Articles by News Staff

Multiaccess puzzle box with easy (a), medium (b) and hard (c) solutions. Image credit: Griebling et al., doi: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2026.123491.

Study: Raccoons Don’t Just Solve Puzzles for Food, They Do It for Fun

Mar 11, 2026 by News Staff

In a new study led by University of British Columbia Ph.D. student Hannah Griebling, raccoons (Procyon lotor) continued manipulating complex puzzle boxes...

Tanyka amnicola. Image credit: Vitor Silva.

275-Million-Year-Old Amphibian Relative with Twisted Jaws Rewrites Early Tetrapod Diets

Mar 10, 2026 by News Staff

A new genus and species of archaic stem tetrapod from the Permian period has been identified from fossil jawbones found in Brazil. Named Tanyka amnicola,...

A pair of scarlet macaws (Ara macao) in Costa Rica. Image credit: Julio-César Chávez / CC BY 4.0.

Ancient Parrot DNA Points to Pre-Inca Animal Trade

Mar 10, 2026 by News Staff

Ancient DNA from brightly colored feathers found in Peru shows that at least four distinct species of Amazonian parrots — the scarlet macaw (Ara...

An artist’s impression of 3I/ATLAS is shown as it passes near the Sun, illuminating one side of the comet; on the side of the comet closer to the Sun, the methanol gas is shown in blue, with icy dust grains still present in the gas; on the dark side of the comet, the hydrogen cyanide is shown in orange. Image credit: NSF / AUI / NRAO / M.Weiss.

3I/ATLAS is Unusually Rich in Methanol, ALMA Observations Show

Mar 9, 2026 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have detected hydrogen cyanide (nitrogen-bearing organic molecule commonly seen...

This artist’s illustration shows the ejection of a cloud of debris after NASA’s DART spacecraft collided with the asteroid Dimorphos. Image credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser.

NASA’s Planetary Defense Test Changed Binary Asteroid’s Orbit around the Sun

Mar 9, 2026 by News Staff

New measurements show that the DART impact in 2022 not only shortened the orbit of the moonlet Dimorphos around its parent asteroid, Didymos, but also...

Vishal Gajjar & Grayce C. Brown report one of the first quantitative frameworks for assessing the impact of stellar environments on the detectability of narrowband technosignatures. Image credit: Sci.News.

Stellar ‘Space Weather’ Could Be Blurring Radio Signals from Extraterrestrial Civilizations

Mar 9, 2026 by News Staff

Stellar activity and plasma turbulence could distort narrow radio signals before they leave their home planetary systems, potentially explaining part of...

Renderings of an exemplary Antscan specimen: subsoldier of Eciton hamatum. Image credit: Katzke et al., doi: 10.1038/s41592-026-03005-0.

Entomologists Create Digital Library of Global Ant Diversity

Mar 5, 2026 by News Staff

Using powerful X-ray beams, automated robotics and AI, entomologists have created interactive digital images representing 212 genera and 792 species of...

Webb captured the auroral footprints of Io and Europa, providing spectral measurements for the first time, and revealing extreme changes in the physical properties within Io’s auroral footprint that are likely linked to the electrons crashing into the top of Jupiter’s atmosphere. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Webb / NIRCam / Jupiter ERS Team / Judy Schmidt / Katie L. Knowles, Northumbria University.

Webb Captures Io’s and Europa’s Auroral Footprints in Jupiter’s Atmosphere

Mar 5, 2026 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope conducted a clockwise scan around the entire limb of Jupiter, chasing aurora as it rotated into view. This...

The occasional use of stone tools as ‘strike-a-lights’ was a technocultural feature shared among Neanderthals in France.

Neolithic Europeans Had Surprisingly Complex Cuisine, Archaeologists Say

Mar 5, 2026 by News Staff

An international team of archaeologists has examined a total of 85 pottery sherds with substantial amounts of foodcrusts from 13 archaeological sites across...

Section of the Line Intensity Map created by charting the distribution and concentration of excited hydrogen (via the Lyman alpha wavelength) in the Universe around 10 billion years ago. The stars mark where HETDEX has found galaxies. The inset simulates the structure present in this map once it is zoomed in on and background noise is removed from the data. Image credit: Maja Lujan Niemeyer / Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics / HETDEX / Chris Byrohl / Stanford University.

Astronomers Find Hidden Structures in Early Universe

Mar 5, 2026 by News Staff

Using spectral data from the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory, astronomers have produced the most detailed 3D map yet of faint cosmic structures...

