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Damian Scarf et al. demonstrate that pigeons (Columba livia) trained to discriminate words from non-words picked up on the orthographic properties that define words and used this knowledge to identify words they had never seen before. Image credit: Damian Scarf / University of Otago.

Study: Pigeons Can Learn to Visually Recognize Words

Sep 18, 2016 by News Staff

Pigeons (Columba livia) can learn to distinguish real words from non-words by visually processing their letter combinations, according to a surprising...

ESA Releases Gaia’s Billion-Star Map of Milky Way Galaxy

Sep 15, 2016 by News Staff

On its way to assembling the most detailed 3D map ever made of our Galaxy, ESA’s Gaia spacecraft has pinned down the precise position on the sky and...

The first detection of Pluto in X-rays has been made using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The main panel in this graphic is an optical image taken from New Horizons on its approach to Pluto, while the inset shows an image of Pluto in X-rays from Chandra. There is a significant difference in scale between the optical and X-ray images. New Horizons made a close flyby of Pluto but Chandra is located near the Earth, so the level of detail visible in the two images is very different. The Chandra image is 180,000 miles across at the distance of Pluto, but the planet is only 1,500 miles across. Pluto is detected in the X-ray image as a point source, showing the sharpest level of detail available for Chandra or any other X-ray observatory. This means that details over scales that are smaller than the X-ray source cannot be seen here. Image credit: X-ray – NASA / CXC / JHUAPL / R.McNutt et al; optical – NASA / JHUAPL.

NASA’s Chandra Observatory Detects X-Rays from Pluto

Sep 14, 2016 by News Staff

Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have made the first detections of X-rays from Pluto. This X-ray emission comes from interaction between...

Geographic distribution of the 6,452 word lists analyzed in this study. Colors distinguish different linguistic macroareas, regions with relatively little or no contact between them (but with much internal contact between their populations). These are North America (orange), South America (dark green), Eurasia (blue), Africa (green), Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands (red), and Australia (fuchsia). Image credit: Damián E. Blasi et al.

Unrelated Languages Often Use Same Sounds for Common Objects and Ideas, Research Finds

Sep 13, 2016 by News Staff

A careful statistical examination of words from 6,000+ languages shows that humans tend to use the same sounds for common objects and ideas, no matter...

Experts Debate Our Duty and Ability to Spread Life around the Cosmos

Sep 9, 2016 by James Romero

The technology to ‘seed’ planets well beyond our solar system with basic life forms, skipping billions of years of evolution on Earth and spreading...

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on the first U.S. mission to sample an asteroid. Image credit: NASA.

OSIRIS-REx Begins Its Journey to Asteroid Bennu

Sep 9, 2016 by News Staff

NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft blasted-off at 7:05 p.m. EDT Thursday...

An artist concept of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Image credit: NASA / Goddard.

NASA Launching Probe to Asteroid Bennu: Watch Live

Sep 8, 2016 by News Staff

An artist concept of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Image credit: NASA / Goddard. NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith...

Rosetta NavCam image taken on 14 March 2015 at 85.7 km from the center of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko; it has been cleaned to remove the more obvious bad pixels and cosmic ray artefacts, and intensities have been scaled. Image credit: ESA / Rosetta / NAVCAM / CC BY-SA IGO 3.0.

Rosetta Finds Solid Organic Matter in Dust Particles from 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Sep 8, 2016 by News Staff

ESA’s Rosetta orbiter has made the first unambiguous detection of solid organic matter in dust grains ejected by comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This...

The Pete Basabe’s butteflyfish (Prognathodes basabei) at a depth of 180 feet (55 m) off Pearl and Hermes Atoll, Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Image credit: Greg McFall / NOAA.

Prognathodes basabei: New Species of Butterflyfish Discovered in Hawaiian Waters

Sep 7, 2016 by Natali Anderson

A new species of the butterflyfish genus Prognathodes has been described from several specimens collected at depths of 180-200 feet (55-61 m) off Pearl...

