The collision with Uranus of a massive object twice the size of Earth that caused the planet’s unusual spin, from a high-resolution simulation using over ten million particles, coloured by their internal energy.
Credit: Jacob Kegerreis/Durham University

Uranus was hit by a massive object roughly twice the size of Earth that caused the planet to tilt and could explain its freezing temperatures, according to new research. Astronomers at Durham University, UK, led an international team of experts to investigate how Uranus came to be tilted on its side and what consequences a giant impact would have had on the planet’s evolution.

The team ran the first high-resolution computer simulations of different massive collisions with the ice giant to try to work out how the planet evolved...

View of comet 67P taken by Rosetta.
Credit: European Space Agency

Scientists have found that molecular oxygen around comet 67P is not produced on its surface, as some suggested, but may be from its body. The European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft escorted comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on its journey round the sun from August 2014 – September 2016, dropping a probe and eventually crashing onto its surface.

When the comet is close enough to the sun the ice on its surface ‘sublimes’ – transforms from solid to gas – forming a gas atmosphere called a coma. Analysis of the coma by instruments on Rosetta revealed that it contained not only water, CO and CO2, as anticipated, but also molecular oxygen.

Molecular oxygen is O2, and on Earth it is essential for life, where it is produced by photo...

Design of a TAM-targeting supramolecular therapeutic.

Supramolecule provides a double whammy to knock out cancer’s ‘eat-me-not’ signaling, keep macrophages on the attack. Researchers have found that cancer cells evade destruction by macrophages in 2 ways – by converting cells to become docile, M2 macrophages, and by sending out an ‘eat me not’ signal that tricks M1 macrophages into letting them be. Investigators have developed a therapeutic that delivers a double whammy to knock out both mechanisms.

Macrophages play a paradoxical role, with M1 macrophages rousing the immune system to action and M2 macrophages quelling inflammation...