ASTRONOMY - HH-222: The Waterfall Nebula

 2025 December 31

HH-222: The Waterfall Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Mike Selby

Explanation: What created the Waterfall Nebula? The origin is still being researched. The structure, officially designated Herbig-Haro 222, appears in the region of NGC 1999 in the Great Orion Molecular Cloud complex. The elongated gaseous stream stretches about ten light years but appears similar to a long waterfall on Earth. Recent observations indicate that HH-222 is likely a gigantic gaseous bow shock, similar to a wave of water caused by a fast-moving ship. The origin of this shock wave is thought to be a jet outflow from the multiple star system V380 Orionis off the lower left of the frame. Therefore, gas does not flow along the waterfall, but rather the entire structure moves toward the upper right. The Waterfall Nebula lies about 1,500 light years away toward the constellation of Orion. The featured image was captured earlier this month from El Sauce Observatory in Chile.

ASTRONOMY - M1: The Crab Nebula

 2025 December 29

M1: The Crab Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Alan Chen

Explanation: This is the mess that is left when a star explodes. The Crab Nebula, the result of a supernova seen in 1054 AD, is filled with mysterious filaments. The filaments are not only tremendously complex but appear to have less mass than expelled in the original supernova and a higher speed than expected from a free explosion. The featured image was taken by an amateur astronomer in Leesburg, Florida, USA over three nights last month. It was captured in three primary colors but with extra detail provided by specific emission by hydrogen gas. The Crab Nebula spans about 10 light years. In the Nebula's very center lies a pulsar: a neutron star as massive as the Sun but with only the size of a small town. The Crab Pulsar rotates about 30 times each second.

ASTRONOMY - NGC 1898: Globular Cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud

 025 December 28

NGC 1898: Globular Cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Explanation: Jewels don't shine this bright -- only stars do. And almost every spot in this jewel-box of an image from the Hubble Space Telescope is a star. Now, some stars are more red than our Sun, and some more blue -- but all of them are much farther away. Although it takes light about 8 minutes to reach Earth from the Sun, NGC 1898 is so far away that it takes light about 160,000 years to get here. This huge ball of stars, NGC 1898, is called a globular cluster and resides in the central bar of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) -- a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way Galaxy. The featured multi-colored image includes light from the infrared to the ultraviolet and was taken to help determine if the stars of NGC 1898 all formed at the same time or at different times. There are increasing indications that most globular clusters formed stars in stages, and that, in particular, stars from NGC 1898 formed shortly after ancient encounters with the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) and our Milky Way Galaxy.

ASTRONOMY - Apollo 17's Moonship

 2025 December 27

Apollo 17's Moonship
Image Credit: Apollo 17, NASA, (Image Reprocessing: Andy Saunders)

Explanation: Awkward and angular looking, Apollo 17's lunar module Challenger was designed for flight in the near vacuum of space. Digitally enhanced and reprocessed, this picture taken from Apollo 17's command module America shows Challenger's ascent stage in lunar orbit. Small reaction control thrusters are at the sides of the moonship with the bell of the ascent rocket engine underneath. The hatch that allowed access to the lunar surface is seen at the front, with a round radar antenna at the top. Mission commander Gene Cernan is clearly visible through the triangular window. This spaceship performed gracefully, landing on the Moon and returning the Apollo astronauts to the orbiting command module in December of 1972. So where is Challenger now? While its descent stage remains at the Apollo 17 landing site in the Taurus-Littrow valley, the ascent stage pictured was intentionally crashed nearby after being jettisoned from the command module prior to the astronauts' return to planet Earth.

