Featured News

Jun 26, 2018 by News Staff

A team of leading astronomers, biologists and geologists have come together under the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS), a NASA research coordination network dedicated to the study of planetary habitability, to make an inventory of the most promising signs of life, called biosignatures. Artist’s conception of what life could look like on the surface of an exoplanet. Image credit: NASA. NExSS considered how to interpret the presence of biosignatures,...

Jun 25, 2018 by News Staff

Brindabellaspis stensioi, a remarkable placoderm fish that swam about 400 million years ago (Early Devonian period), had a long snout, reminiscent of a...

Jun 22, 2018 by News Staff

The NASA Kepler spacecraft’s reborn K2 mission announced this week the discovery of 78 new potential exoplanets: 30 high-quality planet candidates and...

Jun 21, 2018 by News Staff

Herpesviruses 6A and 7 (HHV-6A and HHV-7) — two of the nine known members of the Herpesviridae family that infect humans — are found in the...

Jun 20, 2018 by Sergio Prostak

An extrasolar planet larger than the Earth has been discovered orbiting a nearby cool star, thanks to data gathered by NASA’s Kepler/K2 mission. Artist’s...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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)...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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,...