Astronomy

How do blue stragglers defy the aging that turns their mates red? Blue stragglers are found in ancient star clusters, where they outshine stars the same age, looking far bluer and younger than their true age. Astrophysicists have tried to understand blue stragglers for decades. New research using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is finally revealing how these ageless stars come to be and why they thrive in quieter cosmic neighbourhoods.

Fewer people under age 50 are dying from cancer in the U.S., but colorectal cancer mortality rates continue to surge

The Helix Nebula is one of the closest and brightest planetary nebula. It's what's left of a dying star and has nothing to do with planets. Our Sun will end up as one of these sumptuous displays, and a new JWST image reveals even more detail in the stunning nebula.

The National Institutes of Health’s move to end support for research using fetal human tissue is “clearly a political decision, not a scientific one,” one expert says

The U.S. secretary of health and human services told USA Today that he believed the flu jab was a “potential culprit” for his spasmodic dysphonia that he could not “rule out”

A 5500-year-old genome recovered from human skeletal remains in Colombia may give insights into the early evolution of syphilis and its relatives

A 5500-year-old genome recovered from human skeletal remains in Colombia may give insights into the early evolution of syphilis and its relatives

Scientists are using technology developed to study earthquakes to address an out-of-this-world risk

Treponema pallidum, a microorganism that can cause a deadly sexually transmitted disease in humans, may have a far more ancient lineage than scientists once thought

A new study found that women in Finland who had a lot of kids—or none—aged faster than those with one or a few kids. But the findings don’t necessarily translate to today’s parents

Some really unique science can be done during a total solar eclipse. Totality is the one time we can see the elusive corona of the Sun, the pearly white segment of our host star’s lower atmosphere where space weather activity originates. The trouble is, totality is fleeting. What researchers really need are eclipses on demand. ESA’s innovative Proba-3 mission does just that, by making use of a free-flying occulting disk. Launched in late 2024, we’re now seeing some unique science and images from the space observatory.

A distinct set of microbes has been identified in people with obesity, which might help spot and treat the condition early – but whether it is a cause or effect of the condition isn’t known

A distinct set of microbes has been identified in people with obesity, which might help spot and treat the condition early – but whether it is a cause or effect of the condition isn’t known

Long thought to have walked bipedally, like us, Australia’s extinct giant kangaroos have features that indicate they could also have bounced

Long thought to have walked bipedally, like us, Australia’s extinct giant kangaroos have features that indicate they could also have bounced

New videos from the Solar Orbiter and the Chandra X-ray Observatory capture magnetic avalanches on the Sun and the exploding remnants of a star 17,000 light-years away.

The post Watch Stellar Explosions Near and Far (Videos) appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

A trial will finally reveal whether limiting the time teens spend on social media really does affect their mental health

A trial will finally reveal whether limiting the time teens spend on social media really does affect their mental health

If humans are ever going to expand into space itself, it will have to be for a reason. Optimists think that reason is simply due to our love of exploration itself. But in history, it is more often a profit motive that has led humans to seek out new lands. So, it stands to reason that, in order for us to truly begin space colonization, we will have to have a business-related reason to do so. A new paper from the lab of Srivatsan Raman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and recently published in PLOS Biology, describes one potential such business case - genetically modifying bacteriophages to attack antibiotic resistant bacteria.

A new estimate suggests land sources eject 600 quadrillion pieces of microplastic into the atmosphere every year