ASTRONOMY - 3I/ATLAS Flyby

 025 December 26

3I/ATLAS Flyby
Image Credit & Copyright: Dan Bartlett

Explanation: Attention grabbing interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS made its not-so-close flyby of our fair planet on December 19 at a distance of 1.8 astronomical units. That's about 900 light-seconds. Still, this deep exposure captures the comet from another star system as it gently swept across a faint background of stars in the constellation Leo about 4 days earlier, on the night of December 15. Though faint, colors emphasized in the image data, show off the comet's yellowish dust tail and bluish ion tail along with a greenish tinged coma. And even while scrutinized by arrays of telescopes and spacecraft from planet Earth, 3I ATLAS is headed out of the Solar System. It's presently moving outward along a hyperbolic trajectory at about 64 kilometers per second relative to the Sun, too fast to be bound the Sun's gravity.

MUSIC - Noël

Noël

ASTRONOMY - Unicorn, Fox Fur and Christmas Tree

 2025 December 25

Unicorn, Fox Fur and Christmas Tree
Image Credit & Copyright: Michael Kalika

Explanation: A star forming region cataloged as NGC 2264, this beautiful but complex arrangement of interstellar gas and dust is about 2,700 light-years distant in the faint but fanciful constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn. Seen toward the celestial equator and near the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, the seasonal skyscape mixes reddish emission nebulae excited by energetic light from newborn stars with dark interstellar dust clouds. Where the otherwise obscuring dust clouds lie close to the hot, young stars, they also reflect starlight, forming blue reflection nebulae. In fact, bright variable star S Monocerotis is immersed in a blue-tinted haze near center. Arrayed with a simple triangular outline above S Monocerotis, the stars of NGC 2264 are popularly known as the Christmas Tree star cluster. Carved by energetic starlight, the Cone Nebula sits upside down at the apex of this cosmic Christmas tree while the dusty, convoluted pelt of glowing gas and dust under the tree is called the Fox Fur Nebula. This rich telescopic frame spans about 1.5 degrees or 3 full moons on the sky top to bottom, covering nearly 80 light-years at the distance of NGC 2264.

ASTRONOMY - Mystery: Little Red Dots in the Early Universe

 2025 December 24

Mystery: Little Red Dots in the Early Universe
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, JWST; Dale Kocevski (Colby College)

Explanation: What are these little red dots (LRDs)? Nobody knows. Discovered only last year, hundreds of LRDs have now been found by the James Webb Space Telescope in the early universe. Although extremely faint, LRDs are now frequently identified in deep observations made for other purposes. A wide-ranging debate is raging about what LRDs may be and what importance they may have. Possible origin hypotheses include accreting supermassive black holes inside clouds of gas and dust, bursts of star formation in young dust-reddened galaxies, and dark matter powered gas clouds. The highlighted images show six nearly featureless LRDs listed under the JWST program that found them, and z, a distance indicator called cosmological redshift. Additionally, searches are underway in our nearby universe to try to find whatever previous LRDs might have become today.

ASTRONOMY - Red Sprites and Circular Elves Lightning over Italy

 2025 December 23

Red Sprites and Circular Elves Lightning over Italy
Image Credit & Copyright: Valter Binotto

Explanation: What's happening in the sky? Lightning. The most commonly seen type of lightning involves flashes of bright white light between clouds. Over the past 50 years, though, other types of upper-atmospheric lightning have been confirmed, including tentacled red sprites and ringed ELVES. Although both last only a small fraction of a second, sprites are brighter and easier to photograph than their more common electrical-discharge cousins. ELVES are rapidly expanding rings that are thought to be created when an electromagnetic pulse shoots upward from charged clouds and impacts the ionosphere, causing nitrogen molecules to glow. Capturing either form of lightning takes patience and experience -- capturing them both together, since they usually occur separately, is rare. The featured image is a frame from a video recorded from Possagno, Italy late last month above a distant thunderstorm over the Adriatic Sea.

SANTé/MEDECINE - Cancer Espoir : (3/3) - Des résultats très encourageants chez la souris

Le système de traduction d’ARNm sélectif des cellules (cSMRTS), fonctionne un peu comme un interrupteur automatique.

