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Librado et al. pinpoint the Western Eurasian steppes, especially the lower Volga-Don region, as the homeland of modern domestic horses. Image credit: Devanath.

Horses Were First Domesticated in Western Eurasian Steppes More Than 4,000 Years Ago

Oct 21, 2021 by News Staff

In a study published this week in the journal Nature, scientists analyzed ancient horse genomes from all suspected domestication centers, including Iberia,...

Cretapsara athanata, a modern-looking eubrachyuran crab in Burmese amber. Image credit: Luque et al., doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abj5689.

99-Million-Year-Old Modern-Looking Crab Found in Burmese Amber

Oct 21, 2021 by News Staff

The new fossil from the Cretaceous of Myanmar preserves large compound eyes, delicate mouthparts, and even gills. Cretapsara athanata, a modern-looking...

The decay of a B0 meson into a K0 and an electron-positron pair in the LHCb detector, which is used for a sensitive test of lepton universality in the Standard Model. Image credit: CERN.

Novel Tests of Lepton Universality Boost Evidence for ‘New Physics’

Oct 21, 2021 by News Staff

Physicists from CERN’s LHCb (Large Hadron Collider beauty) Collaboration have carried out new tests of lepton universality, one of the basic principles...

A trio of woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) trudges over snow covered hills; behind them, mountains with snow covered peaks rise above dark green forests of fir trees. Image credit: Daniel Eskridge.

Rapid Climate Change Wiped Out Woolly Mammoths, Study Confirms

Oct 20, 2021 by News Staff

In a large-scale environmental DNA metagenomic study of ancient plant and mammal communities, an international team of researchers have analyzed 535 permafrost...

This artist’s concept depicts NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance on the surface of the Red Planet. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Records Martian Sounds

Oct 20, 2021 by News Staff

NASA’s Perseverance rover carries two microphones which are directly recording sounds on Mars, including wind gusts, rover wheels crunching over gravel,...

An artist’s impression of a white dwarf -- in this case a white dwarf in the MV Lyrae system -- accreting as it draws in material from a companion star. Image credit: Helena Uthas.

TESS Finds Pulsating White Dwarf in TW Pictoris System

Oct 19, 2021 by News Staff

The white dwarf observed by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a member of the binary system TW Pictoris and is known to be accreting...

This WISE multicolor image shows NGC 1605, a binary open cluster located 8,480 light-years away in the constellation of Perseus. It was first discovered on December 11, 1786 by the German-born British astronomer William Herschel. Image credit: NASA / WISE / Camargo, arXiv: 2109.14664.

Astronomer Discovers Ancient Binary Open Cluster in Milky Way

Oct 18, 2021 by Sergio Prostak

An open cluster called NGC 1605 is in fact two merging open clusters with evidence of tidal streams, according to new research by Professor Denilso Camargo...

This illustration shows NASA’s Lucy spacecraft passing one of the Trojan asteroids near Jupiter. Image credit: Southwest Research Institute.

NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft Launches to Study Jupiter’s Trojan Asteroids

Oct 18, 2021 by News Staff

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft was launched on October 16, 2021, at 5:34 a.m. EDT aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket out of Space Launch Complex...

An artist’s rendition of the MOA-2010-BLG-477Lb exoplanet and its white-dwarf host. Image credit: W.M. Keck Observatory / Adam Makarenko.

Jupiter-Mass Exoplanet Found Orbiting White Dwarf

Oct 15, 2021 by News Staff

Using a technique called gravitational microlensing, which occurs when a star close to Earth momentarily aligns with a more distant star, astronomers have...

Water vapor is present in the atmosphere of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / J. da Silva.

Hubble Finds Water Vapor on Trailing Hemisphere of Europa

Oct 15, 2021 by News Staff

Observations by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in far-ultraviolet light of Jupiter’s icy moons were used in the past to detect molecular oxygen...

Astronomers Detect 1,652 Fast Radio Bursts from Source in Distant Dwarf Galaxy

Oct 14, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers using the new Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) have detected 1,652 independent burst events from the FRB 121102...

Gonzalez et al. report an improved measurement of the free neutron lifetime. Image credit: Tomislav Jakupec.

Physicists Measure Neutron Lifetime with Unprecedented Precision

Oct 14, 2021 by News Staff

Physicists have performed an improved measurement of the free neutron lifetime using the UCNτ apparatus at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center. Their...

This image depicts 42 of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter. The images of the asteroids were captured with the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Image credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser / Vernazza et al. / MISTRAL algorithm / ONERA / CNRS.

Astronomers Capture Images of 42 Large Main-Belt Asteroids

Oct 13, 2021 by News Staff

Using the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument mounted on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have conducted...

Planisphere made by Rumold Mercator, 1587.

Milanese Friar Knew about North America 150 Years before Columbus Voyage, Researchers Say

Oct 12, 2021 by News Staff

The Cronica universalis, written in Latin by the Milanese friar Galvaneus Flamma (in Italian, Galvano Fiamma, 1283 – c. 1345), contains an astonishing...

An artist’s impression of the ASKAP J173608.2-321635 source. Image credit: Sebastian Zentilomo.

Astronomers Find Strange Source of Radio Waves near Milky Way’s Center

Oct 12, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers using CSIRO’s ASKAP and South African Radio Astronomy Observatory’s MeerKAT radio telescopes have discovered and characterized ASKAP J173608.2-321635,...

Life reconstruction of Terropterus xiushanensis. Image credit: Dinghua Yang.

Fossils of Giant Sea Scorpion Found in China

Oct 11, 2021 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new genus and species of mixopterid eurypterid (sea scorpion) has been identified from several fossil specimens found in the Xiushan Formation, China. Life...

Perseverance Finds Ancient Delta-Lake System, Flood Deposits in Martian Jezero Crater

Oct 8, 2021 by News Staff

Planetary scientists have analyzed images taken by the Mastcam-Z camera and the Remote Micro-Imager of the SuperCam instrument on NASA’s Perseverance...

Reconstruction of the Darwin’s ground sloth (Mylodon darwinii) feeding on the carcass of the hoofed native herbivore Macrauchenia. These extinct mammals roamed the Pleistocene landscape of Patagonia and other parts of high and mid-latitude South America, like this reconstructed scene from about 12,000 years ago in front of the famous Mylodon Cave (Cueva del Milodón) in southern Chile. Image credit: Jorge Blanco.

Darwin’s Ground Sloth was Opportunistic Omnivore, Study Says

Oct 7, 2021 by News Staff

New research published in the journal Scientific Reports provides the first direct evidence of omnivory in an ancient sloth species. Reconstruction of...

Life reconstruction of Pendraig milnerae among the fissures of Pant-y-ffynnon and three individuals of the rhynchocephalian lepidosaur Clevosaurus cambrica during the Late Triassic epoch. Image credit: James Robbins.

New Small-Sized Carnivorous Dinosaur Unearthed in Wales

Oct 7, 2021 by News Staff

Paleontologists have described a new genus and species of coelophysoid theropod dinosaur from the Late Triassic deposits of Pant-y-ffynnon in southern...