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A stone plaquette engraved with abstract designs from the Magdalenian site of Les Varines, Jersey, Channel Islands. Image credit: Bello et al, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0236875.

15,000-Year-Old Abstract Art Found in Channel Islands

Sep 2, 2020 by News Staff

A team of archaeologists from the United Kingdom has uncovered 15,000-year-old stone plaquettes extensively engraved with abstract designs at the Magdalenian...

The European mole (Talpa europaea). Image credit: Michael David Hill / CC BY-SA 3.0.

European Moles Hate Eating Sand, New Study Finds

Sep 2, 2020 by News Staff

European moles (Talpa europaea) appear to avoid chewing on sand when eating earthworms because it is likely that they find the sensation as repulsive as...

Ecological reconstruction of a 165-million-year-old lacewing mimicking a lichen that existed during the same time period. Image credit: Xiaoran Zuo.

Jurassic Lacewings Mimicked Lichen to Hide from Predators

Sep 1, 2020 by News Staff

Paleontologists in China have unearthed the fossil evidence of a mimetic relationship between two species of moth lacewings and the co-occurring fossil...

A fragment of the 1,400-year-old Christian chalice found at Vindolanda in Northumberland, northern England. Image credit: Vindolanda Trust.

Archaeologists Find Unique 1,400-Year-Old Christian Artifact

Sep 1, 2020 by News Staff

Archaeologists have uncovered the fragments of a lead Christian cup, or chalice, lightly etched with symbols of early Christian iconography, at the archaeological...

Adult red junglefowl (Gallus gallus). Image credit: Per Jensen.

Study: Chickens Have Smaller Brains than Their Junglefowl Relatives

Sep 1, 2020 by News Staff

The red junglefowl (Gallus gallus), a species of tropical bird found in south-east Asia, is the primary ancestor of the domestic chicken (Gallus gallus...

An artist’s impression of plasma jets coming from a supermassive black hole in the central galaxy of the Phoenix cluster. Image credit: NAOJ.

Astronomers Detect Black-Hole Jets in Central Galaxy of Phoenix Cluster

Sep 1, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) have detected plasma jets coming from a supermassive black hole in the central galaxy of...

A guard bee standing next to the entrance hole of the Frieseomelitta varia colony. Image credit: Bibafu / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Scientists Sequence Genome of Brazilian Stingless Bee

Sep 1, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

A team of researchers from Brazil has sequenced the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes of Frieseomelitta varia, a stingless bee that has, as a peculiarity,...

These images of comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) were obtained with the Gemini North telescope on August 1, 2020. Image credit: Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / M. Drahus / P. Guzik.

Astronomers See Spirals in Gaseous Coma of Comet NEOWISE

Aug 31, 2020 by News Staff

New images of comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) show rapidly expanding spiral features in its coma produced by the rotation of its 5-km (3-mile) wide nucleus. These...

Magnified perspective of the titanosaurian embryonic skull with the preorbital and orbital region in left lateral view. Image credit: Kundrat et al, doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.07.091.

Paleontologists Find Perfectly Preserved Embryo inside 80-Million-Year-Old Titanosaurian Egg

Aug 31, 2020 by News Staff

Paleontologists recently found well-preserved dinosaur eggs in an enormous nesting ground of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaurs that lived about 80 million...

An artist’s impression of the hot Neptune TOI-824b and its parent star TOI-824. Also known as SCR J1448-5735, TYC 8688-915-1, TIC 193641523 and 2MASS J14483982-5735175, the star is around 70% the size and mass of the Sun and is 10.9 billion years old. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Rare Hot Neptune Found Orbiting Nearby Dwarf Star

Aug 31, 2020 by Natali Anderson

Using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and two ground-based instruments, astronomers have discovered and confirmed a transiting hot...

This SEM image shows a polished thin section of Asuka 12236. The section is about 1 cm (a third of an inch) across. Most of the bright grains in the image are iron-nickel-metal and/or iron-sulfide. The gray is mostly silicate, with the darker gray areas more magnesium-rich, while the lighter gray areas are more iron-rich. The roundish objects, and some fragments of them, that tend to contain most of the small, bright metal grains are called chondrules, which formed as molten droplets. They are set in a very fine-grained matrix, which is where the organic compounds and presolar grains are found. Image credit: Carnegie Institution for Science / Conel M. O’D. Alexander.

