An incredibly object was discovered 1.4 billion years after the BB
A ‘shadow’ cast on the faint, leftover glow of the Big Bang has revealed a giant object in the early Universe that defies our predictions of how the Universe should evolve. It’s a galaxy cluster named SPT2349-56. Spotted a mere 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang, the gas within it is far, far hotter than it should be. The gravitational heating of a galaxy cluster ought to be a slow process that takes billions of years to reach the temperature regime of SPT2349-56. “We didn’t expect to see such a hot object atmosphere so early in cosmic history,” says astrophysics doctoral student Dazhi Zhou of the University of British…
Mosquitoes Really Can Carry Libraries of Animal DNA
From missing dinosaur feathers to fictitious pack-hunting behaviors, many details of the Jurassic Park movie franchise belong firmly in fantasy, but not the mosquitoes. Yet, incredibly, the films’ central premise may be more realistic than expected: Mosquito meals really can provide a thorough ecological snapshot of the area they buzz about, new research from the University of Florida finds. “They say Jurassic Park inspired a new generation of paleontologists, but it inspired me to study mosquitoes,” says entomologist Lawrence Reeves. Reeves, fellow entomologist Hannah Atsma, and their colleagues caught more than 50,000 individual mosquitoes, representing 21 different species, across a 10,900-hectare protected reserve in central Florida over eight months. Based…
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Mars Was Habitable Longer Than We Thought
It is a scientific consensus that water once flowed on Mars, and that it had a denser atmosphere, meaning that it was once habitable. Unfortunately, roughly 4.2 to 3.7 billion years ago, Mars’ rivers, lakes, and global ocean began to disappear as solar wind slowly stripped its atmosphere away. For scientists, the question of how long it remained habitable has been the subject of ongoing inquiry. Where some scientists maintain that Mars ceased being habitable billions of years ago, recent research suggests that it experienced periods of habitability that lasted for eons. This includes recent findings by NASA’s Curiosity rover, which has been exploring the Gale Crater on Mars to…
Tinnitus – Linked to a Crucial Bodily Function
Those who have never endured the relentless ringing of tinnitus can only dream of the torment. In fact, a bad dream may be the closest some get to experiencing anything like it. The subjective sound, which can also be a hissing, buzzing, or clicking, is heard by no one else, and it may be present constantly, or may come and go. Neuroscientists at the University of Oxford now suspect that sleep and tinnitus are closely intertwined in the brain. Their findings hint at a fundamental relationship between the two conditions – one that has, surprisingly, been overlooked in the brain until very recently. “What first made me and my colleagues…
Bipolar disorder – brain’s areas where extreme states are located
A recently published study reveals the areas of the brain where the extreme states that people with bipolar disorder can reach are located. Moods and emotions play a big role in our daily lives. They even influence how we deal with things – for example, whether we start the day feeling hopeful and energetic or grumpy and lethargic. This can affect whether we interpret events in a positive or negative light. In people with bipolar disorder, however, mood can change rapidly and unpredictably, leaving them “stuck” in either a low or high mood, which can have significant consequences. However, researchers don’t know exactly what causes such extreme mood swings. Now,…
