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New Fossil Finds Push Back Origins of Homo sapiens by 115,000 Years

Jun 8, 2017 by News Staff

The fossilized remains of at least five individuals discovered at the archaeological site of Jebel Irhoud in Morocco have been dated at 315,000 years,...

The Humboldt’s flying squirrel (Glaucomys oregonensis), the third-known species of flying squirrel in North America and the 45th known species of flying squirrel in the world. Image credit: Nick Kerhoulas.

Cryptic New Species of Flying Squirrel Identified in North America

Jun 7, 2017 by News Staff

Scientists reporting in the Journal of Mammalogy on May 30 have identified a new species of flying squirrel living in the Pacific Coast region of North...

This Pluto mosaic was made from New Horizons LORRI images taken on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 49,700 miles (80,000 km). This view is projected from a point 1,118 miles (1,800 km) above Pluto’s equator, looking northeast over the dark, cratered Cthulhu Regio toward the bright, smooth expanse of icy plains called Sputnik Planum. Pluto’s North Pole is off the image to the left. This mosaic was produced with panchromatic images from the New Horizons LORRI camera, with color overlaid from the Ralph color mapper onboard New Horizons. Image credit: S.A. Stern et al.

Could Pluto’s Orbital Wobbles Create Its Mysterious Glacial Crazy-Paving?

Jun 6, 2017 by James Romero

Strange fields of polygons seen during New Horizons’ visit to Pluto could be explained by million year variations in the dwarf planet’s orbit caused...

KELT-9b: Newly-Discovered ‘Hot Jupiter’ Hotter Than Most Stars

Jun 6, 2017 by News Staff

A newly-discovered Jupiter-like exoplanet called KELT-9b is only 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (927 degrees Celsius, or 1,200 degrees Kelvin) cooler than our...

This series of dots with varying distances between them shows the slow dance of two members of the brown-dwarf binary system Luhman 16AB. The image is a stack of 12 images made over the course of three years with Hubble. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / L. Bedin et al.

Hubble Observes Graceful Dance of Luhman 16AB Brown Dwarfs

Jun 5, 2017 by Natali Anderson

Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to track the two components of Luhman 16AB, the third closest system to the Solar System. This...

LIGO’s gravitational wave detections. Image credit: LIGO Scientific Collaboration / ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery.

Scientists Detect Gravitational Waves for Third Time

Jun 2, 2017 by News Staff

Scientists from the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration have made a third detection of gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric...

In this illustration, an ultra-intense X-ray laser pulse from SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source knocks so many electrons out of a molecule’s iodine atom (right) that the iodine starts pulling in electrons from the rest of the molecule (lower left), like an electromagnetic version of a black hole. Many of the stolen electrons are also knocked out by the laser pulse; then the molecule explodes. Image credit: DESY / Science Communication Lab.

Researchers Create Molecular Version of Black Hole

Jun 2, 2017 by News Staff

When a team of physicists focused the full intensity of SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) Coherent X-ray Imaging instrument — the world’s...

Chimpanzees share the human capacity to build on the knowledge of others. Image credit: Marcel Langthim.

Chimpanzees Show ‘Cumulative Culture’

Jun 1, 2017 by News Staff

Chimpanzees share our human ability to amass knowledge, a new study led by a University of St Andrews researcher has found. Chimpanzees share the human...

This artist’s concept depicts a super-Earth-size exoplanet. Image credit: NASA Ames / JPL-Caltech / T. Pyle.

Gliese 625b: Potentially Habitable Super-Earth Spotted 21 Light-Years Away

Jun 1, 2017 by Sergio Prostak

Astronomers have discovered a super-Earth exoplanet orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 625. This artist’s concept depicts a super-Earth-size exoplanet....

Ringed Gas Giant Discovered Orbiting Young Star PDS 110

May 31, 2017 by Natali Anderson

Astronomers have identified that the light from PDS 110 is regularly blocked by a large object — and they predict that these eclipses are caused...

This digitally-colorized scanning electron microscopic image depicts Enterococcus faecalis. Image credit: Pete Wardell / CDC.

Modified Version of Vancomycin Could Fight Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

May 31, 2017 by News Staff

A team of researchers at the Scripps Research Institute has structurally modified vancomycin to make an already-powerful version of the antibiotic even...

This composite image shows the central region of the Milky Way Galaxy. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ESA / CXC / STScI.

Astrophysicists Solve Mystery of How Most Antimatter in Milky Way Galaxy Forms

May 30, 2017 by News Staff

Australian National University astrophysicist Dr. Roland Crocker and his colleagues from Europe, New Zealand, Australia and the United States have shown...

CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing can cause hundreds of unintended mutations. Image credit: Lisichik.

CRISPR-Cas9 Editing Can Cause Unexpected Mutations, Researchers Say

May 30, 2017 by News Staff

As CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing starts to move into clinical trials, a research team led by scientists at Columbia University Medical Center has found that...

Spinach (Spinacia oleracea). Image credit: George Hodan.

Spinach Genome Sequenced

May 29, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of researchers from Cornell University’s Boyce Thompson Institute and Shanghai Normal University has produced the first high-quality...

Artist’s impression of the Jovian aurora. Image credit: JAXA.

NASA’s Juno Mission Delivers Preliminary Science Results

May 26, 2017 by News Staff

NASA’s Juno mission is rewriting what planetary researchers thought they knew about Jupiter, the largest and most massive planet in our Solar System:...

Quasi[1]catenane. Image credit: Steemers et al, doi: 10.1038/ncomms15392.

Chemists Synthesize Pretzel-Like Molecules

May 26, 2017 by News Staff

A team of chemists at the Van ‘t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences of the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, has designed and synthesized...

An artist’s impression of a quasar and neighboring merging galaxy. The galaxies observed by Decarli et al are so distant that no detailed images are possible at present. This combination of images of nearby counterparts gives an impression of how they might look in more detail. Image credit: Max Planck Institute for Astronomy / NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Astronomers Discover New Kind of Galaxy: Rapidly Star-Forming Galaxies from Early Universe

May 25, 2017 by News Staff

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have discovered a new kind of galaxy which, although very old — formed...

Artist’s reconstruction of Luskhan itilensis. Image credit: Andrey Atuchin.

Paleontologists Identify New Pliosaur Species: Luskhan itilensis

May 25, 2017 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new species of marine reptile from the Cretaceous period has been identified from fossils found on the eroded banks of the Volga River. Artist’s reconstruction...

Graecopithecus freybergi lived 7.2 million years ago in the dust-laden savannah of the Athens Basin. This view from Graecopithecus freybergi’s place of discovery, Pyrgos Vassilissis, to the southeast over the plain of Athens and under a reddish cloud of Sahara dust; in the background: Mount Hymettos and Mount Lykabettos. Image credit: Velizar Simeonovski.

Graecopithecus freybergi: Oldest Hominin Lived in Europe, not Africa

May 24, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of paleoanthropologists, led by Professor Madelaine Böhme of the University of Tübingen, Germany, has analyzed 7.2 million-year-old...