Astronomers May Have Just Detected a New Magnetar!

A new discovery could soon be raising the total number of confirmed magnetars to 25.
On 3 June, a brief X-ray burst close to the galactic plane caught the attention of the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT). Follow-up observation and analysis seem to confirm that it was emitted by a previously unknown magnetar, now named Swift J1555.2-5402...

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NASA’s InSight Mars Lander Gets a Power Boost

The spacecraft successfully cleared some dust off its solar panels, helping to raise its energy and delay when it will need to switch off its science instruments.

The team behind NASA’s InSight Mars lander has come up with an innovative way to boost the spacecraft’s energy at a time when its power levels have been falling. The lander’s robotic arm trickled sand near one solar panel, helping the wind to carry off some of the panel’s dust. The result was a gain of about 30 watt-hours of energy per sol, or Martian day...

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A Giant 'Blinking' Star Has Been Detected Near Our Galaxy's Center

Some 25,000 light-years from Earth, astronomers have found a weird star that almost blinked out of existence for several months before reappearing.

"It's amazing that we just observed a dark, large and elongated object pass between us and the distant star and we can only speculate what its origin is," said astronomer Sergey Koposov...

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Physicists Observe Particles Switch Between Matter and Antimatter

Antimatter, which is differentiated by having the opposite charge to normal matter, is composed of the antiparticles of normal matter.

In a world-first discovery, it was found that the charm meson, a subatomic particle made out of a charm quark and an antiquark, can travel as a mixture of their particle and antiparticle states, all the while spontaneously switching between the two...

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Deposits of Copper And Magnetic Iron Found in Alzheimer's Patients' Brains

Set aside every scrap of iron inside a human body and you might have enough to fashion a nail or two. As for copper, you'd be lucky to extract just enough to make a small earring.  
Scarce as they are, these two metals are necessary for our survival, playing essential roles in human growth and metabolism. But one place we wouldn't expect to find either is clumped inside our brain cells.

However, for people with the neurodegenerative disorder Alzheimer's disease, something seems to be turning these elements into microscopic ingots.

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