The end of the universe as we know it will not come with a bang. Most stars will very, very slowly fizzle as their temperatures fade to zero.

“It will be a bit of a sad, lonely, cold place,” said theoretical physicist Matt Caplan, who added no one will be around to witness this long farewell happening in the far far future. Most believe all will be dark as the universe comes to an end. “It’s known as ‘heat death,’ where the universe will be mostly black holes and burned-out stars,” said Caplan, who imagined a slightly different picture when he calculated how some of these dead stars might change over the eons.

Punctuating the darkness...

As the world awaits vaccines to bring the COVID-19 pandemic under control, UC San Francisco scientists have devised a novel approach to halting the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease.

Led by UCSF graduate student Michael Schoof, a team of researchers engineered a completely synthetic, production-ready molecule that straitjackets the crucial SARS-CoV-2 machinery that allows the virus to infect our cells...

Chemists in Arts & Sciences have developed a method to make or modify “smart bricks” that can store energy until required for powering devices. (Image: D’Arcy laboratory)

Red bricks – some of the world’s cheapest and most familiar building materials – can be converted into energy storage units that can be charged to hold electricity, like a battery, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

Brick has been used in walls and buildings for thousands of years, but rarely has been found fit for any other use. Now, chemists in Arts & Sciences have developed a method to make or modify “smart bricks” that can store energy until required for powering devices. A proof-of-concept published Aug...

Data from NASA’s recent Dawn mission answers two long-unresolved questions: Is there liquid inside Ceres, and how long ago was the dwarf planet geologically active? NASA’s Dawn spacecraft gave scientists extraordinary close-up views of the dwarf planet Ceres, which lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. By the time the mission ended in October 2018, the orbiter had dipped to less than 22 miles (35 kilometers) above the surface, revealing crisp details of the mysterious bright regions Ceres had become known for.

Scientists had figured out that the bright areas were deposits made mostly of sodium carbonate – a compound of s...