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Enceladus’ Tiger Stripes Finally Explained

Enceladus’ tiger stripes are known to be spewing ice from the moon’s icy interior into space, creating a cloud of fine ice particles over the moon’s south pole and creating Saturn’s mysterious E-ring. Evidence for this has come from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017. Pictured here, a high resolution image of Enceladus is shown from a close flyby. Tiger stripes are visible in false-color blue. Image credit: NASA / ESA / JPL / SSI / Cassini Imaging Team.
Dec 10, 2019 by News Staff

Saturn’s 300-mile- (500 km) diameter moon Enceladus is thought to have an outer ice shell covering a liquid water ocean. Slashed across the moon’s south pole are four straight, parallel fissures or ‘tiger stripes’ from which water erupts. Using numerical modeling, a team of planetary researchers from the Carnegie Institution for Science and the Universities of California Davis and Berkeley now explains how tidal heating causes Enceladus’...

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An artist’s impression of the Saturn-sized exoplanet TOI 813b. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

TOI 813b: Saturn-Sized Exoplanet Found Orbiting Subgiant Star

Dec 9, 2019 by Natali Anderson

Citizen scientists from the Planet Hunters TESS (PHT) project have discovered a Saturn-sized planet orbiting around TOI 813, a bright subgiant star located...

Illustration of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe approaching the Sun. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Steve Gribben.

NASA Releases First Science Results from Parker Solar Probe Mission

Dec 6, 2019 by NASA

The four instruments of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, a robotic spacecraft designed to explore the Sun’s atmosphere, have returned unprecedented science...

This illustration shows the white dwarf WD J0914 and its Neptune-like exoplanet. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.

Astronomers Find Neptune-Like Exoplanet Orbiting White Dwarf

Dec 5, 2019 by News Staff

A Neptune-like exoplanet orbits an Earth-sized white dwarf star called WD J091405.30+191412.25 (WD J0914 for short) once every 10 days, leaving a comet-like...

New Pterosaur Species Unearthed in Lebanon: Mimodactylus libanensis

Dec 4, 2019 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists in Lebanon have discovered the extremely well-preserved fossilized remains of a previously unknown Cretaceous-period flying reptile. Life...

Hubble captured this view of comet 46P/Wirtanen on December 13, 2018. Image credit: NASA / ESA / D. Bodewits, Auburn University / J.-Y. Li, Planetary Science Institute.

TESS Observes Huge Outburst from Comet 46P/Wirtanen

Dec 4, 2019 by News Staff

On September 26, 2018, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) observed an outburst of gas, ice and dust from the nucleus of comet 46P/Wirtanen....

Paleontologists Find Fossils of Six New Dragonfly Species

Dec 3, 2019 by News Staff

Six new species of dragonflies that lived about 50 million years ago (early Eocene epoch) have been identified from fossils found in the Okanagan Highlands,...

Neanderthal. Image credit: Neanderthal Museum.

Were Neanderthals, Denisovans and Other Archaic Humans Victims of Sixth Mass Extinction?

Dec 1, 2019 by The Conversation

Nine human species walked the Earth 300,000 years ago. Now there is just one. A reconstruction of a Neanderthal man. Image credit: Neanderthal Museum. Neanderthals...

Astronomers Find ‘Impossible’ Stellar Black Hole in Milky Way

Nov 29, 2019 by Natali Anderson

An international team of astronomers has discovered an exceptionally massive black hole of stellar origin with a mass 68 times that of the Sun. An artist’s...

Two individuals of Majungasaurus chasing Rapetosaurus, with Masiakasaurus in the foreground. Image credit: ABelov2014, abelov2014.deviantart.com / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Majungasaurus Replaced All Its Teeth Every Two Months: Study

Nov 29, 2019 by News Staff

Majungasaurus, a carnivorous dinosaur that lived approximately 70 million years ago (Cretaceous period) in what is now Madagascar, grew new teeth roughly...

The yellow-white cloud in the bottom-center of this image, taken on November 30, 2010 by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, is a ‘dust tower’ -- a concentrated cloud of dust that can be lofted dozens of miles above the surface. The blue-white plumes are water vapor clouds. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.

‘Dust Towers’ Spotted on Mars

Nov 28, 2019 by News Staff

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter observed a high number of ‘dust towers’ — concentrated clouds of dust that warm in sunlight and rise high...

Astronomers Capture New Image of Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov

Nov 27, 2019 by News Staff

A group of Yale University astronomers has captured a stunning new image of 2I/Borisov, the first known interstellar comet to travel through our Solar...

SEM image of the Acfer 094 polished section. CAI - Ca-Al-rich inclusion. Image credit: Matsumoto et al, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aax5078.

Scientists Find Fossil Asteroidal Ice in Meteorite

Nov 26, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of scientists from the UK and Japan has found ‘fossilized asteroidal ice’ and pristine dust materials in a 4.6-billion-year-old...

An artist’s impression of planets orbiting a supermassive black hole. Image credit: Kagoshima University.

Planets May Form and Orbit around Supermassive Black Holes

Nov 25, 2019 by Enrico de Lazaro

Protoplanetary disks around stars may not be the only site for planet formation in the Universe, according to a team of theoretical astrophysicists from...

A geoglyph of a human. Image credit: Yamagata University.

Archaeologists Discover 143 New Nazca Geoglyphs

Nov 25, 2019 by News Staff

A team of Japanese archaeologists has identified 143 new geoglyphs in the Nazca Desert, southern Peru. A geoglyph of a human. Image credit: Yamagata University. The...

NGC 6240 harbors three supermassive black holes at its core: the northern black hole (N) is active and was known before; the zoomed-in new high-spatial resolution image shows that the southern component consists of two supermassive black holes (S1 and S2); the green color indicates the distribution of gas ionized by radiation surrounding the black holes; the red lines show the contours of the starlight from the galaxy and the length of the white bar corresponds to 1,000 light years. Image credit: P. Weilbacher, Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam / NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage / STScI / AURA / Hubble Collaboration / A. Evans, University of Virginia, Charlottesville / NRAO / Stony Brook University.

Astronomers Find Three Supermassive Black Holes in NGC 6240

Nov 22, 2019 by News Staff

NGC 6240, a well-studied nearby galaxy system in the process of merging, contains three supermassive black holes at its core, two of which are active and...

Wing of Mars insect caught on the rover; inset: enlarged portion of wing. Image credit: William Romoser, doi: 10.13140/RG.2.2.12363.95520.

NASA Photos Show Insect- and Reptile-Like Life Forms on Mars, Entomologist Says

Nov 21, 2019 by News Staff

Ohio University Emeritus Professor William Romoser has analyzed photos from NASA’s various Mars rovers, mostly from the rover Curiosity, and found insect/arthropod-...

Najash rionegrina. Image credit: Raúl O. Gómez, Universidad de Buenos Aires.

Cretaceous Legged Snake Fossils Shed New Light on Evolution of Modern Snake Body Plan

Nov 21, 2019 by News Staff

An analysis of the first three-dimensionally preserved skulls and skeletons of the extinct legged snake Najash rionegrina shows that nearly 100 million...

Astronomers Observe Host Galaxy of Extremely Bright and Long Gamma-Ray Burst

Nov 21, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers have investigated the nature of a very bright and long-duration gamma-ray burst, GRB 190114C, by studying its environment. Hubble’s observations...

A model of the molecular structure of ribose and an image of the Murchison meteorite. Image credit: Yoshihiro Furukawa.

Researchers Find Extraterrestrial Sugars in Meteorites

Nov 20, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of scientists from Japan and the United States has found ribose and other bioessential sugars in two primitive meteorites, NWA 801...

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