SCIENCE

A solar prominence (also known as a filament when viewed against the solar disk) is a large, bright feature extending outward from the Sun's surface. Prominences are anchored to the Sun's surface in the photosphere, and extend outwards into the Sun's hot outer atmosphere, called the corona. Reports last week surfaced that NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) caught "a piece of Sun being broken off" from its surface.

The rotation of the Earth's solid inner core may have recently paused and could be reversing, according to a study published in Nature Geoscience. The authors showed evidence that oscillation in the rotation of the inner core coincides with periodic changes in the Earth's surface system and that there is an interaction between different layers of the Earth.

The Arp-Madore catalog is a collection of particularly peculiar galaxies spread throughout the southern sky, and includes a collection of subtly interacting galaxies as well as more spectacular colliding galaxies. "Arp-Madore 417-391", which lies around 670 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus in the southern celestial hemisphere, is one such galactic collision. The two galaxies were distorted by gravity and twisted into a colossal ring, leaving their cores nestled side by side, said NASA.

The Milky Way Galaxy where we live includes stars of various ages, including stars still forming. But in some other galaxies, known as elliptical galaxies, all of the stars are old and about the same age. This indicates that early in their histories elliptical galaxies had a period of prolific star formation that suddenly ended.

Scientists had previously seen stars orbiting around something invisible, compact, and very massive at the centre of the Milky Way. But the image of Sagittarius A (Sgr A) which is about 27,000 light-years away from Earth, produced by a global research team called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, provides the first direct visual evidence of it.

The election to the 170-year-old Academy is recognition of his significant contributions to science by its members. Bawa, who is also an elected fellow of the Royal Society (London) and the American Philosophical Society, was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences late last night India time.

The discovery, made by an international team along with NASA researchers, and described in the paper published in Nature Communications, provides more evidence that chemical reactions in asteroids can make some of life's ingredients, which could have been delivered to ancient Earth by meteorite impacts or perhaps the infall of dust.

The growing problem of low egg reserve is one of the most significant factors contributing to lower fertility rates in urban women. Stress, pollution, pesticide exposure, and smoking and alcohol addiction are all major causes of this condition. A recent study found that one in every two women who were unable to conceive had a low egg reserve. Previously, it was a problem that arose with increasing age; however, this has changed. Low egg reserve is a common concern among today's young girls, with women as young as 27 years old experiencing infertility as a result.

For decades, astronomers have detected smaller black holes equal in mass either to a few suns or giant black holes with mass similar to millions of suns but the missing-link of black holes in between those sizes have eluded discovery. The existence of these intermediate-sized or massive black holes has long been theorised but finding them has proven difficult as the light emitted by objects falling into them is not easy to detect.

While studies have shown the efficacy of antidepressant medications for treatment of depression disorder, these medications' effect on patients' overall well-being and health-related quality of life remains controversial. Now, researchers from King Saud University in Saudi Arabia found that antidepressants are not associated with significantly better health-related quality of life.