We are nothing more than stardust
We are all stolen stardust. That is not a philosophic statement but the absolute truth - half the atoms in our body is stardust from across the universe. According to a report in New Scientist, half the atoms that make up everything around us are in fact intergalactic interlopers. Large galaxies such as our Milky Way amassed that much stolen matter from neighbouring star clusters up to a million light years away, according to a new simulation.
A study by astronomers in Northwestern University in Evanston, the US, claims the theft occurs after the death of a star. When some stars die, they become massive supernovae, spewing gas at high-speed into the universe. The matter in these is picked up by galactic winds - streams of charged particles driven by supernovae. These winds are powerful enough to cross the vast distances between neighbouring galaxies and carry the intergalactic material with them.
Using 3D models of how the galaxy evolved, the experts simulated the path that matter inside galaxies would have taken through the universe from the Big Bang till now. More detailed simulations of supernovae showed that the galactic winds move matter faster than we thought. They found that in galaxies with 100 billion stars or more, the winds actually ferried in about 50 per cent of the matter present today. For larger galaxies such as our own, this intergalactic Gulf Stream is the primary contributor to growth, allowing matter to be snatched from smaller counterparts.
An embryo, edited
The first known attempt at creating genetically modified human embryos in the US has been carried out by a team of researchers in Portland, Oregon, according to MIT Technology Review.
The effort, led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health and Science University, involved changing the DNA of one-cell embryos with the gene-editing technique CRISPR.
The three previous reports of editing human embryos were all by scientists in China. Now Mitalipov is believed to have broken new ground showing it is possible to efficiently correct defective genes that cause inherited diseases. Although none of the embryos were allowed to develop, the experiments are a milestone on an inevitable journey toward the birth of the first genetically modified humans.
Some critics say such experiments could open the floodgates to a brave new world of "designer babies" - a prospect bitterly opposed by a range of religious organisations, civil society groups, and biotech companies.
