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The East Antarctic Plateau is a windswept desolate expanse the size off Australia with few bases or instruments. Image credit: Ted Scambos, National Snow and Ice Data Center / University of Colorado Boulder.

Coldest Place on Earth: Study Explains East Antarctica’s Ultra-Low Surface Temperatures

Jun 26, 2018 by News Staff

When Dr. Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, and co-authors first...

Exoplanet Biosignatures: Will We Be Able to Recognize Extraterrestrial Life If We See It?

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...

Early Devonian Fish Had Platypus-Like Snout

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...

An artist’s impression of HD 73344b. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

NASA’s Kepler K2 Mission Discovers 78 New Exoplanet Candidates

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...

An electron micrograph of human herpesvirus-6 particles. Image credit: Bernard Kramarsky / Laboratory Of Tumor Cell Biology, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Scientists Find High Levels of Two Herpesvirus Strains in Brains of Alzheimer’s Disease Patients

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...

Artist’s impression of the exoplanet Wolf 503b and its host star. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Wolf 503b: Large Exoplanet Found 145 Light-Years Away

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...

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.

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

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...

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...