Celestial objects known as dark dwarfs may be hiding at the centre of our galaxy and could offer key clues to uncover the nature of one of the most mysterious and fundamental phenomena in contemporary cosmology: dark matter. A new paper published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP) by a team of researchers based in the UK and Hawaii describes these objects for the first time and proposes how to verify their existence using current observational tools such as the James Webb Space Telescope.

 

Theoretical physicist Jonathan Heckman and Ph.D. student Rebecca Hicks at University of Pennsylvania put a spin on ideas related to testing string theory: Rather than looking to verify it, the team and their collaborators sought a novel way to falsify it with data from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. “We're not rooting for string theory to fail,” Hicks says. “We're stress-testing it, applying more pressure to see if it holds up." “If string theory survives, fantastic," Heckman says. "If it snaps, we'll learn something profound about nature.”

Forests are falling behind in the race against climate change, with new research revealing it takes centuries for tree populations to adapt—far too slow to keep pace with today’s rapidly warming world.

- University of Leicester’s science and innovation park to lead on a European Space Agency project to build a Double-Walled Isolator (DWI) to support analysis of extra-terrestrial samples

- Samples could be stored and handled and initially analysed in the DWI, to reduce the risk of cross contamination on Earth

- Work has started with funding of €5 million