Lightest Black Hole or Heaviest Neutron Star? MeerKAT Uncovers a Mysterious Object in Milky Way

An artist’s impression of the system assuming that the massive companion star is a black hole. The brightest background star is its orbital companion, the radio pulsar PSR J0514-4002E. The two stars are separated by 8 million km and circle each other every 7 days.
Credit: Daniëlle Futselaar (artsource.nl)

An international team of astronomers have found a new and unknown object in the Milky Way that is heavier than the heaviest neutron stars known and yet simultaneously lighter than the lightest black holes known.

Using the MeerKAT Radio Telescope, astronomers from a number of institutions including The University of Manchester and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany found an object in orbit around a rapidly spinning millisecond pulsar located around 40,000 ligh...

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New Medicine can Create a New Life for Diabetes Patients—Without Needles

New medicine can create a new life for diabetes patients—without needles!
These capsules containing nano-carriers with insulin will be tested on humans in 2025. Credit: Nicholas Hunt

There are approximately 425 million people worldwide with diabetes. Approximately 75 million of these inject themselves with insulin daily. Now, they may soon have a new alternative to syringes or insulin pumps. Scientists have found a new way to supply the body with smart insulin.

The new insulin can be eaten by taking a capsule or, even better, within a piece of chocolate.

Inside these are tiny nano-carriers in which the insulin is encapsulated. The particles are 1/10,000th the width of a human hair and so small that you cannot even see them under a normal microscope.

“This way of taking insulin is more precise because it delivers the insulin rapidly to the areas of t...

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New Superconducting Material discovered in Transition-Metal Dichalcogenides Materials

New superconducting material discovered in transition-metal dichalcogenides materials
The crystal structure and superconducting properties of (InSe2)0.12NbSe2. Credit: Niu Rui

With the support of electrical transport and magnetic measurement systems of Steady High Magnetic Field Facility (SHMFF), a research team from Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), discovered a new superconducting material called (InSe2)xNbSe2, which possesses a unique lattice structure. The superconducting transition temperature of this material reaches 11.6 K, making it the transition metal sulfide superconductor with the highest transition temperature under ambient pressure.

The results were published in Journal of the American Chemical Society.

TMD materials have received lots of attention due to their numerous applications in the fields of cata...

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Mars Express finds Evidence of Large Water Deposit at the Medusae Fossae Formation

This map shows the estimated amount of ice within the mounds that form the MFF, indicating that the ice-rich deposits are up to 3000 m thick. Credit: Planetary Science Institute/Smithsonian Institution

Windswept piles of dust, or layers of ice? ESA’s Mars Express has revisited one of Mars’s most mysterious features to clarify its composition. Its findings suggest layers of water ice stretching several kilometers below ground—the most water ever found in this part of the planet.

Over 15 years ago, Mars Express studied the Medusae Fossae Formation (MFF), revealing massive deposits up to 2.5 km deep. From these early observations, it was unclear what the deposits were made of—but new research now has an answer.

“We’ve explored the MFF again using newer data from Mars Express’s M...

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