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NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Launches Successfully

Illustration of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe approaching the Sun. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Steve Gribben.
Aug 13, 2018 by News Staff

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe launched yesterday (August 12) from Space Launch Complex-37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, rising off the pad atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket at 3:31 a.m. EDT. At 5:33 a.m. EDT, the mission operations manager reported that the car-sized spacecraft was healthy and operating normally. The probe will offer a first glimpse of regions of solar wind, helping scientists understand how the Sun’s...

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An artist’s impression of an ultrahot Jupiter. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Ultrahot Jupiters Have Starlike Atmospheres, Astronomers Say

Aug 10, 2018 by News Staff

Recent observations by NASA’s space telescopes of ultrahot Jupiter-like exoplanets have surprised astronomers. The spectra of these planets have suggested...

O’Malley et al find quakes can systematically trigger other ones on opposite side of the globe. This image shows a high school running track in Taiwan crossed by the Chelungpu fault in an earthquake in September 1999. Image credit: Bob Yeats, Oregon State University.

Powerful Earthquakes Can Trigger Other Ones on Opposite Side of Earth, New Research Shows

Aug 9, 2018 by News Staff

A big earthquake can not only cause other quakes, but large ones, and on the opposite side of our planet, according to new research from Oregon State University. O’Malley...

The red fox (Vulpes vulpes). Image credit: Dia Picard.

Researchers Sequence Red Fox Genome

Aug 8, 2018 by News Staff

An international team of scientists has successfully sequenced the genome of the red fox (Vulpes vulpes). The red fox (Vulpes vulpes). Image credit: Dia...

An artist’s rendition of NWA 11119 (far right bottom corner of illustration), the oldest-ever igneous meteorite. Image credit: University of New Mexico.

4.56-Billion-Year-Old Igneous Meteorite Contains Clues to Planetary Building Blocks

Aug 7, 2018 by News Staff

Northwest Africa (NWA) 11119, a stone meteorite found in December 2016 in Mauritania, is the world’s oldest igneous meteorite, according to new research. An...

Artist’s conception of SIMP01365, an object with 12.7 times the mass of Jupiter, but a magnetic field 200 times more powerful than Jupiter’s. Image credit: Chuck Carter, Caltech / NRAO / AUI / NSF.

Free-Floating Exoplanet Has Extremely Strong Magnetic Field

Aug 6, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using NSF’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array have detected a ‘rogue’ planetary-mass object with a surprisingly powerful magnetic field. Artist’s...

Reconstruction of Homo floresiensis. Image credit: Kinez Riza / Atelier Elisabeth Daynes, Sangiran Museum.

Flores Pygmies Show No Genetic Link to Mysterious Homo floresiensis

Aug 3, 2018 by News Staff

Modern pygmies living in a village near the Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, where fossils of the dwarfed human species Homo floresiensis...

Pulmonary ionocytes (orange) extend through neighboring epithelial cells in the upper respiratory tract of the mouse, to the surface of the epithelial lining; cell nuclei in cyan. Image credit: Montoro et al, doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0393-7.

Scientists Discover New Type of Lung Cell

Aug 3, 2018 by News Staff

Two independent teams of scientists have identified a rare cell type in airway tissue — previously uncharacterized in the literature — that...

An artist’s impression of the collision of two stars, like the ones that formed CK Vulpeculae. The inset illustrates the inner structure of one red giant before the merger. A thin layer of 26Al (brown) surrounds a helium core. An extended convective envelope (not to scale), which forms the outermost layer of the star, can mix material from inside the star to the surface, but it never reaches deep enough to dredge 26Al up to the surface. Only a collision with another star can disperse 26Al. Image credit: NRAO / AUI / NSF / S. Dagnello.

Radioactive Molecule Found in Stellar Merger Remnant

Aug 2, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Northern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) have made the first definitive...

Exoplanet Hunters Create Reference Catalog of Solar System Bodies’ Light-Fingerprints

Aug 1, 2018 by News Staff

A team of astronomers at Carl Sagan Institute, Cornell University, has produced a reference catalog of spectra and geometric albedos for 19 objects that...

