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This high-resolution image of Pluto was taken by New Horizons on July 14. Pluto’s surface sports a remarkable range of subtle colors, enhanced in this view to a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges, and deep reds. Many landforms have their own distinct colors, telling a complex geological and climatological story that scientists have only just begun to decode. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

Pluto’s ‘Nitrogen Heart’ Controls Its Atmospheric Circulation: Study

Feb 5, 2020 by News Staff

Pluto’s famous heart-shaped structure, named Tombaugh Regio, controls winds in the atmosphere of the dwarf planet and may give rise to features on its...

The 7,300-year-old water well near Ostrov, the Czech Republic. Image credit: Archaeological Centre in Olomouc.

7,300-Year-Old Wooden Well Unearthed in Czech Republic

Feb 4, 2020 by Sergio Prostak

An international team of archaeologists has unearthed a Neolithic water well made of oak trees at the northern border of the town of Ostrov in the Czech...

Graphic illustrating NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft encountering plasma layers at Mars. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / CI lab.

MAVEN Detects Sporadic ‘Layers’ and ‘Rifts’ in Martian Ionosphere

Feb 3, 2020 by News Staff

NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft has detected sporadic ‘layers’ and ‘rifts’ in the ionosphere — the electrically...

New Study Estimates Spread of 2019-nCoV Coronavirus

Jan 31, 2020 by News Staff

As of January 25, 2020, up to 75,800 individuals in Wuhan, Hubei province, China — the epicenter of the outbreak of the 2019-nCoV coronavirus —...

Neanderthal. Image credit: Neanderthal Museum.

Study: African Individuals Carry More Neanderthal DNA than Previously Thought

Jan 31, 2020 by News Staff

Using a novel method for detecting Neanderthal ancestry in modern humans, a team of U.S. researchers has demonstrated that remnants of Neanderthal genomes...

This image of the Sun’s surface was captured by NSF’s Inouye Solar Telescope. The image, taken at 789 nm, shows features as small as 30 km (18 miles). Image credit: NSO / NSF / AURA.

Inouye Solar Telescope Captures Most Detailed Images Ever Seen of Sun’s Surface

Jan 30, 2020 by News Staff

The high-resolution images from the National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, on the summit of Haleakala, Hawai’i, show a close-up...

Curious Marie is a sample of the Allende meteorite, which fell in northern Mexico in February 1969. The white, fuzzy-looking features in this fragment are calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions -- some of the first solids to condense in the Solar System. Image credit: The Planetary Society.

Researchers Find Presolar Grains in Unusual Inclusion from Allende Meteorite

Jan 29, 2020 by News Staff

Scientists from Washington University, St. Louis, Caltech and the University of Chicago have found presolar grains — tiny bits of solid interstellar...

Australian Researchers Grow 2019-nCoV Coronavirus from Patient Sample

Jan 29, 2020 by News Staff

A team of scientists at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute) in Melbourne, Australia, has successfully grown the...

A group of Allosaurus jimmadseni attacks a juvenile sauropod dinosaur. Image credit: Todd Marshall.

New Species of Carnivorous Dinosaur Unveiled: Allosaurus jimmadseni

Jan 27, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new species of carnivorous theropod dinosaur has been identified from the fossilized remains discovered in the 1990s in northeastern Utah and Wyoming, the...

Newly-Identified Coronavirus 2019-nCoV: Here’s What You Need to Know

Jan 27, 2020 by News Staff

The current outbreak of viral pneumonia in Wuhan, a rapidly flourishing capital city of the Hubei province and the traffic hub of central China, was caused...

High-resolution SEM micrograph of the mycelium-like structures from the Mbuji-Mayi Supergroup, Democratic Republic of Congo. Image credit: Bonneville et al, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aax7599.

715-Million-Year-Old Fungi Microfossils Found

Jan 24, 2020 by Natali Anderson

An international team of researchers has found the microscopic fungal filaments and mycelium-like structures in 715-million-year-old (Neoproterozoic Era)...

The interior of the Borexino detector. Image credit: Borexino Collaboration.

Borexino Detector Spots 53 Geoneutrinos

Jan 23, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

An underground particle detector called the Borexino detector has detected 53 antielectron neutrinos emanating from the Earth, so-called geoneutrinos. The...

Bamboo shark Hemiscyllium halmahera (© Mark Erdmann).

Marine Biologists Solve Mystery of How ‘Walking’ Sharks Split

Jan 23, 2020 by Natali Anderson

An international team of marine biologists has found that members of the genus Hemiscyllium are the ‘youngest’ — as in, the most recently evolved...

Monkeys fresco on the north wall of Room 6 of Building Complex Beta at Akrotiri, Thera. Image credit: Thera Akrotiri Excavations.

Researchers May Have Solved Mystery of Akrotiri’s Monkey Frescoes

Jan 22, 2020 by The Conversation

The blue monkeys painted on the walls of Akrotiri on the Greek island of Santorini are among many animals found in the frescoes of this 3,600-year-old...

This illustration shows the surroundings of a black hole feeding on ambient gas as mapped using ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory. Image credit: ESA.

Astronomers Map Surroundings of Supermassive Black Hole

Jan 22, 2020 by News Staff

As material spirals towards a black hole, it is heated up and emits X-rays that, in turn, echo and reverberate as they interact with nearby gas. These...

This scanning electron microscope image shows a tardigrade. Image credit: Diane Nelson, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.

Could Invisible Extraterrestrial Life Forms Really Exist Among Us?

Jan 21, 2020 by The Conversation

Life is pretty easy to recognize. It moves, it grows, it eats, it excretes, it reproduces. Simple. In biology, researchers often use the acronym ‘MRS-GREN’...

Parecis titis (Plecturocebus parecis) in the forest reserve of the UHE Rondon II hydroelectric plant, municipality of Pimenta Bueno, Rondônia, Brazil. Image credit: Alberto Caldeiras.

New Species of Titi Monkey Discovered in Brazil

Jan 20, 2020 by Natali Anderson

An international team of researchers has discovered a new species of titi monkey living in the forests of Brazil. Parecis titis (Plecturocebus parecis)...

An artist’s rendering of what Wulong bohaiensis might have looked like. Image credit: Erick Toussaint.

New Feathered Dinosaur Species Identified in China

Jan 17, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists in China have identified a new species of microraptorine dromaeosaur closely related to the famous dinosaur Velociraptor. An artist’s...

An artist’s rendering shows G-objects, with the reddish centers, orbiting the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. The black hole is represented as a dark sphere inside a white ring (above the middle of the rendering). Image credit: Jack Ciurlo.

Astronomers Spot Four New G-Objects near Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole

Jan 17, 2020 by News Staff

At the center of our Milky Way Galaxy lurks Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole that is four million times the mass of the Sun. Recently, two unusual...