Mars Credit: NASA

Researchers investigating whether liquid water could exist on Mars have provided new insight into the limits of life on the red planet. A team led by Dr Lorna Dougan from the University of Leeds has analysed the structure of water in a magnesium perchlorate solution – what they refer to as “mimetic Martin water” – to better understand how the liquid could exist on the Martian surface. Martian soil samples gathered by the Phoenix Lander in 2009 found calcium and powerful oxidants, including magnesium perchlorate. This fuelled speculation that perchlorate brine flows might be the cause of channelling and weathering observed on the planet’s surface.

Dr Dougan, from the School of Physics and Astronomy and the Astbury Centre said: “The discovery of significant amounts of diffe...

25-Year Physical Activity Trajectories and Development of Subclinical Coronary Artery Disease as Measured by Coronary Artery Calcium. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2017; DOI: 10.1016/j.mayocp.2017.07.016

White men who exercise at high levels are 86% more likely than people who exercise at low levels to experience a buildup of plaque in the heart arteries by middle age, a new study suggests. Led by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Kaiser Permanente, the study looked at the physical activity trajectories of 3,175 black and white participants in the multicenter, community-based, longitudinal cohort CARDIA study, and assessed the presence of coronary artery calcification, or CAC, among participants.

CAC is a clinical measure of the accumulation of calcium and plaque in the a...

Contrary to classical bits, quantum bits can assume two states at the same time: Right and left, yellow and blue, zero and one.
Credit: KIT

Hurricanes, traffic jams, demographic development – to predict the effect of such events, computer simulations are required. Many processes in nature, however, are so complicated that conventional computers fail. Quantum simulators may solve this problem. One of the basic phenomena in nature is the interaction between light and matter in photosynthesis. Physicists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have now made a big step towards quantum mechanics understanding of plant metabolism. This is reported in Nature Communications.

“A quantum simulator is the preliminary stage of a quantum computer...

On Aug. 17, 2017, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Virgo Interferometer both detected gravitational waves from the collision between two neutron stars. Within 12 hours observatories had identified the source of the event within the lenticular galaxy NGC 4993, shown in this image gathered with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The associated stellar flare, a kilonova, is clearly visible in the Hubble observations. This is the first time the optical counterpart of a gravitational wave event was observed. Credit: NASA and ESA. Acknowledgment: A.J. Levan (U. Warwick), N.R. Tanvir (U. Leicester), and A. Fruchter and O. Fox (STScI)

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has observed for the first time the source of a gravitational wave, created by the merger...