Testée sur des souris atteintes de cancers du sein et du côlon, cette approche a donné des résultats impressionnants :

une activité du traitement plus de 100 fois plus élevée dans les tumeurs ;

une activité jusqu’à 380 fois plus faible dans les organes sains comme le foie ou la rate ;

une réduction de la croissance des tumeurs de 45 % grâce à un gène suppresseur de tumeur (Pten) ;

jusqu’à 93 % de réduction tumorale lorsqu’elle est combinée à une immunothérapie à ARNm.

Ces chiffres suggèrent une meilleure efficacité, mais aussi une toxicité potentiellement beaucoup plus faible.

Jusqu’ici, les techniques utilisées pour transporter l’ARN messager dans l’organisme ont surtout cantonné ces thérapies au domaine des vaccins. En rendant l’ARNm capable de s’activer uniquement dans certaines cellules, les chercheurs ouvrent la voie à des traitements potentiellement moins toxiques et plus précis.

Pour les patients, cela pourrait signifier, à terme, des thérapies contre le cancer mieux ciblées et mieux tolérées, et, à plus long terme encore, des applications possibles à d’autres maladies inflammatoires et métaboliques.

© Mount Sinai Health System

ASTRONOMY - Sunset Solstice over Stonehenge

2025 December 22

Sunset Solstice over Stonehenge
Image Credit & Copyright: English Heritage, Josh Dury

Explanation: Yesterday the Sun reached its southernmost point in planet Earth's sky. Called a solstice, many cultures mark yesterday's date as a change of seasons -- from autumn to winter in Earth's Northern Hemisphere and from spring to summer in Earth's Southern Hemisphere. The featured image was taken just before the longest night of the 2025 northern year at Stonehenge in United Kingdom. There, through stones precisely placed 4,500 years ago, a 4.5 billion year old large glowing orb is seen setting. Even given the precession of the Earth's rotational axis over the millennia, the Sun continues to set over Stonehenge in an astronomically significant way. 

ASTRONOMY - A Solstice Sun Tattoo

 025 December 20

A Solstice Sun Tattoo
Image Credit & Copyright: Marcella Pace

Explanation: The word solstice is from the Latin for Sun and to pause or stand still. And in the days surrounding a solstice the Sun's annual north-south drift in planet Earth's sky does slow down, pause, and then reverse direction. So near the solstice the daily path of the Sun through the sky really doesn't change much. In fact, near the December solstice, the Sun's consistent, low arc through northern hemisphere skies, along with low surface temperatures, has left a noticeable imprint on this path to the mountain town of Peaio in northern Italy. The morning frost on the road has melted away only where the sunlight was able to reach the ground. But it remains in the areas persistently shadowed by the fence, tattooing in frost an image of the fence on the asphalt surface.

SANTé/MEDECINE - Cancer Espoir : (2/3) Un système qui s’active seulement dans les cellules cancéreuses

Des chercheurs de l’École de médecine Icahn du Mount Sinaï ont développé une nouvelle approche basée sur l’ARN messager, conçue pour agir uniquement dans certaines cellules, avec davantage de précision et de sécurité.

Comment ça marche, concrètement ?

Le système, appelé système de traduction d’ARNm sélectif des cellules (cSMRTS), fonctionne un peu comme un interrupteur automatique.

Les cellules cancéreuses possèdent des signatures moléculaires particulières, notamment des microARN (de très petites molécules qui régulent l’activité des gènes). Les scientifiques ont utilisé ces signatures comme code d’identification.

Résultat :

si l’ARNm entre dans une cellule cancéreuse, il s’active et déclenche la production du traitement ;

s’il entre dans une cellule saine, il se désactive automatiquement.

