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Earth’s Magnetopause Vibrates Like Giant Drum When Hit by Strong Impulses

Illustration of a plasma jet impact (yellow) generating standing waves at the boundary (blue) of Earth’s magnetic shield (green). Image credit: E. Masongsong, UCLA / M. Archer, QMUL / H. Hietala, UTU.
Feb 13, 2019 by News Staff

As strong impulses strike the Earth’s magnetopause, the abrupt boundary between the planet’s magnetosphere and the surrounding plasma, ripples travel along its surface which then get reflected back when they approach the magnetic poles. The interference of the original and reflected waves leads to a standing wave pattern, in which specific points appear to be standing still while others vibrate back and forth. A drum resonates like this when struck...

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The bright spots near the center of Occator crater are shown in enhanced color in this view from NASA’s Dawn robotic spacecraft. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA / PSI / LPI.

Ceres’ Crust Kept Cryomagma Liquid for Millions of Years, Researchers Say

Feb 13, 2019 by News Staff

NASA’s Dawn mission recently spotted mysterious bright spots in the center of Occator Crater on the dwarf planet Ceres. According to a new study published...

Abramson et al developed a drug capsule that could be used to deliver oral doses of insulin. Image credit: Felice Frankel.

Microneedle Pill Could Be Used to Deliver Oral Doses of Insulin

Feb 12, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of researchers from the United States, Denmark and Sweden has pioneered a new approach that brings an oral formulation of insulin...

Just 114 miles from the recently-discovered Hiawatha impact crater under the ice of northwest Greenland, lies a possible second impact crater. The 22.7-mile-wide feature would be the second crater found under an ice sheet, and if confirmed, would be the 22nd-largest crater on Earth. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Jefferson Beck.

Scientists Find Possible Second Subglacial Impact Crater in Northwest Greenland

Feb 12, 2019 by News Staff

Following the discovery of the 19.2-mile (31 km) wide Hiawatha impact crater beneath the northwest margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet, Dr. Joe MacGregor...

Neptune and Uranus. Image credit: NASA / ESA / A. Simon, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / M. Wong & A. Hsu, University of California, Berkeley.

Hubble Spots New Dark Storm on Neptune, Giant Polar Cap on Uranus

Feb 8, 2019 by News Staff

Since its launch into orbit in 1990, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has helped astronomers to amass an album of outer planet images. Yearly monitoring...

Mosquitoes can hear up to 32 feet away. Image credit: Egor Kamelev.

Mosquitoes Can Hear Sound over Surprisingly Long Distances

Feb 8, 2019 by News Staff

Yellow fever mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti) can use their antennae to detect sounds that are at least 32 feet (10 m) away, according to a new study published...

Howard et al show that honeybees can learn to use blue and yellow as symbolic representations for addition or subtraction. In a free-flying environment, individual bees used this information to solve unfamiliar problems involving adding or subtracting one element from a group of elements. Image credit: Ralph.

Study: Honeybees Can Do Basic Arithmetic

Feb 7, 2019 by News Staff

A new study published in the journal Science Advances shows that honeybees (Apis mellifera), with a miniature brain, can be taught to recognize colors...

An artist’s impression of the protoplanetary disk around the young star V883 Orionis. Image credit: National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

ALMA Detects Complex Organic Molecules around V883 Orionis

Feb 6, 2019 by News Staff

V883 Orionis is a young star located approximately 1,300 light-years away in the constellation Orion. This star is experiencing a so-called FU Orionis...

In conventional electronic devices, electricity requires the movement of electrons (blue spheres) and their positive counterparts, called holes (red spheres), which behave much like the gas molecules in our atmosphere. Although they move rapidly and collide infrequently in the gas phase, electrons and holes can condense into liquid droplets akin to liquid water in devices composed of ultrathin materials. Image credit: QMO Lab, University of California, Riverside.

‘Electron Liquid’ Created at Room Temperature

Feb 5, 2019 by News Staff

A team of physicists at the University of California, Riverside, has produced the first ‘electron-hole liquid’ at room temperature. In conventional...

From a great distance, our Milky Way Galaxy would look like a thin disk of stars that orbits once every few hundred million years around its central region, where hundreds of billions of stars provide the gravitational ‘glue’ to hold it all together. But this pull of gravity is much weaker in the Galaxy’s far outer disk. There, the hydrogen atoms making up most of the Milky Way’s gas disk are no longer confined to a thin plane, instead they give the disk an S-like, or warped, appearance. Image credit: Xiaodian Chen.

New 3D Map of Milky Way Reveals True Shape of Its Stellar Disk

Feb 5, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers has used 1,339 classical Cepheid stars — pulsating variable stars each up to 100,000 brighter than our Sun —...

