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This new image from the VLT Survey Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in northern Chile shows a vast collection of stars, the globular cluster Messier 54. This cluster looks very similar to many others but it has a secret. Messier 54 doesn’t belong to the Milky Way, but is part of a small satellite galaxy, the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy. This unusual parentage has now allowed astronomers to use the Very Large Telescope (VLT) to test whether there are also unexpectedly low levels of the element lithium in stars outside the Milky Way.

Because gold nanorods are longer than they are wide, 3-D nanorod supercrystals have "anisotropic" properties, which means they have a different response to external fields in one direction than another.

Graphene

Scientists have found evidence of plate tectonics on Jupiter's moon Europa. This conceptual illustration of the subduction process (where one plate is forced under another) shows how a cold, brittle, outer portion of Europa's 20-30 kilometer-thick (roughly 10-20 mile) ice shell moved into the warmer shell interior and was ultimately subsumed. A low-relief subsumption band was created at the surface in the overriding plate, alongside which cryolavas may have erupted.

Cassini spied just as many regular, faint clumps in Saturn's narrow F ring, like those pictured here, as Voyager did, but it saw hardly any of the long, bright clumps that were common in Voyager images.

Map of membrane fluctuations in a normal red blood cell, on average up to 50 nanometers. Measuring these fluctuations over time, researchers found that the membranes stiffen.

This image depicts an illustration of helices.

Concept art of a molybdenum disulfide field-effect transistor based biosensor demonstrated by UCSB researchers with ability to detect ultra-low (femtomolar) concentrations with high sensitivity that is 74-fold higher than that of graphene FET biosensors.