The solar wind, comprised of solar particles largely made of hydrogen ions, created water on the surface of dust grains carried on asteroids that smashed into the early Earth, according to a paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy. | Continue reading
The Minor Planet Centre has just announced that our planet has been orbited by a second moon for the past three years or so. Designated 2020 CD3, the object is extremely faint and small (1-6 m across) -- and won’t be with us for much longer. | Continue reading
Human neurons have a much smaller number of channels that control the flow of ions (such as potassium and sodium) than expected, compared to the neurons of other mammals, according to new research led by MIT neuroscientists. | Continue reading
Ornithologists have discovered a new genus and species of tanager on the lower slopes of the Andes in southeastern Peru and western Bolivia. | Continue reading
A Type II core-collapse supernova called SN 2020fqv exploded in NGC 4568, a member of a pair of colliding unbarred spiral galaxies. | Continue reading
Researchers have discovered that suspensions of gallium liquid metal can convert carbon dioxide into carbonaceous solid products and oxygen at near room temperature. | Continue reading
Astronomers from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration have imaged a jet in the heart of the nearby radio galaxy Centaurus A and identified the location of the galaxy’s central supermassive black hole with respect to its resolved jet core. | Continue reading
A team of astrophysicists from the United States and Korea has created a new dark-matter distribution map using a neural network-based deep learning method and the data on positions and velocities of galaxies in the local Universe. | Continue reading
Biologists have found four bacterial strains of the Methylobacteriaceae family in surface samples collected from the International Space Station (ISS) during Microbial Tracking-1 flight experiments. | Continue reading
A new genus and species of aristonectine elasmosaurid plesiosaur has been described from a partial skeleton found in central Chile. | Continue reading
Four commonly used artificial sweeteners - saccharine, sucralose, aspartame, and acesulfame potassium -- can promote the horizontal transfer of antibiotic resistance genes, according to new research. | Continue reading
The loss and return of consciousness is linked to the same core brain network for both sleep and anesthesia. | Continue reading
Archaeologists on the ERC project LASTJOURNEY have discovered spectacular rock pictographs in three separate rock shelters in the Guaviare Department of Colombia. | Continue reading
An international team of researchers has extracted genetic material from the sediments in Baishiya Karst Cave and identified mitochondrial DNA from Denisovans indicating their presence at about 100,000 years ago, 60,000 years ago, and possibly 45,000 years ago. | Continue reading
A new study published in the published in the Journal of Archaeological Science sheds light on one of the most enigmatic features of Minoan Linear A -- still an undeciphered script mainly used on the island of Crete from 1700 to 1400 BCE -- the precise mathematical values of its … | Continue reading
Russian renowned researcher Dr. Leonid Ksanfomality has reported that he found several objects resembling living beings on images made by the Venera-13 spacecraft. | Continue reading
A team of researchers at MIT has found that phosphine, which is among the stinkiest, most toxic gases on Earth, cannot be produced in any other way except by anaerobic organisms, making it a pure ‘biosignature gas.’ | Continue reading
How do we really know there weren’t previous civilizations on our planet that rose and fell long before humans appeared? That’s the question posed in a thought experiment by University of Rochester’s Professor Adam Frank and Dr. Gavin Schmidt of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space … | Continue reading
In a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, University of Tokyo’s Professor Tomonori Totani looked at how the building blocks of life could spontaneously form in the Universe -- a process known as abiogenesis. | Continue reading
A new species of gondwanatherian mammal from the Cretaceous period has been identified from a very well-preserved fossilized skeleton found on the island of Madagascar. | Continue reading
Scybalium fungiforme is a little-known fungus-like plant species of the family Balanophoraceae. | Continue reading
Kepler 51, a 500-million-year-old G-type star located 2,615 light-years away in the constellation of Cygnus, is host to three of the lowest density exoplanets known to date. | Continue reading
Different groups of gigantic dinosaurs had different thermoregulatory strategies to help moderate brain temperatures in the face of high heat loads, according to new research from the Ohio University’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine. | Continue reading
The tenuous nitrogen atmosphere of the dwarf planet Pluto is predicted to ultimately collapse and freeze over. | Continue reading
