UV light from Superluminous Supernova key to revealing Explosion mechanism

An international team has discovered a way to use UV light from superluminous supernovae to uncover its explosion mechanism, and used it to identify Gaia16apd as a shock-interacting supernova, reports a new study. An international team has discovered a way to use observations at UV wavelengths to uncover characteristics about superluminous supernovae previously impossible to determine.

The team, led by Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) Project Researcher Alexey Tolstov, study stellar explosions called Superluminous Supernovae (SLSNe), an extra bright type of supernova discovered in the last decade that is 10 to 100 times brighter than ordinary supernovae...

The MasSpec Pen rapidly and accurately detects cancer in humans during surgery, helping improve treatment and reduce the chances of cancer recurrence. Credit: University of Texas at Austin

A team at The University of Texas at Austin has invented a powerful tool that rapidly and accurately identifies cancerous tissue during surgery, delivering results in about 10 seconds more than 150 times as fast as existing technology. The MasSpec Pen is an innovative handheld instrument that gives surgeons precise diagnostic information about what tissue to cut or preserve, helping improve treatment and reduce the chances of cancer recurrence.

“If you talk to cancer patients after surgery, one of the first things many will say is ‘I hope the surgeon got all the cancer out,’ ” says Livia Schiavinato Eber...

The porosity of the nanostructured Tantalum (in black) enables the formation of silicon channels (in blue) allowing lithium ions to travel faster within the battery. The rigidity of the tantalum scaffold also limits the expansion of the silicon and preserve structural integrity. Credit: Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University Nanoparticles by Design Unit

Scientists have designed a novel silicon-based anode to provide lithium batteries with increased power and better stability. Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) power most of our portable electronics, but they are flammable and can even explode, as it happened to a recent model of smartphone...

Composite image of the X-ray pulsar SXP 1062 surrounded by the supernova remnant. The false-color image combines X-ray (blue) and optical data (oxygen: green, hydrogen: red). Credit: ESA / XMM-Newton / L. Oskinova, University of Potsdam, Germany / M. Guerrero, Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Spain (X-ray); Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory / R. Gruendl & Y. H. Chu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA (optical)

The discovery of the largest timing irregularity yet observed in a pulsar is the first confirmation that pulsars in binary systems exhibit the strange phenomenon known as a ‘glitch’. Pulsars are one possible result of the final stages of evolution of massive stars...