Observations from five telescopes have revealed a pair of supermassive black holes in coalescing galaxies, farther from Earth than any such pair detected previously. This feat offers key insight into how galaxies form.

Influenza viruses that infect the same host can interfere with each other’s replication. This behaviour seems to result in spatial structuring of infected groups of cells in tissue, with implications for viral evolution.

Intracellular machines called ribosomes use messenger-RNA sequences to synthesize proteins. Investigations using single-molecule imaging and cryo-electron microscopy techniques reveal structural and kinetic differences in how human ribosomes function compared with those of bacteria. These differences explain why ribosomes in cell-nucleus-bearing species are slower and more accurate than their bacterial counterparts.

Landforms across the mid-Norwegian sea floor reveal that a former ice sheet retreated at up to 600 metres per day at the end of the last ice age. Pulses of similarly rapid retreat could soon be observed across flat-bedded areas of the Antarctic Ice Sheet.