OMG science

OMG science

I can't believe it's taken this long to find three,

This particular exoplanet quickly captured astronomers' attention with its extreme variations in brightness. Most objects in space appear to blink, due either to physical changes within the planet or star, or external factors. For super-Jupiter exoplanets, Zhang said, this change in brightness is usually minimal, hovering at 1 to 2%. But on VHS 1256b, brightness variations neared 40%, the largest ever recorded for an object of its size.

More than 100 galaxies can be seen in Galaxy Cluster Abell 209, situated about 2.8 billion light-years away. Though they look close to one another, these galaxies are still separated by millions of light-years. Their combined mass manages to warp and magnify some even more-distant galaxies through a process called gravitational lensing. Lensed galaxies here appear stretched or streaky toward the center.

Collectively, the genetic variants in this population are outside the range of previously described human diversity. What's distinct? Estimates of the timing of when this ancient south African population branched off from any modern-day populations place the split at over 200,000 years ago, or roughly around the origin of modern humans themselves. But this wasn't some odd, isolated group; estimates of population size based on the frequency of genetic variation suggest it was substantial.

"What was once a specialist academic term has become mainstream," he said in the statement.

The first supermoon of the year might have made us wait ten months for it, but, lucky for us, we're getting spoiled with two more before the new year. And even better tonight's is expected to be the best of the bunch. The supermoon, known as a beaver supermoon is projected to appear even bigger and brighter than the last one and it's going to be framed against all the sparkle of Bonfire Night.

One can imagine propping a cube up on its corner and boring a large-enough square hole vertically through it to fit a cube of the same size as the original. Later, mathematicians found more and more three-dimensional shapes that eventually came to be called Rupert: they are able to fall through a straight hole in an identical shape. In 2017 researchers formally conjectured that all 3D shapes with flat sides and no indents, known as convex polyhedrons, are Rupert.

Then, just over two decades ago, the Human Genome Project - the international scientific effort to decode the three billion letters of human DNA - changed everything. Critics at the time called it too expensive, too ambitious, too abstract. And they weren't wrong. It was the largest biology project ever proposed, and scientists hadn't even managed to sequence the smallest bacterial genome yet. But the organizers knew that big plans - moonshots - inspire people and attract funding.