News Archive for March 2015

A simplified image of a slab from one of Earth’s tectonic plates sinking through the upper mantle above, through the boundary between the upper and lower mantle 410 miles deep, then stalling and pooling at a depth of 930 miles, where the new study suggests the existence of an extremely viscous layer in Earth. Image credit: Lowell Miyagi / University of Utah.

Geologists Discover New Layer in Earth’s Mantle

Mar 24, 2015 by News Staff

New research led by Dr Hauke Marquardt of the University of Bayreuth, Germany, suggests the existence of a previously unknown superviscous layer inside...

Terrestrial exoplanet and its moons. Image credit: Luciano Mendez / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Inner Solar System May Have Harbored Super-Earths 4.5 Billion Years Ago

Mar 24, 2015 by News Staff

A new study, published March 23 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that Jupiter’s inward-outward migration early in the...

NGC 5023 is seen edge-on in this new image from NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Image credit: ESA / Hubble / NASA.

Hubble Sees Edge-On Spiral Galaxy NGC 5023

Mar 23, 2015 by News Staff

Astronomers using NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured a spectacular new image of the spiral galaxy NGC 5023. NGC 5023 is seen edge-on in this...

A figure from the original report by Enrico Fermi et al.

Mathematicians Partially Solve Fermi-Pasta-Ulam Problem

Mar 23, 2015 by News Staff

The Fermi-Pasta-Ulam problem – first introduced in 1955 by the famed physicist Enrico Fermi and his colleagues – has now been partially solved...

Warburton East and West sub-basins, northeast South Australia; the Birdsville Track Ridge divides the Warburton East Basin from the Warburton West Basin. Image credit: A.Y. Glikson et al.

Giant Asteroid Impact Basin Found in Australia

Mar 23, 2015 by News Staff

A 400 km-wide (250 mile-wide) impact basin from a massive asteroid that broke in two moments before it slammed into our planet has been found in north-eastern...

This image shows the remnant of CK Vulpeculae; the image was created from a combination of visible-light images from the Gemini telescope, blue, a submillimeter map showing the dust from the SMA, green, and finally a map of the molecular emission from APEX and the SMA, red. Image credit: ESO / T. Kamiński.

Ground-Based Telescopes Reveal Secrets of Enigmatic Nova CK Vulpeculae

Mar 23, 2015 by News Staff

According to an international group of astronomers led by Dr Tomasz Kamiński of ESO and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany,...

Rosetta NavCam image taken on 14 March 2015 at 85.7 km from the center of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko; it has been cleaned to remove the more obvious bad pixels and cosmic ray artefacts, and intensities have been scaled. Image credit: ESA / Rosetta / NAVCAM / CC BY-SA IGO 3.0.

Rosetta Detects Molecular Nitrogen at 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Mar 23, 2015 by News Staff

The Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA) instrument on ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft has made the first measurement of molecular...

Wheat fields in Lviv region, Ukraine. Image credit: Raimond Spekking / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Scientists Create Haplotype Map of Wheat Varieties

Mar 20, 2015 by News Staff

An international team of scientists led by Dr Eduard Akhunov of Kansas State University has created the first haplotype map of wheat that provides detailed...

Neonothopanus gardneri. Image credit: Marina Capelari et al, doi: 10.3852/11-097.

New Study Explains Why Some Fungi Glow

Mar 20, 2015 by News Staff

According to a study co-led by Dr Cassius Stevani of the University of São Paulo and Prof Jay Dunlap of the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, the...

This is a composite, false-color image of the supernova remnant Sagittarius A East. Image credit: R. M. Lau et al.

Supernova Dust Factory Found at Milky Way’s Galactic Center

Mar 20, 2015 by News Staff

Astronomers using NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), the world’s largest airborne astronomical observatory, have...

This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the local dwarf galaxy NGC 5253; superimposed is the gas (fuzzy red to yellow) as seen by the Submillimeter Array; the bright white area is Cloud D. Image credit: J. L. Turner et al.

Astronomers Spot Mysterious Star-Forming Cluster in Nearby Galaxy NGC 5253

Mar 20, 2015 by News Staff

According to a group of astronomers led by Prof Jean Turner of the University of California, Los Angeles, more than a million infant stars are forming...

Straight-tusk elephant rib with cut marks in association with flint tools, including a handaxe. Image credit: Solodenko N et al.

500,000-Year-Old Stone Tools, Butchered Elephant Bones Found in Israel

Mar 20, 2015 by News Staff

Evidence that human ancestors living 500,000 years ago in what is now the Revadim archaeological site used their stone tools on bones of elephants and...

South American ungulate mammals Macrauchenia patachonica. Image credit: Olga Kobrina / CC BY 3.0.

Prehistoric South American Ungulate Mammals are Relatives of Horses, Study Reveals

Mar 19, 2015 by News Staff

According to a team of scientists headed by Dr Ross MacPhee from the American Museum of Natural History, South American native ungulates – the last...

Freshwater shrimp Gammarus duebeni celticus. Image credit: University of Leeds.

Tiny Parasite Pleistophora mulleri Can Turn Freshwater Shrimp to Cannibalism

Mar 19, 2015 by News Staff

In a new study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, scientists from the University of Leeds, Queen’s University Belfast and Stellenbosch...

Life reconstruction of Carnufex carolinensis. Image credit: Jorge Gonzales.

Carnufex carolinensis: New Prehistoric Crocodile Discovered in North Carolina

Mar 19, 2015 by News Staff

A new species of prehistoric crocodile that dates back 231 million years ago (Carnian stage of the Triassic period) has been identified by a team of paleontologists...

Major events in the peopling of the British Isles. Top left: the routes taken by the first settlers after the last ice age. Top right: Britain during the period of Roman rule. Bottom left: the regions of ancient British, Irish and Saxon control. Bottom right: the migrations of Norse and Danish Vikings; the main regions of Norse Viking (light brown) and Danish Viking (light blue) settlement are shown. Image credit: Stephen Leslie et al / EuroGeographics.

New Study Examines Genetic Structure of British Population

Mar 19, 2015 by News Staff

In a new study published in the journal Nature, scientists used DNA samples collected from 2,039 people to create the fine-scale genetic map of British...

Blue-Bearded Helmetcrest Rediscovered in Colombia, Photographed for First Time

Mar 19, 2015 by News Staff

Long thought to be extinct, the blue-bearded helmetcrest (Oxypogon cyanolaemus) – one of the world’s rarest hummingbirds – has been caught...

Martian aurora is similar to Earth’s Aurora borealis but has a different origin. Image credit: University of Colorado.

NASA’s MAVEN Orbiter Detects Ultraviolet Aurora on Mars

Mar 18, 2015 by News Staff

Scientists using the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) instrument on NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft have observed...

Molecular representations of the NU-1000 node and linker (left), MOF topology (two views, center), and the dehydration of the NU-1000 node (right). Zr – blue, O – red, C - black, H - white. Image credit: Joseph E. Mondloch et al.

Novel Material Destroys Chemical Warfare Agents Soman, VX in Minutes

Mar 18, 2015 by News Staff

A group of chemists co-led by Dr Joseph Hupp and Dr Omar Farha, both from Northwestern University, has developed a new material that is very effective...

Proton transfer channel across a quad-defect in graphene. Image credit: Murali Raju / Penn State.

Imperfect Graphene Could Lead to Better Fuel Cells, Water Filters

Mar 18, 2015 by News Staff

A group of scientists headed by Dr Franz Geiger of Northwestern University has found that slightly imperfect graphene shuttles protons, and only protons,...

‹123 4 ›»