How dangerous are kilonovae?

When we look up at the sky on a particularly dark night, there is a sense of timelessness. We might see the flash of a meteor, and occasionally a comet is visible to the naked eye, but the cold and distant stars are unchanging. ...

Asteroid making its closest approach to Earth this week

On 4 February, asteroid 2011 MD will make its closest approach to the Earth. Though it will not be visible with the naked eye, the asteroid will pass 15,000,000 km away from Earth—much closer than those in the asteroid ...

A bacterial toolkit for colonizing plants

Using a novel experimental approach, Max Planck researchers have discovered a core set of genes required by commensal bacteria to colonize their plant hosts. The findings published in Nature Communications may have broad ...

Giant bacterium powers itself with unique processes

Not all bacteria are created equal. Most are single-celled and tiny, a few ten-thousandths of a centimeter long. But bacteria of the Epulopiscium family are large enough to be seen with the naked eye and 1 million times the ...

Paleontologist discovers rare soft tissue in fossil of crab

Most animals and plants never fossilize. For those that do, it's usually only hard parts such as bones and shells that preserve. However, in some exceptional cases, soft tissues such as muscles and gills survive the fossilization ...

A nanoprobe with a barcode: Sensors detect active proteases

Protein-splitting enzymes play an important role in many physiological processes. Such proteases are generally present in an inactive state, only becoming activated under certain conditions. Some are linked to diseases like ...

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