These five galaxies, called Stephan’s Quintet, are about 290 million light-years away
Four of the five are engaged in a deadly game of chicken, swooping past one another closer and closer until, one day in the cosmic future, they will most likely smash together and merge
This cloud of dust and gas surrounding a dying star is called the Southern Ring, or the Eight-Burst Nebula
It’s about 2000 light-years away and nearly half a light-year across. The bright cloud that makes up the ring came from the outer layers of one of the stars at the centre
This image showcases one of JWST’s other key capabilities: examining the light shining through the atmosphere of an exoplanet
It is the spectrum of light coming from a planet called WASP-96b, a gas giant about 1150 light-years from Earth
These four images, showing two sparkling nebulas, a group of doomed galaxies and the chemical composition of a giant exoplanet, are the culmination of decades of work by scientists and engineers – and they’re just the beginning
Yesterday, @NASAWebb also released a stunning image called “Webb’s First Deep Field, containing thousands of galaxies from the cosmic dawn
After its December 2021, launch, JWST beamed down its very first images in February, but those images were part of the telescope testing process, not science images, and they did not yet demonstrate #JWST’s full power
Now that we have the first full-resolution images from JWST, the next step is getting more detailed data from even deeper observations of the cosmos so that researchers can start digging into the science
“Webb’s First Deep Field”, as the image is known, shows a region of space called SMACS 0723, which contains what’s called a gravitational lens
This is when a massive and relatively nearby object acts like a magnifying glass - boosting the light of background objects
The gravitational lens in SMACS 0723 is particularly strong because the nearby object is a large cluster of galaxies
The small specks and streaks of light visible around the edges of the image are distant, incredibly faint galaxies – some of the first that ever formed
Three hundred million people around the world are going hungry as food prices continue to rise as a result of everything from the coronavirus pandemic to India’s extreme heatwave to the ongoing war in Ukraine
The hardest hit countries include the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Yemen. But even in wealthier countries, people on low incomes are being affected by rising food prices
Fossil fuel prices have also been rising, and there is a strong link between food and energy prices. One 2019 study found that 64 per cent of the variance in food prices could be explained by the oil price
Monkeypox is a disease caused by a virus that, as the name suggests, usually spreads among monkeys in Central and West Africa, but occasionally jumps to people, causing small outbreaks.
As of right now, there are thirty-three monkeypox cases have been confirmed worldwide and another 35 are suspected so far.
‘It’s probably more widespread than we are currently detecting,’ says @MOUGK at @UniofOxford
Research behind the Oxford/AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine was led by Sarah Gilbert, alongside a team including Teresa Lambe, who helped design the vaccine’s genetic code, and Catherine Green who helped manufacture the first batches of vaccine used in trials. newscientist.com/article/228300…
Katherine Johnson was a NASA mathematician whose calculations helped the US get an astronaut into orbit for the first time. She also played a crucial role in calculations for the first moon landing. newscientist.com/people/katheri…
Today marks the 65th anniversary of the first nuclear power generation anywhere in the world, at Calder Hall on the Sellafield site in Cumbria, UK.
A thread on how New Scientist saw the dawn of nuclear power...
The first issue of (The) New Scientist was published 3 months later. In it, T.A. Margerison asked “where do we go from Calder Hall?” The article called for a vast stepping-up of the UK’s atomic energy programme, but its predictions proved wide of the mark.
“Coal, as we all know, is scarce and expensive. It can be expected to become more so as the easier-worked seams are exhausted.” This situation proved to be short-lived, and we now have the opposite problem. books.google.co.uk/books?id=X6Xez…
Unlike a computer, the human brain is exquisitely sensitive to the context in which in operates. Here are some of the ways your environment can affect the way you work 🧵
Signals embedded in a space communicate to occupants that they are welcome there – or not. For example, female students were much more interested in studying computer science after spending time in a non-stereotypical classroom.
A sense of ownership also has a big impact. When people occupy spaces that they consider their own, they feel more confident and capable. They are also more efficient and productive, less distractible and they advance their own interests more forcefully and effectively.