Astronomers using the KPED (Kitt Peak Electron Multiplying CCD demonstrator) instrument at NSF’s Kitt Peak National Observatory have discovered ZTF J153932.16+502738.8, a white dwarf eclipsing binary with the shortest orbital period known to date. | Continue reading
As anatomically modern Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa and around the rest of the world, they met and interbred with at least four different hominin species, according to new research from the University of Adelaide, Australia. | Continue reading
In 2018, a team of astronomers from the United States and Canada discovered that an ultra-diffuse galaxy called NGC 1052-DF2 (DF2 for short) contains virtually no dark matter. Now, the team reports the discovery of a second galaxy in this class. | Continue reading
Between 2014 and 2016, the OSIRIS (Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System) camera onboard ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft captured almost 70,000 images of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Now the OSIRIS team has put all of these images online on a dedicated website - … | Continue reading
NASA has released a stunning image snapped by the agency’s Hubble Space Telescope of the globular cluster Messier 62. | Continue reading
The newfound species -- named Ideonella sakaiensis 201-F6 -- breaks down the plastic by using two enzymes to hydrolyze poly[ethylene terephthalate], or PET. | Continue reading
Vitamin D -- which exists in two forms: D2 (ergocalciferol) and D3 (cholecalciferol) -- helps regulate the amount of calcium and phosphate in the body. Vitamin D toxicity is rare, but patients and clinicians must be aware of the risks of vitamin D use to limit complications relat … | Continue reading
A new study finds that UV radiation should not be a limiting factor for the habitability of planets orbiting M-type stars. | Continue reading
In a series of three experiments, a team of psychologists from Lancaster University, the University of Central Lancashire and the University of Gävle investigated the impact of background music on creativity. Their findings challenge the popular view that music enhances creativit … | Continue reading
A five-minute workout called Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training (IMST) lowers blood pressure in middle-aged to older adults; it also improves artery function and scores on memory tests, according to new research. | Continue reading
A common food additive called tert-butylhydroquinone (E319) suppresses the immune response the body mounts when fighting the flu; it also reduces the effectiveness of the flu vaccine through its effects on T cells, according to new research in mice by Michigan State University sc … | Continue reading
According to a theoretical paper published in the Annals of Physics, by Dr. Ovidiu Racorean from the General Direction of Information Technology in Bucharest, Romania, the geometry of spacetime around a rapidly spinning black hole (Kerr black hole) behaves like a quantum computer … | Continue reading
Professional and amateur mathematicians from a worldwide research project called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) have discovered the largest known prime number. | Continue reading
Astronomers using the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSPEC) on the Keck II telescope at the W. M. Keck Observatory have confirmed the existence of water -- as well as a lack of methane -- in the atmosphere of HR 8799c, an extrasolar planet approximately 7 times the mass of Jupiter … | Continue reading
According to new research from the University of California, Davis, the entrainment of theta brain waves with a commercially available device not only enhances theta wave activity, but also boosts memory performance. The findings appear in the journal Cognitive Neuroscience. | Continue reading
A new look at old data from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor lends support to the idea Phobos (and likely Deimos) formed after a large impact on the planet threw a lot of rock into orbit. | Continue reading
Astronomers have discovered a ‘super-Earth’ exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star 473 light-years from Earth. | Continue reading
A new biocompatible alloy has been developed, and it’s about 3-4 times harder than most steels and pure titanium. | Continue reading
Physicists from the Institute for Solid State Physics at the University of Tokyo, Japan, have recorded the largest magnetic field ever generated indoors -- a whopping 1,200 T (tesla). | Continue reading
A team of researchers headed by University of British Columbia scientist Stephen Withers reports on enzymes -- from the human gut -- that remove A or B antigens from red blood cells 30 times more efficiently than previously reported enzymes. | Continue reading
According to a new study, published in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension, older adults who take a mitochondrial-targeted antioxidant called MitoQ see age-related vascular changes reverse by the equivalent of 15 to 20 years within six weeks. | Continue reading