An American satellite is partially disintegrating in orbit, endangering other spacecraft circling Earth, Russian scientists warned on Saturday.

The craft in question is the US geostationary communications satellite Galaxy 11, operated by satellite services company Intelsat, according to the Moscow-based Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics at Russia's Academy of Sciences. It had been launched in 1999 as a backup for the Intelsat 802 satellite.

Telescopes have been following several small-sized fragments that detached from Galaxy 11 and now pose a potential threat for other satellites in orbit, the scientists said.

The Keldysh Institute said that the exact reasons for the disintegration of the spacecraft were currently unknown, but suggested that it could be the result of the aging of its thermal insulation, solar panels or other equipment.

Using stool samples from Viking latrines, researchers at the University of Copenhagen have genetically mapped one of the oldest human parasites -- the whipworm. The mapping reflects the parasite's global spread and its interaction with human beings, a delicate relationship that can make us healthier and ill.

Using fossilized eggs in up to 2500-year-old feces from Viking settlements in Denmark and other countries, researchers at the University of Copenhagen's Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences and the Wellcome Sanger Institute (UK) have made the largest and most in-depth genetic analysis of one of the oldest parasites found in humans -- the whipworm.

Imagine you are a young Bar-tailed Godwit, a large, leggy shorebird with a long, probing bill hatched on the tundra of Alaska. As the days become shorter and the icy winter looms, you feel the urge to embark on one of the most impressive migrations on Earth: a nonstop transequatorial flight lasting at least seven days and nights across the Pacific Ocean to New Zealand 12,000 kilometers away. It's do or die. Every year tens of thousands of Bar-tailed Godwits complete this journey successfully. Billions of other young birds, including warblers and flycatchers, terns and sandpipers, set out on similarly spectacular and dangerous migrations every spring, skillfully navigating the night skies without any help from more experienced birds.

People have long puzzled over the seasonal appearances and disappearances of birds. Aristotle thought that some birds such as swallows hibernated in the colder months and that others transformed into different species — redstarts turned into robins for the winter, he proposed. Only in the past century or so, with the advent of bird banding, satellite tracking and more widespread field studies, have researchers been able to connect bird populations that winter in one area and nest in another and show that some travel vast distances between the two locales every year. Remarkably, even juvenile long-haul travelers know where to go, and birds often take the same routes year after year. How do they find their way?

Migrating birds use celestial cues to navigate, much as sailors of yore used the sun and stars to guide them. But unlike humans, birds also detect the magnetic field generated by Earth's molten core and use it to determine their position and direction. Despite more than 50 years of research into magnetoreception in birds, scientists have been unable to work out exactly how they use this information to stay on course. Recently we and others have made inroads into this enduring mystery. Our experimental evidence suggests something extraordinary: a bird's compass relies on subtle, fundamentally quantum effects in short-lived molecular fragments, known as radical pairs, formed photochemically in its eyes. That is, the creatures appear to be able to "see" Earth's magnetic field lines and use that information to chart a course between their breeding and wintering grounds.

Be it magnets or superconductors: materials are known for their various properties. However, these properties may change spontaneously under extreme conditions. Researchers at the Technische Universität Dresden (TUD) and the Technische Universität München (TUM) have discovered an entirely new type of such phase transitions. They display the phenomenon of quantum entanglement involving many atoms, which previously has only been observed in the realm of few atoms. The results were recently published in the scientific journal Nature.

New Fur for the Quantum Cat

In physics, Schroedinger's cat is an allegory for two of the most awe-inspiring effects of quantum mechanics: entanglement and superposition. Researchers from Dresden and Munich have now observed these behaviors on a much larger scale than that of the smallest of particles. Until now, materials that display properties like, e.g., magnetism have been known to have so-called domains - islands in which the materials properties are homogeneously either of one or a different kind (imagine them being either black or white, for example). Looking at lithium holmium fluoride (LiHoF4), the physicists have now discovered a completely new phase transition, at which the domains surprisingly exhibit quantum mechanical features, resulting in their properties becoming entangled (being black and white at the same time). "Our quantum cat now has a new fur because we've discovered a new quantum phase transition in LiHoF4 which has not previously been known to exist," comments Matthias Vojta, Chair of Theoretical Solid State Physics at TUD.

