Best of Last Week Dark matter maybe notso dark, chance of asteroid strike and statinsincreasing diabetes risk20 April 2015, by Bob Yirka

A false-color image of the mid-infrared emission from theGreat Galaxy in Andromeda, as seen byNasa's WISE space telescope. The orange colorrepresents emission from the heat of stars forming in thegalaxy's spiral arms. The G-HAT team used imagessuch as these to search 100,000 nearby galaxies forunusually large amounts of this mid-infrared emissionthat might arise from alien civilizations. Credit:NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team

(Phys.org)It was an interesting week for physicsas a multinational team of researchers found potential signs of "interacting" dark matter thatsuggested the mysterious material is notcompletely dark after allobservations of a group offour galaxies colliding indicated one dark matterclump that appeared to be lagging behind theothers, suggesting something other than gravitywas at work. In other news from space,astronomers (and many others) wondered ifasteroid 2012 TC4 will hit the Earth in October

2017it came close enough back in 2012 to make astrike a possibility the next time around.

Also disappointingly, a team at NASA's WISEorbiting observatory conducted a search foradvanced civilizations beyond Earth and foundnothing obvious in 100,000 galaxies. There wasalso an update by the researchers trying to figureout what the two bright spots are on "Dwarf planet"Ceresthey report it is a giant mysterythe twospots were originally assumed to be similar, butnew evidence from NASA's Dawn space probeshowed one is colder than the surrounding surface,but the other is not. They are also wondering whythere are so few craters on the surface.

In other news, a team of scientists developed amesh that captures oilbut lets water throughapossible new tool for cleaning up oil spills in thefuture. Another team of researchers announcedthey had created a world-record electric motor foraircraftit's small, yet delivers a reported five timesmore power than comparable drive systems. Also ateam in Senegal reported that they had observed chimps fashioning spears for huntingthe firstobservation of a species other than man using toolsto hunt large animals. A team of researchers at theUniversity of California also reported that braindevelopment suffers from lack of fish oil fatty acidsin developing frogs. There was also news from theteam working on The Green Brain Projecttheyused a bee brain simulation to pilot a drone.

And finally, for those people who take statins toreduce their chances of heart attack or stroke, anew study conducted in Finland has found that thedrugs also increase the risk of developing diabetesby 46%patients will apparently have to decide forthemselves whether they are worth the risk.

1 / 2

2015 Phys.org

APA citation: Best of Last Week Dark matter maybe not so dark, chance of asteroid strike and statinsincreasing diabetes risk (2015, April 20) retrieved 22 April 2015 from http://phys.org/news/2015-04-week-dark-chance-asteroid-statins.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no partmay be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

2 / 2