Tag Archives: discovery

Science

Pivotal Discovery Could Treat Epilepsy, Parkinson’s, Depression and Chronic Pain

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Artist’s rendering shows X-rays striking radioluminescent nanoparticles in the brain, which emit red light that triggers a sodium (Na+) and potassium (K+) ion influx and thereby activates brain neurons. Credit: Image by Zhaowei Chen/Argonne National Laboratory.

Scientists make pivotal discovery of method for wireless modulation of neurons with X-rays that could improve the lives of patients with brain disorders. The X-ray source only requires a machine like that found in a dentist’s office.

Many people worldwide suffer from movement-related brain disorders. Epilepsy accounts for more than 50 million; essential tremor, 40 million; and Parkinson’s disease, 10 million.

Relief for some brain disorder sufferers may one day be on the way in the form of a new treatment invented by researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and four universities. The treatment is based on breakthroughs in both optics and genetics. It would be applicable to not only movement-related brain disorders, but also chronic depression and pain.

“Our high precision noninvasive approach could become routine with the use of a small X-ray machine, the kind commonly found in every dental office.” — Elena Rozhkova, a nanoscientist in Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials

This new treatment involves stimulation of neurons deep within the brain by means of injected nanoparticles that light up when exposed to X-rays (nanoscintillators) and would eliminate an invasive brain surgery currently in use. 

“Our high-precision noninvasive approach could become routine with the use of a small X-ray machine, the kind commonly found in every dental office,” said Elena Rozhkova, a lead author and a nanoscientist in Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM), a DOE Office of Science User Facility.

Traditional deep brain stimulation requires an invasive neurosurgical procedure for disorders when conventional drug therapy is not an option. In the traditional procedure, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, surgeons implant a calibrated pulse generator under the skin (similar to a pacemaker). They then connect it with an insulated extension cord to electrodes inserted into a specific area of ​​the brain to stimulate the surrounding neurons and regulate abnormal impulses.

“The Spanish-American scientist José Manuel Rodríguez Delgado famously demonstrated deep brain stimulation in a bullring in the 1960s,” said Vassiliy Tsytsarev, a neurobiologist from the University of Maryland and a co-author of the study. ​“He brought a raging bull charging at him to a standstill by sending a radio signal to an implanted electrode.”

About 15 years ago, scientists introduced a revolutionary neuromodulation technology, ​“optogenetics,” which relies on genetic modification of specific neurons in the brain. These neurons create a light-sensitive ion channel in the brain and, thereby, fire in response to external laser light. This approach, however, requires very thin fiberoptic wires implanted in the brain and suffers from the limited penetration depth of the laser light through biological tissues.

The team’s alternative optogenetics approach uses nanoscintillators injected in the brain, bypassing implantable electrodes or fiberoptic wires. Instead of lasers, they substitute X-rays because of their greater ability to pass through biological tissue barriers.

“The injected nanoparticles absorb the X-ray energy and convert it into red light, which has significantly greater penetration depth than blue light,” said Zhaowei Chen, former CNM postdoctoral fellow.

“Thus, the nanoparticles serve as an internal light source that makes our method work without a wire or electrode,” added Rozhkova. Since the team’s approach can both stimulate and quell targeted small areas, Rozhkova noted, it has other applications than brain disorders. For example, it could be applicable to heart problems and other damaged muscles.    

One of the team’s keys to success was the collaboration between two of the world-class facilities at Argonne: CNM and Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source (APS), a DOE Office of Science User Facility. The work at these facilities began with the synthesis and multi-tool characterization of the nanoscintillators. In particular, the X-ray excited optical luminescence of the nanoparticle samples was determined at an APS beamline (20-BM). The results showed that the particles were extremely stable over months and upon repeated exposure to the high-intensity X-rays.

According to Zou Finfrock, a staff scientist at the APS 20-BM beamline and Canadian Light Source, ​“They kept glowing a beautiful orange-red light.”

