Dive Right Into the Largest Ever Image of Our Galaxy’s Centre
You are looking at more than 84 million stars, the largest ever catalogue of the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Astronomers at the Paranal Observatory in Cerro Paranal, Chile, stitched the 9 gigapixels of the original image from thousands of individual infrared pictures.You can see the full, zoomable version here. It contains more…
Soon, Your Vaccinations Will Be Arriving Via Email
Craig Venter, the über-DNA jockey who quietly sequenced the human genome using his own DNA, then made “synthetic life” by outfitting a gutted bacterium with homemade genes, says his next trick will be emailing biological molecules, using 3D biological printers. The move that could revolutionise healthcare – and biological warfare. Venter discussed the idea at…
Mystery Particles on Mars Revealed by Curiosity’s Junk
Sifting through soil on Mars, NASA’s rover Curiosity paused to take a picture – and exposed its own bad behaviour. The shot included a bright object lying in the Martian dirt, and a closer look suggests that the rover is guilty of littering: it appears the object is a piece of plastic wrapper that has…
Why Some Pills Are Little White Discs and Others Are Big Red Torpedoes
Pills, they’re the answer to every one of life’s little problems, or so the pharmaceutical companies would like us to think. They come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colours, but have you ever thought about why? Why are some boring white and round, while others are bright pink and look like a torpedo?…
