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This Pluto mosaic was made from New Horizons LORRI images taken on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 49,700 miles (80,000 km). This view is projected from a point 1,118 miles (1,800 km) above Pluto’s equator, looking northeast over the dark, cratered Cthulhu Regio toward the bright, smooth expanse of icy plains called Sputnik Planum. Pluto’s North Pole is off the image to the left. This mosaic was produced with panchromatic images from the New Horizons LORRI camera, with color overlaid from the Ralph color mapper onboard New Horizons. Image credit: S.A. Stern et al.

Researchers Say the Reason Pluto Lost Its Planet Status is Not Valid

Sep 10, 2018 by News Staff

In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) established a definition of a planet that required it to clear its orbit, or in other words, be the...

Pottery Analysis Reveals Earliest Mediterranean Cheese Production 7,200 Years Ago

Sep 7, 2018 by News Staff

An analysis of fatty residue in pottery from two Neolithic archaeological sites in Croatia has revealed evidence of fermented dairy products (soft cheeses...

New data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory reveal the presence of very bright X-ray sources, most likely binary systems powered by either a stellar-mass black hole or neutron star, in the remarkable ring of the galaxy AM 0644-741. In this composite image, X-rays from Chandra (purple) have been combined with optical data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, and blue). Image credit: X-ray – NASA / CXC / INAF / A. Wolter et al; optical – NASA / STScI.

Chandra X-ray Observatory Discovers Ring of Dense Compact Objects in Distant Galaxy

Sep 7, 2018 by News Staff

A remarkable ring of bright X-ray sources — black holes or neutron stars — has been discovered in a galaxy approximately 300 million light...

Huge Northern Polar Vortex Spotted Forming in Saturn’s Stratosphere

Sep 5, 2018 by News Staff

When NASA’s Cassini spacecraft arrived at Saturn in 2004, the gas giant’s southern hemisphere was enjoying summertime, while the northern was in the...

Did Mona Lisa Suffer from Hypothyroidism?

Sep 4, 2018 by News Staff

In a paper published in the September 2018 issue of the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Brigham and Women’s Hospital researcher Mandeep Mehra and University...

Wild Bottlenose Dolphins Learn from Each Other to Tail-Walk on Water

Sep 3, 2018 by News Staff

A new paper published in the journal Biology Letters describes how tail walking was learned by a single bottlenose dolphin and then copied by other dolphins...

An artist’s impression of a water-world exoplanet. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Water-World Exoplanets Could Be Friendly to Life

Sep 3, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers have largely assumed that water-world exoplanets would not support the cycling of minerals and gases that keeps the climate stable on Earth,...

The Fiordland penguin (Eudyptes pachyrhynchus). Image credit: University of Otago.

Fiordland Penguins Travel up to 4,350 Miles to Feed: Study

Aug 31, 2018 by News Staff

The Fiordland penguin (Eudyptes pachyrhynchus), the only crested penguin species breeding on the New Zealand mainland, is currently one of the least studied...

This Hubble image is a composite of observations made of Saturn in early 2018 in the optical and of the auroras on Saturn’s north pole region, made in 2017. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / A. Simon, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / OPAL Team / J. DePasquale, STScI / L. Lamy, Observatoire de Paris.

Hubble Captures Enormous Northern Auroras on Saturn

Aug 31, 2018 by News Staff

Viewing Saturn’s northern polar region for a period of seven months, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space telescope snapped a series of stunning images of auroras...

North American dinosaurs. Image credit: Davide Bonadonna.

New Jersey Fossils Shed Light on Theropod Dinosaurs of Eastern United States

Aug 30, 2018 by News Staff

On the east coast of North America, dinosaur fossils are rare finds. Owing to several factors, such as the mass-urbanization of the eastern seaboard, fossils...

Artist’s impression of the extreme starburst galaxy AzTEC/COSMOS-1. Image credit: National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

ALMA Provides Detailed View of Very Distant Star-Forming Galaxy

Aug 30, 2018 by News Staff

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a team of astronomers revealed that molecular clouds in a galaxy called AzTEC/COSMOS-1,...

Artist’s rendering of what Ekwiiyemakius walshi, Gunnelltarsius randalli and Brontomomys cerutti might have looked like. Image credit: Randy Kirk, University of Texas at Austin.

Paleontologists Discover Three New Fossil Primates

Aug 29, 2018 by News Staff

Paleontologists at the University of Texas at Austin have identified three new species of omomyine primates that lived between 42 and 46 million years...

A candidate event display for the production of a Higgs boson decaying to two bottom quarks (blue cones), in association with a W boson decaying to a muon (red) and a neutrino. The neutrino leaves the detector unseen, and is reconstructed through the missing transverse energy (dashed line). Image credit: ATLAS Collaboration / CERN.

Physicists Observe Long-Sought Decay of Higgs Boson to Bottom Quarks

Aug 28, 2018 by News Staff

Physicists from the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider have observed the Higgs boson decaying into a pair of bottom quarks...

There are many ways alcohol may cause cancer including directly damaging DNA, increasing levels of certain hormones and damaging the liver. Image credit: Laura M.

Study: There is No Safe Level of Drinking Alcohol

Aug 28, 2018 by News Staff

Alcohol use is a leading risk factor for global disease burden and causes substantial health loss. A new study has found that the risk of all-cause mortality,...

Hippocampus japapigu, Hachijo-jima Island, Izu Islands, Japan from 33 feet (10 m) depth. Image credit: Richard Smith.

New Species of Pygmy Seahorse Discovered: Hippocampus japapigu

Aug 27, 2018 by Natali Anderson

An international team of marine biologists has discovered a new species of the seahorse genus Hippocampus in the waters off southeast Japan. Hippocampus...

An artist’s depiction of Eorhynchochelys sinensis as it would have appeared in life 228 million years ago in China. Image credit: Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

228-Million-Year-Old Fossil Reveals Complex Early History of Turtles

Aug 24, 2018 by News Staff

Paleontologists in China have discovered a 228-million-year-old extinct species of turtle, known for its weird disc-like body without a shell and its toothless...

Artist’s impression of a cloud of trapped antihydrogen atoms. Image credit: Chukman So.

CERN Physicists Observe Lyman-alpha Transition in Antihydrogen

Aug 24, 2018 by News Staff

Physicists from the ALPHA Collaboration at CERN have detected the Lyman-alpha transition — when the hydrogen electron transitions between the lowest-energy...

This artist’s impression shows how the gas giant exoplanet inside the disc of Beta Pictoris may look. Image credit: L. Calçada / ESO.

Astronomers Measure Mass of Young Exoplanet Beta Pictoris b

Aug 24, 2018 by News Staff

A duo of astronomers at Leiden University in the Netherlands has deduced the mass of Beta Pictoris b from the motion of its parent star, which lies 63...

Denisovans were probably dark-skinned, unlike the pale Neandertals. The picture shows a Neanderthal man. Image credit: Mauro Cutrona.

‘Denisova 11’ Had Neanderthal Mother and Denisovan Father

Aug 23, 2018 by News Staff

Neanderthals and Denisovans are extinct groups of hominins that separated from each other more than 390,000 years ago. These two groups inhabited Eurasia...