New research led by planetary scientists from Southwest Research Institute and KTH Royal Institute of Technology suggests that evidence for vapor erupting from Jupiter’s icy moon Europa may be less conclusive than once believed. This is an artist’s impression of a water-vapor geyser on Europa. Image credit: University of Cologne. “The evidence for water vapor plumes on Europa isn’t as...

New observations from NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft reveal that the Zwan-Wolf effect — a phenomenon once thought unique to Earth’s magnetosphere, in which charged particles are squeezed like toothpaste coming out of a tube along magnetic structures called flux tubes — is also reshaping the Red Planet’s upper atmosphere. An artistic representation...

Hominins at the Acheulian site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov in Israel relied on driftwood gathered along a lakeshore to fuel their hearths, according to new research led by archaeologists from the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social and Bar-Ilan University; 780,000-year-old charcoal fragments from the site show that survival wasn’t about finding the perfect wood — it...

Paleontologists have described a new genus and species of early monofenestratan pterosaur based on a nearly complete and well-preserved fossil skeleton discovered in Bavaria, Germany. The holotype specimen of Laueropterus vitriolus seen under natural light. Image credit: D.W.E. Hone, doi: 10.7717/peerj.21204. Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to achieve powered flight, appearing around 210 million...

When an antenna of the house cricket (Acheta domesticus) is touched with a heated probe, something curious happens: the insect turns its attention to the burned spot, grooming it repeatedly, for far longer than it would after a harmless touch or no contact at all. According to team of entomologists at University of Sydney, that behavior may be evidence of something scientists have long debated —...

Researchers have developed a new method to identify whether black hole mergers occurred inside dense clouds of dark matter, potentially opening a fresh avenue for studying one of astronomy’s biggest mysteries. Gravitational waves observed by Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) twin detectors were produced during the final fraction of a second of the merger of two black holes...

An analysis of 27 animal studies found that switching to a healthier diet improved memory performance, though the effects were far weaker after diets high in sugar. Rehn et al. performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of the cognitive and behavioral effects of diet reversal in rodent models. Image credit: Steve Buissinne. “Our results show that improving diet quality does benefit memory,”...

Scientists have extracted and analyzed proteins from the tooth enamel of six Homo erectus individuals who lived in China roughly 400,000 years ago, offering an unprecedented glimpse into the genetic makeup of one of humanity’s most successful and far-ranging ancestors. Their results suggest that Homo erectus may have carried genetic variants that were later passed to Denisovans and eventually...

Unusual gases rising from geothermal springs within the Kafue Rift of Zambia suggest a deep fracture in Earth’s crust could mark the early stages of a new tectonic boundary. Location map of the extensional zone within the Central African Plateau of Zambia. The Kafue Rift is connected to the Luano and Luangwa rifts to the NE, and the Western branch of the EARS at the Rukwa rift (RRB) and Rungwe...

An analysis of 27 animal studies found that switching to a healthier diet improved memory performance, though the effects were far weaker after diets high in sugar. Rehn et al. performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of the cognitive and behavioral effects of diet reversal in rodent models. Image credit: Steve Buissinne. “Our results show that improving diet quality does benefit memory,”...