A stunning new image captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the lopsided intermediate spiral galaxy NGC 4654, whose unusual shape was sculpted by both a close encounter with another galaxy and a headlong plunge through the hot gas of the Virgo Cluster. This Hubble image shows NGC 4654, an intermediate spiral galaxy some 55 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. Image...

Europa’s subsurface ocean has long topped astrobiologists’ wish lists as a place to search for life beyond Earth. But new research led by a Rutgers University scientist suggests reaching that ocean — or even glimpsing evidence of it near the icy surface — may be far harder than expected. Artist’s concept of ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech. “Numerous...

Ararat-1, a modest limestone cave that lies at an elevation of 1,034 m on the eastern flanks of the Ararat Depression in central Armenia, has yielded a striking puzzle about how Middle Paleolithic humans moved across their landscape. A look at Ararat-1 Cave from the bottom of the Ararat Depression. Image credit: Ariel Malinsky Buller. “The Caucasus is a geographically and ecologically diverse region...

Paleontologists have announced the discovery of a new fossil honeybee species that fills a long-standing gap in the evolutionary record of the genus Apis. Apis aibai. Image credit: Y. Takahashi & J-ichi Takahashi, doi: 10.3897/zookeys.1255.162389. Fossil honeybees are exceedingly rare, and most known specimens come from Oligocene and Miocene deposits in Europe and China, tens of millions of years...

In a new study of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus), scientists found that embraces, touches and other reassuring gestures before competition for food were linked to more peaceful sharing, suggesting the roots of human social touch stretch back at least six million years. Examples of bonobo and chimpanzee reassurance behaviors. Image credit: Z. Clay / J.S. Brooker. “Social...

Using the largest sample yet of particles called beauty mesons, physicists with the CMS Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) refined a decades-old test of the subtle imbalance that let our Universe exist at all. Neutral beauty mesons can turn into their own antimatter opposite and back again. Image credit: Ansar Iqbal / CMS. One of the greatest mysteries in physics is why the Universe...

A large British study spanning more than 70 years has found that people who experience chronic money struggles over their working lives show measurable declines in memory and processing speed by their 50s, along with signs of accelerated brain shrinkage decades later — with men, those raised in poorer households, and carriers of a key Alzheimer’s risk gene (APOE-ε4) appearing most vulnerable. Long-term...

In an analysis of 390 traditionally cultivated cacao trees representing traditional Amazonian varieties, researchers identified four previously unknown genetic lineages, with two showing ancestry linked to exceptional flavor potential and offering new opportunities for growers and chocolate makers. Motilal et al. collected cacao samples from eight departments of Peru. Image credit: Fernando Graniel. Cacao...

Zircon crystals and impact-altered minerals show that a massive asteroid slammed into what is now the Pilbara region of Western Australia about 3 billion years ago. The North Pole Dome crater: (A) simplified map of the East Pilbara Terrane (EPT, Western Australia), showing Paleoarchean granite domes (pink) and greenstone belts (greens and blues); the North Pole Dome (NPD) lies near the terrane center;...

A large British study spanning more than 70 years has found that people who experience chronic money struggles over their working lives show measurable declines in memory and processing speed by their 50s, along with signs of accelerated brain shrinkage decades later — with men, those raised in poorer households, and carriers of a key Alzheimer’s risk gene (APOE-ε4) appearing most vulnerable. Long-term...