NASA’s TESS delivers new insights into an Ultrahot World

Explore KELT-9 b, one of the hottest planets known. Observations from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) have revealed new details about the planet’s environment. The planet follows a close, polar orbit around a squashed star with different surface temperatures, factors that make peculiar seasons for KELT-9 b.
Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Measurements from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) have enabled astronomers to greatly improve their understanding of the bizarre environment of KELT-9 b, one of the hottest planets known.

“The weirdness factor is high with KELT-9 b,” said John Ahlers, an astronomer at Universities Space Research Association in Columbia, Maryland, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland...

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Glowing Dye may Aid in Eliminating Cancer

Used in dogs with mammary cancer, a model for human breast cancer, the technique was capable of illuminating both the primary tumor as well as lymph nodes where the disease had spread. (Image: Penn Vet)

“Clean margins” are a goal of cancer excision surgery. If even a small piece of cancerous tissue is left behind, it increases the likelihood of a local recurrence and spread of the disease, possibly reducing overall survival time. With an innovative approach to cancer surgery, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are investigating a technique to help surgeons clearly see whether they’ve left any diseased tissue behind...

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Understanding of Relaxor Ferroelectric Properties could lead to many Advances

molecular model of polymer orange and blue balls
Chiral (mirror) molecules give relaxor ferroelectrics their amazing properties.
IMAGE: MRI, Penn State

A new fundamental understanding of polymeric relaxor ferroelectric behavior could lead to advances in flexible electronics, actuators and transducers, energy storage, piezoelectric sensors and electrocaloric cooling, according to a team of researchers at Penn State and North Carolina State.

Researchers have debated the theory behind the mechanism of relaxor ferroelectrics for more than 50 years, said Qing Wang, professor of materials science and engineering at Penn State. While relaxor ferroelectrics are well-recognized, fundamentally fascinating and technologically useful materials, a Nature article commented in 2006 that they were heterogeneous, hopeless messes.

Without a funda...

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A cosmic mystery: ESO Telescope captures the disappearance of a Massive Star

Artist’s impression of the disappearing star
This illustration shows what the luminous blue variable star in the Kinman Dwarf galaxy could have looked like before its mysterious disappearance.

Credit:ESO/L. Calçada

Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have discovered the absence of an unstable massive star in a dwarf galaxy. Scientists think this could indicate that the star became less bright and partially obscured by dust. An alternative explanation is that the star collapsed into a black hole without producing a supernova. “If true,” says team leader and PhD student Andrew Allan of Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, “this would be the first direct detection of such a monster star ending its life in this manner.”

Between 2001 and 2011, various teams of astronomers studied the myster...

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