This entrancing image shows a few of the tenuous threads that comprise Sh2-308, a faint and wispy shell of gas located 5,200 light-years away in the constellation of Canis Major (The Great Dog). Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

This entrancing image shows a few of the tenuous threads that comprise Sh2-308, a faint and wispy shell of gas located 5,200 light-years away in the constellation of Canis Major (The Great Dog). Sh2-308 is a large bubble-like structure wrapped around an extremely large, bright type of star known as a Wolf-Rayet Star – this particular star is called EZ Canis Majoris. These type of stars are among the brightest and most massive stars in the Universe, tens of times more massive than our own sun, and they represent the extremes of stellar evolution.

Thick winds continually pou...

The light from the supernova iPTF16geu and of its host galaxy is warped and amplified by the curvature of space mass of a foreground galaxy. In the case of the point-like supernova, the light is split into four images. These have been resolved with the Hubble Space Telescope. Original image by ALMA (ESO/NRAO/NAOJ), L. Calçada (ESO), Y. Hezaveh et al, edited and modified by Joel Johansson

An international team led by Ariel Goobar at Stockholm University has detected for the first time multiple images from a gravitationally lensed Type Ia supernova iPTF16geu. The new observations suggest promising new avenues for the study of the accelerated expansion of the Universe, gravity and distribution of dark matter in the universe...

In a human cell, CHIP (red) is recruited to clusters of a dementia-inducing protein (yellow). There is not enough CHIP for insulin receptor degradation in this situation. The cell undergoes premature aging. (Photo: CECAD)

Researchers uncover the link between protein aggregation, aging. Early in evolution, sugar intake and the regulation of life span were linked with each other. The hormone insulin is crucial here. It reduces blood sugar levels by binding to its receptor on the cell surface. However, many processes for stress management and survival are shut down at the same time. When there is a good supply of food, they appear unnecessary to the organism, although this reduces life expectancy over the long term. The insulin receptor thus acts like a brake on life expectancy...

These images show light patterns generated by a rhenium-based crystal using a laser method called optical second-harmonic rotational anisotropy. At left, the pattern comes from the atomic lattice of the crystal. At right, the crystal has become a 3-D quantum liquid crystal, showing a drastic departure from the pattern due to the atomic lattice alone. Credit: Hsieh Lab/Caltech

Physicists at the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter at Caltech have discovered the first 3D quantum liquid crystal – a new state of matter that may have applications in ultrafast quantum computers of the future...