News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
A distant exoplanet looks more like a football than the usual sphere, researchers report in a groundbreaking new study. The strange shape of ultrahot WASP-103b, which is more than 1,000 light-years from Earth, is due to the planet being stretched by the gravitational forces of its parent star, according to the new research. WASP-103b was … Read more
Doctors have transplanted the heart from a genetically modified pig into the chest of a man from Maryland in a last-ditch effort to save his life. The first-of-its-kind surgery is being hailed as a major step forward in the decades-long effort to successfully transplant animal organs into humans. Although it’s been tried before—one of the … Read more
Before Earth and the other planets in our solar system existed, the sun may have been surrounded by giant rings of dust similar to Saturn’s, according to a new study. Those rings of dust may have prevented Earth from growing into a “super-Earth” — a type of planet that is about twice the size of … Read more
Dr. Michaela Musilova is the director of Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) program, which conducts analog missions to the moon and Mars for scientific research at a habitat on the volcano Mauna Loa. Currently, she is in command of the two-week Valoria 3 Martian mission and contributed this report to Space.com’s Expert Voices: … Read more
Bush fire season is underway again in Australia, where summer has just kicked off. Yet the country is still recovering from record-breaking wildfires two years ago that killed at least 33 people, destroyed thousands of homes and burned more than 65,000 square miles of land. How quickly the natural landscape recovers depends on the climate … Read more
A computer simulation tracks 9 million years of evolution within a stellar nursery – also known as a giant molecular cloud – in which stars are born Space 11 January 2022 By Chen Ly The most detailed simulations to date of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) hint that we may need to rethink our understanding of … Read more
For most of life on Earth, oxygen is essential, and sunlight is usually needed to produce that oxygen. But in an exciting twist, researchers have caught a common, ocean-dwelling microbe breaking all the rules. Scientists have found that a microbe called Nitrosopumilus maritimus and several of its cousins, called ammonia oxidizing archaea (AOA), are able to … Read more
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA’s newest space observatory, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), is set to begin spying on some of the universe’s most dramatic objects — black holes and neutron stars — potentially changing our understanding of the cosmos in the process. The 730-pound (330 kilograms) IXPE satellite launched to orbit on Dec. … Read more
The first transplant of a pig heart genetically modified for acceptance into human bodies raises hopes for a new solution to donor organ shortages Health 11 January 2022 By Clare Wilson Surgeons prepare genetically engineered pig heart for transplant University of Maryland School of Medicine FOR the first time, a human has been given a … Read more
Random numbers – a vital part of encryption – are hard for computers to generate, but a new trick turns memory chips into a source of random noise Technology 11 January 2022 By Matthew Sparkes A DRAM memory chip on a circuit board B Christopher / Alamy Computers struggle to create randomness, but a new … Read more