© Mount Sinai Health System

ASTRONOMY - Long Shadows of the Montes Caucasus

 2025 December 19

Long Shadows of the Montes Caucasus
Image Credit & Copyright: Guy Bardon

Explanation: When the Moon is at its first quarter phase, the Sun rises along the Montes Caucasus as seen from the lunar surface. The lunar mountain range casts the magnificent, spire-like shadows in this telescopic view from planet Earth, looking along the lunar terminator or the boundary between lunar night and day. Named for Earth's own Caucasus Mountains, the rugged lunar Montes Caucasus peaks, up to 6 kilometers high, are located between the smooth Mare Imbrium to the west and Mare Serenitatis to the east. Still mostly in shadow in this first quarter lunarscape, at the left (west) impact craters reflect the light of the rising Sun along their outer, eastern crater walls.

SANTé/MEDECINE - Cancer Espoir : (1/3) Une nouvelle génération de thérapies

Longtemps utilisé surtout pour les vaccins, l’ARN messager pourrait entrer dans une nouvelle phase de son histoire. Des chercheurs montrent qu’il pourrait devenir un outil de thérapie beaucoup plus ciblé, notamment contre le cancer. © Dr_Microbe, Adobe Stock

Et si les traitements à base d’ARN messager devenaient enfin capables de viser uniquement les cellules à soigner, sans affecter les autres ? Des chercheurs américains viennent de franchir une étape importante dans cette direction. Leur découverte, publiée récemment dans la revue scientifique Molecular Therapy, ouvre la voie à des traitements plus précis, notamment contre le cancer.

Un système qui s’active seulement dans les cellules cancéreuses

Depuis les vaccins contre la Covid-19, l’ARN messager (ARNm) est connu du grand public. Son principe est simple : donner aux cellules des instructions pour fabriquer une protéine utile.

Mais traiter le cancer pose un défi supplémentaire : éviter de toucher les cellules saines. Or, avec les techniques actuelles, l’ARNm peut être lu par de nombreuses cellules, pas uniquement celles que l’on cherche à soigner.

L’équipe de l’École de médecine Icahn du Mount Sinaï, à New York, a voulu changer cela. Elle a mis au point une thérapie à ARNm « intelligente », capable de s’activer uniquement dans certaines cellules, comme les cellules cancéreuses, et de rester inactive ailleurs.

« Nous avons modifié l'ARNm pour qu'il puisse reconnaître s'il se trouve à l'intérieur d'une cellule cancéreuse ou d'une cellule saine. S'il détecte un environnement inapproprié, il s'arrête tout simplement. Cette capacité de décision intégrée est ce qui rend cette technologie unique », explique Magdalena M. Zak, PhD, première auteure de l’étude.

FuturaSciences

LES BELLES INVENTIONS DE LEONARD DE VINCI - La grue à plateforme annulaire

Voici un exemple d'une des machines de levage conçues par l'ingénieur Léonard de Vinci. Il s'agit d'une grue à plateforme annulaire. Léonard de Vinci s'est probablement inspiré ici des créations des ingénieurs de l'époque qui servaient à la construction de palais et de dômes tel celui de Florence.

© Catalogo collezioni, CC by-sa 4.0

ASTRONOMY - W5: The Soul Nebula

 2025 December 17

W5: The Soul Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Jeffrey Horne

Explanation: Stars are forming in the Soul of the Queen of Aethopia. More specifically, a large star forming region called the Soul Nebula can be found in the direction of the constellation Cassiopeia, whom Greek mythology credits as the vain wife of a King who long ago ruled lands surrounding the upper Nile river. Also known as Westerhout 5 (W5), the Soul Nebula houses several open clusters of stars, ridges and pillars darkened by cosmic dust, and huge evacuated bubbles formed by the winds of young massive stars. Located about 6,500 light years away, the Soul Nebula spans about 100 light years and is usually imaged next to its celestial neighbor the Heart Nebula (IC 1805). The featured image, taken from near Nashville, Tennessee, USA, is a composite of 234 hours of exposures made in different colors: red as emitted by hydrogen gas, yellow as emitted by sulfur, and blue as emitted by oxygen.

