The Milky Way is surrounded by dozens of dwarf galaxies that are thought to be relics of the very first galaxies in the universe. Among the most primitive of these galactic fossils is Tucana II—an ultrafaint dwarf galaxy that is about 50 kiloparsecs, or 163,000 light years, from Earth.

Now MIT astrophysicists have detected stars at the edge of Tucana II, in a configuration that is surprisingly far from its center but nevertheless caught up in the tiny galaxy’s gravitational pull. This is the first evidence that Tucana II hosts an extended dark matter halo—a region of gravitationally bound matter that the researchers calculated to be three to five times more massive than scientists had estimated...

Good news: The bacteria living on your toothbrush reflect your mouth – not your toilet. To obtain toothbrushes for the study, Hartmann’s team launched the Toothbrush Microbiome Project, which asked people to mail in their used toothbrushes along with corresponding metadata. Hartmann’s team then extracted DNA from the bristles to examine the microbial communities found there. They compared these communities to those outlined by the Human Microbiome Project, an NIH initiative that identified and catalogued microbial flora from different areas of the human body.

“Many people contributed samples to the Human Microbiome Project, so we have a general idea of what the human microbiome looks like,” Blaustein said...

Using salt as a key ingredient, Chinese and British researchers have designed a new type of rechargeable battery that could accelerate the shift to greener, electric transport on our roads.

Many electric vehicles (EV) are powered by rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, but they can lose energy and power over time. Under certain conditions, such batteries can also overheat while working or charging, which can also degrade battery life and reduce miles per charge.

To solve these issues, the University of Nottingham is collaborating with six scientific research institutes across China to develop an innovative and affordable energy store with the combined performance merits of a sol...

A new type of rocket thruster that could take humankind to Mars and beyond has been proposed by a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL).

The device would apply magnetic fields to cause particles of plasma, electrically charged gas also known as the fourth state of matter, to shoot out the back of a rocket and, because of the conservation of momentum, propel the craft forward. Current space-proven plasma thrusters use electric fields to propel the particles.

The new concept would accelerate the particles using magnetic reconnection, a process found throughout the universe, incl...