Featured News

Nov 12, 2015 by News Staff

A team of astronomers has discovered a new rocky, Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting a star approximately 39 light-years away. In this artist’s conception GJ 1132b circles a red dwarf star. Image credit: Dana Berry. The newfound world, named GJ 1132b, orbits a red dwarf star known as GJ 1132 (Gliese 1132), which is only 1/5 the size of the Sun. The star is also cooler and much fainter than our Sun, emitting just 1/200th as much light. GJ 1132b, also...

Nov 11, 2015 by News Staff

Phobos, the larger and inner of the two natural satellites of Mars, is slowly being pulled apart by tidal forces and is expected to break up within the...

Nov 10, 2015 by Natali Anderson

Using images of Pluto’s surface, geologists with the New Horizons mission have discovered that two of dwarf planet’s mountains could be cryovolcanoes...

Nov 6, 2015 by News Staff

Thanks to NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) orbiter, scientists have learned more about what happened to the Martian climate since...

Nov 5, 2015 by Sergio Prostak

Paleontologists have discovered what they say is a new giant raptor that lived in what is now South Dakota during the Maastrichtian stage of the Upper...

Nov 4, 2015 by Natali Anderson

Astronomers have detected layers of clouds – made up of hot dust and droplets of molten iron – on a planet-like object known as PSO J318.5338–22.8603...

Nov 3, 2015 by News Staff

A multinational team of scientists has sequenced genomes of a wild pineapple relative, the red pineapple (Ananas bracteatus), and two cultivated varieties...

Nov 3, 2015 by News Staff

A tiny snail shell with a diameter of 0.028 inches (0.7 mm) was found on the Malaysian portion of the island of Borneo by a group of scientists from the...

Nov 2, 2015 by News Staff

A new species of woolly horseshoe bat has been described from Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. The Francis’ woolly horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus francisi). Image...

Nov 1, 2015 by News Staff

Astronomers using NSF’s 1,000-foot (305-m) Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico have captured images of a massive asteroid – designated 2015 TB145...

Oct 30, 2015 by News Staff

Paleontologists from Spain and the United States have discovered a new genus and species of small-bodied ape that lived about 11.6 million years ago, before...

Oct 29, 2015 by News Staff

ESA’s Rosetta orbiter has detected molecules of oxygen in the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Rosetta has made the first in situ detection...

Oct 28, 2015 by News Staff

Using data from the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea Survey (VVV) ESO Public Survey, astronomers have discovered a previously unknown component of the...

Oct 27, 2015 by News Staff

A multinational group of archaeologists has unearthed a 3,500-year-old tomb of Mycenaean warrior near the city of Pylos on the southwest coast of Greece...

Oct 26, 2015 by News Staff

A multinational team of researchers has sequenced the nuclear genome of the aurochs (Bos primigenius), an extinct species of ox that inhabited Europe,...

Oct 26, 2015 by Natali Anderson

In a paper in the journal Science Advances, astronomers report the detection of 21 different organic molecules in gas from Comet Lovejoy, including the...

Oct 26, 2015 by News Staff

An international team of biologists from Australia and the United States has discovered two new species of methane-metabolizing archaea. Archaea were first...

Oct 23, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has sent back four low-resolution images of Kerberos, Pluto’s tiny moon. This image of Kerberos completes the family...

Oct 22, 2015 by News Staff

Using a trio of X-ray telescopes, astronomers have observed material being blown away from a supermassive black hole after it tore a star apart. The event...

Oct 21, 2015 by News Staff

There are two subspecies of the Galapagos giant tortoise (Chelonoidis nigra) – not just one, as had been long believed – living on the island...