A sequence was compiled from a series of images taken on July 25 by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. The angular extent of the widest field of view is six degrees. Visible in the images are the comet C/2018 N1, asteroids, variable stars, asteroids and reflected light from Mars. TESS is expected to find thousands of planets around other nearby stars. Download animated GIF: 
Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology/NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Before NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) started science operations on July 25, 2018, the planet hunter sent back a stunning sequence of serendipitous images showing the motion of a comet...

An illustration of how CAS-12A works with DNA. Illustration by Jenna Luecke, University of Texas at Austin

Scientists have found conclusive evidence that Cas9, the most popular enzyme currently used in CRISPR gene editing, is less effective and precise than one of the lesser-used CRISPR proteins, Cas12a. Because Cas9 is more likely to edit the wrong part of a plant’s or animal’s genome, disrupting healthy functions, the scientists make the case that switching to Cas12a would lead to safer and more effective gene editing.

“The overall goal is to find the best enzyme that nature gave us and then make it better still, rather than taking the first one that was discovered through historical accident,” said Ilya Finkelstein, an assistant professor of molecular biosciences and a co-author of the ...

Using 100-year-old minerals processing methods, chemical engineering students have found a solution to a looming 21st-century problem: how to economically recycle lithium ion batteries.
Credit: Lei Pan, Michigan Tech

Using 100-year-old minerals processing methods, chemical engineering students have found a solution to a looming 21st-century problem: how to economically recycle lithium ion batteries. Lei Pan’s team of chemical engineering students had worked long and hard on their research project, and they were happy just to be showing their results at the People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) competition last April in Washington, DC. What they didn’t expect was to be mobbed by enthusiastic onlookers.56-58F

“We got a lot of ‘oh wow!’ responses, from eight-year-olds wanting to know how it w...

Illustration of the early solar disk, with an inset image of a blue hibonite crystal, one of the first minerals to form in the Solar System. Credit: © Field Museum, University of Chicago, NASA, ESA, and E. Feild (STScl).

By examining tiny blue crystals trapped inside meteorites, scientists were able to figure out what the sun was like before the Earth formed – and apparently, it had a pretty rowdy start. When scientists analyzed the chemical make-up of these crystals, they found atoms that would only be there if the early sun was spitting out lots of high-energy particles – the solar version of going through the ‘terrible twos.’

Our Sun’s beginnings are a mystery. It burst into being 4.6 billion years ago, about 50 million years before the Earth formed...