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Ultima Thule: Revealing First Primordial Planetesimal

This composite picture combines nine individual images taken with New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), each with an exposure time of 0.025 seconds, just 6 ½ minutes before the spacecraft’s closest approach to Ultima Thule. The image was taken at 12:26 a.m. EST (5:26 a.m. GMT) on January 1, 2019, when the spacecraft was 4,109 miles (6,628 km) from Ultima Thule and 4.1 billion miles (6.6 billion km) from Earth. The angle between the spacecraft, Ultima Thule and the Sun -- known as the ‘phase angle’ - was 33 degrees. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute / National Optical Astronomy Observatory.
Mar 20, 2019 by News Staff

Analyzing the data NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has been sending home since the flyby of the Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule, the mission team is learning more about the development, geology and composition of this pristine planetesimal, a building block of the planets. This composite picture combines nine individual images taken with New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), each with an exposure time of 0.025 seconds, just 6...

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The Sodré astrolabe in situ. Image credit: David Mearns.

World’s Oldest Mariner’s Astrolabe Found

Mar 19, 2019 by News Staff

A unique leaded-gunmetal disk with iconic Portuguese markings recovered from the Sodré shipwreck site in Al Hallaniyah, Oman, has been identified as an...

Wang et al report a strong, specific human brain response to ecologically-relevant rotations of Earth-strength magnetic fields. Image credit: Gerd Altmann.

First Neuroscientific Evidence that Humans Have Geomagnetic Sense

Mar 19, 2019 by Enrico de Lazaro

An international team of neuroscientists and geoscientists from Caltech, the University of Tokyo, Princeton University and Tokyo Institute of Technology...

1,700-Year-Old Elusa Inscription Bears City’s Name

Mar 18, 2019 by News Staff

The ancient city of Elusa (Hebrew: Halutza) is located at the northern edge of the Negev desert and was established as a caravan station on the incense...

The ‘Teacup’ quasar is causing an ongoing storm. The ‘handle’ is a ring of X-ray (blue) and optical (red and green) light surrounding a giant bubble, shown in the Chandra and Hubble data. This handle-shaped feature, which is located about 30,000 light-years from the galaxy’s central supermassive black hole, was likely formed by one or more eruptions powered by the black hole. Image credit: X-ray -- NASA / CXC / University of Cambridge / G. Lansbury et al; optical - NASA / STScI / W. Keel et al; radio - NRAO / VLA.

‘Teacup’ Quasar Causes Galactic Storms

Mar 18, 2019 by News Staff

SDSS J143029.88+133912.0, nicknamed the ‘Teacup’ because of its shape, is a quasar located about 1.1 billion light-years away. The power source of...

Nearest Hypervelocity Star May Have Been Ejected from Milky Way’s Disk by Young Stellar Cluster

Mar 15, 2019 by News Staff

Hypervelocity stars are solitary stars moving fast enough to escape the gravitational grasp of the Milky Way Galaxy. Discovered in 2014, LAMOST-HVS1 is...

Yamagata et al succeeded in observing the signs of the biological activity of 28,140-year-old mammoth nuclei in mouse oocytes. In this image, proteins that form chromosomes (red) and proteins that form dividing spindles (green) gather around a mammoth cell nucleus (upper right) in the mouse oocyte. Image credit: Yamagata et al, doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-40546-1.

Researchers ‘Revive’ Woolly Mammoth Cell Nuclei

Mar 14, 2019 by Enrico de Lazaro

In 2010, the 28,140-year-old partial carcass of a woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), nicknamed ‘Yuka,’ was found in Siberian permafrost. Now a...

An artist’s impression of a quasar. Image credit: Yoshiki Matsuoka.

Eighty-Three Quasars Spotted in Early Universe

Mar 14, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Subaru Telescope have discovered 83 quasars in the distant Universe, from a time when the Universe was less than 10% of its present...

In this illustration, several dust rings circle the Sun. These rings form when planets’ gravities tug dust grains into orbit around the Sun. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith.

Astronomers Detect Circumsolar Dust Ring near Mercury’s Orbit

Mar 13, 2019 by News Staff

A team of astronomers from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, and the University of Colorado, Boulder, has found evidence for a fine...

This artist’s impression shows ‘Oumuamua, the first interstellar object discovered in our Solar System. Recent observations show that the object is moving faster than predicted while leaving the Solar System. Astronomers assume that venting material from its surface due to solar heating is responsible for this behavior. This outgassing can be seen in this artist’s impression as a subtle cloud being ejected from the side of the object facing the Sun. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / ESO / M. Kornmesser.