Next, Argonne sent CNM-prepared nanoscintillators to the University of Maryland for tests in mice. The team at University of Maryland performed these tests over two months with a small portable X-ray machine. The results proved that the procedure worked as planned. Mice whose brains had been genetically modified to react to red light responded to the X-ray pulses with brain waves recorded on an electroencephalogram.

Finally, the University of Maryland team sent the animal brains for characterization using X-ray fluorescence microscopy performed by Argonne scientists. This analysis was performed by Olga Antipova on the Microprobe beamline (2-ID-E) at APS and by Zhonghou Cai on the Hard X-ray Nanoprobe (26-ID) jointly operated by CNM and APS.

This multi-instrument arrangement made it possible to see tiny particles residing in the complex environment of the brain tissue with a super-resolution of dozens of nanometers. It also allowed visualizing neurons near and far from the injection site on a microscale. The results proved that the nanoscintillators are chemically and biologically stable. They do not wander from the injection site or degrade.

“Sample preparation is extremely important in these types of biological analysis,” said Antipova, a physicist in the X-ray Science Division (XSD) at the APS. Antipova was assisted by Qiaoling Jin and Xueli Liu, who prepared brain sections only a few micrometers thick with jeweler-like accuracy.

“There is an intense level of commercial interest in optogenetics for medical applications,” said Rozhkova. ​“Although still at the proof-of-concept stage, we predict our patent-pending wireless approach with small X-ray machines should have a bright future.”

Reference: “Wireless Optogenetic Modulation of Cortical Neurons Enabled by Radioluminescent Nanoparticles” by Zhaowei Chen, Vassiliy Tsytsarev, Y. Zou Finfrock, Olga A. Antipova, Zhonghou Cai, Hiroyuki Arakawa, Fritz W. Lischka, Bryan M. Hooks, Rosemarie Wilton, Dongyi Wang, Yi Liu, Brandon Gaitan, Yang Tao, Yu Chen, Reha S. Erzurumlu, Huanghao Yang and Elena A. Rozhkova, 24 February 2021, ACS Nano.
DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.0c10436

The related article ​“Wireless optogenetic modulation of cortical neurons enabled by radioluminescent nanoparticles” appeared in ACS Nano. In addition to Rozhkova, Chen, Finfrock, Antipova and Cai, another Argonne author is Rosemarie Wilton. University contributors include Vassiliy Tsytsarev, Dongyi Wang, Yi Liu, Brandon Gaitan, Yang Tao and Yu Chen from the University of Maryland, Department of Bioengineering; Hiroyuki Arakawa and Reha Erzurumlu from the University of Maryland School of Medicine; Fritz Lischka from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences; Bryan Hooks from the University of Pittsburgh, Department of Neurobiology; and Huanghao Yang from Fuzhou University.

This research received support from the DOE Office of Science, National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation.



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Science

Lego offers set with new space shuttle Discovery and Hubble Space Telescope

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The set, which will be released on April 1, was created in partnership with NASA to mark the 40th anniversary since the first space shuttle flight on April 12, 1981, that started a new era in space exploration.
The shuttle model costs $199 and has more than 2,300 pieces. Aimed at adults, the model features realistic details like an opening payload bay, retractable landing gear, opening cockpit, space arm, and five seats for the crew. It measures more than 8.5 inches high, 21 inches long and 13.5 inches wide to make it easy to display, according to a news release from Lego.

“I was thrilled to see the space shuttle in Lego form … Hubble is definitely the highlight of my career,” Sullivan said in the news release.

“This Lego model is a great way for Lego builders and space fans alike to get excited about space travel and learn more about the famous mission in a fun and engaging way.”

Sullivan flew on three space shuttle missions and was the first American woman to complete a spacewalk as part of STS 41-G with the space shuttle Challenger on October 11, 1984.
The space shuttle was the first reusable spacecraft. The orbiter would launch like a rocket and land like a plane. The two solid rocket boosters that helped push them into space were also reusable after being recovered in the ocean. Only the massive external fuel tank would burn up as it fell back to Earth. The combined system was known as the Space Transportation System.