This is an artist's impression of a rocky and water-rich asteroid being torn apart by the strong gravity of the white dwarf star GD 61. Image credit: Mark A. Garlick, Space-art.co.uk / University of Warwick / University of Cambridge.

Extremophile Bacteria May Hitch Rides on Asteroid Fragments

Mar 4, 2026 by News Staff

Earlier work has demonstrated that an extremophile bacterium species called Deinococcus radiodurans can survive the radiation, cold, and desiccation associated...

In this image, Hubble captures the very core of the billowing gas in the Cat’s Eye Nebula. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Z. Tsvetanov.

Hubble and Euclid Telescopes Highlight Hidden Complexity of Cat’s Eye Nebula

Mar 4, 2026 by News Staff

New images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and ESA’s Euclid mission have revealed the complex, multi-shell structure of the extraordinary planetary...

Shortly after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, the earliest known primates, such as Purgatorius mckeeveri shown in the foreground, quickly set themselves apart from their competition -- like the archaic ungulate mammal on the forest floor -- by specializing in an omnivorous diet including fruit found up in the trees. Image credit: Andrey Atuchin.

Southernmost Fossils of Earliest Primate Relative Unearthed in Colorado

Mar 3, 2026 by News Staff

The newly-discovered minuscule fossils of Purgatorius — a shrew-sized mammal considered the earliest known relative of all primates, including humans,...

This is a mosaic image, one of the largest ever taken by Hubble of the Crab Nebula, a 6-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star’s supernova explosion. Japanese and Chinese astronomers recorded this violent event nearly 1,000 years ago in 1054, as did, almost certainly, Native Americans. Image credit: NASA / ESA / J. Hester / A. Loll, Arizona State University.

Astronomer Deciphers Crab Pulsar’s Zebra Stripes

Mar 2, 2026 by News Staff

New research from the University of Kansas untangles a decades-old astrophysical puzzle, showing how competing forces — gravity’s pull and magnetospheric...

Study: Ancient Mating Preferences Helped Shape Human Genome

Mar 2, 2026 by News Staff

Prehistoric humans and Neanderthals didn’t just interbreed, they did so with a consistent sex bias, as male Neanderthals and female modern humans mated...

This is an artist’s concept of the Jupiter’s moon Ganymede; two auroral ovals can be seen over northern and southern mid-latitudes. Image credit: NASA / ESA / G. Bacon, STScI / J. Saur, University of Cologne.

Ganymede’s Auroral Patches Reveal Shared Physics with Earth’s Aurorae

Mar 2, 2026 by News Staff

Scientsts from the United States, Europe and China have used the Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) onboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft to map detailed patch...

Fossil ant colony preserved in a piece of Baltic amber from Lithuania. Image credit: José de la Fuente & Agustín Estrada-Peña, doi: 10.3389/fevo.2026.1724595.

Fossil Amber Preserves Ecological Interactions between Ancient Ants and Other Organisms

Feb 27, 2026 by News Staff

Fossils trapped in amber aren’t just beautiful, they may preserve real ecological interactions, including possible parasitism or commensal relationships...

This image shows the complex distribution of molecular gas in the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) of the Milky Way. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / Longmore et al. / Minniti et al.

ALMA Produces Largest and Most Detailed Image Ever Taken of Milky Way’s Center

Feb 25, 2026 by News Staff

With the record-setting image from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have mapped the molecular heart of our Milky Way...

The ancient marine amphibians Erythrobatrachus (foreground) and Aphaneramma (background) swimming along the coast of what is now far norther Western Australia 250 million years ago. Image credit: Pollyanna von Knorring, Swedish Museum of Natural History.

Early Triassic Fossils from Australia Uncover Diverse Marine Amphibian Community

Feb 24, 2026 by News Staff

Several 250-million-year-old specimens from museum collections in Australia and the United States have revealed a surprising diversity of trematosaurid...

The main image at left shows a combined Webb and Hubble view of the spiral galaxy NGC 1637, with the region of interest in the top right; the remaining three panels show a detailed view of a red supergiant star before and after it exploded; the star is not visible in the Hubble image before the SN 2025pht explosion, but appears in the Webb image; the July 2025 view from Hubble shows the glowing aftermath of the explosion. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / C. Kilpatrick, Northwestern / A. Suresh, Northwestern / J. DePasquale, STScI.

Webb Identifies Supernova Progenitor Star in NGC 1637

Feb 23, 2026 by News Staff

Using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have for the first time identified the progenitor of a nearby supernova — a red supergiant...

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