Oumuamua is Interstellar Comet with Odd Properties, Astronomers Say

Mar 13, 2019 by News Staff

‘Oumuamua, a recently discovered object of extrasolar origin, is a comet that rocks, according to a new study by astronomers at Yale University and Caltech. This...

An artist’s illustration of events on the Sun changing the conditions in near-Earth space. Image credit: NASA.

Solar Super-Storm Hit Earth 2,610 Years Ago

Mar 12, 2019 by Enrico de Lazaro

Evidence of an enormous solar storm that struck the Earth around 2,610 years ago has been found in ice cores from Greenland. An artist’s illustration...

New Species of Plant-Eating Dinosaur Discovered in Australia

Mar 11, 2019 by News Staff

Paleontologists in Australia have found fossil fragments from a new genus and species of ornithopod dinosaur that walked the Earth during the Early Cretaceous...

One of the first heavy-ion collisions with stable beams recorded by LHCb. Image credit: CERN.

New Charmonium Particle Discovered

Mar 11, 2019 by News Staff

Physicists from the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) Collaboration at CERN have discovered a previously unknown particle that consists of a charm quark...

Physicists Transform Liquid Metal into Dense Plasma

Mar 8, 2019 by News Staff

A team of physicists from the University of Rochester and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has found a way to turn liquid metallic deuterium...

This artist’s impression shows a computer generated model of the Milky Way Galaxy and the accurate positions of the globular clusters used in this study surrounding it. Watkins et al used the measured velocities of these 44 globular clusters to determine the total mass of the Milky Way. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / L. Calçada.

New Mass Estimate for Milky Way Galaxy: 1.54 Trillion Suns

Mar 7, 2019 by News Staff

The Milky Way contains an estimated 200 billion stars. But that’s just the bare tip of the iceberg — the Galaxy is surrounded by vast amounts of...

Quantum scrambling is one suggestion for how information can fall into a black hole and come out as random-looking radiation. Perhaps, the argument goes, it is not random at all, and black holes are just excellent scramblers. Image credit: E. Edwards / Joint Quantum Institute.

Physicists Use Seven-Qubit Quantum Computer to Simulate Scrambling inside Black Holes

Mar 7, 2019 by News Staff

A team of physicists from the Joint Quantum Institute, the University of Maryland, the University of California Berkeley and Perimeter Institute for Theoretical...

Study Finds No Link between Measles, Mumps, Rubella Vaccine and Autism

Mar 7, 2019 by Enrico de Lazaro

The mumps, measles, and rubella (MMR) vaccination does not increase the risk for autism, does not trigger autism in susceptible children, and is not associated...

An artist’s concept of the Kepler-1658 system. Sound waves propagating through the stellar interior were used to characterize the star and the planet. Image credit: Gabriel Perez Diaz / Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias.

Astronomers Confirm Kepler’s First Exoplanet Candidate: Kepler-1658b

Mar 6, 2019 by News Staff

A decade after its launch and months after its mission ended, glimmers of data detected by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope in 2009 have been confirmed...

This composite image shows the starburst galaxy Messier 82. The magnetic field detected by SOFIA, shown as streamlines, appears to follow the bipolar outflows (red) generated by the intense nuclear starburst. The image combines visible starlight (gray) and a tracing of hydrogen gas (red) from the Kitt Peak Observatory, with near-infrared and mid-infrared starlight and dust (yellow) from SOFIA and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Image credit: NASA / SOFIA / E. Lopez-Rodriguez / Spitzer / J. Moustakas et al.

SOFIA Observes Galactic Superwind in Messier 82

Mar 6, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) have discovered that the galactic wind flowing from the center of Messier...

Mosaic of the Valles Marineris hemisphere of Mars projected into point perspective, a view similar to that which one would see from a spacecraft. The distance is 1,550 miles (2,500 km) from the surface of the planet. The mosaic is composed of 102 Viking Orbiter images of Mars. The center of the scene shows the entire Valles Marineris canyon system, over 1,240 miles (2,000 km) long and up to 5 miles (8 km) deep, extending form Noctis Labyrinthus, the arcuate system of graben to the west, to the chaotic terrain to the east. Many huge ancient river channels begin from the chaotic terrain from north-central canyons and run north. The three Tharsis volcanoes (dark red spots), each about 15.5 miles (25 km) high, are visible to the west. South of Valles Marineris is very ancient terrain covered by many impact craters. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Ancient Mars Had Planet-Wide Groundwater System

Mar 5, 2019 by News Staff

Observations by ESA’s Mars Express orbiter show evidence of an ancient planet-wide groundwater system on the Red Planet. Mosaic of the Valles Marineris...

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