An artist’s impression of a terraformed Mars. Image credit: Daein Ballard / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Mars Terraforming is Not Possible Using Currently Available Technology, Researchers Say

Jul 31, 2018 by News Staff

On Mars, the atmospheric pressure is around 0.6% of Earth’s. Any liquid water on the surface would very quickly evaporate or freeze. One of the challenges...

An artist’s impression of HD 26965b and its star. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

HD 26965b: Super-Earth Found Just 16 Light-Years Away

Jul 30, 2018 by Natali Anderson

Astronomers have discovered an exoplanet with several times the mass of the Earth orbiting a nearby star. A paper reporting this discovery is published...

Einstein’s General Relativity Passes Black Hole Test

Jul 27, 2018 by News Staff

At the center of our Milky Way Galaxy lies the 4-million-solar-mass black hole named Sagittarius A*. This gravitational monster is surrounded by a group...

An artist’s impression of Lingwulong shenqi. Image credit: Zhang Zongda.

New Sauropod Dinosaur Unveiled: Lingwulong shenqi

Jul 26, 2018 by News Staff

Fossils of a diplodocoid sauropod dinosaur unearthed more than a decade ago in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, northwest China, have been recognized as...

An artist’s impression of ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft. Image credit: ESA / ATG Medialab / DLR / FU Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Mars Express Finds Huge Reservoir of Liquid Water below Martian Surface

Jul 25, 2018 by News Staff

ESA’s Mars Express orbiter has used radar signals bounced through underground layers of ice to find evidence of liquid water trapped below the south...

The surface of Europa looms large in this newly-reprocessed color view; image scale is 1.6 km per pixel; north on Europa is at right. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SETI Institute.

NASA Unveils Radiation Maps of Europa

Jul 25, 2018 by News Staff

Jupiter’s moon Europa is one of the most compelling targets in the search for life beyond Earth. However, its water-ice surface is affected by the harsh...

Andromeda Galaxy Merged with Massive Neighbor 2 Billion Years Ago

Jul 24, 2018 by News Staff

The Andromeda galaxy, also known as Messier 31, collided and merged with a large galaxy approximately 2 billion years ago, according to new research. Even...

On Earth, the Northern and Southern lights occur when the solar wind (electrically charged particles from the Sun) follow our planet’s geomagnetic field lines to the poles and collide with the upper atmosphere. Mars lacks a global magnetic field, so instead the solar wind piles up in front of Mars in a bow shock, which blocks charged particles from reaching the bulk of the atmosphere. However, in a process first observed by NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft, some solar wind protons can slip past the bow shock by first bonding with electrons from the Martian upper atmosphere to form hydrogen atoms. Because these hydrogen atoms are electrically neutral, they can pass through the bow shock and go on to create an ultraviolet proton aurora on the dayside of Mars. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Proton Aurora Discovered on Mars

Jul 24, 2018 by News Staff

NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) spacecraft has found a new type of Martian aurora that occurs over much of the day side of the...

This mosaic of Cerealia Facula is based on images obtained by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft in its second extended mission, from an altitude as low as about 21 miles (34 km). The contrast in resolution obtained by the two phases is visible here, reflected by a few gaps in the high-resolution coverage. This image is superposed to a similar scene acquired in the low-altitude mapping orbit of the mission from an altitude of about 240 miles (385 km). The increased resolution afforded by the low altitude is revealing intimate details about the relationships between bright and dark materials across the facula, which will help resolve the mystery of its origin. Cerealia Facula is located at about 19.7 degrees north latitude and 239.6 degrees east longitude. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA / PSI.

Dawn Shows Ceres’ Mysterious Bright Spots in Spectacular Detail

Jul 23, 2018 by News Staff

New images of Ceres, taken by NASA’s Dawn orbiter, show the bright areas in sharper detail than ever before. This mosaic of Cerealia Facula is based...

The occasional use of stone tools as ‘strike-a-lights’ was a technocultural feature shared among Neanderthals in France.

Neanderthals Could Start Fires with Mineral Pyrite and Stone Tools

Jul 23, 2018 by News Staff

New research published in the journal Scientific Reports provides clear evidence that Neanderthals made fire by striking a piece of pyrite, the yellow...

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