ASTRONOMY - Andromeda and Sprites over Australia

 2025 December 16

Andromeda and Sprites over Australia
Image Credit & Copyright: JJ Rao

Explanation: What’s happening over that tree? Two very different things. On the left is the Andromeda galaxy, an object that is older than humanity and will last billions of years into the future. Andromeda (M31) is similar in size and shape to our own Milky Way Galaxy. On the right is a red sprite, a type of lightning that lasts a fraction of a second and occurs above violent thunderstorms. Red sprites were verified as real atmospheric phenomena only about 35 years ago. The tree in the center is a boab, which may live for as long as a thousand years. Boab trees grow naturally in Australia and Africa and are known for being able to store large amounts of water: up to 100,000 liters. The featured image was captured last month near Derby in Western Australia.

VULCANOLOGIE - Les volcans sous-marins - Une majorité invisible

Près de 70 % de toutes les éruptions volcaniques se produisent sous la surface de l'océan, façonnant et renouvelant constamment les fonds marins par des coulées de lave et des dépôts sous-marins invisibles à l'œil humain.

©Shutterstock

ASTRONOMY - Gemini Meteors over Snow Capped Mountains

 2025 December 15

Gemini Meteors over Snow Capped Mountains
Image Credit & Copyright: Tomáš Slovinský

Explanation: Where are all of these meteors coming from? In terms of direction on the sky, the pointed answer is the constellation of Gemini. That is why the major meteor shower in December is known as the Geminids -- because shower meteors all appear to come from a radiant toward Gemini. Three dimensionally, however, sand-sized debris expelled from the unusual asteroid 3200 Phaethon follows a well-defined orbit about our Sun, and the part of the orbit that approaches Earth is superposed in front of the constellation of Gemini. Therefore, when Earth crosses this orbit, the radiant point of falling debris appears in Gemini. Featured here is a composite of many images taken over the past few days through dark skies from Slovakia and capturing the snow-covered peaks of the Belianske Tatra mountains Numerous bright meteor streaks from the Geminids meteor shower are visible. Orion is visible above the horizon, while the bright star nearest the radiant is Castor.

ASTRONOMY - Juno Flyby of Ganymede and Jupiter

 2025 December 14

Juno Flyby of Ganymede and Jupiter
Video Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, SWRI, MSSS;
Animation: Koji Kuramura, Gerald Eichstädt, Mike Stetson; Music: Vangelis

Explanation: What would it be like to fly over the largest moon in the Solar System? In 2021, the robotic Juno spacecraft flew past Jupiter's huge moon Ganymede and took images that have been digitally constructed into a detailed flyby. As the featured video begins, Juno swoops over the two-toned surface of the 2,000-km wide moon, revealing an icy alien landscape filled with grooves and craters. The grooves are likely caused by shifting surface plates, while the craters are caused by violent impacts. Continuing on in its orbit, Juno then performed its 34th close pass over Jupiter's clouds. The digitally-constructed video shows numerous swirling clouds in the north, colorful planet-circling zones and bands across the middle -- featuring several white-oval clouds from the String of Pearls, and finally more swirling clouds in the south.

ASTRONOMY - Orion and the Ocean of Storms

 2025 December 13

Orion and the Ocean of Storms
Image Credit: NASA, Artemis 1

Explanation: On December 5, 2022, a camera on board the uncrewed Orion spacecraft captured this view as Orion approached its return powered flyby of the Moon. Beyond one of Orion's extended solar arrays lies dark, smooth, terrain along the western edge of the Oceanus Procellarum. Prominent on the lunar nearside Oceanus Procellarum, the Ocean of Storms, is the largest of the Moon's lava-flooded maria. The lunar terminator, the shadow line between lunar night and day, runs along the left of this frame. The 41 kilometer diameter crater Marius is top center, with ray crater Kepler peeking in at the edge, just right of the solar array wing. Kepler's bright rays extend to the north and west, reaching the dark-floored Marius. By December 11, 2022 the Orion spacecraft had returned to its home world. The historic Artemis 1 mission ended with Orion's successful splashdown in planet Earth's water-flooded Pacific Ocean.

