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This image of the rectangular iceberg was taken during an Operation IceBridge flight over the northern Antarctic Peninsula on October 16, 2018. Image credit: Jeremy Harbeck, NASA.

NASA’s IceBridge Researchers Find Rectangular Icebergs in Southern Ocean

Oct 24, 2018 by News Staff

Members of the Operation IceBridge, NASA’s decade-long airborne survey of polar ice, spotted two rectangular icebergs during a flight over the northern...

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.

Salty, Oxygenated Water on Mars Could Host Simple Aerobic Life

Oct 23, 2018 by News Staff

Caltech researcher Vlada Stamenković and co-authors calculated that if liquid water exists on the Red Planet, it could contain more oxygen than previously...

The Rote leaf warbler (Phylloscopus rotiensis). Image credit: Philippe Verbelen.

Rote Leaf Warbler: New Bird Species Discovered in Indonesia

Oct 23, 2018 by News Staff

A striking new species of leaf warbler has been discovered in the forests of the Indonesian island of Rote by an international team of researchers. The...

European-Japanese BepiColombo Spacecraft is on Its Way to Mercury

Oct 23, 2018 by News Staff

BepiColombo, a joint endeavor between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), blasted off from Europe’s Spaceport...

The Pando aspen clone from a distance (green foreground and middle -- not yellow). Image credit: Lance Oditt, Studio 47.60° North.

Pando, World’s Largest Single Organism, is Shrinking

Oct 22, 2018 by News Staff

A team of researchers from Utah State University has conducted the first complete assessment of the Pando aspen clone — the largest living organism...

Piranhamesodon pinnatomus, 2.8 inches (7.1 cm) long, from the Late Jurassic of Ettling, Solnhofen Archipelago, Germany. Image credit: M. Ebert.

Jurassic Flesh-Eating Fish Had Piranha-Like Teeth

Oct 19, 2018 by Enrico de Lazaro

A remarkable new species of predatory fish that lived about 152 million years ago (Jurassic period) has been identified from a fossil found in Germany. Piranhamesodon...

Electrons Are Perfectly Spherical, New Measurements Confirm

Oct 18, 2018 by News Staff

Physicists from the Advanced Cold Molecule Electron Electric Dipole Moment (ACME) Collaboration have examined the shape of an electron’s charge with...

The Hyperion proto-supercluster is the largest and most massive structure yet found at such a remote time and distance -- about 2.3 billion years after the Big Bang. Image credit: ESO / L. Calçada & Olga Cucciati et al.

Astronomers Find Proto-Supercluster of Galaxies in Early Universe

Oct 18, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope have spotted a gigantic galaxy proto-supercluster in the early Universe, just 2.3 billion years after the...

The wild sugarcane (Saccharum spontaneum). Image credit: Joydeep / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Researchers Sequence Genome of Wild Sugarcane

Oct 17, 2018 by News Staff

An international team of over 100 scientists from 16 institutions has sequenced the genome of the wild sugarcane (Saccharum spontaneum). The results appear...

This scanning electron micrograph shows macrophages infected with Bacillus anthracis (Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology)

New Nanoparticle-Based Vaccine Protects against Anthrax and Plague

Oct 17, 2018 by Enrico de Lazaro

A research team in the United States has developed a nanoparticle-based dual vaccine against Bacillus anthracis and Yersinia pestis — pathogens that...

An artist’s impression of four gas giants in orbit around CI Tau. Image credit: University of Cambridge.

Astronomers Discover Young Planetary System with Four Gas Giants

Oct 16, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered a 2-million-year-old planetary system containing at least four...

Comet C/2016 R2 (PanSTARRS). Image credit: Damian Peach, www.damianpeach.com / Jose J. Chambo, www.cometografia.es.

Astronomers Spot Rare Blue Comet: C/2016 R2

Oct 16, 2018 by Sergio Prostak

C/2016 R2 (PanSTARRS), a visitor from the Solar System’s distant Oort Cloud, sports a very complex tail dominated by blue light and is unusually rich...

Lavender Genome Sequenced

Oct 15, 2018 by Enrico de Lazaro

A team of scientists from Brock University and the University of British Columbia, Canada, has sequenced the genome of the English lavender (Lavandula...

The faint supernova iPTF14gqr appeared in the outskirts of IV Zw 155, a spiral galaxy located 920 million light years away from us. Image credit: SDSS / Caltech / Keck.

Ultra-Stripped Supernova Produces Neutron Star Binary

Oct 12, 2018 by News Staff

A team of astronomers led by Caltech’s Kishalay De has discovered the first recorded ‘ultra-stripped’ supernova — a faint type of supernova...

An artist’s impression of CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope detecting a fast radio burst. Image credit: Swinburne University of Technology / OzGrav ARC Centre of Excellence.

Astronomers Discover Twenty New Fast Radio Bursts

Oct 11, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using CSIRO’s Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) at the Murchison Radio-Astronomy Observatory have nearly doubled the known...

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

New Science Results from Cassini’s Grand Finale

Oct 11, 2018 by News Staff

Cassini’s 20-year mission culminated in a series of wild orbits. First, it grazed the outer rim of Saturn’s rings and then, in the Grand Finale phase,...

Extra DNA Produces Blue Eyes in Huskies

Oct 10, 2018 by News Staff

In a study examining the DNA of over 6,000 dogs, researchers at Embark Veterinary, Inc., Boston, Massachusetts, have identified that duplication of a part...

Life appearance of the fossil flying squirrel Miopetaurista neogrivensis showing the animal ready to land on a tree branch. Image credit: Oscar Sanisidro / ICP.

World’s Oldest Flying Squirrel Fossil Discovered

Oct 10, 2018 by News Staff

An international team of paleontologists has found the world’s oldest flying squirrel fossil — an 11.63-million-year-old specimen of an extinct...

CK Vulpeculae resides in the constellation Vulpecula. It is just below the star Albireo, the head of Cygnus, the swan. That location is inside the Summer Triangle of bright stars, which is now high in the south after nightfall. The star is approximately 2,200 light-years from Earth. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / Eyres et al.

ALMA Discovers New Type of Stellar Collision

Oct 10, 2018 by News Staff

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers found evidence that a white dwarf and a brown dwarf collided in a ‘blaze of...