Stars Memorize Rebirth of our Home Galaxy

Schematic diagram showing two stages of star formation in the Milky Way galaxy according to Noguchi. In upper illustration, blue (cold) and red (hot) indicate gas. The color map in bottom panel shows distribution of the elemental composition of stars calculated by Noguchi’s model with the purple line indicating how the elemental composition of the gas changes over time (Credit: M. Noguchi, courtesy of Nature). Overlaid contours show the distribution of solar neighborhood stars observed by APOGEE, a spectroscopic device attached to the 2.5 m telescope of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico (Credit: M. Haywood et al. A&A, 589, 66 (2016), reproduced with permission © ESO).

The Milky Way galaxy has died once before and we are now in what is considered its ...

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Largest Brain Study of 62,454 Scans Identifies Drivers of Brain Aging

Drivers of brain aging. Credit: Daniel G. Amen

Schizophrenia, cannabis use, and alcohol abuse are just several disorders that are related to accelerated brain aging. In the largest known brain imaging study, scientists from Amen Clinics (Costa Mesa, CA), Google, John’s Hopkins University, University of California, Los Angeles and the University of California, San Francisco evaluated 62,454 brain SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) scans of more than 30,000 individuals from 9 months old to 105 years of age to investigate factors that accelerate brain aging. SPECT tomography) evaluates regional cerebral blood flow in the brain that is reduced in various disorders.

Lead author, psychiatrist Daniel G...

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Making Light Work of Quantum Computing

Tracks called waveguides guide photons in silicon. Spirals of these waveguides are used to generate photons that are routed around the processor circuit. Credit: Xiaogang Qiang, University of Bristol

Tracks called waveguides guide photons in silicon. Spirals of these waveguides are used to generate photons that are routed around the processor circuit.
Credit: Xiaogang Qiang, University of Bristol

Light may be the missing ingredient in making usable quantum silicon computer chips, according to an international study featuring a University of Queensland researcher. The team has engineered a silicon chip that can guide photons along optical tracks, encoding and processing quantum-bits of information – ‘qubits’.

Professor Timothy Ralph from UQ’s Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology said that the use of photons in this way could increase the number and types of tasks that computers can help us with...

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Ice Confirmed at the Moon’s Poles

The image shows the distribution of surface ice at the Moon’s south pole (left) and north pole (right), detected by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument. Blue represents the ice locations, plotted over an image of the lunar surface, where the gray scale corresponds to surface temperature (darker representing colder areas and lighter shades indicating warmer zones). The ice is concentrated at the darkest and coldest locations, in the shadows of craters. This is the first time scientists have directly observed definitive evidence of water ice on the Moon’s surface.
Credit: NASA

Using data from NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument, scientists have identified 3 specific signatures that definitively prove there is water ice at the surface of the Moon...

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