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Cassini entering Saturn’s atmosphere. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Cassini Completes Its Historic Journey with Plunge into Atmosphere of Saturn

Sep 15, 2017 by News Staff

Today, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft made its final approach to Saturn and dove into the gas giant’s atmosphere. Loss of contact with the orbiter took...

Hypothetical Planet 9. Image credit: R. Hurt, IPAC / Caltech.

Planet 9, Probably Not a Scooped Up Exoplanet

Sep 14, 2017 by James Romero

Suggestions that the hypothesized Planet 9 formed outside our solar system, or was even stolen from a rival solar system, have been dealt a blow by investigations...

In this screenshot from the short animated film Cassini’s Grand Finale, the spacecraft is shown breaking apart after entering the atmosphere of Saturn. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Cassini is Ready for ‘Grand Finale’

Sep 14, 2017 by News Staff

On September 15, 2017, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will make its final approach to Saturn, but this encounter will be like no other. This time, Cassini...

Photomicrograph of Linguamyrmex vladi. Image credit: Barden et al, doi: 10.1111/syen.12253.

98-Million-Year-Old Burmese Amber Preserves Hell Ants

Sep 13, 2017 by Enrico de Lazaro

In a paper published in the journal Systematic Entomology, researchers described an unusual species of prehistoric trap-jaw ant found in several pieces...

Researchers from the University of Michigan have uncovered that the cause of turbulence in non-equilibrium atmospheric pressure plasma is due to heat-induced sound waves from the instrument’s electrodes. Image credit: Texas A&M University.

Heat-Induced Sound Waves Drive Turbulence in Plasma Therapy, Study Says

Sep 12, 2017 by Zvi Cramer

Non-equilibrium atmospheric pressure plasma jets are a promising mode of treating a variety of afflictions. However, unpredictable turbulence in the plasma...

UC Berkeley psychologists Professor Dacher Keltner and Alan Cowen uncovered 27 varieties of emotional experience. Image credit: Alexandra.

Psychologists Identify Twenty Seven Distinct Categories of Emotion

Sep 11, 2017 by News Staff

Using sophisticated statistical models to analyze the responses of people to emotionally evocative short videos, University of California, Berkeley researchers...

This artist’s illustration depicts a two billion year old star called Gliese 176 (GJ 176), located 30 light-years from Earth, with the exoplanet Gliese 176b in orbit around it. The large dark area is a ‘coronal hole,’ a phenomenon associated with low levels of magnetic activity. Image credit: NASA / CXC / M. Weiss.

Astronomers Use X-Rays to Determine Hospitability of Sun-Like Stars for Extraterrestrial Life

Sep 11, 2017 by News Staff

X-rays emitted by a Sun-like star may provide valuable information about whether its planetary system will be hospitable to life, a new study suggests....

Wells et al estimate that there should be at least 10 -- currently undiscovered -- exoplanets which are favorably located to detect the Earth and are capable of sustaining life as we know it. Image credit: NASA.

Alien Astronomers On At Least Nine Known Exoplanets Could Spot Earth

Sep 8, 2017 by News Staff

Queen’s University Belfast astronomer Robert Wells and co-authors have turned exoplanet-hunting on its head, in a new study that instead looks at how...

According to the team, music listening can be easily integrated into daily life and may provide an innovative means to facilitate creative cognition in an efficient way in various scientific, educational and organizational settings when creative thinking is needed. Image credit: Gerd Altmann.

Happy Music Boosts Divergent Creative Thinking, New Study Finds

Sep 8, 2017 by News Staff

A new study published in the journal PLoS ONE has found that listening to ‘happy music’ (i.e. classical music that elicits positive mood and is high...

Pluto’s first official surface-feature names are marked on this map, compiled from images and data gathered by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft during its flight through the Pluto system in 2015. Image credit: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI / Ross Beyer.

Pluto’s Surface Features Get Official Names

Sep 7, 2017 by News Staff

The International Astronomical Union (IAU), the internationally recognized authority for naming celestial bodies and their surface features, has officially...

‘Vampires’ May Have Been Real People with Erythropoietic Protoporphyria, Researchers Say

Sep 7, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of researchers, led by Dr. Barry Paw of the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, has identified a genetic...

