Science

By Corey Williams | Associated Press Four people have been charged in the death of a 5-year-old boy who was “incinerated” inside a pressurized oxygen chamber that exploded at a suburban Detroit medical facility, Michigan’s attorney general said Tuesday. Thomas Cooper from Royal Oak, Michigan, was pronounced dead at the scene on Jan. 31 at the Oxford Center in Troy . His mother suffered burn wounds as she tried to save her boy. “A single spark it appears ignited into a fully involved fire that claimed Thomas’s life within seconds,” Attorney General Dana Nessel said. “Fires inside a hyperbaric chamber are considered a terminal event. Every such fire is almost certainly fatal and this is why many procedures and essential safety practices have been developed to keep a fire from ever occurring,” she said. The center’s founder and chief executive, Tamela Peterson, 58, is charged with second-degree murder. Facility manager Gary Marken, 65, and safety manager Gary Mosteller, 64, are charg...

Young stars grow by gobbling up nearby gas and dust. Over time, they can become extremely massive. The most massive stars we know of have up to 200 solar masses. But the flow of matter isn't a one-way street. Instead, young protostars eject some of the matter back into space with powerful jets.

The U.S. Space Force's X-37B spaceplane (which looks remarkably like a Space Shuttle that someone forgot to put the windows in!) completed its seventh mission this week, touching down at Vandenberg Space Force Base after 434 days in orbit. Although the mission is classified, Space Force officials, said that it followed a highly elliptical orbital path while conducting various tests and experiments. They also described the mission as operating "across orbital regimes,” whatever that means…is classified!

Astronomers know the Flame Nebula well—a stellar nursery around 1,400 light years away. It’s less than a million years old and is teeming with brown dwarfs, objects that never quite accumulated enough mass to begin fusing elements in their core. When comparing the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) infrared observations with Hubble's visible light images of the Flame Nebula, the difference is, ahem - astronomical! The infrared wavelengths penetrate the obscuring gas and dust, revealing clusters where young stars and brown dwarfs are taking shape.

In a recent paper, Adam Hibberd and Marshall Eubanks explore the feasibility of sending a mission to rendezvous with YR4, the asteroid that may pose a hazard to Earth someday.

Despite having recently officially ended its science operations in January, Gaia, one of the most prolific star explorers ever, is still providing new scientific insights. A recent paper pre-published on arXiv (which has not been peer-reviewed but was submitted to the Astrophysical Journal) took another look at some Gaia data to try to find a unique type of astronomical entity - white dwarf stars that are paired up in a binary with a main sequence one. By applying a machine learning technique called a "self-organizing map," they found 801 new white dwarf-main sequence (WDMS) binaries, increasing the total number ever found by over 20%.

Ask almost any physicist what the most frustrating problem is in modern-day physics, and they will likely say the discrepancy between general relativity and quantum mechanics. That discrepancy has been a thorn in the side of the physics community for decades. While there has been some progress on potential theories that could rectify the two, there has been scant experimental evidence to support those theories. That is where a new NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts grantee comes in - Selim Shahriar from Northwestern University, Evanston, was recently funded to work on a concept called the Space-borne Ultra-Precise Measurement of the Equivalent Principle Signature of Quantum Gravity (SUPREME-GQ), which he hopes will help collect some accurate experimental data on the subject once and for all.

Let’s face it: Space is a hostile environment for humans. Even on Mars, settlers might have a hard time coping with potentially lethal levels of radiation, scarce resources and reduced gravity. In “Mickey 17” — a new sci-fi movie from Bong Joon Ho, the South Korean filmmaker who made his mark with “Parasite” — an expendable space traveler named Mickey (Robert Pattinson) is exposed over and over again to deadly risks. And every time he’s killed, the lab’s 3D printer just churns out another copy of Mickey.

By LAURAN NEERGAARD and KASTURI PANANJADY, Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Rural cancer patients may miss out on cutting-edge treatments in Utah. Therapies for intellectual disorders could stall in Maryland. Red states and blue states alike are poised to lose jobs in research labs and the local businesses serving them. Ripple effects of the Trump administration’s crackdown on U.S. biomedical research promise to reach every corner of America. It’s not just about scientists losing their jobs or damaging the local economy their work indirectly supports — scientists around the country say it’s about patient health. “Discoveries are going to be delayed, if they ever happen,” said Dr. Kimryn Rathmell, former director of the National Cancer Institute. It’s hard for patients to comprehend how they could lose an undiscovered cure. Yet “all the people out there who have, you know, sick parents, sick children, this is going to impact,” said neuroscientist Richard Huganir of Johns Hopkins ...

Dark Matter Doesn't Decay, Whatever It Is

By LAURA UNGAR, AP Science Writer When Tristen Boyer recently had a couple of cavities filled, her dentist suggested she get fluoride treatment afterward. She has Crohn’s disease, which puts her at increased risk for tooth decay . “It’s something I felt like I should get done,” the 22-year-old University of Kentucky student said. “It’s something I’m going to keep doing.” Dentists and hygienists often propose fluoride treatments to patients in the dental chair to prevent cavities and strengthen teeth. But the relatively simple procedure – which involves applying a varnish, gel or foam directly to the teeth – isn’t always covered by insurance , especially for adults. So when is it worth getting? Here are some ways to figure that out. Who needs in-office fluoride treatment? If there’s a high risk of tooth decay, then professional fluoride treatments can help. Alexander Daniel, DDS, left, demonstrates fluoride treatment on resident Cameron Onken, right, at the Johns Hopkins Outpat...

Parts of some bayside communities in Marin are sinking at an accelerated pace, making them more vulnerable to threats from the rising sea, according to a federal study. Areas of eastern San Rafael and Corte Madera are subsiding at a rate of more than 0.4 inches per year, largely because of sediment compaction, according to the report by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. RELATED: That sinking feeling: SFO is subsiding in the mud In the lowest areas, sea levels could rise more than 17 inches by 2050, more than double the estimated average of 7.4 inches for the region. “In many parts of the world, like the r eclaimed ground beneath San Francisco , the land is moving down faster than the sea itself is going up,” said Marin Govorcin, the lead author of the study and a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The study used satellite imagery and models based on tide gauge measurements. Areas of other Bay Area communities, including Foster C...

There are several well-documented health risks that come from spending extended periods in microgravity, including muscle atrophy, bone density loss, and changes to organ function and health. In addition, astronauts have reported symptoms of immune dysfunction, including skin rashes and other inflammatory conditions. According to a new study , these issues could be due to the extremely sterile environment inside spacecraft and the International Space Station (ISS). Their results suggest that more microbes could help improve human health in space. The study was led by Rodolfo A. Salido and Haoqi Nina Zhao , a bioengineer and an environmental analytical chemist at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), respectively. They were joined by researchers from multiple UCSD programs and centers, the University of Denver, the Chiba University-UC San Diego Center for Mucosal Immunology Allergy and Vaccines (cMAV), Space Research Within Reach , the Baylor College Center for Space Medic...