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The Kohnen Station in Antarctica. Image credit: Sepp Kipfstuhl.

Scientists Find Interstellar Iron in Antarctic Snow

Aug 20, 2019 by Natali Anderson

A team of researchers from Germany, Austria and Australia has found traces of the radioactive isotope iron-60 — the tell-tale signature of a supernova...

Archaeologists Unearth 45,000-Year-Old Stone Tools in Mongolia

Aug 19, 2019 by News Staff

A collection of stone artifacts unearthed at the archaeological site of Tolbor-16 in the northern Khangai Mountains of Mongolia indicates that anatomically...

Abdo et al discovered a meshlike organ covering the skin that senses dangerous environmental stimuli. Image credit: Tarkan K.

Researchers Discover New Pain Organ in Human Skin

Aug 19, 2019 by News Staff

A team of scientists at Karolinska Institutet has discovered a previously unknown meshlike organ in the skin that is sensitive to painful mechanical damage,...

Cyclo[18]carbon. Image credit: Kaiser et al.

Cyclocarbon: New Form of Carbon Synthesized

Aug 16, 2019 by News Staff

A team of researchers from the University of Oxford and IBM Research-Zürich has, for the first time, synthesized and characterized a ring of 18 carbon...

An artist’s impression of a collision between the proto-Jupiter and a massive protoplanet in the early Solar System. Image credit: K. Suda & Y. Akimoto, Mabuchi Design Office / Astrobiology Center, Japan.

Massive Planetary Embryo Crashed into Jupiter 4.5 Billion Years Ago

Aug 15, 2019 by News Staff

An energetic head-on collision between a large planetary embryo and the proto-Jupiter about 4.5 billion years ago could explain puzzling gravitational...

Neanderthal. Image credit: Neanderthal Museum.

Neanderthals and Ancient Humans Suffered from Swimmer’s Ear: Study

Aug 15, 2019 by News Staff

Exostoses of the ear canal — more commonly called swimmer’s ear — were surprisingly common in Neanderthals, according to new research by...

A pair of extant penguins. Image credit: Martin Fuchs.

Ancient Giant Penguin Unearthed in New Zealand: Crossvallia waiparensis

Aug 15, 2019 by News Staff

The fossilized bones of a large-sized penguin species that lived during the Paleocene epoch (between 66 and 56 million years ago) have been discovered...

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and Churymoon (circled). Image credit: ESA / Rosetta / MPS / OSIRIS / UPD / LAM / IAA / SSO / INTA / UPM / DASP / IDA / J. Roger.

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko Had Tiny, Temporary Moon

Aug 14, 2019 by News Staff

Astrophotographer Jacint Roger has spotted a small object in a sequence of images of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko taken by ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft on October...

An artist’s impression of a flare erupting from the star Proxima Centauri and the glowing exoplanet Proxima b. Image credit: Roberto Molar Candanosa, Carnegie Institution for Science / NASA / SDO / JPL / Sci-News.com.

Biofluorescence Could Expose Hidden Alien Life on Exoplanets around Red Dwarfs

Aug 14, 2019 by News Staff

Powerful flares from M-type stars (red dwarfs) — once thought to destroy life on their planets — might help uncover hidden biospheres; their...

A view of Mars showing the planet’s northern polar ice cap. Image credit: ISRO / ISSDC / Emily Lakdawalla.

New Study Rules Out Wind Erosion of Rocks as Source of Methane on Mars

Aug 14, 2019 by News Staff

A new study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, has ruled out the possibility that the levels of methane detected in the Martian atmosphere could...

Glitch in Vela Pulsar Provides Unique Opportunity to Study Neutron Star’s Interior

Aug 13, 2019 by News Staff

Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars observed to have pulses of radiation at very regular intervals that typically range from milliseconds to seconds....

Green biofluorescence in swell sharks (Cephaloscyllium ventriosum). Image credit: Park et al, doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2019.07.019.

New Form of Biofluorescence Discovered

Aug 13, 2019 by News Staff

A team of U.S. researchers has discovered a previously undescribed group of small molecule metabolites responsible for the green biofluorescence in two...

Ancient volcanoes. Image credit: Sharon Ang.

Jurassic Volcanic Province Discovered in Australia

Aug 13, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of researchers has discovered around 100 ancient volcanoes and associated lava flows buried deep within the Cooper-Eromanga Basins...

Reconstruction of the Xinhang forest landscape. Image credit: Wang et al, doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2019.06.053.

Devonian Fossil Forest Unearthed in China

Aug 12, 2019 by News Staff

Paleontologists have discovered a 360-million-year-old (Devonian period) fossilized forest of lycopsid trees near Xinhang in China’s Anhui province —...

This image, taken with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), shows the planetary nebula NGC 2022. The color composite was assembled from images taken in visible and infrared light. Two filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / R. Wade.

Hubble Captures Beautiful Planetary Nebula Image

Aug 12, 2019 by Enrico de Lazaro

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced a stunning image of NGC 2022, a vast orb of gas in space, cast off by an aging star. This image, taken...

This artist’s impression shows the evolution of the Universe beginning with the Big Bang on the left followed by the appearance of the Cosmic Microwave Background. The formation of the first stars ends the cosmic dark ages, followed by the formation of galaxies. Image credit: M. Weiss / Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Dark Matter May Have Existed before Big Bang, Theoretical Physicist Says

Aug 9, 2019 by News Staff

Dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up roughly a quarter of the Universe, may have its origin in pre-Big-Bang times, according to a new paper...

This new Hubble image of Jupiter, taken on June 27, 2019, reveals the giant planet’s Great Red Spot, and a more intense color palette in the clouds swirling in Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere than seen in previous years. The colors, and their changes, provide important clues to ongoing processes in Jupiter’s atmosphere. The bands are created by differences in the thickness and height of the ammonia ice clouds. The colorful bands, which flow in opposite directions at various latitudes, result from different atmospheric pressures. Lighter bands rise higher and have thicker clouds than the darker bands. Image credit: NASA / ESA / A. Simon, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / M.H. Wong, University of California, Berkeley.

Hubble Snaps Super-Sharp Image of Jupiter

Aug 9, 2019 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope obtained a detailed image of Jupiter on June 27, 2019, when the gas giant was approximately 400 million miles (644...

Goumas et al found that human gaze direction significantly affected gulls’ latency to approach the food: gulls took less time to approach when a human was facing away versus looking directly at them. Image credit: Circe Denyer.

Staring at Seagulls Makes Them Less Likely to Snatch Your Food

Aug 8, 2019 by News Staff

A team of researchers from the University of Exeter, UK, put a bag of chips on the ground and tested how long it took herring gulls (Larus argentatus)...

Earth’s magnetic field connects the North Pole (orange lines) with the South Pole (blue lines) in this NASA-created image. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Most Recent Reversal of Earth’s Magnetic Field Lasted 22,000 Years

Aug 8, 2019 by News Staff

Earth’s magnetic field is produced in the planet’s liquid iron outer core as it spins around the solid inner core, and protects the surface from harmful...