Science | WPN World People News

Artist's illustration of a Neptune-like planet. A new study explores why Neptunes are so rare when their smaller cousins, sub-Neptunes, are very common.

Graphic illustrating radio signals from a remote station (bent purple line) interfering with a local station (black tower) after being reflected off a plasma layer in the ionosphere.

Fig 1: Inflation stretched the initial microscopic Universe to a macroscopic size and turned the cosmic energy into matter. However, it likely created an equal amount of matter and anti-matter predicting complete annihilation of our universe. The authors discuss the possibility that a phase transition after inflation led to a tiny imbalance between the amount of matter and anti-matter, so that some matter could survive a near-complete annihilation. Such a phase transition is likely to lead to a network of "rubber-band"-like objects called cosmic strings, that would produce ripples of space-time known as gravitational waves. These propagating waves can get through the hot and dense Universe and reach us today, 13.8 billion years after the phase transition. Such gravitational waves can most likely be discovered by current and future experiments.

An artist’s impression of K2-18b orbiting K2-18 along with another planet in the system.

Photothermal therapy (PTT) – a proposed treatment for diseases such as antibacterial-resistant infections and cancer – makes use of a chemical agent that absorbs the light of an infrared laser
Scientists at Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry have made a biocompatible material that has potential use in medical therapies that deploy near-infrared light to combat antibacterial-resistant infections and cancer.

The cosmic cow explained - radio signals point to an explosion and a newborn magnetar

The white dwarf-pulsar binary system PSR J1141-6545 discovered by the CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope. The pulsar orbits its white dwarf companion every 4.8 hours. The white dwarf’s rapid rotation drags space-time around it, causing the entire orbit to change its orientation.

Artist's impression of CHEOPS.

The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope is responsible for finding a number of fast radio bursts. But could there be fainter flashes that it’s missing?

This image shows BOBCAT hardware used to demonstrate the successful transfer of cryogenic fluids into a dewar during a balloon demonstration in August 2019. The shot was taken when the balloon reached its float altitude of 133,000 feet.