Five shuttles flew into space during the program’s history: Atlantis, Challenger, Columbia, Discovery and Endeavour. Challenger and Columbia were destroyed in accidents.

The Challenger exploded minutes after launch on January 28, 1986, due to faulty O-rings in the shuttle’s rocket booster. All seven crew members died, including Christa McAuliffe, who would have been the first teacher in space.
The Columbia exploded over Texas during reentry on February 1, 2003, killing the seven crew members. An investigation determined the accident was caused by a piece of insulating foam that broke off and struck a hole in the leading edge of the left wing less than two minutes into the flight.

The shuttle program ended in 2011 after 135 missions.

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Science

LEGO reveals space shuttle Discovery set featuring Hubble Space Telescope

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March 22, 2021

— Once described as the most complex flying machine ever built, comprised of more than 2.5 million moving parts, you can now assemble your own model of NASA’s space shuttle using just 2,354 pieces.

LEGO on Monday (March 22) revealed its new NASA Space Shuttle Discovery set, which not only replicates its full-size counterpart in amazing detail, but does so as it was configured for one of its most well-known and historic missions: the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.

“I always liked that combination of very compact, almost miniature, but very elegantly detailed, and I think that’s exactly what the Hubble model within this set reminded me of,” astronaut Kathy Sullivan said in an interview with collectSPACE.

And she would know. Sullivan flew as a mission specialist on Discovery’s STS-31 mission in 1990, giving her a front row seat for the deployment of the observatory.

“I hadn’t known what to expect in terms of how large Discovery would be,” Sullivan said about her first time seeing the new LEGO set. “It’s about like two feet long. It’s really very impressive size.”


Designed with adult builders in mind, the LEGO NASA Space Shuttle Discovery packs a lot of detail into that two-foot (0.5 m) package. The landing gear deploys, the control surfaces on the wings (elevons) move and the payload bay doors open to expose the reflective radiators, the Canadarm robotic manipulator, the Ku-band antenna and even video cameras for the “crew” to monitor the activities outside.

“Translating this into LEGO was an exciting challenge,” Milan Madge, who led the design of the set for the Denmark-based toy company, said in a statement. “In the real vehicle, every inch of space is used in ingenious ways. Generally, in a LEGO model we can rely on the size to accommodate the structure that holds the whole set together, but on the Discovery Space Shuttle we needed to create a smooth exterior and an interior capable of holding the payload.”

It is not just the cargo bay that opens. The crew cabin opens to reveal the flight deck with the orbiter’s control panels and crew seats. Below that, the middeck includes the crew’s equipment lockers and the airlock leading into the payload bay.

“And for all I know, Bruce [McCandless] and I are represented inside that airlock, which is where we were stuck when Hubble was deployed,” said Sullivan with a laugh. “So I leave it to the intrepid modeler to determine if there are two spacesuited figures locked inside that airlock just like there were on Discovery on the day of the deploy.”

Sullivan was also surprised to find that the model features not only the vertical stabilizer- or tail-mounted speed brake, but also the elevons, the control surfaces on the orbiter’s wings.

“A lot of people look at the trailing edge of the shuttle’s wing and think of it as the traditional elevator like you see on the backend of an airplane’s wing,” she said. “On the space shuttle, it’s a combination of an elevator and an aileron, called an elevon. And so I thought, let’s see if they got the elevons right — they operate opposite each other. And indeed they got that right.”

“And you don’t have to just manhandle the elevons. In a very clever twist. you can twist the center main engine bell and that will rock the elevons back and forth,” said Sullivan.

The same attention to detail was given to LEGO’s model of the Hubble Space Telescope, which can either be placed into Discovery’s payload bay or displayed on its own included stand.

“Though this is a little bit of an anachronistic [detail], they’ve got the grapple fixture on the aft end that was put on by the final servicing crew,” said Sullivan, whose book “Handprints on Hubble” details the history of the space telescope, as well as her own story. “You can also see they’ve represented the lens if you look in the front end of it. It’s just really super.”

Produced in celebration of the upcoming 40th anniversary of the first space shuttle mission, the LEGO NASA Space Shuttle Discovery set will retail for $199.99 when it goes on sale on April 1 at LEGO Stores and on LEGO.com.

