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Astronomers Find Too Many Massive Stars in Nearby and Distant Star-Forming Galaxies

An artist’s impression of a starburst galaxy. This kind of galaxy is typically forming stars at such a high rate; they can form up to 1,000 times more stars per year, compared to our own Milky Way Galaxy. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.
Jun 19, 2018 by News Staff

Two independent teams of astronomers have discovered that both starburst galaxies in the early Universe and a star-forming region in a nearby galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud contain a much higher proportion of massive stars than is found in more peaceful galaxies. The findings, detailed in a pair of papers published in the journals Nature and Science, challenge current ideas about how galaxies evolved. An artist’s impression of a starburst...

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An artist’s impression of an ancient ecosystem. Image credit: Davide Bonadonna.

Bite Marks on East Coast Dinosaur Bones Illuminate Ancient Coastal Ecosystem

Jun 18, 2018 by News Staff

One might expect a dig site in some far-off desert when thinking of a paleontological discovery. Nevertheless, new finds are often made in museum collections. An...

Artist’s impression of a potentially habitable exomoon orbiting a giant planet. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Astronomers Identify 121 Gas Giants that May Have Habitable Moons

Jun 15, 2018 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers from the United States, Australia, and Brazil has identified 121 giant exoplanets in the habitable zones of their...

Burmese Amber Preserves 99-Million-Year-Old Tropical Frogs

Jun 15, 2018 by News Staff

In a paper published this week in the journal Scientific Reports, paleontologists have described an extinct genus and species of frog, Electrorana limoae,...

Colony of Chroococcidiopsis thermalis cells where the different colors represent photosynthesis driven by chlorophyll-a (magenta) and chlorophyll-f (yellow). Image credit: Dennis Nuernberg.

Scientists Discover New Type of Photosynthesis

Jun 15, 2018 by News Staff

The vast majority of life on our planet uses red light (680 to 700 nm) in the process of photosynthesis, but the new type uses near-infrared light (750...

An artist’s impression of protoplanets forming around a young star. Image credit: NRAO / AUI / NSF / S. Dagnello.

ALMA Spots Three Giant Protoplanets around HD 163296

Jun 14, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have uncovered evidence that three infant planets are forming in the protoplanetary...

An artist’s concept of the K2-239 planetary system. Image credit: Gabriel Perez Diaz, SMM / IAC.

Astronomers Discover Five New Exoplanets Orbiting Cool Dwarf Stars

Jun 13, 2018 by Natali Anderson

Astronomers using data from NASA’s Kepler K2 mission have discovered two new planetary systems, one of which contains two super-Earths and the other...

Artist’s impression of diamond dust. Image credit: S. Dagnello.

Astronomers Find Rapidly Spinning Nanodiamonds in Dust Disks around Young Stars

Jun 12, 2018 by News Staff

A faint and mysterious stream of microwaves emanating from young star systems far out in the Milky Way Galaxy could be caused by nanodiamonds about 1.5-2.2 nm...

A honeybee (Apis mellifera). Image credit: Vijaya Narasimha.

Study: Honeybees Understand Concept of Zero

Jun 11, 2018 by News Staff

The honeybee (Apis mellifera) has joined the ranks of dolphins, parrots, and primates, in demonstrating the ability to understand the concept of zero numerosity....

Fifteen moais of Ahu Tongariki. Image credit: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Ancient Easter Islanders Used Rope and Ramps to Put Massive Stone Hats on Moai

Jun 11, 2018 by News Staff

The ancient people of Easter Island, Chile, were able to move so-called pukao — massive stone hats of the island’s famed monumental statues (moai)...

An artist’s impression of an Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting an M-dwarf star. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

We May Miss Life-Hosting Exoplanets If We Only Look for Their Oxygen

Jun 8, 2018 by James Romero

There could be a flaw in the search for atmospheric oxygen as a signature of life around most of our nearby exoplanets. A team from the University of Washington...

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.

Curiosity Finds Organic Molecules in Ancient Rocks, Seasonal Methane Releases on Mars

Jun 8, 2018 by News Staff

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has detected organic molecules in 3-billion-year-old sedimentary rocks at the base of the Murray formation at Pahrump Hills,...

Visualization of a data event from the tt¯H(γγ) Had BDT bin with the largest signal over background ratio; the event contains two photon candidates, with a diphoton mass of 125.4 GeV; in addition, six jets are reconstructed using the anti-kt algorithm and R = 0.4, including one jet that is b-tagged using a 77% efficiency working point; the photons correspond to the green towers in the electromagnetic calorimeter, while the jets (b-jets) are shown as yellow (blue) cones. Image credit: ATLAS Collaboration.

Physicists Observe Simultaneous Production of Higgs Boson with Top Quark-Antiquark Pair

Jun 8, 2018 by News Staff

In July 2012, ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) and CMS (Compact-Muon-Solenoid) experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider jointly announced the discovery...

A study of the inhabitants of Easter Island served in part as the basis for a mathematical model showing the ways a technologically advanced population and its planet might develop or collapse together. Image credit: Michael Osadciw / University of Rochester.

How Do Extraterrestrial Technological Civilizations Solve Climate Change?

Jun 7, 2018 by News Staff

As the population of a technologically advanced civilization grows, it uses more and more of its planet’s resources. By consuming the resources, the...

The first artist’s illustration shows a key part of the process that created this new black hole, as the two neutron stars spin around each other while merging. The purple material depicts debris from the merger. Image credit: NASA / CXC / M.Weiss.

Recent Gravitational-Wave Event Likely Created Low-Mass Black Hole

Jun 5, 2018 by News Staff

A new study using X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory indicates that the neutron star merger that became the gravitational wave source,...

This artist’s impression shows the evolution of the Universe beginning with the Big Bang on the left followed by the appearance of the Cosmic Microwave Background. The formation of the first stars ends the cosmic dark ages, followed by the formation of galaxies. Image credit: M. Weiss / Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Does Small Fraction of Dark Matter Particles Carry Electric Mini-Charge?

Jun 4, 2018 by News Staff

A duo of astrophysicists is proposing a new model for the invisible material that makes up most of the Universe: it’s possible that a small fraction...

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 Find Methane Ice Dunes on Pluto

Jun 1, 2018 by News Staff

Wind-blown dunes are known on Earth, Mars, Venus, Saturn’s moon Titan, and Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko — and, now on Pluto, according to a...

The NOTCH2NL genes arose in human ancestors just before a dramatic increase in brain size and are involved in genetic defects associated with neurological disorders. Image credit: Gerd Altmann / Sci-News.com.

Newly-Identified Human-Specific Genes Influence Brain Size

Jun 1, 2018 by News Staff

A set of three nearly identical genes found only in humans, NOTCH2NL, appears to play a critical role in the development of our large brains, according...

Hubble Space Telescope Sees Messy Result of Galactic Collision: NGC 3256

Jun 1, 2018 by News Staff

A gorgeous new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows NGC 3256, an impressive example of a peculiar galaxy that is actually the relict of...

Megachirella wachtleri. Image credit: Davide Bonadonna.

Megachirella wachtleri: World’s Oldest Squamate Fossil Found

May 31, 2018 by News Staff

Paleontologists have unearthed the world’s oldest squamate fossil — 240-million-year-old specimen of a species called Megachirella wachtleri —...

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