After decades of searching, astronomers have pinpointed the first of an estimated 10,000 stellar-mass black holes thought to lurk in Omega Centauri, the most massive stellar system in the Milky Way found so far, with a stellar mass of 3.6 million solar masses. Whitaker et al. found Omega Centauri’s first stellar-mass black hole, which has a visible star companion that is shown in greater detail....

By analyzing nickel isotopes preserved in the 66-million-year-old debris left by the Chicxulub impact, researchers conclude that the asteroid responsible for Earth’s last mass extinction most likely belonged to an exceptionally rare class of primitive meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites of the Ornans type (CO chondrites). This painting depicts an asteroid slamming into tropical, shallow seas...

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...

Paleontologists in China have discovered what they say is the earliest confirmed pieces of amber ever found, a fossilized resin roughly 385 million years old (Middle Devonian epoch) that predates the previous record-holder by about 65 million years. The discovery also suggests that resin production evolved in plants well before seed plants existed. Photographs of the Middle Devonian Hujiersite amber....

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...

Using the largest sample yet of particles called beauty mesons, physicists with the CMS Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) refined a decades-old test of the subtle imbalance that let our Universe exist at all. Neutral beauty mesons can turn into their own antimatter opposite and back again. Image credit: Ansar Iqbal / CMS. One of the greatest mysteries in physics is why the Universe...

In a new review paper, Dr. Gregory Marcus from the University of California, San Francisco and colleagues analyzed decades of research on how caffeine — most often consumed as coffee — affects the heart and its risk factors. They defined moderate intake as up to about 400 mg of caffeine a day, roughly three to five 8-ounce cups (a fluid ounce is 30 ml) of coffee. Marcus et al. conclude...

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;...

In a new review paper, Dr. Gregory Marcus from the University of California, San Francisco and colleagues analyzed decades of research on how caffeine — most often consumed as coffee — affects the heart and its risk factors. They defined moderate intake as up to about 400 mg of caffeine a day, roughly three to five 8-ounce cups (a fluid ounce is 30 ml) of coffee. Marcus et al. conclude...