The Chandra team has unveiled a stunning new composite image of the Cocoon Nebula, a fascinating reflection and emission nebula located in the constellation Cygnus. This image artfully combines high-energy X-rays with optical and infrared light, showcasing a vibrant population of newborn stars emerging from the surrounding clouds of dust and gas.
This composite image of the Cocoon Nebula highlights a heart-shaped formation. X-ray data from Chandra reveals a new cluster of stars, complemented by optical light from astrophotographers Michael Adler and Barry Wilson, as well as infrared data from the WISE mission. Image credits: NASA / CXC / SAO / JPL / Caltech / WISE / M. Adler / B. Wilson / L. Frattare.
The Cocoon Nebula is located approximately 2,650 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus.
This nebula, also known as IC 5146 or Colinder 470, spans 15 light-years across.
The object was first discovered by American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard on October 11, 1893.
Chandra astronomers noted, “This image depicts the Cocoon Nebula as a vibrant, glowing heart-shaped cloud amidst a backdrop of millions of stars in the Milky Way.”
“The core of this nebula features warm reds, oranges, and golds, forming a luminous cocoon of gas and dust, with soft, uneven edges that gradually fade into the surrounding darkness.”
“Within this illuminated cloud lies a multitude of young stars, some visible as bright white or bluish dots, while others remain hidden or only detectable through X-ray light captured by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.”
“These X-rays trace a population of newly formed, highly active stars clustered near the center of the nebula,” the researchers explained.
“The heart-shaped nebula glows from a combination of light emitted by these young stars and starlight reflected by the surrounding dust.”
“Optical data from two astrophotographers, along with infrared observations from NASA’s Wide Field Infrared Surveyor (WISE), add depth and texture, unveiling a shimmering starry landscape and the dense, dusty regions where new stars are continuously forming.”
A newly photographed newborn marsupial, weighing less than a grain of rice, is seen crawling towards its mother’s pouch for the first time. This remarkable observation highlights the unique gestation and development process of marsupials.
Unlike placental mammals, which give birth to more developed young, marsupials experience a brief gestation period before their young must navigate to the mother’s pouch to continue their growth.
According to Brandon Menzies from the University of Melbourne, this remarkable process remains largely unknown for many of Australia’s rare marsupials, even for those in captivity. Menzies and his team care for several hundred fat-tailed dunnarts (Smithopsis crassicaudata) and aim to work with Colossal Biosciences to potentially resurrect the extinct Tasmanian tiger.
Despite establishing the colony decades ago and monitoring female fertility closely, the exact details of how marsupials give birth and the young’s attachment to the teats have never been documented before now.
Menzies explained that this phenomenon is difficult to observe due to the lack of pregnancy tests for this species, their nocturnal habits, and the fact that births occur at night. During a 12 to 24-hour period, a swarm of newborns is born, taking just 30 minutes to reach the pouch.
Adult Fat-tailed Dunnarts
Emily Scicluna
In 2024, researchers noted blood in an enclosure. An examination revealed tiny newborns, just 5 milligrams each, making their way towards their mother’s pouch.
“We observed the pouch waving, crawling, and wriggling,” Menzies stated. “It’s a freestyle swim type of crawl, similar to a commando crawl.”
Young Dunnarts in Their Mother’s Pouch
Emily Scicluna
Realizing this was a groundbreaking moment, Menzies captured 22 seconds of footage before carefully returning the mother to her enclosure. The team believes gravity plays a crucial role in guiding the young towards the pouch.
Researchers estimate the newborns achieved around 120 movements per minute while crawling.
Reaching the nipple is just the first challenge. Many marsupials, including fat-tailed dunnarts, produce more offspring than nipples available for nursing. While they can carry up to 17 pups, they can only care for 10, contrasting with the Tasmanian devil that has the capacity to produce 30 pups with just four nipples.
Menzies expressed amazement at how fat-tailed dunnarts can give birth to such mobile pups merely 14 days after conception. It was previously believed these tiny babies couldn’t independently enter the pouch without maternal assistance.
“The ability to crawl independently into the pouch underscores the remarkable developmental capabilities of this species,” he remarked. “Just a week ago, these were fertilized eggs consisting of mere cells.”
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Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of the Department of Health and Human Services has committed to improving the health of Americans, with a particular emphasis on reducing health burdens among children. Despite this, the department recently removed the Advisory Committee on Newborn and Child Genetic Disorders.
For the past 15 years, the Advisory Committee on Hereditary Disorders in Newborns and Children has played a crucial role in recommending which conditions should be included in the universal screening panel for newborns to the health and human services secretaries.
Kennedy’s focus has been on tracing the origins of a broader spectrum of pediatric diseases such as autism, asthma, and obesity, but rare diseases, mostly genetic, remain a significant public health concern. In the United States, around 15 million children have rare diseases, most of which are genetic.
