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To perform coordinated movements, we rely on special sensory neurons in our muscles and joints. Without them, the brain wouldn’t know what the rest of our body was doing. A team led by Niccolò Zampieri has studied their molecular markers to better understand how they work and describes the results in Nature Communications.

Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch: We’re all familiar with the five senses that allow us to experience our surroundings.

Equally important but much less well known is the sixth sense: “Its job is to collect information from the muscles and joints about our movements, our posture and our position in space, and then pass that on to our central nervous system,” says Dr. Niccolò Zampieri, head of the Development and Function of Neural Circuits Lab at the Max Delbrück Center in Berlin. “This sense, known as proprioception, is what allows the central nervous system to send the right signals through motor neurons to muscles so that we can perform a specific movement.”

The experiment is a collaboration between the University of Cambridge and Université Libre de Bruxelles – partner institutions of the European Commission’s Graphene Flagship – along with the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) in the United Arab Emirates, York University in Canada, and the European Space Agency (ESA).

Regolith is composed of extremely sharp, tiny and sticky grains and, since the Apollo missions, it has been one of the biggest challenges lunar missions have had to overcome. Regolith can cause mechanical and electrostatic damage to equipment and is therefore also hazardous for astronauts. It clogs spacesuits’ joints, obscures visors, erodes spacesuits and protective layers, and is a potential health hazard.

Cambridge researchers have produced special graphene composites that are meant to reduce regolith adhesion. The graphene samples will be monitored via an optical camera, which will record footage throughout the mission. Researchers from Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) will gather information during the mission and suggest adjustments to the path and orientation of the rover. Data and images obtained will be used to study the effects of the moon environment and the regolith abrasive stresses on the samples.

International Gemini Observatory uncovers surprising evidence of colliding neutron stars after probing aftermath of gamma-ray burst.

While investigating the aftermath of a long gamma-ray burst (GRB), two independent teams of astronomers using a host of telescopes in space and on Earth have uncovered the unexpected hallmarks of a kilonova. This is the colossal explosion triggered by colliding neutron stars. This discovery challenges the prevailing theory that long GRBs exclusively come from supernovae, the end-of-life explosions of massive stars.

HEXATRACK-Space Express Concept Connecting Lunar &Martian City (Lunar & Mars Glass) and Beyond — SHORT VERSIONHEXATRACK-Space Express Concept, designed and created by Yosuke A. Yamashiki, Kyoto University.
Lunar Glass & Mars Glass, designed and created by Takuya Ono, Kajima Co. Ltd.
Visual Effect and detailed design are generated by Juniya Okamura.
Concept Advisor Naoko Yamazaki, AstronautSIC Human Spaceology Center, GSAIS, Kyoto UniversityVR of Lunar&Mars Glass — created by Natsumi Iwato and Mamiko Hikita, Kyoto University.
VR contents of Lunar&Mars Glass by Shinji Asano, Natsumi Iwato, Mamiko Hikita and Junya Okamura.
Daidaros concept by Takuya Ono.
Terraformed Mars were designed by Fuka Takagi & Yosuke A. Yamashiki.
Exoplanet image were created by Ryusuke Kuroki, Fuka Takagi, Hiroaki Sato, Ayu Shiragashi and Y. A. Yamashiki.
All Music (” Lunar City” “Martian”“Neptune”) are composed and played by Yosuke Alexandre Yamashiki.

Thanks to a cool physics trick, flares from a nearby star can heat a planet from the inside, powering plate tectonics.

A new analysis of Hubble data has clinched it: There’s too much light in the space around the Solar System.

Not much extra light, to be sure. Just a subtle, ghostly glow, a faint excess that can’t be accounted for in a census of all the light-emitting objects.

All the stars and galaxies surrounding the Solar System – and zodiacal light, aka dust on the Solar System’s plane – none of these can explain what astronomers are now calling “ghost light”.

Dust storms, long distances and freezing temperatures make living on Mars magnificently challenging. How will we do it?

And the galaxy from which the GRB came from is also strange. It is young and still forming stars – the opposite of the only other known nearby galaxy that has played host to such an event.

“This event looks unlike anything else we have seen before from a long gamma-ray burst,” said Jillian Rastinejad, from Northwestern University, who led the study. “Its gamma rays resemble those of bursts produced by the collapse of massive stars.

Given that all other confirmed neutron star mergers we have observed have been accompanied by bursts lasting less than two seconds, we had every reason to expect this 50-second GRB was created by the collapse of a massive star. This event represents an exciting paradigm shift for gamma-ray burst astronomy.

Avi Shporer, Research Scientist, with the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research via Chris Adami, Paul Davies, AIP Advances, EurekaAlert and University of Portsmouth

“Information,” wrote Arizona State University astrophysicist Paul Davies in an email to The Daily Galaxy, “is a concept that is both abstract and mathematical. It lies at the foundation of both biology and physics.”

Continue reading “Is Information the Fifth State of Matter in the Universe?” »