Caltech

Astronomers have observed a bright flash of light from space, which appears to have come from a collision between two black holes. And that’s surprising, considering that black holes are famously dark objects.

The LIGO-Virgo collaboration has reported a very strange gravitational wave signal. This signal appears to have come from a black hole swallowing some unknown object, with a mass that sits in a range thought to be empty.

Using polarized light, astronomers have detected signs of cloud bands in the atmosphere of a brown dwarf far beyond the solar system. It turns out that these gassy giants have a similar appearance to Jupiter, and the same kind of wild weather.

All previous records absolutely pale in comparison to the new record holder for the world’s fastest camera, boasting a mind-boggling rate of 70 trillion frames per second. That’s fast enough to capture light waves in movement.

Many of us now keep tabs on how we're doing by wearing health and fitness trackers, which run on batteries. Researchers from Caltech have developed an electronic skin that can be packed with sensors, and that's powered by the sweat of its wearer.

Blind readers will likely be familiar with refreshable braille displays, in which raised dots rise and fall from a flat surface in order to form braille characters. A new material, however, could make such displays cheaper and more useful than ever.

A paper is adding weight to the growing hypothesis suggesting the toxic protein clusters that cause Parkinson’s disease first aggregate in the gut before moving to the brain, and deficiency in a certain enzyme may help this mechanism.

A team of researchers is proposing a radical new technique for killing cancer cells using low-intensity ultrasound waves. The work is still at an early stage but cell tests have shown sound waves can destroy cancer while leaving healthy cells intact.

Scientists at Caltech and Stanford University have developed a tiny prosthetic that gives jellyfish an ability to swim faster while using less energy, all with the aim of one day using them to monitor the ocean environment.

The LIGO collaboration has announced the detection of gravitational waves from a pair of neutron stars colliding. This marks just the second time ever that this kind of event has been spotted, as the smash-up sent ripples through spacetime itself.

NASA has released a new panoramic infrared image of the center of the Milky Way. With data gathered by the Boeing 747-based SOFIA observatory, the image reveals new details of certain regions that have been traditionally tricky to capture.

A new species of microscopic worm found in Mono Lake in California is able to survive huge doses of arsenic, and is divided into three sexes.