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Astronomers Characterize Wolf 1061 Planetary System

Jan 20, 2017 by Enrico de Lazaro

A research team led by San Francisco State University astronomer Stephen Kane has obtained new observations of Wolf 1061, known to host at least three super-Earth exoplanets. The team’s findings will appear in the Astrophysical Journal (arXiv.org preprint). An artist’s rendering of the exoplanet Wolf 1061c. Image credit: NASA / Ames / JPL-Caltech. The very dim M-dwarf star Wolf 1061 is one of our closest neighbors. It is located in the constellation...

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A pair of thylacines, a male and female, c. 1905. Image credit: Smithsonian Institutional Archives / E. J. Keller, National Zoological Park.

Thylacine Had Brain Structure Suited to Predatory Life Style

Jan 19, 2017 by News Staff

A duo of researchers from the United States and Australia has used an imaging technique to reconstruct the brain architecture and neural networks of the...

A watercolor drawing of the durian (Durio zibethinus), c. 1819-1823. The drawing is one of 477 natural history drawings of plants and animals of Malacca and Singapore commissioned by William Farquhar.

Chemists Identify Key Compounds Responsible for Durian’s Pungent Odor

Jan 19, 2017 by Natali Anderson

A team of researchers in Germany has analyzed a set of stinky and fruity chemical ingredients and found that the overall odor of durian pulp could be mimicked...

An artist’s impression showing the increasing effect of ram-pressure stripping in removing gas from the spiral galaxy NGC 4921 and its satellite galaxies. Image credit: ICRAR / NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage Team / STScI / AURA.

‘Ram-Pressure Stripping’ Shuts Off Star Formation in Galaxies, Astronomers Say

Jan 18, 2017 by News Staff

According to a new study published this week in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a phenomenon called ram-pressure stripping is more...

‘Clam-shell’ view of Side A (top) and B showing black dendrites against the background of the brown mudstone. The flake, only shown re-attached on Side A, is the result of a post-excavation fracture of the specimen. Arrows point to large inclusion visible on Sides A and B. Image credit: Davorka Radovčić et al, doi: 10.1016/j.crpv.2016.04.013.

Neanderthals Capable of Incorporating Symbolic Objects into Their Culture, Discovery Suggests

Jan 18, 2017 by Enrico de Lazaro

An unusual limestone rock found at an archaeological site in Croatia indicates that Neanderthals were capable of incorporating symbolic objects into their...

Roasted beans of Arabica coffee (Coffea arabica). Image credit: University of California, Davis.

Researchers Sequence Genome of Arabica Coffee

Jan 17, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of researchers led by University of California, Davis, geneticists has publicly released the first public genome sequence of Arabica...

The ruby seadragon (Phyllopteryx dewysea). Image credit: Scripps Institution of Oceanography / Western Australia Museum.

Ruby Seadragon Filmed Alive in Ocean for First Time

Jan 16, 2017 by Natali Anderson

A team of marine biologists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Western Australia Museum has captured on video the first-ever field sighting...

The six most common elements of life on Earth (including more than 97% of the mass of a human body) are carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur and phosphorus. The colors in the spectra show dips, the size of which reveal the amount of these elements in the atmosphere of a star. The human body on the left uses the same color coding to evoke the important role these elements play in different parts of our bodies, from oxygen in our lungs to phosphorous in our bones (although in reality all elements are found all across the body). In the background is an artist’s impression of the Galaxy, with cyan dots to show the APOGEE measurements of the oxygen abundance in different stars; brighter dots indicate higher oxygen abundance. Image credit: Dana Berry / SkyWorks Digital Inc / SDSS.

Astronomers Map ‘Elements of Life’ in Milky Way Galaxy

Jan 14, 2017 by News Staff

At the 229th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Jan. 5, 2017, astronomers from the SDSS/APOGEE (Sloan Digital Sky Survey/Apache Point Observatory...

An adult female of the Skywalker hoolock gibbon (Hoolock tianxing). Image credit: Fan Peng-Fei.

Hoolock tianxing: New Species of Gibbon Discovered in Myanmar and China

Jan 13, 2017 by Natali Anderson

A new species of hoolock gibbon has been discovered in eastern Myanmar and southwestern China by an international team of scientists from the United States,...

Reconstruction of the hyolith Haplophrentis on the Cambrian sea floor. Image credit: D. Dufault / Royal Ontario Museum.

