A UCL-led research team has used artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to infer the influence and properties of dark energy more precisely from a map of dark and visible matter in the universe covering the last 7 billion years.

The study, submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and available on the arXiv preprint server, was carried out by the Dark Energy Survey collaboration. The researchers doubled the precision at which key characteristics of the universe, including the overall density of dark energy, could be inferred from the map.

This increased precision allows researchers to rule out models of the universe that might previously have been conceivable.

Dark energy is the mysterious force that is accelerating the universe’s expansion and is th...

A research team led by Professor Yuanliang ZHAI at the School of Biological Sciences, The University of Hong Kong (HKU) collaborating with Professor Ning GAO and Professor Qing LI from Peking University (PKU), as well as Professor Bik-Kwoon TYE from Cornell University, has recently made a significant breakthrough in understanding how the DNA copying machine helps pass on epigenetic information to maintain gene traits at each cell division...

For the first time, scientists have developed artificial nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, with several additional properties in the laboratory. The DNA carries the genetic information of all living organisms and consists of only four different building blocks, the nucleotides. Nucleotides are composed of three distinctive parts: a sugar molecule, a phosphate group and one of the four nucleobases adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine. The nucleotides are lined up millions of times and form the DNA double helix, similar to a spiral staircase. Scientists from the UoC’s Department of Chemistry have now shown that the structure of nucleotides can be modified to a great extent in the laboratory.

The researchers developed so-called threofuranosyl nucleic acid (TNA) with a new, ad...

Neutron star mergers are a treasure trove for new physics signals, with implications for determining the true nature of dark matter, according to research from Washington University in St. Louis.

On Aug. 17, 2017, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), in the United States, and Virgo, a detector in Italy, detected gravitational waves from the collision of two neutron stars. For the first time, this astronomical event was not only heard in gravitational waves but also seen in light by dozens of telescopes on the ground and in space.

Physicist Bhupal Dev in Arts & Sciences used observations from this neutron star merger — an ev...