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An artist’s impression of the Gliese 414 system. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Solar Gravity Telescope Could Directly Image Exoplanetary Atmospheres

May 4, 2022 by News Staff

In a new paper in the Astrophysical Journal, a duo of astronomers from the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University...

Kjernsmo et al. show that brilliant iridescence and gloss found in some animals can have a protective function by working as a form of deceptive warning coloration. Image credit: Domianick.

Study: Beetle Iridescence is Form of Warning Coloration against Predators

May 4, 2022 by News Staff

Iridescence and gloss are usually associated with display, but can they also defend? In new research, scientists at the University of Bristol have tested...

This image from the Dark Energy Camera shows the interacting galaxy pair NGC 1512 and NGC 1510. Image credit: Dark Energy Survey / DOE / FNAL / DECam / CTIO / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / T.A. Rector, University of Alaska Anchorage & NSF’s NOIRLab / J. Miller, Gemini Observatory & NSF’s NOIRLab / M. Zamani & D. de Martin, NSF’s NOIRLab.

DECam Spots Bizarre Pair of Interacting Galaxies

May 4, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

Using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), a state-of-the-art wide-field imager on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-m Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory,...

Differences in Vibrio fischeri swimming patterns when in open spaces or tight spaces. Image credit: Lynch et al., doi: 10.1016/j.bpj.2022.04.008.

Swimming Marine Bacteria Can Make Beeline to Escape Tight Spaces: Study

May 4, 2022 by News Staff

Vibrio fischeri (also known as Aliivibrio fischeri), a flagellated marine bacterium that forms a binary symbiosis with the Hawaiian bobtail squid (Euprymna...

Astronomers hope to send a message toward the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Image credit: Andriy Sydorenko.

Two Teams of Astronomers Want to Broadcast Earth’s Location for Intelligent Extraterrestrials

May 4, 2022 by The Conversation

For over 70 years, astronomers have been scanning for radio or optical signals from other civilizations in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence...

Mound A made almost entirely of oyster at the Crystal River site, Florida Gulf Coast, which is estimated to contain 20-30 million oysters which accumulated between 1,330 and 800 years ago. It covered at least 9,000 m2, even after approximately 1/3 of the mound was destroyed during the historical period. At its highest point, the mound stood 9 m above the surrounding landscape. Image credit: Victor Thompson.

North American and Australian Indigenous Communities Farmed Oysters for 5,000-10,000 Years

May 3, 2022 by News Staff

Despite several important studies, Indigenous fisheries generally receive less attention from scholars and managers than the 17th-20th century capitalist...

Retinosaurus hkamtiensis, which was approximately 3.5 cm (1.4 inches) in length, prior to being trapped in tree resin 110 million years ago. Image credit: Stephanie Abramowicz.

Lizards, Snakes, and Their Relatives Diverged 50 Million Years Earlier than Previously Thought

May 3, 2022 by News Staff

The squamates (lizards, snakes, and relatives) today comprise more than 10,000 species, and yet their sister group, the Rhynchocephalia, is represented...

A section of the Large Magellanic Cloud, captured under normal conditions by SARAO’s MeerKAT radio telescope. It is detecting all radio light, and PSR J0523-7125 looks like just another source of radio light. Image credit: Yuanming Wang.

ASKAP Radio Telescope Discovers New Extragalactic Pulsar

May 3, 2022 by News Staff

PSR J0523-7125, a highly circularly polarized, variable, steep-spectrum pulsar located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, is the brightest extragalactic pulsar...

This image, taken on December 17, 2012 by ESA’s Mars Express, shows the icy cap that covers Mars’ south pole, composed of frozen water and carbon dioxide. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / Bill Dunford.

Martian Deposits of Carbon Dioxide Ice Flow as Glaciers: Study

May 3, 2022 by News Staff

Carbon dioxide ice is found in a stack of deposits at the south pole of Mars. These deposits are situated in basins, where they reach more than 1 km thick....

This image shows Messier 66, a spiral galaxy some 31 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo. Image credit: ESO / PHANGS.

VLT Observes Spiral Galaxy Messier 66

May 3, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

ESO has released a beautiful image taken by the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) of a large portion of the...

Life reconstruction of Maip macrothorax. Image credit: Agustín Ozán.

New Carnivorous Dinosaur Unearthed in Argentina

May 2, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have described a new species of large-bodied megaraptoran dinosaur from fossilized remains found in Patagonia, Argentina. Life reconstruction...

