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NASA's Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn's north pole.

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have shown for the first time that bursts of star formation have a major impact far beyond the boundaries of their host galaxy. These energetic events can affect galactic gas at distances of up to twenty times greater than the visible size of the galaxy — altering how the galaxy evolves, and how matter and energy is spread throughout the Universe.

Astronomers have used ESO’s Very Large Telescope, along with radio telescopes around the world, to find and study a bizarre stellar pair consisting of the most massive neutron star confirmed so far, orbited by a white dwarf star. This strange new binary allows tests of Einstein’s theory of gravity — general relativity — in ways that were not possible up to now. So far the new observations exactly agree with the predictions from general relativity and are inconsistent with some alternative theories.

Georgia Tech researcher Wenzhuo Wu holds an array of piezotronic transistors capable of converting mechanical motion directly into electronic controlling signals. The arrays are fabricated on flexible substrates.

The LHCb detector

Graphene's hexagonal structure makes it an excellent lubricant.

This photograph of the meteor streaking through the sky above Chelyabinsk, Russia, on Feb. 15, 2013, was taken by a local, M. Ahmetvaleev. The small asteroid was about 56 to 66 feet (17 to 20 meters) wide.

Female anopheles mosquito.

Penn State researchers working with the Army Research Office showed that tungstenite formed from layers of sulfur and tungsten atoms has light-emitting properties that could be useful to plenty of Army applications, like optical sensors or even lasers.