Pluto’s tenuous atmosphere appears to have begun contracting after years of holding steady, according to a new study published in the Planetary Science Journal. Complex chemical compounds called tholins give Pluto a distinctive blue haze. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute. Pluto’s atmosphere is composed mainly of nitrogen with...

Pluto’s tenuous atmosphere appears to have begun contracting after years of holding steady, according to a new study published in the Planetary Science Journal. Complex chemical compounds called tholins give Pluto a distinctive blue haze. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute. Pluto’s atmosphere is composed mainly of nitrogen with...

Archaeologists in southwestern Germany have unearthed two miniature bird figurines carved from mammoth ivory, among the smallest and most delicate examples of Ice Age art ever found. Two bird figurines found at Hohle Fels Cave in Germany. Image credit: Ralf Ehmann / University of Tübingen / Museum of Prehistory and Ice Age Art. The two ancient figurines, roughly 2 cm (0.8 inches) long and weighing...

An exquisitely preserved specimen of Austronaga minuta, a small, long-necked marine reptile from the Triassic of China, contains a fossilized stomach, liver and intestines, offering paleontologists their oldest detailed glimpse yet of how early reptiles digested food. Life reconstruction of Austronaga minuta. Image credit: Gabriel Ugueto. Austronaga minuta inhabited the Tethys Ocean during the Middle...

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology have found that moth wings are equipped with odor-detecting receptors, suggesting the insects use their wings — not just their antennae — to sense chemical cues in the air while flying. Reda Ismaieel et al. examined the olfactory capabilities of the wings of the tobacco hawkmoth (Manduca sexta). Image credit: Reda Ismaieel et...

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...

In a perspective paper published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, a team of researchers and health experts calls for a ‘paradigm shift’ in how public health agencies address hypertension, which affects more than 1.28 billion adults worldwide and remains a leading driver of cardiovascular disease. The authors say high blood pressure can be controlled better with a strategy that combines...

New research led by the University of California, Berkeley reveals that beyond Neanderthals and Denisovans, humans interbred with two mysterious ‘ghost’ lineages: one in Africa more than 50,000 years ago, another in Eurasia over 1.7 million years ago. Archaic hominins. Image credit: Ninara / CC BY 2.0. “The sequencing of the Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes has transformed our understanding...

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;...

In a perspective paper published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, a team of researchers and health experts calls for a ‘paradigm shift’ in how public health agencies address hypertension, which affects more than 1.28 billion adults worldwide and remains a leading driver of cardiovascular disease. The authors say high blood pressure can be controlled better with a strategy that combines...