An artist’s impression of a black hole X-ray binary. Image credit: Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias.

NICER Detects Echoes from Eight Black Hole X-Ray Binaries

May 2, 2022 by News Staff

As a stellar-mass black hole pulls in gas and dust from an orbiting star, it can give off spectacular bursts of X-rays that bounce and echo off the inspiraling...

Until now odd and even categorization, also called parity classification, had never been shown in non-human animals; Howard et al. show honeybees (Apis mellifera) can learn to do this. Image credit: xiSerge.

Honeybees Demonstrate Ability to Learn Concepts of Odd and Even

May 2, 2022 by The Conversation

New research shows that honeybees (Apis mellifera) can visually acquire the capacity to differentiate between odd and even quantities of 1-10 geometric...

Palm bruchine tunnels in a fossil coconut fruit of the Cerrejón Formation, Colombia. Image credit: Penn State.

60-Million-Year-Old Fossil Reveals Evidence of Seed Beetle Predation on Coconuts

May 2, 2022 by News Staff

Paleontologists have found insect borings in a fruit fossil of the genus Cocos (coconuts) from the Paleocene Cerrejón Formation of Colombia. Their findings...

This Hubble image shows Messier 99, a spiral galaxy some 42 million light-years away in the constellation of Coma Berenices. The Hubble data was taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). The color composite was assembled from images taken in ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light. It is based on data obtained through five filters. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / M. Kasliwal / J. Lee / PHANGS-HST Team.

Hubble Space Telescope Photographs Messier 99

May 2, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has revealed fine details of the grand design spiral galaxy Messier 99. This Hubble image shows Messier 99, a spiral...

Copper-alloy daggers from Pragatto, a Bronze Age domestic site in northern Italy: (A) site location; (B) aerial view of the site highlighting excavation areas A, B and C; (C) copper-alloy daggers analyzed by Caricola et al. Image credit: Caricola et al., doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-09983-3.

New Study Reveals Function of Bronze Age Daggers

Apr 29, 2022 by News Staff

According to an organic residue analysis performed on 10 copper-alloy daggers from Pragatto, a Bronze Age domestic site (1550-1250 BCE) in northern Italy,...

Nagaraj & Kejriwal defined and measured the differences between male character prevalence and female character prevalence using three robust measures of prevalence, on a corpus of copyright-expired literary texts from the Project Gutenberg English-language corpus. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Male Characters are Four Times More Prevalent in Pre-Modern Literature than Female Characters: Study

Apr 29, 2022 by News Staff

A duo of scientists from the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California has analyzed the publicly available English-language...

Engineering images of sharply focused stars in the field of view of each instrument demonstrate that the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope is fully aligned and in focus. For this test, Webb pointed at part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, providing a dense field of hundreds of thousands of stars across all the observatory’s sensors. The sizes and positions of the images shown here depict the relative arrangement of each of Webb’s instruments in the telescope’s focal plane, each pointing at a slightly offset part of the sky relative to one another. Webb’s three imaging instruments are NIRCam (images shown here at a wavelength of 2 microns), NIRISS (image shown here at 1.5 microns), and MIRI (shown at 7.7 microns, a longer wavelength revealing emission from interstellar clouds as well as starlight). NIRSpec is a spectrograph rather than imager but can take images, such as the 1.1 micron image shown here, for calibrations and target acquisition. The dark regions visible in parts of the NIRSpec data are due to structures of its microshutter array, which has several hundred thousand controllable shutters that can be opened or shut to select which light is sent into the spectrograph. Lastly, Webb’s Fine Guidance Sensor tracks guide stars to point the observatory accurately and precisely; its two sensors are not generally used for scientific imaging but can take calibration images such as those shown here. This image data is used not just to assess image sharpness but also to precisely measure and calibrate subtle image distortions and alignments between sensors as part of Webb’s overall instrument calibration process. Image credit: NASA / STScI.

Webb Successfully Completes Alignment Phase

Apr 29, 2022 by News Staff

After full review, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has been confirmed to be capable of capturing well-focused images with each of its four...

The study sheds new light on the link between sleep deprivation and obesity. Image credit: Sweet Briar College.

New Animal Study Pinpoints Molecular Basis of Deep Sleep

Apr 29, 2022 by News Staff

Identification of mechanisms which increase deep sleep could lead to novel treatments which promote the restorative effects of sleep. Uygun et al. show...