumasia Planum.Photo Credit: Wikimedia 2. LSU Mars researchers study the Kilauea Iki lava lake on Hawaii, which offers a similar geological environment to Mars.Photo Credit: Don Hood, LSU

Researcher Don Hood from LSU and colleagues from collaborating universities studied an unusual region on Mars – an area with high elevation called Thaumasia Planum. They analyzed the geography and mineralogy of this area they termed Greater Thaumasia, which is about the size of North America. They also studied the chemistry of this area based on Gamma Ray Spectrometer data collected by Mars Odyssey Orbiter, launched in 2001...

Comparison of approaches to obtain fetal DNA in ongoing pregnancies, including amniocentesis, chorionic villous sampling (CVS), cell-free fetal DNA, and trophoblast retrieval isolation from the cervix (TRIC). Sources of fetal DNA throughout early pregnancy are illustrated according to their accessibility during gestation. Credit: Jain et al., Science Translational Medicine (2016)

The latest developments in prenatal technology conceived by scientists at the Wayne State University School of Medicine that make it possible to test for genetic disorders a little more than 1 month into pregnancy were revealed this week...