Heavens

When certain massive stars use up all of their fuel and collapse onto their cores, explosions 10 to 100 times brighter than the average supernova occur. Exactly how this happens is not well understood. Astrophysicists from Caltech, UC Berkeley, the Albert Einstein Institute, and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics have used the National Science Foundation's Blue Waters supercomputer to perform three-dimensional computer simulations to fill in an important missing piece of our understanding of what drives these blasts.

All the stars in the sky will eventually die - and some will really go out with a bang.

When a dying star goes supernova, it explodes with such ferocity that it outshines the entire galaxy in which it lived, spewing material and energy across unimaginable distances at near-light speed.

In some cases, these cosmic cataclysms defy expectations, blasting not symmetrically in all directions - as an exploding firework might - but instead launching two narrow beams, known as jets, in opposite directions.

Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have developed a new, more precise way to control the differentiation of stem cells into bone cells. This new technique has promising applications in the realm of bone regeneration, growth and healing. The research, led by David Mooney, the Robert P. Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering at SEAS, was published in Nature Materials.

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Recent conversations in the United States have centered on discrimination issues; yet, little is known about how discrimination affects youths' mental health and their willingness to help others. Now, University of Missouri researchers found Latino immigrant youth who reported feeling discriminated against had more depressive symptoms and were less likely to perform altruistic behaviors six months and a year after experiencing discrimination.

Using a combination of two blood sugar tests rather than a single test would improve detection of prediabetes in American children and adults, according to a new study by researchers at the School of Public Health at Georgia State University.

It had been planned for several months, but as fate would have it, the University of Montreal hosted the Conférences de la montagne "Challenges of democracy" symposium less than a week after the attacks on Paris. No fewer than 1,000 people arrived at the University of Montreal's Ernest-Cormier Amphitheatre on November 19, 2015 to hear two great voices of political philosophy - Charles Taylor, Professor Emeritus of McGill University, and Michael J. Sandel, professor at Harvard University, exchange their views on the issues facing the contemporary world with regard to the rise of terrorism.

A University of Alberta researcher has successfully generated 3D simulations of deep jet streams and storms on Jupiter and Saturn, helping to satiate our eternal quest for knowledge of planetary dynamics. The results facilitate a deeper understanding of planetary weather and provide clues to the dynamics of Earth's weather patterns evidenced in jet streams and ocean currents.

A supercomputer simulation of a mere 10 milliseconds in the collapse of a massive star into a neutron star proves that these catastrophic events, often called hypernovae, can generate the enormous magnetic fields needed to explode the star and fire off bursts of gamma rays visible halfway across the universe.

A new study by Sauder School of Business Professor Izak Benbasat and his collaborators shows that envy is a key motivator behind Facebook posts and that contributes to a decrease in mental well-being among users.

Creating a vicious cycle of jealousy and self-importance, the researchers say Facebook leads users to feel their lives are unfulfilling by comparison, and react by creating posts that portray their best selves.

Scientists have discovered a hungry black hole swallowing a star at the centre of a nearby galaxy.

The supermassive black hole was found to have faint jets of material shooting out from it and helps to confirm scientists' theories about the nature of black holes.

The discovery was published today in the journal Science.

An international team of astrophysicists led by a Johns Hopkins University scientist has for the first time witnessed a star being swallowed by a black hole and ejecting a flare of matter moving at nearly the speed of light.

The finding reported Thursday in the journal Science tracks the star -- about the size of our sun -- as it shifts from its customary path, slips into the gravitational pull of a supermassive black hole and is sucked in, said Sjoert van Velzen, a Hubble fellow at Johns Hopkins.

Tropical Storm In-fa was becoming an extra-tropical storm as it tracked toward the island of Iwo To, Japan in the western North Pacific Ocean. NASA's Terra satellite captured an infrared image of the small storm that is battling wind shear and was becoming extra-tropical.

AMES, Iowa - Was it a catastrophic collision in the star's asteroid belt? A giant impact that disrupted a nearby planet? A dusty cloud of rock and debris? A family of comets breaking apart? Or was it alien megastructures built to harvest the star's energy?

Just what caused the mysterious dimming of star KIC 8462852?

Massimo Marengo, an Iowa State University associate professor of physics and astronomy, wondered when he saw all the buzz about the mysterious star found by citizen scientists on the Planet Hunters website.

VY Canis Majoris is a stellar goliath, a red hypergiant, one of the largest known stars in the Milky Way. It is 30-40 times the mass of the Sun and 300 000 times more luminous. In its current state, the star would encompass the orbit of Jupiter, having expanded tremendously as it enters the final stages of its life.

Drowning has emerged as a mysterious cause of death amongst groups of young common starlings (Sturnus vulgaris), according to research by a team of scientists led by international conservation charity the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

Drowning as a cause of death amongst wild birds is comparatively rare and normally involves single rather than multiple animals. Starlings, however, have been observed to drown in groups of 10 or more, prompting scientists to investigate these unusual occurrences.