Complementing the set, members of the LEGO VIP loyalty program will also be able to redeem 1,800 points to receive a LEGO model kit based on another of Discovery’s payloads: the Ulysses space probe. Also deployed in 1990, Ulysses’ primary mission was to study the Sun.

In addition, beginning on April 18, LEGO stores nationwide will display real images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope that have been translated into LEGO form.

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World

Israeli experts announce discovery of more Dead Sea scrolls

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JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli archaeologists on Tuesday announced the discovery of dozens of Dead Sea Scroll fragments bearing a biblical text found in a desert cave and believed hidden during a Jewish revolt against Rome nearly 1,900 years ago.

The fragments of parchment bear lines of Greek text from the books of Zechariah and Nahum and have been dated around the first century based on the writing style, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority. They are the first new scrolls found in archaeological excavations in the desert south of Jerusalem in 60 years.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of Jewish texts found in desert caves in the West Bank near Qumran in the 1940s and 1950s, date from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D. They include the earliest known copies of biblical texts and documents outlining the beliefs of a little understood Jewish sect.

The roughly 80 new pieces are believed to belong to a set of parchment fragments found in a site in southern Israel known as the “Cave of Horror” — named for the 40 human skeletons found there during excavations in the 1960s — that also bear a Greek rendition of the Twelve Minor Prophets, a book in the Hebrew Bible. The cave is located in a remote canyon around 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Jerusalem.

The artifacts were found during an operation in Israel and the occupied West Bank conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority to find scrolls and other artifacts to prevent possible plundering. Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 war, and international law prohibits the removal of cultural property from occupied territory. The authority held a news conference Tuesday to unveil the discovery.

The fragments are believed to have been part of a scroll stashed away in the cave during the Bar Kochba Revolt, an armed Jewish uprising against Rome during the reign of Emperor Hadrian, between 132 and 136. Coins struck by rebels and arrowheads found in other caves in the region also hail from that period.

“We found a textual difference that has no parallel with any other manuscript, either in Hebrew or in Greek,” said Oren Ableman, a Dead Sea Scroll researcher with the Israel Antiquities Authority. He referred to slight variations in the Greek rendering of the Hebrew original compared to the Septuagint — a translation of the Hebrew Bible to Greek made in Egypt in the third and second centuries B.C.

“When we think about the biblical text, we think about something very static. It wasn’t static. There are slight differences and some of those differences are important,” said Joe Uziel, head of the antiquities authority’s Dead Sea Scrolls unit. “Every little piece of information that we can add, we can understand a little bit better” how the Biblical text came into its traditional Hebrew form.

Alongside the Roman-era artifacts, the exhibit included far older discoveries of no lesser importance found during its sweep of more than 500 caves in the desert: the 6,000-year-old mummified skeleton of a child, an immense, complete woven basket from the Neolithic period, estimated to be 10,500 years old, and scores of other delicate organic materials preserved in caves’ arid climate.

In 1961, Israeli archaeologist Yohanan Aharoni excavated the “Cave of Horror” and his team found nine parchment fragments belonging to a scroll with texts from the Twelve Minor Prophets in Greek, and a scrap of Greek papyrus.

Since then, no new texts have been found during archaeological excavations, but many have turned up on the black market, apparently plundered from caves.

For the past four years, Israeli archaeologists have launched a major campaign to scour caves nestled in the precipitous canyons of the Judean Desert in search of scrolls and other rare artifacts. The aim is to find them before plunderers disturb the remote sites, destroying archaeological strata and data in search of antiquities bound for the black market.

Until now the hunt had only found a handful of parchment scraps that bore no text.

Amir Ganor, head of the antiquities theft prevention unit, said that since the commencement of the operation in 2017 there has been virtually no antiquities plundering in the Judean Desert, calling the operation a success.

“For the first time in 70 years, we were able to preempt the plunderers,” he said.

