Science News

Pandora will study select planets for vastly longer than any other telescope has, staring at a star system for up to 24 hours at a time and repeating each such session nine more times for every star it studies. Those detailed observations could go a long way toward determining if the conditions for life exist on distant worlds. But the job won’t be easy.

Building on the University of Arizona's leadership in interferometry, a Steward Observatory-led team of astronomers probe mysterious "hot dust" around stars that has vexed astronomers for decades.

The study shows that TORC1, a key controller of cell growth, doesn’t just turn on or off. Instead, different proteins adjust its activity based on how much nitrogen the cell has. When nutrients are low but not gone, the cell slows its growth and shifts its metabolism to adapt. But when nitrogen runs out completely, an additional regulator steps in to fully shut down TORC1, putting the cell into a resting state. This reveals that cells use a layered system to fine-tune growth, not a single switch — a strategy that may be shared across many organisms.