Hubble Snaps a Crowded Cluster

Hubble image of Messier 75, taken with the telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Ferraro et al.

This sparkling burst of stars is Messier 75. It is a globular cluster: a spherical collection of stars bound together by gravity. Clusters like this orbit around galaxies and typically reside in their outer and less-crowded areas, gathering to form dense communities in the galactic suburbs.

Messier 75 lies in our Milky Way galaxy in the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer), around 67,000 light-years away from Earth. The majority of the cluster’s stars, about 400,000 in total, are found in its core; it is one of the most densely populated clusters ever found, with a phenomenal luminosity of some 180,000 times that of the Sun...

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Nanoparticles take a fantastic, Magnetic Voyage


MIT engineers have designed a magnetic microrobot that can help push drug-delivery particles into tumor tissue (left). They also employed swarms of naturally magnetic bacteria to achieve the same effect (right).
Credit: Image courtesy of the researchers.

Tiny robots powered by magnetic fields could help drug-delivery nanoparticles reach their disease targets. MIT Engineers have designed tiny robots that can help drug-delivery nanoparticles push their way out of the bloodstream and into a tumor or another disease site. The magnetic microrobots could help to overcome one of the biggest obstacles to delivering drugs with nanoparticles: getting them to exit blood vessels and accumulate in the right place.

Like crafts in “Fantastic Voyage” – a 1960s science fiction film in which a submarine...

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Surprising Quantum effect in Hard Disk Drive material


Researchers at Argonne have discovered a way to control the direction of electron spin in a cobalt-iron alloy, influencing its magnetic properties. The result could have implications for more powerful and energy-efficient materials for information storage.
Credit: Argonne National Laboratory

Scientists have further explored a new effect that enhances their ability to control the direction of electron spin in certain materials. Their discovery may lead to more powerful and energy-efficient materials for information storage.

Sometimes scientific discoveries can be found along well-trodden paths. That proved the case for a cobalt-iron alloy material commonly found in hard disk drives. As reported in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters, researchers from the U.S...

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Evidence of 6 new Binary Black Hole Mergers within LVC data



Matias Zaldarriaga, Professor in the School of Natural Sciences, describes the results of his team’s search for new events in the publicly available LIGO data that nearly doubles the catalog of binary black hole mergers.  Credit:
Lee Sandberg

Scholars at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) recently submitted a paper announcing the discovery of six new binary black hole mergers that exceed the detection thresholds defined by the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration (LVC), the group responsible for the first direct observation of gravitational waves on February 11, 2016.

Taking data made public by the LVC, the IAS team applied a unique set of signal processing techniques to detect these cataclysmic events, nearly doubling the total number of binary black hole mergers found during LVC’s second ...

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