Using spectral data from the Magellan Clay telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, astronomers detected helium escaping from LHS 1140b, a rocky exoplanet that orbits in the habitable zone of the nearby low-mass star LHS 1140. An artist’s concept of rocky planets LHS 1140b and LHS 1140c. Image credit: Melissa Weiss / Harvard & Smithsonian’s Center for Astrophysics. LHS 1140 is a 3-billion-year-old...

New research indicates that Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, may continue to lose rotational energy despite the pair’s long-standing tidal lock, offering scientists a rare glimpse into the hidden interiors of distant icy worlds. This impressive view of Charon was captured on July 14, 2015. Charon’s color palette is not as diverse as Pluto’s; most striking is the reddish north (top) polar region,...

For as long as readers have pored over Homer’s Odyssey they have pictured Ithaca, the homeland Odysseus fights for ten years to reach, as an island unto itself. Now, two scholars say that assumption — held since antiquity — is simply wrong, arguing that Ithaca was a peninsula on the Greek island of Kefalonia. Paliki peninsula on the island of Kefalonia, Ionian Islands, Greece. Image...

Thousands of fossilized bones from a Cretaceous-period bonebed in Wyoming, the United States, offer rare physical evidence that Tyrannosaurus rex fed on the carcasses of a duck-billed dinosaur species called Edmontosaurus annectens. Life reconstruction of Edmontosaurus annectens. Image credit: Dani Navarro. “Identifying the origin of perforating lesions on fossil bone is often difficult, and many...

Researchers have identified and formally described a new species of the African monkey genus Colobus living in the remote interior of the Democratic Republic of Congo, marking only the fifth new monkey species found on the continent in the past 75 years. Colobus congoensis. Image credit: Daniel Rosengren, Frankfurt Zoological Society. The newly described species is a small, black-furred monkey distinguished...

Physicists with LHCb Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have detected the elusive Ωcc⁺ baryon, a particle containing two charm quarks and one strange quark, completing a long-sought family of doubly charmed baryons first predicted over half a century ago. An artist’s impression of the doubly charmed Ωcc⁺ baryon. Image credit: Daniel Dominguez / CERN. “Quarks are basic...

New research from Columbia University found that adults who cut their sleep by about 80 minutes for six weeks packed on a pound (0.45 kg) and moved less during the day. The mild sleep deprivation common to nearly a third of American adults may be quietly driving long-term weight gain, not through overeating, but inactivity. Image credit: Sweet Briar College. Much of what’s known about the link...

In an analysis of 390 traditionally cultivated cacao trees representing traditional Amazonian varieties, researchers identified four previously unknown genetic lineages, with two showing ancestry linked to exceptional flavor potential and offering new opportunities for growers and chocolate makers. Motilal et al. collected cacao samples from eight departments of Peru. Image credit: Fernando Graniel. Cacao...

Zircon crystals and impact-altered minerals show that a massive asteroid slammed into what is now the Pilbara region of Western Australia about 3 billion years ago. The North Pole Dome crater: (A) simplified map of the East Pilbara Terrane (EPT, Western Australia), showing Paleoarchean granite domes (pink) and greenstone belts (greens and blues); the North Pole Dome (NPD) lies near the terrane center;...

New research from Columbia University found that adults who cut their sleep by about 80 minutes for six weeks packed on a pound (0.45 kg) and moved less during the day. The mild sleep deprivation common to nearly a third of American adults may be quietly driving long-term weight gain, not through overeating, but inactivity. Image credit: Sweet Briar College. Much of what’s known about the link...