OCEANOGRAPHIE - Vagues scélérates - (7/29) Leur origine

Francesco Fedele, professeur agrégé à la Georgia Tech School of Civil and Environmental Engineering et depuis longtemps sceptique quant aux explications conventionnelles, a dirigé une équipe internationale chargée d'étudier la formation des vagues scélérates et les causes de ces géants océaniques soudains.

©Getty Images

ASTRONOMY - Northern Fox Fires

 2025 December 12

Northern Fox Fires
Image Credit & Copyright: Dennis Lehtonen

Explanation: In a Finnish myth, when an arctic fox runs so fast that its bushy tail brushes the mountains, flaming sparks are cast into the heavens creating the northern lights. In fact the Finnish word "revontulet", a name for the aurora borealis or northern lights, can be translated as fire fox. So that evocative myth took on a special significance for the photographer of this northern night skyscape from Finnish Lapland near Kilpisjarvi Lake. The snowy scene is illuminated by moonlight. Saana, an iconic fell or mountain of Lapland, rises at the right in the background. But as the beautiful nothern lights danced overhead, the wild fire fox in the foreground enthusiastically ran around the photographer and his equipment, making it difficult to capture in this lucky single shot.

ASTRONOMY - Galaxies in the River

 2025 December 11

Galaxies in the River
Image Credit & Copyright: Vikas Chander

Explanation: Large galaxies grow by eating small ones. Even our own galaxy engages in a sort of galactic cannibalism, absorbing small galaxies that are too close and are captured by the Milky Way's gravity. In fact, the practice is common in the universe and illustrated by this striking pair of interacting galaxies from the banks of the southern constellation Eridanus, The River. Located over 50 million light years away, the large, distorted spiral NGC 1532 is seen locked in a gravitational struggle with dwarf galaxy NGC 1531, a struggle the smaller galaxy will eventually lose. Seen nearly edge-on, in this sharp image, spiral NGC 1532 spans about 100,000 light-years. The NGC 1532/1531 pair is thought to be similar to the well-studied system of face-on spiral and small companion known as M51.

VULCANOLOGIE - Les volcans sous-marins : Les bâtisseurs cachés des fonds marins

Les volcans sous-marins se forment lorsque le magma remonte par des fissures dans le fond de l'océan et crée d'immenses montagnes volcaniques qui restent cachées sous les vagues.

©Getty Images

ASTRONOMY - The Heart of the Soul Nebula

 2025 December 9

The Heart of the Soul Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Nicola Bugin

Explanation: This cosmic close-up looks deep inside the Soul Nebula. The dark and brooding dust clouds outlined by bright ridges of glowing gas are cataloged as IC 1871. About 25 light-years across, the telescopic field of view spans only a small part of the much larger Heart and Soul nebulae. At an estimated distance of 6,500 light-years, the star-forming complex lies within the Perseus spiral arm of the Milky Way, seen in planet Earth's skies toward the constellation of the Queen of Aethiopia (Cassiopeia). An example of triggered star formation, the dense star-forming clouds of IC 1871 are themselves sculpted by the intense winds and radiation of the region's massive young stars. This color image adopts a palette made popular in Hubble images of star-forming regions.

SANTé/MEDECINE - CANCER - 12 AVANCéES REVOLUTIONNAIRES - 12. Une pilule qui pourrait réduire le risque de cancer du sein

Le médicament Anastrozole, déjà utilisé contre le cancer du sein, est testé sur près de 300 000 femmes à haut risque dans le cadre d’un programme du NHS. Cette petite pilule agit en réduisant le taux d’œstrogènes, une hormone liée à certains cancers du sein. Ce traitement pourrait prévenir l’apparition de la maladie, surtout dans les pays où les ressources médicales sont limitées. En effet, 70 % des décès liés au cancer surviennent dans les pays à revenu faible ou intermédiaire, où l’accès aux soins reste inégal.