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Entertainment

Discovery Plus is the perfect background noise streaming service

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The word discovery implies there’s something new to find, but I’ve spent the past few weeks steadily making my way through a show that’s been on the air for more than 20 years, thanks to Discovery Plus: House Hunters.

Thanks to House Hunters (and House Hunters International, alongside Tiny House Hunters) my days spent inside, working from home and doing nothing but watching TV, have transitioned almost exclusively to Discovery Plus. It exists as white noise in my apartment: the buzzing of couples arguing over whether to pay the full $560,000 for a house in the nice neighborhood closer to the cute bistro or take a chance on the $480,000 home that needs some work but is way under budget emitting from my TV set. From the time I start working until the second I’m beginning to wind down, House Hunters plays continuously on its dedicated channel housed within Discovery Plus.

“Our bet is when the world makes a full rotation, that the content people have chosen when they could choose anything on TV or cable, the content that they love and run home for — 90 Day, Fixer Upper, Property Brothers — they’re still going to love that,” Discovery CEO David Zaslav told The New York Times in a recent interview.

Discovery Plus, home to shows from networks like HGTV, TLC, Investigation Discovery, and the Food Network, launched at just the right moment, when ambient television was becoming a fixture in people’s homes during the pandemic. Author and journalist Kyle Chayka referred to ambient TV as something “you don’t have to pay attention to in order to enjoy but which is still seductive enough to be compelling if you choose to do so momentarily.” For Chayka, that was Emily in Paris. This reasoning is also what makes House Hunters, as well as 90 percent of the series on Discovery Plus, perfect ambient television.

Streaming also makes ambient TV possible in a way cable television can’t because there’s a total ad-free option. Loud commercials that play every seven minutes cease to exist. Functionally, I have the option to throw on a House Hunters channel that streams episodes of the show 24/7 and forget about it. Streaming services are designed to make viewing as effortless as possible and keep people’s attention once they’ve started watching TV.

So far, it’s working out better than expected for Discovery Plus. The company has signed up more than 11 million subscribers to the platform since it launched in early January. Discovery’s target audience is people between 25 and 54, a wide bracket but one with the most disposable income as of 2019, according to Statista. The disposable income of a household led by a person between the ages of 25 and 54 ranged between $69,700 and $91,400 in 2019, Statista reported. Add in that cord-cutting continues to happen at an accelerated rate and that millennials are one of the biggest groups to sign up for three or more streaming services, and Discovery Plus’ potential is obvious.

Zaslav chalked up the impressive initial signups as proof that “people really don’t change that much,” when talking to the Times. That’s probably true, but having an ad-free option that does for adults and college students what Frozen 2 on Disney Plus or Cocomelon on YouTube and Netflix repeats do for kids has become essential in my home. To quote a popular TikTok meme, House Hunters on Discovery Plus leads to “empty head, no thoughts.”

There’s another term for this: waiting room television. Like daytime TV talk shows or new soap opera episodes, shows like 90 Day Fiancé, House Hunters, and Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives are just interesting enough to catch someone’s fleeting attention, but they’re monotonous enough to not become total distractions. They simply exist to keep people entertained if they want but can float into the background if someone would rather check in on Instagram or read a book instead — or, in my case, work.

Discovery Plus still has a long way to go. There are basic product features that need to be fixed (finding on-demand videos instead of 24/7 channels is more difficult than it should be), and I haven’t seen any new series or specials that have caught my attention. Discovery also has to ensure that it’s keeping the vast majority of those who do sign up. For now, Discovery filled a need I didn’t know I had while working at home — pure, ongoing, ambient TV that I don’t have to think about for hours the second I hit play.

