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This artist’s conception shows a hypothetical tidally-locked planet with two moons orbiting in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star. Image credit: D. Aguilar / Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Tidally-Locked Planets More Common than Previously Thought, Astronomer Says

Aug 16, 2017 by News Staff

Dr. Rory Barnes, an assistant professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrobiology Program at the University of Washington, arrived at this finding...

This illustration shows a likely configuration of a gravitational lensing system discovered by the team: the milli-lens is located in or near the intervening spiral galaxy; the lens is magnifying blobs of jet material within the active galaxy PKS1413+135, but the blobs are too small to be seen in the radio image (top left); only when the blobs move far away from the yellow core do they expand and are visible as the pink blobs in the image. Image credit: Anthony Readhead / Caltech / MOJAVE.

Gravitational ‘Milli-Lens’ Reveals Clumps of Hot Gas Streaming from Supermassive Black Hole

Aug 16, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers has found evidence for a unique gravitational lensing system, in which a massive star cluster is magnifying an extremely...

A candidate event of light-by-light scattering, a very rare process in which two photons interact and change direction, measured in the ATLAS detector. Image credit: CERN.

CERN Physicists Find Direct Evidence of High Energy Light-By-Light Scattering

Aug 15, 2017 by News Staff

Physicists from the ATLAS experiment, one of the four major experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland, have found the first direct...

Antarctica. Image credit: Angie Agostino.

91 New Subglacial Volcanoes Discovered in West Antarctica

Aug 15, 2017 by News Staff

A team of geoscientists from the University of Edinburgh, UK, has discovered an extensive volcanic range beneath West Antarctica’s massive ice sheet. Location...

Artist’s reconstruction of an Asian caveman. Image credit: Peter Schouten.

Anatomically Modern Humans Arrived in Southeast Asia Far Earlier than Previously Thought

Aug 14, 2017 by News Staff

New excavations of a cave site in western Sumatra called Lida Ajer indicate modern humans reached Southeast Asia between 73,000 to 63,000 years ago —...

This illustration shows what the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system might look like from a vantage point near TRAPPIST-1f (at right). Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

TRAPPIST-1 Planetary System Could Be 10 Billion Years Old, Astronomers Say

Aug 14, 2017 by News Staff

A research team says the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system — a compact system of at least seven exoplanets with sizes similar to Earth — formed between...

Life reconstruction of Patagotitan mayorum. Image credit: Jorge Gonzalez.

Meet Patagotitan mayorum, Biggest Animal Ever to Walk Earth

Aug 11, 2017 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists from the Museo Egidio Feruglio in Argentina have discovered and described a new supermassive titanosaur species. At about 122 feet (37...

Maiopatagium furculiferum in Jurassic forest in crepuscular (dawn and dusk) light: a mother with a baby in suspending roosting posture, climbing on tree trunk, and in gliding. Image credit: April I. Neander, University of Chicago.

Gliding Proto-Mammals Lived among Jurassic Dinosaurs

Aug 11, 2017 by News Staff

Dinosaurs that roamed what is now China some 160 million years ago had two ‘flying’ neighbors — strange creatures with long limbs, long hand,...

Artist’s illustration of a four-planet system. Image credit: Mark A. Garlick, University of Warwick / Space-art.co.uk.

Four Exoplanets Detected around Nearby Star Tau Ceti

Aug 10, 2017 by News Staff

A multinational group of astronomers has detected four possible alien worlds circling tau Ceti, which is less than 12 light-years from our Solar System. Artist’s...

The solar eclipse petroglyph in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Image credit: J. McKim Malville, University of Colorado.

Strange Petroglyph in Chaco Canyon May Represent Ancient Total Solar Eclipse

Aug 10, 2017 by News Staff

A petroglyph on the south face of Piedra del Sol, a free-standing rock in New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon, may depict the solar corona observed during the...

The living scene of Corythoraptor jacobsi. Image credit: Zhao Chuang.

Corythoraptor jacobsi: New Species of Bird-Like Dinosaur Discovered in China

Aug 8, 2017 by Sergio Prostak

An international team of paleontologists has identified from an almost complete skeleton found in China a massive oviraptorid dinosaur with a toothless...

This image from the Keck Telescope shows an extremely bright, nearly circular storm system near Neptune’s equator. Image credit: Ned Molter & Imke de Pater, University of California, Berkeley / C. Alvarez, W. M. Keck Observatory.

Giant, Extremely Bright Storm System Spotted in Neptune’s Atmosphere

Aug 8, 2017 by News Staff

An unusually bright storm system nearly the size of Earth has been spotted in the atmosphere of Neptune, baffling researchers because it is located near...

Artist’s impression of a cloud of trapped antihydrogen atoms. Image credit: Chukman So.

Physicists Observe Hyperfine Spectrum of Antihydrogen

Aug 7, 2017 by News Staff

In a paper published in the August 3, 2017 issue of the journal Nature, physicists with the ALPHA collaboration, a multinational project based at CERN,...

Ancient Greek by Albert Kretschmer in Costumes of All Nations, 1882.

Minoans and Mycenaeans Descended from Anatolian Migrants, Ancient DNA Study Suggests

Aug 4, 2017 by News Staff

Researchers have obtained and analyzed genome sequences from the ancient Minoans and Mycenaeans, who lived 3,000 to 5,000 years ago and were Europe’s...

A reconstruction of Borealopelta markmitchelli indicating the stressful life it must have lived with the constant chance of being eaten. Image credit: Robert Nicholls.

Meet Borealopelta markmitchelli, ‘Best-Preserved Armored Dinosaur’

Aug 3, 2017 by News Staff

An analysis of the fossilized skin of Borealopelta markmitchelli, the most well-preserved of the armored dinosaurs ever unearthed, has revealed that the...

This true color image of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot was taken by the JunoCam imager onboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft on July 10, 2017. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Björn Jónsson.

NASA Unveils True Color Close-Up of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot

Aug 3, 2017 by News Staff

NASA’s Juno spacecraft took this stunning photo of Jupiter’s most distinctive feature, its Great Red Spot, from orbit. This true color image of Jupiter’s...

Flaring, active regions of the Sun are highlighted in this image combining observations from several telescopes. High-energy X-rays from NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) are shown in blue; low-energy X-rays from Japan’s Hinode spacecraft are green; and extreme ultraviolet light from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is yellow and red. All three telescopes captured their solar images around the same time on April 29, 2015. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / GSFC / JAXA.

Sun’s Core Rotates Nearly 4 Times Faster than Its Surface, SOHO Data Reveal

Aug 2, 2017 by News Staff

Using data from the NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), solar physicists have found evidence of a type of seismic wave (gravity waves,...

Overfat prevalence categories in 30 of the most developed countries. Image credit: Maffetone et al.

Up To 90% of Men in the United States and Other Developed Countries are Overfat

Aug 1, 2017 by News Staff

The term ‘overfat’ refers to the presence of excess body fat that can impair health, even for normal weight individuals. In the U.S., New Zealand,...

Electron microscopic images (false color) of hypothalamic neural stem/progenitor cells. Right - high magnification of the outlined area on the left; arrows indicate the presence of multivescular bodies. Image credit: Zhang et al, doi: 10.1038/nature23282.

Hypothalamic Stem Cells Control Aging in Mice

Jul 31, 2017 by News Staff

In a study in mice, a research team at Albert Einstein College of Medicine has found that stem cells in the hypothalamus, a region of the brain that controls...