In the Aug. 19 SN: Bulletins from the tick wars, roots of Rwandan genocide, spin-resistant spiders, making mums blue, tardigrade saga continues, HIV antibodies from cows, Maxwell’s demon aces memory test and more.
SIGNS OF LINES The sun’s magnetic field is connected to one in the corona, which is much weaker and therefore harder to observe. Together, they form a twisted mess, illustrated here as white lines (based partly on a model) over a 2016 image of the sun from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
NASA/SDO/AIA/LMSAL
ROCK BOTTOM Earthquake vibrations are helping seismologists measure the depth of the ground we stand on.
Izf/Shutterstock
Each day until August 21, astronomy writer Lisa Grossman will explore the top questions scientists will tackle during the 2017 total solar eclipse.
Rick Fienberg/TravelQuest International/Wilderness Travel (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
TRAVELING LIGHT Particles of light can scatter off one another, a new study suggests. Researchers from the ATLAS experiment (illustrated) at the Large Hadron Collider detected events in which two photons (yellow beams) bounced off each other in collisions of lead nuclei.
ATLAS Experiment © 2017 CERN
