Tiny Neptune Moon Spotted by Hubble may have Broken from Larger Moon

An artist’s concept of the tiny moon Hippocamp that was discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2013. Only 20 miles across, it may actually be a broken-off fragment from a much larger neighboring moon, Proteus, seen as a crescent in the background. This is the first evidence for a moon being an offshoot from a comet collision with a much larger parent body.
Credit: NASA, ESA and J. Olmsted (STScI)

Astronomers call it “the moon that shouldn’t be there.” After several years of analysis, a team of planetary scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has at last come up with an explanation for a mysterious moon around Neptune that they discovered with Hubble in 2013.

The tiny moon, named Hippocamp, is unusually close to a much larger Neptunian moon called Proteus...

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Breakthrough toward developing Blood Test for Pain

Researchers are developing an objective test for patient pain.
Credit: © ake1150 / Fotolia

Researchers have developed a test that objectively measures pain biomarkers in blood. The test could help physicians better treat patients with precision medicine, and help stem the tide of the opioid crisis.

“We have developed a prototype for a blood test that can objectively tell doctors if the patient is in pain, and how severe that pain is. It’s very important to have an objective measure of pain, as pain is a subjective sensation. Until now we have had to rely on patients self-reporting or the clinical impression the doctor has,” said Niculescu, who worked with other Department of Psychiatry researchers on the study. “When we started this work it was a farfetched idea...

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Breakthrough in the Search for Graphene-based Electronics

Danish researchers just solved one of the biggest challenges of making effective nano electronics based on graphene: to carve out graphene to nanoscale dimensions without ruining the electrical properties. This allows them to achieve electrical currents orders of magnitude higher than previously achieved for such structures. The work shows that the quantum transport properties needed for future electronics can survive scaling down to 10 nanometer dimensions.
Credit: Otto Moesgaard

A team of researchers from Denmark has solved one of the biggest challenges in making effective nanoelectronics based on graphene. For 15 years, scientists have tried to exploit the “miracle material” graphene to produce nanoscale electronics...

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Solar Tadpole-like Jets seen with NASA’S IRIS add new clue to age-old mystery

Images from IRIS show the tadpole-shaped jets containing pseudo-shocks streaking out from the Sun (see animated GIF).
Credit: Abhishek Srivastava IIT (BHU)/Joy Ng, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Scientists have discovered tadpole-shaped jets coming out of regions with intense magnetic fields on the Sun. Unlike those living on Earth, these “tadpoles” – formally called pseudo-shocks – are made entirely of plasma, the electrically conducting material made of charged particles that account for an estimated 99% of the observable universe. The discovery adds a new clue to one of the longest-standing mysteries in astrophysics.

For 150 years scientists have been trying to figure out why the wispy upper atmosphere of the Sun – the corona is over 200 times hotter than the solar surface...

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