An X9.3-class solar flare flashes in the middle of the Sun on September 6, 2017. This image was captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory at 11:58:42 UTC and shows light in the 304 angstrom wavelength. Image credit: NASA / GSFC / SDO.

NASA’s Sun Watching Observatory Sees Two Powerful Solar Flares

Sep 7, 2017 by Sergio Prostak

On September 6, 2017, an active region on the Sun released two X-class solar flares, captured here by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). An X9.3-class...

Zika Virus Kills Glioblastoma Stem Cells, New Research Shows

Sep 6, 2017 by News Staff

In a research paper published this week in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, scientists report that Zika virus could be used to target and kill brain...

Mostafavi et al found a drop in some harmful genetic mutations in longer-lived people. Image credit: Darryl Leja, NHGRI / CC BY 2.0.

Natural Selection is Still Happening in Modern Human Populations, Major Genetic Study Finds

Sep 6, 2017 by News Staff

Genetic variants linked to Alzheimer’s disease and heavy smoking are less frequent in people with longer lifespans, suggesting that natural selection...

Zeolitic ice (left) and aeroice (right) are illustrated: their structure can be regarded as combinations of a couple of polyhedral building blocks. In molecular scale, each polygonal face of the polyhedra is made of water molecules (left bottom); yellow lines are hydrogen bonds. Image credit: Masakazu Matsumoto / CC BY 2.0.

Scientists Predict Existence of Ultralow-Density Ices: ‘Aeroices’

Sep 6, 2017 by News Staff

A research team at Okayama University in Japan has theoretically predicted a new class of ice phases, called aeroices, likely the most stable solid phases...

Life restoration of the Upper Cretaceous plesiosaur Morturneria seymourensis. Image credit: Texas Tech University.

Antarctic Plesiosaur Filtered Food Like Modern Baleen Whales

Sep 4, 2017 by News Staff

In 1984, Texas Tech University paleontologists Sankar Chatterjee and Bryan Small unearthed the fossilized skull of a previously unknown marine reptile...

Aepyornithomimus tugrikinensis. Image credit: Masato Hattori.

New Ostrich-Like Dinosaur Discovered in Mongolia: Aepyornithomimus tugrikinensis

Sep 4, 2017 by Natali Anderson

Paleontologists have found fossil fragments from a new species of ornithomimosaur (ostrich-mimic dinosaur) that walked the Earth between 84 and 72 million...

The Trachilos footprints were discovered by Dr. Gerard Gierlinski, a paleontologist at the Polish Geological Institute, by chance when he was on holiday on Crete in 2002. Dr. Gierlinski identified the footprints as those of a mammal. In 2010, he returned to the site together with Dr. Grzegorz Niedzwiedzki, a Polish paleontologist at Uppsala University, to study the footprints in detail. Together they came to the conclusion that the footprints were made by hominins. Image credit: Andrzej Boczarowski.

5.6-Million-Year-Old Hominin-Like Footprints in Crete Challenge Theories of Human Evolution

Sep 1, 2017 by News Staff

Researchers have found late Miocene footprints — which show hominin-like characteristics — near the village of Trachilos, west of Kissamos,...

This artist’s concept allows us to imagine what it would be like to stand on the surface of TRAPPIST-1f. Because this planet is thought to be tidally locked to its star, meaning the same face of the planet is always pointed at the star, there would be a region called the terminator that perpetually divides day and night. If the night side is icy, the day side might give way to liquid water in the area where sufficient starlight hits the surface. One of the unusual features of TRAPPIST-1 planets is how close they are to each other -- so close that other planets could be visible in the sky from the surface of each one. In this view, the planets in the sky correspond to TRAPPIST1e (top left crescent), d (middle crescent) and c (bright dot to the lower right of the crescents). TRAPPIST-1e would appear about the same size as the Moon and TRAPPIST1-c is on the far side of the star. The star itself, an ultra-cool dwarf, would appear about three times larger than our own Sun does in Earth’s skies. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Catlech.

TRAPPIST-1’s Outer Planets May Harbor Water, New Study Finds

Sep 1, 2017 by News Staff

In a research paper to appear in the Astronomical Journal (arXiv.org preprint), astronomers from MIT, the Geneva Observatory and elsewhere report that...