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Earth-Moon system. Image credit: Comfreak.

Meghalayan: Collapse of Ancient Agricultural Civilizations Defines Holocene’s Youngest Stage

Jul 18, 2018 by News Staff

The Meghalayan, the youngest stage of the current Holocene epoch, began at the time when ancient agricultural societies experienced an abrupt and critical...

Various groupings of Jupiter’s moons with the newly-discovered ones shown in bold; Valetudo has a prograde orbit that crosses the retrograde orbits. Image credit: Roberto Molar-Candanosa / Carnegie Institution for Science.

Astronomers Discover Twelve New Jovian Moons

Jul 18, 2018 by News Staff

A team of astronomers led by Dr. Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science has discovered twelve new moons orbiting Jupiter: eleven ‘normal’...

One of the stone structures of the Shubayqa 1 site, Jordan; the fireplace, where the bread was found, is in the middle. Image credit: Alexis Pantos.

Flatbread Baked 14,400 Years Ago Found in Jordan

Jul 17, 2018 by News Staff

Archaeologists from the Universities of Copenhagen and Cambridge, and University College London have unearthed the charred remains of a flatbread baked...

Diamond in kimberlite. Image credit: Parent Géry / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Study: Up To 2% of Earth’s Oldest Mantle Rocks are Made from Diamond

Jul 17, 2018 by News Staff

The ancient cores of Earth’s continents are called cratons. Shaped like inverted mountains, they can stretch as deep as 200 miles (320 km) through the...

This image from NASA’s Galileo spacecraft shows a volcanic explosion on Io. Image credit: NASA / JPL / University of Arizon.

Juno Spots New Active Volcano on Jupiter Moon’s Io

Jul 16, 2018 by News Staff

Infrared data collected by NASA’s Juno spacecraft point to a new heat source in the southern hemisphere of Io — Jupiter’s third-largest moon...

The clay tablet contains 13 verses from the Odyssey’s 14th rhapsody. Image credit: Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports.

Oldest Known Fragment of Homer’s Odyssey Found on Clay Tablet

Jul 16, 2018 by News Staff

Archaeologists in Greece have discovered what they think is the oldest written record of Homer’s poem Odyssey. The clay tablet contains 13 verses from...

An artist’s impression of a blazar. Image credit: DESY / Science Communication Lab.

Astronomers Pinpoint Source of High-Energy Neutrinos for First Time

Jul 13, 2018 by News Staff

A large multinational team of astronomers has found the first evidence of a source of super-energetic neutrino particles: a distant blazar — the...

The 2.12-million-year-old stone artifact at the Shangchen site, China. Image credit: Zhaoyu Zhu.

2.1-Million-Year-Old Stone Tools Unearthed in China

Jul 12, 2018 by News Staff

Archaeologists working in the southern Chinese Loess Plateau have unearthed stone tools crafted at least 2.1 million years ago by early humans. The discovery,...

This artist’s impression shows Ross 128b, with the red dwarf star Ross 128 in the background. This system is located in the constellation of Virgo, about 11 light-years away. Ross 128b is 20 times closer to the star than the Earth is to the Sun, and takes just 9.9 days to circle it. The planet’s equilibrium temperature is estimated to be 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius). Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Exoplanet Ross 128b Likely Has Temperate Climate: Study

Jul 11, 2018 by News Staff

Understanding which chemical elements are present in a star in what abundances can help astronomers estimate the makeup of planets that orbit them, which...

Biogeochemist Dr. Janet Hope holds an ampoule with pink colored porphyrins. Image credit: Australian National University.

Bright Pink is Oldest Color in Geological Record

Jul 10, 2018 by News Staff

An international team of researchers from Australia, Japan, the United States and Belgium has successfully extracted bright pink biological pigments from...

An artist’s conception of PSO J352.4034-15.3373, with disk of material orbiting the black hole and jet of fast-moving particles ejected into space. Image credit: Robin Dienel / Carnegie Institution for Science.

Radio-Bright Quasar May Provide Clues about Physical Processes in Early Universe’s Galaxies

Jul 10, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using NSF’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) have found a quasar with the brightest radio emission ever observed in the early Universe. An...

Canadian Eskimo dogs. Illustration by John James Audubon and John Bachman (1845-1848).

New World’s First Dogs Came from Siberia: Study

Jul 9, 2018 by News Staff

According to a study published in the journal Science, the earliest New World dogs were not domesticated from North American wolves; instead, they form...

An artist’s impression of the triple star system PSR J0337+1715, which is located about 4,200 light-years from Earth. Image credit: NRAO / AUI / NSF / S. Dagnello.

Scientists Test Einstein’s Theory of Gravity on Unique Triple-Star System

Jul 5, 2018 by News Staff

In a new test of Einstein’s theory of gravity, a group of astronomers from the Netherlands, the United States, Australia and Canada has demonstrated...

An impression of the encounter between the Milky Way and the Sausage dwarf galaxy. Image credit: V. Belokurov / Juan Carlos Muñoz / ESO.

‘Sausage’ Galaxy Crashed into Milky Way 8-10 Billion Years Ago

Jul 5, 2018 by News Staff

An unknown dwarf galaxy, dubbed ‘Sausage’ galaxy, smashed into our own Milky Way Galaxy around 8 to 10 billion years ago, a team of astronomers suggests....

Camargo 1102. Image credit: Denilso Camargo, doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/aacc68.

Astronomer Discovers Five New Globular Clusters

Jul 4, 2018 by Sergio Prostak

Using images from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), Dr. Denilso Camargo of the Colégio Militar de Porto Alegre, Brazil, has discovered...

Koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus). Image credit: Holger Detje.

Koala Genome Sequenced

Jul 3, 2018 by News Staff

The Koala Genome Consortium, a research group that includes 54 scientists from 29 different institutions across seven countries, has produced the first...

This image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope is the first clear image of an exoplanet caught in the very act of formation. The planet stands clearly out, visible as a bright point to the right of the center of the image, which is blacked out by the coronagraph mask used to block the blinding light of the central star. Image credit: ESO / A. Müller et al.

ESO’s Very Large Telescope Directly Images Newborn Exoplanet

Jul 3, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope have found an infant gas giant orbiting the young dwarf star PDS 70. Not only have...

This artistic concept shows Kepler-186f. Image credit: NASA Ames / SETI Institute / JPL-CalTech.

Study: Habitable Zone Exoplanets Kepler-62f and Kepler-186f Have Stable Climate, Regular Seasons

Jun 29, 2018 by News Staff

New research from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics suggests that exoplanets Kepler-62f and Kepler-186f...

Theosodon arozquetai (left) and Llullataruca shockeyi. Image credit: Velizar Simeonovski.

Paleontologists Discover Two New Hoofed Mammals from Miocene Epoch

Jun 29, 2018 by Enrico de Lazaro

An international team of paleontologists has identified two new species of ancient mammals that lived about 13 million years ago (middle Miocene epoch)...