Astronomers building a globe-spanning virtual telescope capable of photographing the “event horizon” of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way have extended their instrument to incorporate the South Pole Telescope (SPT), a 280-ton radio telescope located at the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica. Dan Marrone, an assistant […]
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has revealed an extremely powerful magnetic field, beyond anything previously detected in the core of a galaxy, very close to the event horizon of a supermassive black hole. This new observation helps astronomers to understand the structure and formation of these massive inhabitants of the centers of galaxies, and […]
A species of bone-eating worm that was believed to have evolved in conjunction with whales has been dated back to prehistoric times when it fed on the carcasses of giant marine reptiles. Scientists at Plymouth University found that Osedax – popularised as the ‘zombie worm’ – originated at least 100 million years ago, and subsisted […]
Scientists from the Icahn School of Medicine, collaborating with a multicenter team of U.S. and Venezuelan researchers, have discovered the most diverse collection of bacteria yet in humans among an isolated tribe of Yanomami Amerindians in the remote Amazonian jungles of Venezuela. Bacterial diversity in the Yanomami, previously unexposed to antibiotics or industrialized diets, was […]