The ratio of volatile elements in Earth’s mantle suggests that virtually all of the planet’s life-giving carbon came from a collision with an embryonic planet about 100 million years after Earth formed. Image credit: A. Passwaters / Rice University / NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Proto-Earth Collided with Mercury-Like Planetary Embryo about 4.4 Billion Years Ago

Sep 6, 2016 by News Staff

In a new paper in the journal Nature Geoscience, researchers offer a new answer to a long-debated question: how did carbon-based life develop on Earth,...

Close-up of the Philae comet lander, imaged by Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera on September 2 from a distance of 1.7 miles (2.7 km). Several of the lander’s instruments are identified, including one of the CIVA panoramic imaging cameras, the SD2 drill and SESAME-DIM (Surface Electric Sounding and Acoustic Monitoring Experiment Dust Impact Monitor). Image credit: ESA / Rosetta / OSIRIS Team / MPS / UPD / LAM / IAA / SSO / INTA / UPM / DASP / IDA.

Philae Comet Lander Finally Found

Sep 5, 2016 by News Staff

ESA’s Rosetta orbiter has spotted Philae hidden in a dark crack on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Philae has been identified in Rosetta’s...

Madagascarophis lolo. Image credit: Sara Ruane.

Madagascarophis lolo: New Species of Cat-Eyed Snake Discovered in Madagascar

Sep 5, 2016 by Enrico de Lazaro

An international team of researchers from the United States and Madagascar has described a new, possibly microendemic, species of the snake genus Madagascarophis...

Juno Sends Back Incredible New Images of Jupiter

Sep 3, 2016 by News Staff

NASA’s Juno spacecraft has beamed back the most detailed images yet of the Solar System’s king of the planets, Jupiter. This montage of ten JunoCam...

Earth-Moon system. Image credit: Comfreak.

Moon Mission Could Reveal the Story of Earth’s Journey around the Milky Way

Sep 1, 2016 by James Romero

A researcher’s proposal for an ESA mission to return to the Moon could lay the groundwork for a full-surface geological survey from a permanent lunar...

Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii). Image credit: J.J. Harrison / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Tasmanian Devils Rapidly Evolve to Overcome Facial Tumor Disease

Aug 31, 2016 by News Staff

An international group of researchers has discovered that two regions in the genomes of Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) are changing in response...

This composite image shows the young galaxy cluster CL J1001 in X-rays from Chandra (purple), infrared data from ESO’s UltraVISTA survey (red, green, and blue), and radio waves from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (green). Image credit: X-ray – NASA / CXC / CEA / T. Wang et al; infrared – ESO / UltraVISTA; radio – ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / ALMA.

Astronomers Find Young Galaxy Cluster 11.1 Billion Light-Years Away

Aug 31, 2016 by News Staff

Using five space- and four ground-based telescopes, an international team of astronomers has found the most distant galaxy cluster to date. This composite...

Fossil of Previously Unknown Small-Bodied Pterosaur Found in Canada

Aug 30, 2016 by News Staff

Paleontologists say they’ve discovered the fossilized remains of a small-bodied pterosaur, a prehistoric flying reptile, which lived roughly 77 million...

An artist’s representation of the Jurassic pterosaur Allkauren koi. Image credit: Gabriel Lío.

Meet Allkauren koi: Argentina’s Newest Flying Reptile

Aug 30, 2016 by Natali Anderson

170-million-year-old fossilized remains discovered in Patagonia, Argentina, have been identified as a new genus and species of pterosaur. An artist’s...

This image depicts the presence of different viral RNA segments of GCXV within infected cells. Image credit: Michael Lindquist.

Guaico Culex Virus: Researchers Find Multicomponent Animal Virus

Aug 26, 2016 by Enrico de Lazaro

For the first time, researchers have identified a multicomponent RNA virus – one containing different segments of genetic material in separate particles,...