Co-orbital bodies that orbit the Sun in the same direction as a planet can follow trajectories (blue curves with arrows) that, from the perspective of the planet, look like tadpoles, horseshoes or ‘quasi-satellites’. Credit: Helena Morais & Fathi Namouni

In our solar system, an asteroid orbits the sun in the opposite direction to the planets. Asteroid 2015 BZ509, also known as Bee-Zed, takes 12 years to make one complete orbit around the sun. This is the same orbital period as that of Jupiter, which shares its orbit but moves in the opposite direction. The asteroid with the retrograde co-orbit was identified by Helena Morais, a professor at São Paulo State University’s Institute of Geosciences & Exact Sciences (IGCE-UNESP). Morais had predicted the discovery 2 years earlier.

“It’s good to...

Georgia Tech’s Regents Professor Mostafa El-Sayed (front) is one of the most highly decorated and cited living chemists. With his team for this research from left to right: Yue Wu, Professor Ronghu Wu, and Yan Tang. Credit: Georgia Tech / Christopher Moore

Researchers have found a way to virtually halt cell migration, a key component in metastasis, in vitro, in human cells. In past in vivo studies in mice, treated cancer did not appear to recur. No significant side effects were observed. Cancer cells often cover themselves bristly leg-like protrusions that enable them to creep. The researchers have used minuscule gold rods heated gently by a laser to mangle the protrusions, according to a new study.

The treatment can also easily kill cancer cells, but in this experiment, it was vital to sp...

Single nanowires shown emitting different colors. The top panel shows a cesium lead bromide (CsPbBr3)-cesium lead chloride (CsPbCl3) heterojunction simultaneously emitting green and blue lights, respectively, under UV excitation. The bottom panel shows a cesium lead iodide (CsPbI3)-cesium lead bromide-cesium lead chloride configuration emitting red, green, and blue lights, respectively. Credit: Letian Dou/Berkeley Lab and Connor G. Bischak/UC Berkeley

A new type of semiconductor may be coming to a high-definition display near you. Scientists at Berkeley Lab have shown that a class of semiconductor called halide perovskites is capable of emitting multiple, bright colors from a single nanowire at resolutions as small as 500 nanometers...

Artist’s conception shows two supermassive black holes, similar to those observed by UNM researchers, orbiting one another more than 750 million light years from Earth. Credit: Joshua Valenzuela/UNM

For the first time ever, astronomers at The University of New Mexico say they’ve been able to observe and measure the orbital motion between two supermassive black holes hundreds of millions of light years from Earth – a discovery more than a decade in the making. In early 2016, an international team, including a UNM alumnus, working on the LIGO project detected gravitational waves, confirming Albert Einstein’s 100-year-old prediction. These waves were the result two stellar mass black holes (~30 solar mass) colliding in space within the Hubble time...