A multidisciplinary team of Indiana University researchers have discovered that the motion of chromatin, the material that DNA is made of, can help facilitate effective repair of DNA damage in the human nucleus -- a finding that could lead to improved cancer diagnosis and treatment. Their findings were recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

DNA damage happens naturally in human body and most of the damage can be repaired by the cell itself. However, unsuccessful repair could lead to cancer.

It is our best look yet at these weird gravitationally-warped halos of light.

A new image using data collected by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope shows off a stunningly "almost perfect" Einstein ring captured. It is our best look yet at these weird gravitationally-warped halos of light. Credit: NASA

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has snapped a perfect shot of an "Einstein ring." The stunning halo is the result of light from a distant galaxy passing through warped space-time surrounding another galaxy aligned between the distant light source and Earth. The new image, which was created by a Reddit-based astronomy enthusiast, is one of the best examples of the trippy astronomical phenomenon ever captured.

The press service of the Admiralty Shipyards of Russia announced that the Arktika ship was launched on its first voyage after the state flag was hoisted on it.

The service said in a statement: "On September 1, the marine research vessel and the icebreaker (Arktika) set off on their first voyage after raising the national flag on it."

The ship will head to Murmansk to prepare for the first research voyage in the area of ​​the New Siberian Islands, which will be carried out under the supervision of the Russian Institute of Arctic and Antarctic Research.

NASA estimates there are around 25,000 asteroids big enough to prove dangerous in the event of a collision near Earth's orbit — so why isn't the White House interested in identifying them before it's too late?

The Biden administration is intending to delay the launch of an infrared telescope that could seek out these potential killer asteroids, a move that one space policy advocate called "baffling" in an interview with Bloomberg.

While the chances of a cataclysmic collision are minuscule, experts are arguing it's crucial we track the asteroids' whereabouts so that we can act in the event of an impending collision.

The James Webb Space Telescope captured mysterious concentric rings around a distant star that astronomers are still working to explain.

The image, taken in July, was released on Twitter by citizen scientist Judy Schmidt, prompting a torrent of comments and head-scratching. It shows a star known as WR140 surrounded by regular ripple-like circles that gradually fade away. The circles, however, are not perfectly round, but have a somewhat square-like feel to them, prompting speculations about possible alien origins.

"I think it's just nature doing something that is simple, but when we look at it from only one viewpoint it seems impossible, at first, to understand that it is a natural phenomenon," Schmidt told Space.com in an email. "Why is it shaped the way it is? Why is it so regular?"

Mark McCaughrean, an interdisciplinary scientist in the James Webb Space Telescope Science Working Group and a science advisor to the European Space Agency, called the feature "bonkers" in a Twitter thread.

Newly discovered sensory neurons send messages from fat tissue to the brain and could eventually be co-opted to treat obesity or metabolic disease.

LA JOLLA, CA — What did the fat say to the brain? For years, it was assumed that hormones passively floating through the blood were the way that a person's fat — called adipose tissue — could send information related to stress and metabolism to the brain. Now, Scripps Research scientists report in Nature that newly identified sensory neurons carry a stream of messages from adipose tissue to the brain.

"The discovery of these neurons suggests for the first time that your brain is actively surveying your fat, rather than just passively receiving messages about it," says co-senior author Li Ye, PhD, the Abide-Vividion Chair in Chemistry and Chemical Biology and an associate professor of neuroscience at Scripps Research. "The implications of this finding are profound."

"This is yet another example of how important sensory neurons are to health and disease in the human body," says co-senior author and professor Ardem Patapoutian, PhD, who is also a Nobel laureate and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

In mammals, adipose tissue stores energy in the form of fat cells and, when the body needs energy, releases those stores. It also controls a host of hormones and signaling molecules related to hunger and metabolism. In diseases including diabetes, fatty liver disease, atherosclerosis and obesity, that energy storage and signaling often goes awry.

Researchers have long known that nerves extend into adipose tissue, but suspected they weren't sensory neurons that carry data to the brain. Instead, most hypothesized that the nerves in fat belonged mostly to the sympathetic nervous system — the network responsible for our fight-or-flight response, which switches on fat-burning pathways during times of stress and physical activity. Attempts to clarify the types and functions of these neurons have been difficult; methods used to study neurons closer to the surface of the body or in the brain don't work well deep in adipose tissue, where nerves are hard to see or to stimulate.