Large Volcanic Outburst on Discovered on Jupiter’s Moon Io

nebula outburst
IoIO image of Jovian sodium nebula in outburst
Credit: Jeff Morgenthaler, PSI.

A large volcanic outburst was discovered on Jupiter’s moon Io by Jeff Morgenthaler of the Planetary Science Institute using PSI’s Io Input/Output observatory (IoIO).

PSI Senior Scientist Morgenthaler has been using IoIO, located near Benson, Arizona, to monitor volcanic activity on Io since 2017. The observations show some sort of outburst nearly every year, but the largest yet was seen in the fall of 2022.

Io is the innermost of Jupiter’s four large moons and is the most volcanic body in the Solar System thanks to the tidal stresses it feels from Jupiter and two of its other large satellites, Europa and Ganymede.

IoIO uses a coronagraphic technique which dims the light coming from Jupiter to enable ...

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Good Hydration Linked to Healthy Aging

hydration
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Adults who stay well-hydrated appear to be healthier, develop fewer chronic conditions, such as heart and lung disease, and live longer than those who may not get sufficient fluids, according to a National Institutes of Health study published in eBioMedicine. Using health data gathered from 11,255 adults over a 30-year period, researchers analyzed links between serum sodium levels—which go up when fluid intake goes down—and various indicators of health. They found that adults with serum sodium levels at the higher end of a normal range were more likely to develop chronic conditions and show signs of advanced biological aging than those with serum sodium levels in the medium ranges...

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Self-assembling Proteins can Store Cellular ‘Memories’

Collage of images against a black background shows a calendar icon in top left. Top right shows 4 protein structures that look like worms, with different pink and blue sections. Bottom shows 1 worm-like protein structure in pink and blue.
MIT engineers have devised a way to induce cells to inscribe the history of cellular events in a long protein structure that can be imaged using a light microscope.
Credits:Courtesy of the researchers

Using these engineered proteins, researchers can record histories that reveal when certain genes are activated, or how cells respond to a drug. As cells perform their everyday functions, they turn on a variety of genes and cellular pathways. MIT engineers have now coaxed cells to inscribe the history of these events in a long protein chain that can be imaged using a light microscope.

Cells programmed to produce these chains continuously add building blocks that encode particular cellular events...

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New Measurements of Galaxy Rotation lean toward Modified Gravity as an explanation for Dark Matter

Rotation curve of the typical spiral galaxy M 33 (yellow and blue points with errorbars) and the predicted one from distribution of the visible matter (white line). The discrepancy between the two curves is accounted for by adding a dark matter halo surrounding the galaxy. Credit: Public domain / Wikipedia

Although dark matter is a central part of the standard cosmological model, it’s not without its issues. There continue to be nagging mysteries about the stuff, not the least of which is the fact that scientists have found no direct particle evidence of it.

Despite numerous searches, we have yet to detect dark matter particles. So some astronomers favor an alternative, such as modified Newtonian dynamics (MoND) or modified gravity model...

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