Ephemeral Isle: Catch up

DNA may be one of the most basic molecules of life, but it's not easy to study. Despite being a very long molecule, it's only about 2.2 nanometers wide, so it's hard to see. Attaching fluorescent dyes to it can help, but until now, knowing how those dye molecules were behaving wasn't possible. A team of scientists at Stanford University has built on a technique called "single-molecule microscopy" to see just how DNA-bound dye molecules orient themselves, flop around and glow in the presence of polarized laser light.

.. Continue Reading Polarized lasers zap dyed DNA into super resolution

Category: Biology

Tags:
molecular biology
Stanford University
DNA

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An unmanned Cygnus cargo ship left the International Space Station today, and then NASA set it on fire. At 4:55 pm EDT, ground control activated the Saffire-I experiment in the hold of the Orbital ATK Cygnus Pressurized Cargo Module as it drifted away from the station, triggering the largest fire ever started in space. The controlled burn inside an insulated container is part of a study to learn more about the nature of fire in zero gravity and improve spacecraft safety... Continue Reading NASA sets fire to unmanned cargo ship in the name of safety

Category: Space

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International Space Station
Cygnus
Safety
Orbital Sciences Corporation
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The latest attempt by SpaceX to land a Falcon 9 booster on a sea barge ended in what founder and CEO Elon Musk called a "rapid unscheduled disassembly." After three successful sea landings in a row by the company, the unmanned rocket impacted on the deck of the droneship "Of Course I Still Love You" at 10:37 am EDT after successfully sending its payload of two communications satellites into orbit. According Musk, the fiery crash was due to an engine malfunction... Continue Reading Falcon 9 landing ends in "rapid unscheduled disassembly" (Translation: it crashed)

Category: Space

Tags:
Elon Musk
Falcon
SpaceX
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If there's one place in our solar system you would expect to be as frozen solid as a box of forgotten ice lollies, it would be Pluto. However, PhD student Noah Hammond at Brown University says that data returned in 2015 by NASA's unmanned New Horizons deep-space probe indicates that the dwarf planet may have a subsurface ocean similar to those suspected to exist on some moons of Jupiter and may be responsible for the unusual surface features... Continue Reading Does Pluto have an ocean hiding beneath its surface?

Category: Space

Tags:
Brown University
New Horizons
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Ephemeral Isle