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Bizarre New Species of Frog Discovered in India: Nasikabatrachus bhupathi

Aug 28, 2017 by Natali Anderson

Herpetologists are claiming they have discovered a new species of purple frog living in the Western Ghats, India. The Bhupathy’s purple frog (Nasikabatrachus...

Oxo Crater is the second-brightest feature on Ceres. Only Occator’s central area is brighter. Oxo lies near the 0 degree meridian that defines the edge of many Ceres maps, making this small feature easy to overlook. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft took this image in its low-altitude mapping orbit, at a distance of 385 km from the surface of Ceres. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA / PSI.

Crater Slope Avalanches Reveal Ceres’ Surface Water Ice

Aug 25, 2017 by James Romero

Surface water ice found within a brilliantly bright crater on the dwarf planet Ceres is being exposed by avalanches reprocessing impact deposits in just...

Plimpton 322, a 3,700-year-old Babylonian tablet held in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University in New York.

Mathematicians Crack Mystery of Babylonian Clay Tablet ‘Plimpton 322’

Aug 25, 2017 by News Staff

Plimpton 322, the most famous of Old Babylonian tablets (1900-1600 BC), is the world’s oldest trigonometric table, possibly used by Babylonian scholars...

A rendering of Inermorostrum xenops. Image credit: Robert Boessenecker.

Toothless Dwarf Dolphin Provides Insights into Cetacean Evolution

Aug 24, 2017 by News Staff

A new species of extinct dwarf dolphin that lived about 30 million years ago (Oligocene epoch) and possessed adaptations for suction feeding has been identified...

Life reconstruction of Shingopana songwensis. Image credit: Mark Witton, www.markwitton.com.

Shingopana songwensis: New Titanosaur Species Discovered in Tanzania

Aug 24, 2017 by News Staff

A new species of long-necked titanosaurian dinosaur has been unearthed in southwestern Tanzania. Life reconstruction of Shingopana songwensis. Image credit:...

This is the most detailed image ever of the red supergiant star Antares, or any other star apart from the Sun. Image credit: K. Ohnaka / ESO.

Antares: Astronomers Snap Most Detailed Image of Star That’s Not the Sun

Aug 23, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers from Chile and Germany has managed to capture an image of unprecedented detail of another star — that isn’t...

Underwater archaeologists explore the submerged portion of Port Royal. Image credit: Texas A&M University.

Underwater Archaeologists Uncovering Secrets of Sunken Pirate City

Aug 23, 2017 by News Staff

Underwater archaeologists using a new state-of-the-art technology are mapping out the submerged portion of the 17th-century town of Port Royal in Jamaica. Underwater...

Moon’s Interior Likely Contains No Water, New Research Says

Aug 22, 2017 by News Staff

A new study led by a Scripps Institution of Oceanography researcher contradicts a recently published paper, which suggested the interior of Earth’s only...

This illustration depicts a 3D computer-generated image of a group of clindamycin-resistant GBS bacteria, which were arranged in chains. The artistic recreation was based upon scanning electron microscopic (SEM) imagery. If you look carefully, you’ll be able to see a number of these organisms undergoing the process of cell division along the long axis of their respective chains. Image credit: James Archer / CDC.

Study: Breast Milk Oligosaccharides Kill Group B-Streptococcus, Block Biofilm Formation

Aug 21, 2017 by News Staff

Streptococcus agalactiae (Group B-Streptococcus, or GBS) is a type of bacteria that can cause invasive infections in people of all ages. A research team...

(3122) Florence will pass safely by Earth on September 1, at a distance of about 4.4 million miles. Image credit: University of Colorado.

Asteroid Florence to Fly Safely Past Earth on September 1

Aug 21, 2017 by Enrico de Lazaro

A relatively large near-Earth asteroid will safely fly by pur planet on September 1, 2017, according to NASA. (3122) Florence will pass safely by Earth...

An artist’s reconstruction of Anatoliadelphys maasae. Image credit: Peter Schouten.

Cat-Sized Marsupial Relative Lived in Turkey 43 Million Years Ago

Aug 18, 2017 by Enrico de Lazaro

Fossils discovered in Turkey represent a new species that is a previously unknown relative of modern-day marsupials, according to a new paper published...

Gliese 832 Hosts at Least Three Exoplanets, Astrophysicists Say

Aug 18, 2017 by Natali Anderson

An international team of researchers from the Kiepenheuer Institute for Solar Physics and the University of Texas at Arlington has spotted signs of an...

Tropidogyne pentaptera, holotype. Scale bars -1 mm. Image credit: George O. Poinar, Jr. / Kenton L. Chambers.

Cretaceous Flowers Found Preserved in Burmese Amber

Aug 17, 2017 by News Staff

In a paper published recently in the journal Palaeodiversity, U.S. paleontologists described a new species of angiosperm flower, Tropidogyne pentaptera,...

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...