Peculiar Planetary System Architecture around 3 Orion Stars explained

New observations of GW Orionis, a triple star system with a peculiar inner region, revealed that this object has a warped planet-forming disk with a misaligned ring. The image on the right is from the SPHERE instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, which allowed astronomers to see, for the first time, the shows this ring casts on the rest of the disk. This helped the researchers figure out the 3D shape of the ring and the overall disk. The left panel shows an artistic impression of the disk’s inner region, including the ring, which is based on the 3D shape reconstructed by the team. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada, Exeter/Kraus et al.

The discovery that our galaxy is teeming with exoplanets has also revealed the vast diversity of planetary systems out there a...

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Common Class of Drugs linked to increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease

Common anticholinergic drugs like Benadryl linked to increased dementia risk  - Harvard Health Blog - Harvard Health Publishing

A team of scientists, led by researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, report that a class of drugs used for a broad array of conditions, from allergies and colds to hypertension and urinary incontinence, may be associated with an increased risk of cognitive decline, particularly in older adults at greater risk for Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

The findings were published in the September 2, 2020 online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Anticholinergic drugs are widely used for dozens of conditions, minor and major. Some of these medications require a prescription, while others can be purchased over the counter...

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New technology lets Quantum Bits hold Information for 10,000 times Longer than previous record

Conceptual art of the acceptor-based spin-orbit qubit. A boron atom (yellow) implanted in silicon crystal (blue) bounds a hole. Orbital motion of a hole in silicon is coupled to its spin degree of freedom. This coupling is reminiscent of gears where circular motion (blue arrow) and spinning (red arrow) are locked together. Quantum information is encoded to the combined motion and spin of a hole in the spin-orbit qubit. â’¸Takashi Kobayashi, Tohoku University

Quantum bits, or -qubits, can hold quantum information much longer now thanks to efforts by an international research team. The researchers have increased the retention time, or coherence time, to 10 milliseconds – 10,000 times longer than the previous record – by combining the orbital motion and spinning inside an atom...

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An unexpected -Origin story for a Lopsided Black hole merger

black holes merging

Researchers suggest a novel process to explain the collision of a large black hole and a much smaller one. A lopsided merger of two black holes may have an oddball origin story, according to a new study by researchers at MIT and elsewhere.

The merger was first detected on April 12, 2019 as a gravitational wave that arrived at the detectors of both LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory), and its Italian counterpart, Virgo. Scientists labeled the signal as GW190412 and determined that it emanated from a clash between two David-and-Goliath black holes, one three times more massive than the other. The signal marked the first detection of a merger between two black holes of very different sizes.

Now the new study, published today in the journal Physical Review...

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