Screenings of newborns identify about 14,000 babies each year with potentially life-threatening conditions, according to the National Agency for Rare Disability (NORD). Early diagnosis at birth provides parents with valuable intervention opportunities, usually most effective before symptoms manifest.
While individual states determine which conditions to screen for, most follow the federally recommended uniform screening panel. Volunteer scientists and medical professionals on the advisory board primarily shape the screening panel with their recommendations.
Allison Herrity, senior policy analyst at NORD, expressed disappointment at the dissolution of the committee and its impact on the process of adding new conditions to the screening panel.
The Internal HHS email reviewed by NBC News confirmed the abrupt end of the committee on April 3, without any explanation. This decision has left room for speculation and hope that the committee may be reinstated to address the pressing need for identifying and treating rare genetic disorders in newborns.
Dr. Sean McCandless, Director of Genetics and Metabolism at Colorado Children’s Hospital, emphasized the importance of early diagnosis and treatment, especially for conditions like MLD and DMD, which have available therapies to improve patients’ quality of life.
However, the removal of the advisory committee poses a threat to the inclusion of new conditions in the Universal Panel. Without a structured approach like the committee, ensuring comprehensive and evidence-based screening for new conditions becomes challenging.
McCandless and other healthcare professionals have appealed to Kennedy to reinstate the advisory board to align with his vision of a healthier America. Advocates are concerned about the future of universal screening and fear disparities between states in offering comprehensive screenings.
They stress the importance of an independent body like the advisory committee to ensure that screening recommendations are based on scientific evidence rather than external influences.
There is a call for a more streamlined process for adding conditions to the screening panel to keep pace with advancements in treatments and medical knowledge, ultimately benefiting children and families affected by rare genetic disorders.
Chinese and Australian astrophysicists have discovered that neutron stars’ birth rates can be described by a unimodal distribution that smoothly turns on at a solar mass of 1.1 and peaks before declining as a sudden power method.
Impressions of the artist of Neutron Star. Image credit: Sci.News.
Neutron stars are dense remnants of giant stars, more than eight times as huge remnants as our Sun, born at the end of life with the explosion of a brilliant supernova.
These incredibly dense objects have a mass of one to twice the mass of the sun, compressed into a ball of the size of a city with a radius of just 10 km.
Astronomers usually only weigh the neutron stars (which measure how big they are) and are found in binary star systems with different objects, such as white d stars or other neutron stars.
However, in these systems, the first born neutron stars acquire extra mass from their peers through a process called attachment, making it difficult to determine the original birth amount.
“Understanding the birth mass of neutron stars is key to unlocking the history of their formation,” says Dr. Simon Stevenson, an Ozgrav researcher at Swinburne University.
“This work provides an important basis for interpreting gravitational wave detection in neutron star mergers.”
Dr. Stevenson and his colleagues analyzed samples of 90 neutron stars in the binary star system and considered the masses obtained from the birth of each neutron star to measure the distribution of neutron star masses at birth.
They discovered that neutron stars are usually born with a mass of about 1.3 solar masses, with heavier neutron stars being more rare.
“Our approach allows us to finally understand the mass of neutron stars at birth. This has been a long-standing question in astrophysics,” said Professor Xingjiang Zhu of Beijing Normal University.
“This discovery is important for interpreting new observations of neutron star masses from observations of gravitational waves.”
study It will be displayed in the journal Natural Astronomy.
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ZQ. you et al. Determination of the birth mass function of neutron stars from observations. Nut AthlonPublished online on February 26th, 2025. doi:10.1038/s41550-025-02487-w
An orca that carried around a dead calf for several days in 2018 appears to be repeating the same behavior with a newly dead calf.
Scientists believe the killer whales are likely expressing sadness.
Killer whales are part of an endangered subpopulation known as southern killer whales.
Nearly six years ago, a mother orca attracted international attention when she carried a dead calf for 17 days straight. Sadly, the whale now appears to be repeating what researchers say is an expression of grief over another deceased newborn.
The mother whale, also known as J35 or Tahlequah, was first spotted with her new calf on December 20th. But on Wednesday, researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration photographed a whale with a dead calf on its head off the coast of West Seattle.
“We can confirm that J31 lost the calf and was pushing it around on its head,” Brad Hanson, a researcher at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center, said in a press conference Thursday.
He said that when the calf is about to sink, “she seems to do a high arch dive to retrieve the calf, but at that point you can’t really tell if she’s pushing or grabbing the calf.” added. ”
Scientists said they believe Tahlequah likely carried the dead calf as an expression of grief. Whales have a similar wiring structure to humans and other large, long-lived social mammals, Joe Gaydos, scientific director of the Sea Dog Society, an ocean research organization, said at a press conference.
“We have the same neurotransmitters as they do. We have the same hormones as they do. Shouldn’t we have the same emotions that they have? We are a market cornered by emotions.” So I think it’s fair to say she’s sad or grieving,” Gaydos said, adding that similar behavior has been observed in dolphins and non-human primates. added.
