This artist’s rendering shows the hot, molten Moon emerging from a synestia, a giant spinning donut of vaporized rock that formed when planet-sized objects collided. The synestia is in the process of condensing to form the Earth. This new model for the Moon’s origin answers outstanding questions about how the Moon’s composition compares to that of Earth. Credit: Image by Sarah Stewart/UC Davis based on NASA rendering.

A new explanation for the Moon’s origin has it forming inside the Earth when our planet was a seething, spinning cloud of vaporized rock, called a synestia. The new model led by researchers at the University of California, Davis and Harvard University resolves several problems in lunar formation...

This figure depicts the enzyme telomerase as well as telomeres relative to a chromosome.

Can we stay young forever, or even recapture lost youth? Can we stay young forever, or even recapture lost youth? Research from the laboratory of Professor Julian Chen in the School of Molecular Sciences at Arizona State University recently uncovered a crucial step in the telomerase enzyme catalytic cycle. This catalytic cycle determines the ability of the human telomerase enzyme to synthesize DNA “repeats” (specific DNA segments of six nucleotides) onto chromosome ends, and so afford immortality in cells. Understanding the underlying mechanism of telomerase action offers new avenues toward effective anti-aging therapeutics.

Typical human cells are mortal and cannot forever renew themselves...

The electron (blue) orbits the nucleus (red) — and its orbit encloses many other atoms of the Bose-Einstein-condensate (green). Credit: TU Wien

Scientists have provided proof for a new state of matter: an electron orbits a nucleus at a great distance, while many other atoms are bound inside the orbit. What is inside an atom, between the nucleus and the electron? Usually there is nothing, but why could there not be other particles too? If the electron orbits the nucleus at a great distance, there is plenty of space in between for other atoms. A “giant atom” can be created, filled with ordinary atoms. All these atoms form a weak bond, creating a new, exotic state of matter at cold temperatures, referred to as “Rydberg polarons.”

A team of researchers has now presented this state of matter in...

After the interaction of a xenon atom with two photons from an attosecond pulse (purple), the atom is ionized and multiple electrons (green balls) are ejected. This two-photon interaction is made possible by the latest achievements in attosecond technology. (Image: Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik)

A newly developed laser technology has enabled physicists in the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics (jointly run by LMU Munich and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics) to generate attosecond bursts of high-energy photons of unprecedented intensity. This has made it possible to observe the interaction of multiple photons in a single such pulse with electrons in the inner orbital shell of an atom.

In order to observe the ultrafast electron motion in the inner shells of atoms with short ...