Caltech

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.

Astronomers have studied the ringing tones of a newly-created black hole for the first time, proving Einstein right once again.

The CRISPR tool is often referred to as “genetic scissors,” but a new improvement turns it into a “genetic Swiss Army Knife.”

If it was in our solar system, the orbit of exoplanet HR 5183 b would swing from the asteroid belt to way out beyond Neptune.

White dwarf stars are thought to follow very specific “rules” – if they’re over a certain mass limit, they’ll explode in a supernova with a very predictable brightness and time. But now Caltech astronomers have found a strange twist: white dwarfs used to explode at lower masses than they do today.

It’s not unusual to find rust around salt water, but now the pairing might be more useful. Researchers have found that electricity can be produced when salt water flows over the top of thin films of rust. The process was previously seen in – what else – graphene, but rust is far easier to scale up.

Strangely enough, the mechanisms behind thirst and satiation are somewhat of a mystery to science. Now researchers from Caltech have investigated and found two connections between body and brain that control the process.

Most oxygen in the universe isn’t in the form that we need to breathe: molecular oxygen, or O2. Now, researchers at Caltech claim to have created a reactor that can turn carbon dioxide into molecular oxygen, which could help us fight climate change here on Earth or generate oxygen for life in space.

In the 1990s, the lab of Frances Arnold showed how we can turn evolution to our advantage by manipulating microbes into evolving in a certain way. Now Arnold's team is using the technique to develop new antibiotics.

We’re now getting new gravitational wave detections so often it almost doesn’t seem special anymore. Barely a month into a new observation run, the LIGO/Virgo collaboration has now reported five new events, including what may be the first ever detection of a black hole swallowing a neutron star.