While the Ohio State Buckeyes and Washington Huskies prepared to butt heads in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1, researchers at the two universities collaborated to create proteins that zip together in much the same way DNA molecules zip up to form a double helix. The first-of-its-kind scientific breakthrough could enable the development of protein nanomachines that could help diagnose and treat disease, allow for more exact engineering of cells and perform a wide variety of other tasks. “This technique makes it possible for you to design proteins so they come together exactly how you want them to,” said Zibo Chen, a graduate student at the University of Washington and lead author…

Imagine if you could see something the size of a coin at the distance of the moon. That’s roughly the equivalent of what an international team of astronomers did by combining four of the most powerful telescopes in the world — the Very Large Telescopes at the European Southern Observatory in Chile — in a super-instrument called GRAVITY and directing it at the quasar 3C 273, which is about 2.5 billion light-years away from Earth in the constellation Virgo. For the first time, the scientists were able to observe the motion of gas clouds swirling around the supermassive black hole at the center of the quasar. Doing so allowed them…

Some portions of the Arctic are so remote and barren, they seem like another planet. In fact, until recently, there were more detailed maps of Mars and the moon than certain parts of the Arctic. But with climate change occurring more rapidly in the Arctic than anywhere on Earth, there has been an increasing need for high-quality maps that can track geographic changes in the region, said Ian Howat, professor of Earth sciences, director of the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center (BPCRC) and a principal investigator on the ArcticDEM project, which has created the first high-resolution digital elevation maps (DEMs) of the Arctic. The public-private initiative — formed in 2015…

It’s been six years since scientists confirmed the existence of a long-theorized particle called the Higgs boson, finally providing an explanation for how other particles acquire mass. Conditions on Earth make it extremely difficult to detect this mysterious particle, which is why discovering it took the world’s single largest machine — the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) — and thousands of scientists from more than 100 countries. Eager for more answers about the deep hidden structure of nature, physicists at CERN have been searching nonstop for further clues about the Higgs boson and how it interacts with other particles. Years of data and trillions…