Astronomy

Astronomers Discover Four New White Dwarfs in Solar Neighborhood

An artist’s impression of a red dwarf with a white dwarf binary companion peeking out from behind. Image credit: Mark A. Garlick / University of Warwick.

Using near-UV spectroscopic data from the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers discovered four white dwarfs orbiting nearby red dwarf stars. These binary systems are all located within 20 parsecs (65 light-years) of the Sun, and one of the white dwarfs is the ninth closest to our star. An artist’s impression of a red dwarf with a white...

Paleontology

Paleontologists Discover New Species of Titanosaur in Uruguay

Mesetasaurus protector. Image credit: Merlina Ramírez.

Paleontologists in Uruguay have identified a new species of aeolosaurine titanosaur from a pair of remarkably well-preserved tailbones unearthed in the 1980s near the Uruguay River. Mesetasaurus protector. Image credit: Merlina Ramírez. Mesetasaurus protector lived in what is now Uruguay between 86 and 72 million years ago (Late Cretaceous epoch). The new species was a member of a group of titanosaurian...

Biology

Bumblebees Display Emotion-Like Reactions to Sweet and Bitter Tastes

Gibbons et al. showed that bumblebees are capable of modifying their response to noxious stimuli in order to get a higher sugar reward. Image credit: Ralphs Fotos.

Slow-motion video reveals that buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) respond to sweet and bitter tastes with distinct, context-dependent behaviors resembling mammalian expressions of pleasure and disgust, adding fresh evidence to the debate over insect consciousness. Zhou et al. show that buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) display analogous orofacial reactions to tastes that reflect...

Geology

Australia’s North Pole Dome Crater is Earth’s Oldest and Only Known Archean Impact Structure

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; (B) geological map of the NPD and the shatter-cone field (yellow star); (C) A quartz (Qtz)-carbonate vein cutting shatter-cone lineation. Image credit: Kirkland et al., doi: 10.1130/G54866.1.

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;...