Tahlequah, also known as J35, and a dead calf. NOAA
J35 is part of an endangered subpopulation of whales known as southern killer whales. The death of Tahlequah’s calf and the recent birth of another killer whale left the group at just 73 individuals.
Over the years, Tahlequah has had two surviving calves, both male, one born in 2020.
Southerners have been given tracking numbers by the Center for Whale Research and are closely watched by researchers, photographers and whale watchers, especially if they are near Puget Sound communities like Seattle.
Scientists have been following the story of the dead calf for weeks. Hanson said NOAA researchers discovered the female calf themselves on Dec. 23 after a citizen scientist first noticed the female calf, called J61. They were concerned about the calf’s health at the time because it appeared to be struggling and surfacing unusually, he said.
It is not uncommon for orca pups to die shortly after birth. Michael Weiss, director of research at the Center for Whale Research, said the first year of life is the biggest hurdle to survival.
Approximately 70% to 80% of calves that researchers can record and give identification numbers survive the first few years.
“We don’t know exactly what the survival rate is, probably because so many calves are born and die before they are photographed or recorded,” Weiss says. “Probably 50 percent of calves born will survive the first year.”
NOAA researchers said they are now concerned about Tahlequah’s own health because pushing his calves creates a lot of resistance in the water and requires a lot of energy.
“One thing she probably doesn’t have time for is feeding,” Hanson said. “We are concerned that she is expending so much energy caring for her lost calf.”
This is a typical calving season for southern whales. Hanson said researchers were encouraged by the birth of another killer whale, called J62. The orca was first spotted by observers on Dec. 30 and confirmed by the Cetacean Research Center on New Year’s Day.
“It appears to be very robust,” Hanson said.
Southern killer whales have been the subject of conservation efforts for decades. They are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and were listed as endangered in 2005.
Whales typically spend several months each year along the Puget Sound coastline in Washington state. They live in three pods called J, K, and L, and have evolved to eat primarily fish, including the prized Chinook salmon.
In the early 1960s, many of Minami’s killer whales were killed or captured, and some of the surviving killer whales were put on display in marine parks. As of 1974, surveys showed that only 71 individuals remained in the wild. The population has since fluctuated, reaching a high of 95 people in 1995, but has declined since then.
The main reasons why whales are struggling are a decline in the quality and quantity of their prey and pollution from industrial chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that contaminate their prey and accumulate in their bodies. Additionally, ship noise can disturb whales and prevent communication.
Research shows that unless more aggressive action is taken, the southern population is on a path to extinction. Already, Washington state and federal agencies have invested more than $1 billion in programs to reduce threats to whales. But the essential point still remains. Southerners simply don’t have enough food.
Major rivers that were once rich in salmon, including the lower Snake River, have been dammed, limiting access to and survival of salmon.
“We’re not doing enough on chinook recovery and salmon recovery,” Gaydos said.
For struggling southerners, the loss of a female calf is a devastating blow not only to the mother but to the trajectory of the subspecies as a whole.
“The real limit is the number of females that reach reproductive age and their ability to actually raise calves successfully. So we would like to see more females in the population.” Weiss said.
The orca who captured hearts worldwide in 2018 by refusing to let go of her deceased calf has now welcomed her second baby in the last four years.
The Whale Research Center has confirmed that their team has started monitoring the new baby girl on Monday, giving her the alphanumeric name “J61.” They are closely monitoring and observing the calf’s well-being.
The mother, known as Tahlequah with the designation number J35, is an experienced mother. The center is concerned about the health of both J61 and her mother during this critical period.
The early years are especially risky for newborn calves, with high mortality rates in the first year. The Center for Whale Research expressed their hope that J35 will be able to keep J61 safe through this challenging time.
Tahlequah made headlines globally in 2018 when she carried her deceased calf for 17 days, moving people around the world with her display of grief. Her actions prompted Washington State Governor Jay Inslee to establish the Southern Resident Killer Whale Task Force for conservation efforts.
J61 is Tahlequah’s third surviving calf, following J47 or “Notch” born in 2010 and J57 or “Phoenix” born in 2020. They belong to the J pod of killer whales, residing in the coastal waters between Washington state and Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
The J-Pod is one of three pods of Southern Resident killer whales, totaling about 73 orcas across the pods. Conservation groups are working to protect and restore the declining population of these majestic creatures.
Threats to killer whales include entanglement in fishing nets, food scarcity, human interference, and environmental pollution. The declining population highlights the urgent need for conservation efforts to protect these endangered animals.
Contaminants in the water pose a significant threat to orcas, with industrial chemicals accumulating in the food chain and affecting the health of the whales. Female southern whales and their offspring are particularly vulnerable to these pollutants.
NOAA’s 2022 pod health assessment raises concerns about the impact of contaminants on the Southern Resident killer whale population, emphasizing the need for immediate action to protect these magnificent creatures.
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