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US

Stockton man arrested, accused of Discovery Bay homicide, Antioch drive-by shooting

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A 26-year-old man from Stockton is under arrest in connection with a homicide in Discovery Bay and a drive-by shooting on first responders in Antioch.First responders were with police on a medical emergency call just before 9 p.m. Saturday night. While helping the patient, a silver SUV drove by, and someone inside started shooting, authorities said.Both a firefighter and a paramedic were hit, and both are expected to recover, officials said. An ambulance and police car were also struck in the shooting. After a chase, officers said they were able to arrest the suspect, 26-year-old Darryon Williams, of Stockton.Williams is also facing a homicide charge after Antioch police asked the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office to conduct a welfare check at a home in Discovery Bay for a person related to their case.While at the home, deputies found the body of 64-year-old Michael Iliff of Discovery Bay, the sheriff’s office said.Now, authorities say they want to find Williams’ 4-year-old son and Kimberly Meeks, the child’s mother.They believe she is driving a dark-colored Audi SUV with the license plate 8UKN742.

A 26-year-old man from Stockton is under arrest in connection with a homicide in Discovery Bay and a drive-by shooting on first responders in Antioch.

First responders were with police on a medical emergency call just before 9 p.m. Saturday night. While helping the patient, a silver SUV drove by, and someone inside started shooting, authorities said.

Both a firefighter and a paramedic were hit, and both are expected to recover, officials said. An ambulance and police car were also struck in the shooting.

After a chase, officers said they were able to arrest the suspect, 26-year-old Darryon Williams, of Stockton.

Williams is also facing a homicide charge after Antioch police asked the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office to conduct a welfare check at a home in Discovery Bay for a person related to their case.

While at the home, deputies found the body of 64-year-old Michael Iliff of Discovery Bay, the sheriff’s office said.

Now, authorities say they want to find Williams’ 4-year-old son and Kimberly Meeks, the child’s mother.

They believe she is driving a dark-colored Audi SUV with the license plate 8UKN742.

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Science

Scientists Make Unexpected Find Deep Under Antarctic Ice

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(Newser)
–
Researchers working in Antarctica have made an unexpected discovery: colonies of stationary animals—likely sponges and related creatures—attached to a boulder deep beneath the ice, NBC reports. Geologists boring through the 3,000-foot-thick ice of the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf to take sediment samples from the ocean floor ran into the rock and sent down a camera. “It was a genuine surprise to see these animals there,” Huw Griffiths, a marine biologist and lead author of the new study documenting the find, told CNN. “It’s amazing,” he said, speaking to NBC, “because no one has ever seen these before.” In the past, small mobile creatures—things like fish, worms, jellyfish, and crustaceans—have been found far beneath the ice, the Guardian notes. But stationary filter-feeders have not.

Many scientist thought that was because of the hostile environment created by total darkness, a dearth of food sources, and frigid temperatures. Sponges and other filter feeders survive by feeding on floating material from plants and animals. The boulder hosting the animals is about 150 miles from the open sea. Based on the currents, the food they ingest may come from more than 900 miles away, the researchers say. “It was a real shock to find them there, a really good shock, but we can’t do DNA tests, we can’t work out what they’ve been eating, or how old they are. We don’t even know if they are new species, but they’re definitely living in a place where we wouldn’t expect them to be living,” Griffiths told the Guardian. (Read more Antarctica stories.)

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Technology

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Fans Furious Over New Discovery

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Assassin’s Creed Valhalla fans are furious over the current state of the game following a new discovery on the game’s Reddit page. As the Reddit post — which quickly shot to the top of page — points out, there are currently nine different armor sets in the game’s store, locked behind microtransactions, which means there are roughly as many armor sets locked behind microtransactions as there are in the entire base game. In a free-to-play game or even a multiplayer game with a long tail, this isn’t anything out of the ordinary, but this being the case with a premium single-player game isn’t as common, and it’s enough to have fans irate.

Amplifying the issue, according to the Reddit post, is the fact that all of this has come before Ubisoft has added to the game with any DLC or meaningful content. Now, Valhalla is going to get DLC just like Origins and Odyssey — the most recent previous entries in the series — did. And both Origins and Odyssey had similar microtransactions, but it looks and sounds like Valhalla is a bit more egregious in this regard.

Unfortunately for Ubisoft, the Reddit post didn’t just shoot to the top of the game’s Reddit page. It’s also been shared on other, larger Reddit pages and is now being picked up by the media. Despite this, Ubisoft still hasn’t addressed the feedback. And at this point, it doesn’t look like it will. However, if it does, we will be sure to update this story with whatever is provided, salient or not.

