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Scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have developed the most sensitive method yet for detecting and profiling a single molecule — unlocking a new tool that holds potential for better understanding how the building blocks of matter interact with each other. The new method could have implications for pursuits as varied as drug discovery and the development of advanced materials.

The technical achievement, detailed this month in the journal Nature, marks a significant advance in the burgeoning field of observing individual molecules without the aid of fluorescent labels. While these labels are useful in many applications, they alter molecules in ways that can obscure how they naturally interact with one another. The new label-free method makes the molecules so easy to detect, it is almost as if they had labels.

Explore: UW–Madison scientists develop most sensitive way to observe single molecules (wisc.edu)

China's Chang'e-6 lunar probe successfully landed Sunday on the far side of the Moon to collect samples, state media reported – the latest leap for Beijing's decades-old space programme.

The Chang'e-6 set down in the immense South Pole-Aitken Basin, one of the largest known impact craters in the solar system, state news agency Xinhua said, citing the China National Space Administration. Explore: China Just Landed Its Lunar Probe on The Far Side of Moon : ScienceAlert

Hundreds of Huge Stars Disappeared From The Sky. We May Finally Know Why.

An artist's impression of VFTS 243. (ESO/L. Calçada)

When massive stars die, as we understand the Universe, they don't go quietly. As their fuel runs out, they become unstable, wracked by explosions before finally ending their lives in a spectacular supernova.

But some massive stars, scientists have found, have simply vanished, leaving no trace in the night sky. Stars clearly seen in older surveys are inexplicably absent from newer ones. A star isn't exactly a set of keys – you can't just lose it down the back of the couch. So where the heck do these stars go?

A new study has given us the most compelling explanation yet. Some massive stars, suggest an international team led by astrophysicist Alejandro Vigna-Gómez of the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany,…

THEORY AND EXPERIMENT COMBINE TO SHINE A NEW LIGHT ON PROTON SPIN

Nuclear physicists have long been working to reveal how the proton gets its spin. Now, a new method that combines experimental data with state-of-the-art calculations has revealed a more detailed picture of spin contributions from the very glue that holds protons together. It also paves the way toward imaging the proton's 3D structure.

The work was led by Joseph Karpie, a postdoctoral associate in the Center for Theoretical and Computational Physics (Theory Center) at the U.S. Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility.

He said that this decades-old mystery began with measurements of the sources of the proton’s spin in 1987. Physicists originally thought that the proton’s building blocks, its quarks, would be the main source of the proton’s spin. But that’s not what they found. It turned out that the proton’s quarks only provide about 30%…