Important : Bien que ces avancées soient prometteuses, elles sont encore en cours d’étude ou en phase d’essai pour la plupart. Il est donc essentiel de consulter votre médecin avant toute décision médicale, et de ne pas interrompre un traitement en cours sans avis professionnel.

LaNatureCa

LES BELLES INVENTIONS DE LEONARD DE VINCI - Ses machines volantes

Voici une des machines volantes de Léonard de Vinci.

Elle semble plus tenir du planeur que des inventions dessinées pour faire du vol battu Léonard de Vinci était limité par les sources d'énergie disponibles à son époque. Il semble avoir compris au fil du temps qu'il devait s'orienter vers ce type de machine imitant les oiseaux en vol plané.

Le but ? Réaliser l'un des plus vieux rêves de l'Homme : voler.

© Diagram Lajard, DP

ASTRONOMY - Visualization: Near a Black Hole and Disk

 2025 December 3

Visualization: Near a Black Hole and Disk
Illustration Credit: NASA's GSFC, J. Schnittman & B. Powell; Text: Francis Reddy (U. Maryland, NASA's GSFC)

Explanation: What would it look like to plunge into a monster black hole? This image from a supercomputer visualization shows the entire sky as seen from a simulated camera plunging toward a 4-million-solar-mass black hole, similar to the one at the center of our galaxy. The camera lies about 16 million kilometers from the black hole’s event horizon and is moving inward at 62% the speed of light. Thanks to gravity’s funhouse effects, the starry band of the Milky Way appears both as a compact loop at the top of this view and as a secondary image stretching across the bottom. Move the cursor over the image for additional explanations. Visualizations like this allow astronomers to explore black holes in ways not otherwise possible.

ASTRONOMY - Apollo 17 at Shorty Crater

 2025 December 6

Apollo 17 at Shorty Crater
Apollo 17 Crew, NASA

Explanation: Fifty three years ago, in December of 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent about 75 hours on the Moon exploring the Taurus-Littrow valley, while colleague Ronald Evans orbited overhead. This snapshot from another world was taken by Cernan as he and Schmitt roamed the lunar valley's floor. The image shows Schmitt next to the lunar rover parked at the southeast rim of Shorty Crater. That location is near the spot where geologist Schmitt discovered orange lunar soil. The Apollo 17 crew returned with 110 kilograms of rock and soil samples, more than was returned from any of the other lunar landing sites. And for now, Cernan and Schmitt are the last to walk on the Moon.

SANTé/MEDECINE - CANCER - 12 AVANCéES REVOLUTIONNAIRES - 11. Une thérapie qui utilise les propres cellules du patient

Les médecins ont mis au point un traitement très spécial appelé « thérapie CAR-T ». Il s’agit d’un procédé où on prélève certaines cellules du système immunitaire du patient, puis on les modifie en laboratoire pour qu’elles sachent reconnaître et attaquer les cellules cancéreuses. Ensuite, on réinjecte ces cellules au patient pour qu’elles fassent le travail à l’intérieur du corps.

Ce traitement a donné de très bons résultats chez certaines personnes atteintes de leucémie (un cancer du sang). Par exemple, une femme qui a reçu ce traitement est toujours en bonne santé 19 ans plus tard. Cela montre que ce genre de thérapie peut parfois fonctionner pendant très longtemps.

Cependant, les autorités de santé, comme la FDA aux États-Unis, ont remarqué que chez environ 30 personnes, un autre cancer est apparu après la thérapie. On ne sait pas encore si c’est directement lié au traitement, mais par prudence, les médecins ajoutent maintenant des avertissements pendant que les recherches se poursuivent.

LaNatureCa