This isn’t the first time Assassin’s Creed has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, but from the time of reveal to now, it’s been pretty smooth sailing for Valhalla.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is available via the PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC. For more coverage on the game and all things gaming — including all of the other recent controversies in the industry — click here or check out the relevant links below:

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Science

Astronomers find origins of “galactic cannibalism” with discovery of ancient dark matter halo

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Astronomers have detected what they believe to be one of the earliest instances of “galactic cannibalism” — when one galaxy consumes one of its smaller neighbors — in an ultrafaint dwarf galaxy called Tucana II. The findings stem from the discovery of an ancient dark matter halo, located in a galaxy 163,000 light years from Earth. 

Tucana II is just one of dozens of dwarf galaxies surrounding the Milky Way. They are thought to be artifacts left over from the first galaxies in the universe — and Tucana II is among the most primitive of them. 

In a new study, published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy, astrophysicists report detecting nine previously unknown stars at the edge of Tucana II, using the SkyMapper Telescope in Australia and the Magellan Telescopes in Chile. The stars are shockingly far away from its center but remain in the small galaxy’s gravitational pull. 

The configuration of stars provides the first evidence that the galaxy contains an extended dark matter halo — a region of matter three to five times larger than scientists originally believed — in order to keep a gravitational hold on its distant stars. The findings suggest that the earliest galaxies in the universe were much more massive than previously believed. 

“Tucana II has a lot more mass than we thought, in order to bound these stars that are so far away,” one of the authors of the study, MIT graduate student Anirudh Chiti, said in a statement. “This means that other relic first galaxies probably have these kinds of extended halos too.”

Every galaxy is believed to be held together by a halo of dark matter, a type of hypothetical matter thought to make up over 85% of the universe, MIT News explains. But the new findings represent the first time one has been detected in an ultrafaint dwarf galaxy. 

“Without dark matter, galaxies would just fly apart,” Chiti said. “[Dark matter] is a crucial ingredient in making a galaxy and holding it together.”

The vicinity of the Tucana II ultra-faint dwarf galaxy, as imaged with the SkyMapper Telescope.

Anirudh Chiti, MIT


Scientists also found that these far-flung stars are older than the stars at Tucana II’s core — the first evidence of such an imbalance in this type of galaxy. Their discovery points to the possibility that the galaxy could be the product of one of the first mergers between two galaxies in the universe, which scientists refer to as “galactic cannibalism.” 

“We may be seeing the first signature of galactic cannibalism,” said MIT Professor Anna Frebel. “One galaxy may have eaten one of its slightly smaller, more primitive neighbors, that then spilled all its stars into the outskirts.”

Using a telescope’s imaging filter, astronomers are able to study the metal content of a galaxy’s stars to determine just how primitive it is. They had previously found stars at Tucana II’s core with such low metal content that the galaxy was identified as the most chemically primitive of the known ultrafaint dwarf galaxies.

New research found the outer stars were three times more metal-poor than the ones at the center, making them even more primitive. 

“This probably also means that the earliest galaxies formed in much larger dark matter halos than previously thought,” Frebel said. “We have thought that the first galaxies were the tiniest, wimpiest galaxies. But they actually may have been several times larger than we thought, and not so tiny after all.”

An early galactic merger is one likely explanation for the imbalance. Galactic cannibalism occurs “constantly” across today’s universe, according to MIT News, but mergers in the early universe are not so certain. 

“Tucana II will eventually be eaten by the Milky Way, no mercy,” Frebel said. “And it turns out this ancient galaxy may have its own cannibalistic history.”

The team hopes to use their approach to discover even older, more distant stars in other ultrafaint dwarf galaxies. 

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Science

Thanks to a new fossil discovery, we suddenly know a lot more about dinosaur sex

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No one predicted that January 2021 would be a banner month for dinosaur news. Last week an article in the scholarly journal Cretaceous Research revealed that dinosaur bones in Argentina may have belonged to a creature so massive that it would have been the largest land animal know to have existed. Now a study published in the journal Current Biology gives us an up close look at these animals — namely, at their butts.

