EverythingScience

Gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful class of cosmic explosions, usually last under a minute. But astronomers spotted one in July that continued for days. Learn how NASA telescopes and other facilities are helping us narrow down the possible causes: go.nasa.gov/49Yr5hL Source: @NASAUniverse @EverythingScience

Why Scientists Are Studying Mayonnaise in Space Your sunscreen sits in the bathroom cabinet, slowly changing. The mayonnaise in your fridge gradually separates. That prescription cream loses effectiveness over time. All these materials share something fundamental, they're soft matter, substances like gels, foams, and colloids whose internal structure reorganises slowly and mysteriously over months or years. Understanding exactly what happens inside these materials as they age has always been complicated by gravity. Even sitting still on a shelf, Earth's gravitational pull constantly influences how particles within these substances settle, cluster, and rearrange themselves. So a team of researchers from Politecnico di Milano and the Université de Montpellier decided to study soft matter somewhere gravity that gravity will have no effect. The result is COLIS, a new experimental facility now operating aboard the International Space Station. The laboratory represents the culmination of more than 25 years of collaboration between Luca Cipelletti, a physicist at the Laboratoire Charles Coulomb, and Roberto Piazza, who runs the Soft Matter laboratory at Politecnico di Milano. COLIS uses sophisticated optical techniques to look inside materials without disturbing them. Dynamic light scattering analyses how laser beams pass through samples, revealing tiny variations called speckle patterns that show how gels and other soft materials restructure over time. The facility can also carefully heat samples to trigger aging processes in precise, reproducible ways, then watch what happens at the molecular level. Early results have already surprised the research team. Gravity affects soft matter structure more dramatically than expected, influencing material properties even over long timescales. Source:Universe Today @EverythingScience

Newly Discovered DNA “Danger Zone” Could Change What We Know About Human Disease Source:SciTechDaily @EverythingScience

ESA’s Juice Spacecraft Beams Back New Image of 3I/ATLAS Source:Sci.News @EverythingScience

Your Gut Could Be Quietly Controlling Your Sleep, Research Shows Source:ScienceAlert @EverythingScience

'Hubble tension' is back again as a new cosmic map deepens the puzzle Source:Space.com @EverythingScience

NASA completes Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope construction Source:Phys.org @EverythingScience

Animals maintain stability by monitoring their body position and correcting errors with every step Source:Phys.org @EverythingScience

CERN's ATLAS detects evidence for decay of Higgs boson into muon–antimuon pair Source:Phys.org @EverythingScience

This photo of Earth, dubbed the Blue Marble, was taken by the Apollo 17 crew #OTD in 1972 as they traveled to the Moon. It soon became one of the most widely-distributed photographs in history. Source: @NASAhistory @EverythingScience

Mars Was Once a Tropical Oasis, New Study Suggests Source:SciTechDaily @EverythingScience

Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Will Make Its Closest Approach To Earth This Month, Just 270 Million Kilometers Away Source:IFLScience @EverythingScience