The globular cluster Camargo 1107. Image credit: D. Camargo & D. Minniti, doi: 10.1093/mnrasl/slz010.

Astronomers Discover Three New Globular Clusters in Milky Way

Feb 4, 2019 by Sergio Prostak

A duo of astronomers has spotted three new globular clusters in the Milky Way’s bulge, a 10,000-light-year-wide central structure made primarily of old...

Along the banks of a river, three archosaur inhabitants of the dense Voltzia conifer forest cross paths: Antarctanax shackletoni sneaks up on an early titanopetran insect, Prolacerta broomi lazes on a log, and an enigmatic large archosaur pursues two unsuspecting dicynodonts, Lystrosaurus maccaigi. Image credit: Adrienne StrouAntarctanax shackletoni. Image credit: Adrienne Stroup, Field Museum.p, Field Museum.

Iguana-Sized Reptile Roamed Antarctica 250 Million Years Ago

Feb 1, 2019 by News Staff

Some 250 million years ago (early Triassic epoch), an early relative of dinosaurs and crocodiles lived in what is now a frozen continent, Antarctica, according...

This image, taken with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), shows a part the globular cluster NGC 6752. Behind the bright stars of the cluster a denser collection of faint stars is visible -- the previously unknown dwarf spheroidal galaxy Bedin 1. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Bedin et al.

Bedin 1: New Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy Discovered in Our Cosmic Backyard

Jan 31, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a new dwarf galaxy in our cosmic neighborhood. Named Bedin 1, the galaxy is approximately...

A group of Neanderthals in a cave. Image credit: Tyler B. Tretsven.

Denisovans and Neanderthals Lived in Denisova Cave for Thousands of Years

Jan 31, 2019 by News Staff

Two groups of archaic humans — Neanderthals and their enigmatic cousins, Denisovans — occupied Denisova Cave in the Altai region of Siberia...

Drawing of the male and female huon astrapia (Astrapia rothschildi), also known as the Rothschild’s bird-of-paradise, by Ellis Rowan.

Researchers Sequence Genomes of Five Bird-of-Paradise Species

Jan 30, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of scientists has sequenced and analyzed the genomes of representatives from all five major clades within the birds-of-paradise family...

The two Moon-exploring crew men of the Apollo 14 lunar landing mission photographed and collected the large rock pictured just above the exact center of this picture. The rock, casting a shadow off to the left, is the lunar breccia 14321. It lies between the wheel tracks made by the modular equipment transporter (MET) or rickshaw-type portable workbench. A few prints of the lunar overshoes of the crew members are at the left. This photo was made near the boulder field near the rim of Cone Crater. Image credit: NASA.

Terrestrial Meteorite Found on the Moon

Jan 29, 2019 by News Staff

A lunar rock sample collected by Apollo 14 astronauts in 1971 contains traces of minerals with a chemical composition common to Earth and very unusual...

Changala et al used frequency combs, or ‘rulers of light,’ to observe individual quantum energy transitions in buckminsterfullerene. Image credit: Steven Burrows / JILA.

Physicists Uncover Quantum Structure of Buckminsterfullerene

Jan 29, 2019 by News Staff

A team of physicists from the Joint Institute for Lab Astrophysics (JILA) and IMRA America Inc. has measured hundreds of individual quantum energy levels...

An artist’s impression of the newly-discovered Kuiper Belt object. Image credit: Ko Arimatsu.

Astronomers Discover Kilometer-Sized Object in Kuiper Belt

Jan 29, 2019 by News Staff

A team of astronomers from Japan has discovered a 2.6-km (1.6 mile) wide object in the Kuiper Belt, a distant region of icy debris that extends far beyond...

This striking image combines data gathered with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and data from the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. It shows just a part of the spectacular tail emerging from the spiral galaxy D100. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Cramer et al.

Hubble Finds Spiral Galaxy with Ram Pressure-Stripped Tail in Coma Cluster

Jan 28, 2019 by News Staff

A long streamer of hydrogen gas is being stripped from a spiral galaxy called D100 as it plunges toward the center of the Coma cluster (also known as Abell...

A 30,000 light-year region from the Renaissance Simulation centered on a cluster of young galaxies that generate radiation (white) and metals (green) while heating the surrounding gas. A dark matter halo just outside this heated region forms three supermassive stars (inset) each over 1,000 times the mass of our Sun that will quickly collapse into massive black holes and eventually supermassive black holes over billions of years. Image credit: Advanced Visualization Lab, National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

Early Universe’s Massive Black Holes Born in Rapidly-Growing Dark Matter Halos: Study

Jan 28, 2019 by News Staff

When the Universe was less than 1 billion years old, some of its stars turned into supermassive black holes. A key mystery in astronomy has been: why are...

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