Some melanoma cancer cells may punch their way through the body

A greyish mass with a collection of protruding red blobs moves through 3D-looking yellow webbing on a black background

Imagine tiny fists punching their way through your body. For some cancer patients, this may be the reality. Melanoma cells can mechanically tunnel their way through tissue using fleshy membrane protrusions without the need for chemicals that chew up the environment, researchers report June 12 in Developmental Cell. Cells have various modes of movement (SN: … Read more

We may finally know the source of mysterious high-energy neutrinos

image of galaxy NGC 4151

Supermassive black holes at the hearts of active galaxies may be churning out a lot of the universes high-energy neutrinos. Two teams using data from IceCube, the worlds premier neutrino observatory located in Antarctica, have independently identified a common type of these active galaxies, called Seyfert galaxies, as likely neutrino producers. These findings, reported in … Read more

Scientists developed a sheet of gold thats just one atom thick

A lattice of gold-colored spheres, with each sphere connected by lines to six of its neighbors

Meet graphenes newest metallic cousin, goldene. For the first time, researchers have created a free-standing sheet of gold thats just one atom thick. The development, reported in the April 16 Nature Synthesis, could someday allow scientists to use less gold in electronics and chemical reactions, says materials physicist Lars Hultman of Linkping University in Sweden. … Read more

Can bioluminescent milky seas be predicted?

This satellite image shows a pale expanse of sea just below the island of Java in the Indian Ocean. A white line traversiing the image is the track of a yacht that sailed through this "milky sea." The track turns blue where the yacht traveled through the giant patch of bioluminescence.

BURLINGTON, Vt. For the first time, a researcher has found a milky sea without relying on happenstance. For centuries, sailors have been amazed and mystified by a rare phenomenon: the water around their ship glowing as far as the eye can see. Scientists have struggled to study such milky seas because they had no way … Read more

Strange observations of galaxies challenge ideas about dark matter

Streaks around the galaxy cluster Abell 370 reveal more distant galaxies whose light has been bent and distorted by an effect called gravitational lensing.

Head-scratching observations of distant galaxies are challenging cosmologists dominant ideas about the universe, potentially leading to the implication that the strange substance called dark matter doesnt exist. Thats one possible conclusion from a new study published June 20 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The finding raises questions of an extraordinarily fundamental nature, says Richard Brent … Read more

The neutrinos quantum fuzziness is beginning to come into focus

A sensor chip with multiple small pixels is shown

Neutrinos are known for funny business. Now scientists have set a new limit on a quantum trait responsible for the subatomic particles quirkiness: uncertainty. The lightweight particles morph from one variety of neutrino to another as they travel, a strange phenomenon called neutrino oscillation (SN: 10/6/15). That ability rests on quantum uncertainty, a sort of fuzziness intrinsic … Read more