The large and small Magellanic Clouds.
Credit: Andrew Lockwood

Two of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way – the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds – may have had a third companion, astronomers believe. Research published today describes how another “luminous” galaxy was likely engulfed by the Large Magellanic Cloud some 3 to 5 billion years ago. ICRAR Masters student Benjamin Armstrong, the lead author on the study, said most stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud rotate clockwise around the centre of the galaxy.

But, unusually, some stars rotate anti-clockwise. “For a while, it was thought that these stars might have come from its companion galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud,” Mr Armstrong said. “Our idea was that these stars might have come from a merger with another galaxy in the past.”

Mr...

Photomicrograph showing the result of a NIST nanoscale scratch test on a sample of automobile clearcoat material. The scratch, which shows fractures radiating from the line of impact, is 20 micrometers wide, 150 micrometers long and 2 micrometers deep (A micrometer is a millionth of a meter or about half the length of an average E. coli bacterium.).
Credit: NIST

Data from new suite of tests could eventually help your vehicle’s exterior better defend itself against dings, dents, scratches and things that go bump on the highway...

This is a fruit fly.
Credit: Carnegie Institution for Science

Body organs such as the intestine and ovaries undergo structural changes in response to dietary nutrients that can have lasting impacts on metabolism, as well as cancer susceptibility, according to Carnegie’s Rebecca Obniski, Matthew Sieber, and Allan Spradling. Their work, published by Developmental Cell, used fruit flies, which are currently the most-sensitive experimental system for such detecting diet-induced cellular changes that are likely to be similar in mammals.

There are 3 major types of cells in fruit fly (and mammalian) intestines: Stem cells, hormone-producing cells, and nutrient-handling cells...

This is the characteristic disc structure from the simulation of a misaligned disc around a spinning black hole. Credit: K. Pounds et al. / University of Leicester

Astronomers report the first detection of matter falling into a black hole at 30% of the speed of light, located in the center of the billion-light year distant galaxy PG211+143. The team used data from the European Space Agency’s X-ray observatory XMM-Newton to observe the black hole.

A UK team of astronomers report the first detection of matter falling into a black hole at 30% of the speed of light, located in the centre of the billion-light year distant galaxy PG211+143...