Aestus Ajith

Life - but not as we know it.. Scientists have managed to coax living cells into making carbon-silicon bonds, demonstrating for the first time that nature can incorporate silicon - one of the most abundant elements on Earth - into the building blocks of life. While chemists have achieved carbon-silicon bonds before - they’re found in everything from paints and semiconductors to computer and TV screens - they’ve so far never been found in nature, and these new cells could help us understand more about the possibility of silicon-based life elsewhere in the Universe. After oxygen, silicon is  the second most abundant element  in Earth’s crust, and yet it has nothing to do with biological life.  Why silicon has never be incorporated into any kind of biochemistry on Earth has been a long-standing puzzle for scientists, because, in theory, it would have been just as easy for silicon-based lifeforms to have evolved on our planet as the carbon-based ones we know and ...

Antoine Louveau was looking through his microscope at thin membranes that protect the brain when he saw something that absolutely shouldn't be there: a lymphatic vessel. The lymphatic system is part of the circulatory system but, instead of blood, it carries lymph — a clear liquid that ferries immune cells and rids the body of toxins and waste. As a  2009 research review  notes,  it is "an undisputed anatomical fact" that the brain is the only major organ that lacks a direct connection to the lymphatic system. Now that claim  is  disputed. If confirmed, the discovery may have huge implications for studying brain diseases like Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis (MS). "All the textbooks said there were not supposed to be any lymphatic vessels in that area," said Louveau, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Virginia. But after he and UVA neuroscientist Jonathan Kipnis ran a battery of tests, they discovered Louveau had been right. "It wa...

For the first time, researchers have probed the energy difference between two states of the antimatter atom. The best known research at CERN centers on collisions of particles accelerated to higher and higher energies. But for the past 30 years, the lab has also hosted several research teams working to decelerate antiprotons, combine them with positrons, and cool and trap the resulting atoms of antihydrogen. A main goal of that research is to perform precision spectroscopic measurements that might reveal differences between matter and antimatter—and help to explain why the universe contains so much more of the former than the latter. (See the Quick Study by Gerald Gabrielse,  Physics Today , March 2010, page 68 .) Now CERN’s  ALPHA collaboration  has achieved the first spectroscopic success: observing the transition between antihydrogen’s 1S and 2S states. The standard technique for atomic spectroscopy—exciting atoms with a laser and detecting the photons they emi...

The virus is adapting to new hosts. One person has been infected with a rare form of bird flu after catching the virus from a shelter cat in New York City.  According to the NYC Department of Health,  this is the first reported case of a human contracting  H7N2  - a strain of influenza A virus - due to exposure from an infected cat. While the risk to humans is extremely low, officials advise that local cat owners be on the look-out for symptoms. "Every time a virus adapts in a new animal, like a bird to a cat, we get concerned about the health of the cats and the humans who care for those cats," Jay Varma, deputy commissioner for disease control at the NYC Department of Health,  told NPR. The virus has infected  at least 45 cats  in a Manhattan animal shelter, and this increased exposure is how one of the shelter's veterinarians caught the disease. Since last week,  more than 100 cats have tested positive for H7N2 across all NYC shelter...

The Sun, as seen from one of the Moon of Uranus, Ron Miller   Our Solar System is a seriously beautiful place. Whether it’s the pockmarked volcanic surface of  Mercury , the dusty crimson plains of  Mars , the beautiful rings of  Saturn , or even the blues and viridians of our  own world , it’s a diverse place full of remarkable sights and natural wonders. We’d be nowhere without the Sun, mind you, and a series of truly stunning visualizations of our local star – as seen from each planet, and poor demoted Pluto – by artist and illustrator  Ron Miller  serve to remind you of this fact. He’s spent more than 40 years illustrating the dark realms of space, both near and far, and has come up with the most realistic depictions of the Sun as seen from these far-flung worlds as possible. “I've taken care in not only making sure the Sun is depicted realistically, but also the surfaces of the planets and satellites as well,” Miller...

Humans may have thought they mastered the flame back in the Stone Age, but hundreds of thousands of years later and fire is still a cause of fascination and confusion. Scientists from the University of Maryland have described a previously unobserved form of fire in a study published in  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . Dubbed the “blue whirl”, the flame glows nearly completely blue and rapidly spins on top of a water’s surface. “Blue whirls evolve from traditional yellow fire whirls,” Elaine Oran, Glenn L. Martin Institute professor of engineering and co-author of the paper, explained in  a statement . “The yellow color is due to radiating soot particles, which form when there is not enough oxygen to burn the fuel completely. Blue in the whirl indicates there is enough oxygen for complete combustion, which means less or no soot, and is therefore a cleaner burn.” But this blue whirl doesn’t just make for a pretty pictur...

An international team hunt for the origins of dog domestication. Performing a medical procedure on a live animal isn’t for a faint hearted researcher. So when a village dog in rural India bit Ryan Boyko’s thumb, he figured it was a small price to pay (although he got a tetanus shot to be safe) for the opportunity to explore some of the big questions of dog lovers — when and where did that special relationship between dog and human begin? To answer these questions, Boyko and an international team of collaborators, led by his brother Professor Adam Boyko from  Cornell University  in Ithaca, New York, took on a project that would make most vets blanch: to collect blood from 549 village dogs across 38 countries. The aim was to map the dogs’ genetic relationships and through that, trace the history of dog domestication. Boyko, the CEO of dog DNA testing company, Embark Veterinary Inc, wanted to know “what makes dogs dogs and to what extent does that help us understand what ...

Albert Einstein , one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, forever changed the landscape of science by introducing revolutionary concepts that shook our understanding of the physical world. One of Einstein's most defining qualities was his remarkable ability to conceptualise complex scientific ideas by imagining real-life scenarios. He called these scenarios  " Gedankenexperiments ",  which is German for "thought experiments". Here are a few thought experiments that demonstrate some of Einstein's most ground-breaking discoveries. Imagine you're chasing a beam of a light. This is something Einstein  started thinking about when he was just 16 years old . What would happen if you chased a beam of light as it moved through space? If you could somehow catch up to the light, Einstein reasoned, you would be able to observe the light frozen in space. But light can't be frozen in space, otherwise it would cease to be light. Eventually Eins...

Nearly 50 years after  landing on the Moon , mankind has now set its sights on sending the  first humans to Mars . The Moon trip  took three days ; a Mars trip will likely take  most of a year . The difference is in more than just time. We’ll need many more supplies for the trip itself, and when we get to the Red Planet, we’re going to need to set up camp and stay for a while. Carrying all this material will require a revolutionary rocket technology. The  Saturn V  was the largest rocket ever built. It consumed an enormous amount of fuel in explosive chemical reactions that propelled the Apollo spacecraft into orbit. After reaching orbit, Apollo ejected the empty fuel tanks and turned on its own chemical rockets that used even more fuel to get to the Moon. It took  nearly a million gallons  (3.7 million litres) of various fuels just to send a few people on a day trip to our nearest extraterrestrial body. So how could we send a settlement...