Computer simulations are showing astrophysicists how massive clumps of gas within galaxies scatter some stars from their orbits, eventually creating the smooth, exponential fade in the brightness of many disk galaxies. Researchers from Iowa State University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and IBM Research have advanced studies they started nearly 10 years ago. They originally focused ...
As harmful atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to increase, understanding the planet’s carbon balance is increasingly important. A new report by U.S. National Science Foundation-funded ecologists at Arizona State University has quantified the global soil carbon sequestration by roots and the amount leached into the soil. It reveals that climate and land use are major influencers ...
Wolves today live and hunt in packs, which helps them take down large prey. But when did this group behavior evolve? An international research team has reported specimens of an ancestral wolf, Canis chihliensis, from the Ice Age of north China (~1.3 million years ago), with debilitating injuries to its jaws and a leg. The ...
Astronomers using the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) have made the first direct geometric measurement of the distance to a magnetar within our Milky Way Galaxy — a measurement that could help determine if they are the sources of the long-mysterious Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs). Magnetars are a variety of neutron stars ...
When stars like our Sun die, all that remains is an exposed core — a white dwarf. A planet orbiting a white dwarf presents a promising opportunity to determine if life can survive the death of its star, according to Cornell researchers. In a study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, they show how NASA’s ...
New composite images made by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft are the most detailed global infrared views ever produced of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. And data used to build those images provides strong evidence that the northern hemisphere of the moon has been resurfaced with ice from its interior. Cassini’s Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) collected light ...
A new analysis of ancient genomes suggests that different branches of the human family tree interbred multiple times, and that some humans carry DNA from an archaic, unknown ancestor. Melissa Hubisz and Amy Williams of Cornell University and Adam Siepel of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory report these findings in a study published in PLOS Genetics. Roughly 50,000 ...
A fossil recently recovered from the age of the dinosaurs is giving scientists the most vivid picture yet of how one of the most enigmatic and fearsome groups of ants to exist, the “hell ants,” once used their uncanny tusk-like mandibles and diverse horns to successfully hunt down victims for nearly 20 million years, before ...
Curtin University researchers have discovered two meteorites in a two-week period on the Nullarbor Plain — one freshly fallen and the other from November 2019. Both falls were captured by The Desert Fireball Network (DFN) team, which uses cameras across Australia to observe shooting stars and predict where meteorites will land. The team, which usually ...
Resembling a space butterfly with its symmetrical structure, beautiful colors, and intricate patterns, this striking bubble of gas — known as NGC 2899 — appears to float and flutter across the sky in this new picture from ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). This object has never before been imaged in such striking detail, with even ...
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