Hyoliths: Mysterious Cambrian Animals Classified as Lophophorates

Jan 12, 2017 by News Staff

Paleontologists have finally determined what hyoliths — a group of extinct marine creatures — actually are. Reconstruction of the hyolith Haplophrentis...

Stellar streams around the Milky Way Galaxy. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / R. Hurt, SSC & Caltech.

Milky Way’s Most Distant Stars Might Be Ripped from Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy

Jan 12, 2017 by News Staff

Milky Way’s 11 most distant stars are located roughly 300,000 light-years away from us. According to a team of astronomers at Harvard University, five...

This artist’s impression shows a Milky Way-type galaxy, surrounded by a large halo of blue, faint light, made of Lyman-alpha photons. Image credit: L. Calçada / ESO.

Photons Struggle to Escape Early Milky Way-Type Galaxies

Jan 11, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers has discovered enormous halos of blue, faint light — made of so-called Lyman-alpha photons — around early...

A vast alluvial fan in the XinJiang province of China. The right side is the active part of the fan, and appears blue from water currently flowing in the many small streams. The image was acquired on May 2, 2002. Image credit: NASA / GSFC / METI / ERSDAC / JAROS / US-Japan ASTER Science Team.

Have We Seen Evidence of Titan’s Catastrophic Methane Downpours?

Jan 9, 2017 by James Romero

Attempts to investigate the origin of giant wedge-shaped sedimentary structures on Saturn’s moon Titan using analogues in Death Valley, California has...

Earth-Moon System as Seen from Mars Orbit

Jan 9, 2017 by News Staff

This image composite combines the best Earth image with the best Moon image from four sets of images acquired on November 20, 2016, by the High Resolution...

This illustration shows several comets speeding across a vast protoplanetary disk of gas and dust and heading straight for the youthful, central star HD 172555. These exocomets will eventually plunge into the star and vaporize. HD 172555 represents the third extrasolar system where astronomers have detected doomed, wayward comets. All of the systems are young, under 40 million years old. Image credit: NASA / ESA / A. Feild & G. Bacon, STScI.

Astronomers Detect Exocomets Falling into HD 172555

Jan 8, 2017 by News Staff

Exocomets are plunging into HD 172555, a nearby young star surrounded by a debris disk, according to a team of astronomers led by Carol Grady of NASA’s...

PGC 1000714 (center). Image credit: Ryan Beauchemin.

Double-Ringed Elliptical Galaxy Spotted 372 Million Light-Years Away

Jan 6, 2017 by News Staff

Astronomers have spotted for the first time an elliptical galaxy with two fairly round rings. PGC 1000714 (center). Image credit: Centre de Données astronomiques...

In this extended color image of Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, rounded and bizarrely textured mountains, named the Tartarus Dorsa, rise up along Pluto’s day-night terminator and show intricate but puzzling patterns of blue-gray ridges and reddish material in between. This view, roughly 330 miles (530 km) across, combines blue, red and infrared images taken by New Horizons’ Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera on July 14, 2015. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

New Horizons Spots Penitentes in Pluto’s Tartarus Dorsa Region

Jan 6, 2017 by Enrico de Lazaro

Planetary researchers using data from NASA’s New Horizons mission have found evidence of snow and ice features on the dwarf planet Pluto that, until...

The globally distributed dishes of the European VLBI Network are linked with each other and the 305-m William E. Gordon Telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Together they have localized FRB121102’s exact position within its host galaxy. Image credit: Danielle Futselaar, www.artsource.nl.

Repeating ‘Fast Radio Burst’ Found to Originate from Extremely Distant Dwarf Galaxy

Jan 5, 2017 by News Staff

A large international team of astronomers has uncovered the cosmological source of a repeating ‘fast radio burst’ known as FRB 121102. The globally...

Reconstruction of the early chimaera Dwykaselachus oosthuizeni. Image credit: Kristen Tietjen.

Dwykaselachus oosthuizeni: Permian Fossil Reveals Origins of Chimaeras

Jan 4, 2017 by News Staff

CT scans of the fossilized skull of Dwykaselachus oosthuizeni — a shark-like fish that lived during the Permian period, around 280 million years...

This image of Orion A is composed of near-infrared observations from ESO’s VISTA survey telescope. Image credit: ESO / VISION Survey.

VISTA Captures Detailed Image of Orion A

Jan 4, 2017 by Enrico de Lazaro

This striking image, captured by ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), shows the Orion A molecular cloud, the nearest known...

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