For the first time, the James Webb Space Telescope has observed several tidal disruption events — when a black hole draws in a nearby star and tears it to shreds. Surprisingly, these are not active black holes, but rather dormant ones that briefly “wake up” to feast on a passing star.

Until today, skin, brain, and all tissues of the human body were difficult to observe in detail with an optical microscope, since the contrast in the image was hindered by the high density of their structures. The research group of the Molecular Microscopy and Spectroscopy Lab at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT-Italian Institute of Technology) in Genoa has devised a new method that allows scientists to see and photograph biological samples in all their complexity, obtaining clear and detailed images. The new technique has been made available to the scientific community in “open science” mode, representing an advantage in the biomedical field, since it allows us to observe active cells, even in the presence of diseases, as well as to understand how drugs interact with living tissues.