Science Glance
Imagine you could step out of our Milky Way a few million light-years and take a look back. This is the sort of view you might see. That is because this dazzling new image from the Hubble Space Telescope is of a galaxy that is thought to resemble our own.
Known as NGC 1073, and lying 55 million light-years away in the constellation of Cetus, it is a spiral galaxy, like so many classic “star cities”, but has a distinctive bar across its middle. This bar apparently denotes a galaxy that has moved on from being a bright young thing and headed into middle age.
Scientists at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have created the world's first atomic X-ray laser. The researchers aimed SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source at a capsule of neon gas, setting off an avalanche of X-ray emissions to create the shortest, purest X-ray laser pulses ever achieved.
NASA's prolific planet-hunting spacecraft has hit the jackpot again, discovering 11 new planetary systems with 26 confirmed alien planets among them.
A "treasure trove" of fossils - including some collected by Charles Darwin - has been re-discovered in an old cabinet. The fossils, lost for some 165 years, were found by chance in the vaults of the British Geological Survey HQ near Keyworth, UK.
The more astronomers look for other worlds, the more they find that it's a crowded and crazy cosmos. They think planets easily outnumber stars in our galaxy and they're even finding them in the strangest of places. And they've only begun to count.
Einstein's theories of relativity suggest that gravity can cause time to slow down. Now scientists have demonstrated a way to stop time altogether—or at least, to give the appearance of time stopping by bending light to create a hole in time.
