(University of Arizona) Researchers are gearing up to take the first picture ever taken of a black hole. By stringing together radio telescopes across the globe, they are building an Earth-sized, virtual telescope powerful enough to see all the way to the center of our Milky Way where a supermassive black hole is devouring matter caught in its extreme gravitational field. In the process, they are putting Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity to the ultimate test.

(NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) When it launches in 2014, NASA’s new Magnetospheric Multiscale mission will give scientists unprecedented insights into a little-understood physical process at the heart all space weather. This process, known as magnetic reconnection, sparks solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and other phenomena that can imperil Earth-orbiting spacecraft and even power grids on terra firma.

(University of Hawaii at Manoa) An international team of scientists led by University of Hawai’i at Msnoa professor Ralf I. Kaiser, Alexander M. Mebel of Florida International University, and Alexander Tielens of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, discovered a novel chemical route to form polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — complex organic molecules such as naphthalene carrying fused benzene rings — in ultra-cold regions of interstellar space.

(California Institute of Technology) A team of astronomers led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology has discovered the three smallest confirmed planets ever detected outside our solar system. The three planets, which all orbit a single star, are smaller than Earth and appear to be rocky. Their existence suggests that the galaxy could be teeming with similarly rocky planets—and that there’s a good chance that many are in the so-called habitable zone, where liquid water and possibly life could exist.

(Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health) Worldwide pandemics of influenza caused widespread death and illness in 1918, 1957, 1968 and 2009. A new study examining weather patterns around the time of these pandemics finds that each of them was preceded by La Niña conditions in the equatorial Pacific. Since the La Niña pattern is known to alter the migratory patterns of birds, the scientists theorize that altered migration patterns promote the development of dangerous new strains of influenza.

(Air Force Office of Scientific Research) The Air Force Office of Scientific Research announced it will award approximately $18 million in grants to 48 scientists and engineers who submitted winning research proposals through the Air Force’s Young Investigator Research Program.

(Rice University) New evidence this week supports a theory developed five years ago at Rice University to explain the electrical properties of unconventional superconductors and other classes of materials that have long vexed scientists. Physicists say the new findings in Nature Materials represent an important step toward the ultimate goal of creating a unified theoretical description of quantum effects in electronic materials at the border of magnetism and superconductivity.

(University of Arizona) Researchers are gearing up to take the first picture ever taken of a black hole. By stringing together radio telescopes across the globe, they are building an Earth-sized, virtual telescope powerful enough to see all the way to the center of our Milky Way where a supermassive black hole is devouring matter caught in its extreme gravitational field. In the process, they are putting Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity to the ultimate test.

(Technische Universitaet Muenchen) A special group of proteins, the so-called chaperons, helps other proteins to obtain their correct conformation. Until now scientists supposed that hydrolyzing ATP provides the energy for the large conformational changes of chaperon Hsp90. Now a research team from the Nanosystems Initiative Munich could prove that Hsp90 utilizes thermal fluctuations as the driving force for its conformational changes. The renowned journal PNAS reports on their findings.

(University of Hawaii at Manoa) An international team of scientists led by University of Hawai’i at Msnoa professor Ralf I. Kaiser, Alexander M. Mebel of Florida International University, and Alexander Tielens of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, discovered a novel chemical route to form polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — complex organic molecules such as naphthalene carrying fused benzene rings — in ultra-cold regions of interstellar space.