A team of scientists from the University of Bristol and the University of Massachusetts Amherst revealed that they had discovered and described in detail a dinosaur’s cloaca — that is, a vent in the animal’s posterior that would have been the dinosaur’s equivalent of an anus, urethra and genitalia — based on a fossil that had distinctly preserved the skin patterns of a Psittacosaurus, a dog-sized dinosaur related to the Triceratops. Unlike bones, soft tissue does not usually preserve well over millions of years; hence, lacking any preserved organs or skin tissue, much of dinosaur anatomy and behavior has been a mystery. That makes this discovery of a cloaca a genuinely interesting clue that tells us more about dinosaur behavior, including mating.

“The cloaca is a multi-purpose opening that is used for everything that you do opposite of your mouth: peeing, pooping, having sex, laying eggs,” Dr. Jakob Vinther, a paleontologist at the University of Bristol, told Salon. “Most of these animals have penises, except for some of the dinosaurs’ descendants. Amongst birds you don’t find penises so often. They do something else called cloacal kissing, where they basically put their cloacal openings up against each other and then they just vibrate until some sperm is released and that is absorbed by the female’s cloaca. The question is, what would dinosaurs be doing?”

Until recently, paleontologists could only guess.

“One of the issues is that a lot of the bits that would be relevant to the actual reproductive systems are soft tissues that don’t typically fossilize,” Dr. Diane Kelly, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who helped co-author the paper, told Salon. She noted that there have been some exceptions, such as a raptor fossil that was found sitting on a nest in the Gobi desert.

“From that you can deduce that that particular species had brooding behavior,” Kelly told Salon. When it comes to actual preserved soft tissue, however, Kelly pointed out that finding it in a condition suitable for meaningful scientific examination is “rare,” and as such information about dinosaurs nether-regions has been limited.

Thanks to the scientists’ study of this cloaca, however, we now know a lot more.

“Now we can actually say that this type of cloaca is not suited for cloacal kissing, that is a cloaca that is suitable for penetrative sex,” Vinther told Salon. Although he said that scientists cannot determine the sex of the dinosaur they found, they noted that “the shape of the cloaca is somewhat distinct. It doesn’t look like either birds or the close relatives, the crocodiles. It’s got a pair of sort of swollen lips on either side that sort of flare out. They sort of join together in one direction and then they flare out towards the tail.” By contrast, bird cloacas “kind of looks like a swollen zit that is ready to be popped,” Vinther said, although another close relative of dinosaurs — the crocodile — also has a pair of lips around its cloaca.

“In crocodiles, when you have these swollen lips there is a pair of glands below that can release this sort of fatty substance that are full of pheromones and smell irresistible to other crocodiles,” Vinther explained. “We believe that this dinosaur also had that based on its anatomy.”

In addition, Vinther identified something “quite surprising and unique” in the dinosaur’s cloaca — namely, the fact that it was very colorful, which suggested that they were used for visual signaling.

“That’s something we don’t see in crocodiles,” Vinther explained. “We don’t see that in many animals actually altogether. Of course there are some mammals like, for example, baboons, that have a big colorful butt or lower quarter, as they say in technical terms, which can be used for communication. But if you take, for example, birds, there are just two species of living birds that we could find that have a colorful cloaca.”

Normally cloacas are not exactly headline news fodder, but both scientists told Salon that they suspected their discovery might garner attention.

“We were not surprised that there was a lot of attention,” Kelly explained. “There’s usually a lot of attention when it’s dinosaurs. When any new dinosaur study comes out, people are usually pretty interested in and excited about it.” She noted that this is compounded her because the discovery is “about naughty bits, so that’s just another level of interest.”

Vinther also said he had a “suspicion” the story would become popular, recalling that people had expressed interest in the subject when he had mentioned it in passing prior to the article being published. Even so, he added that “I wasn’t sure whether people would pick up on it and cover it to the extent that they have. That is quite amazing.”

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