Researchers Find Extraterrestrial Amino Acids in Antarctic Meteorite

Aug 31, 2020 by News Staff

A team of astrobiologists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the Carnegie Institution for Science has found a wide diversity of amino acids...

This Hubble image shows NGC 2188, a barred spiral galaxy located 27 million light-years away in the constellation of Columba. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / R. Tully.

Hubble Spies Barred Spiral Galaxy Edge-On

Aug 31, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have taken a picture of the edge-on barred spiral galaxy NGC 2188. This Hubble image shows NGC 2188,...

An artist’s impression of Lystrosaurus. Image credit: Victor O. Leshyk, www.victorleshyk.com / University of Birmingham.

Paleontologists Find Evidence of Hibernation-Like State in Tusks of Triassic Mammal Relative

Aug 28, 2020 by News Staff

In a paper published in the journal Communications Biology, a team of U.S. paleontologists reports evidence of a hibernation-like condition in Lystrosaurus,...

A piece of the enstatite chondrite meteorite Sahara 97096. Image credit: Christine Fieni / Laurette Piani / French National Museum of Natural History.

Earth’s Water Came from Enstatite Chondrite-Like Asteroids, Study Suggests

Aug 28, 2020 by News Staff

A type of meteorite called an enstatite chondrite has similar isotopic composition to terrestrial rocks and thus may be representative of the material...

Scelidosaurus harrisonii. Image credit: John Sibbick.

Paleontologist Redescribes Enigmatic Armored Dinosaur from Jurassic Period

Aug 28, 2020 by News Staff

Scelidosaurus harrisonii, an armored dinosaur that lived around 193 million years ago (Early Jurassic epoch), has been redescribed from a near-complete...

This image shows the location of the 43 quasars Lehner et al used to probe Andromeda’s gaseous halo. These quasars are scattered far behind the halo, allowing scientists to probe multiple regions. Looking through the immense halo at the quasars’ light, the team observed how this light is absorbed by the halo and how that absorption changes in different regions. By tracing the absorption of light coming from the background quasars, the astronomers are able to probe the halo’s material. Image credit: NASA / ESA / E. Wheatley, STScI.

Astronomers Create Map of Andromeda Galaxy’s Gaseous Halo

Aug 28, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have found that a halo of diffuse plasma around the Andromeda galaxy, which is located 2.5 million...

SDSS J141637.44+003352.2, a dual quasar at a distance for which the light reaching us was emitted 4.6 billion years ago. The two quasars are 13,000 light-years apart on the sky, placing them near the center of a single massive galaxy that appears to be part of a group, as shown by the neighboring galaxies in the left panel. In the lower panels, optical spectroscopy has revealed broad emission lines associated with each of the two quasars, indicating that the gas is moving at thousands of kilometers per second in the vicinity of two distinct supermassive black holes. The two quasars are different colors, due to different amounts of dust in front of them. Image credit: Silverman et al, doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/aba4a3.

Astronomers Find Three Luminous Dual Quasars

Aug 27, 2020 by News Staff

Using the Subaru Telescope and W. M. Keck and Gemini observatories, astronomers have spotted three dual quasars — merging galaxy systems that have...

Miskin et al built microsopic robots that consist of a simple circuit made from silicon photovoltaics and four electrochemical actuators; when laser light is shined on the photovoltaics, the robots walk. Image credit: Miskin et al, doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-2626-9.

Researchers Create Laser-Activated Walking Microrobots

Aug 27, 2020 by News Staff

A team of scientists from Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania has developed a new class of microscopic robots that incorporate semiconductor...

This multi-frequency composite VLBA image shows young radio jets originating near a supermassive black hole at the core of the active galaxy TXS 0128+554; the jets in this image started about 80 years ago, stopped, then resumed about 10 years ago. Image credit: Lister et al / Sophia Dagnello, NRAO / AUI / NSF.

Astronomers Observe Young, Radio-Emitting Jets in Distant Active Galaxy

Aug 27, 2020 by News Staff

Around five years ago, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected high-energy gamma rays coming from TXS 0128+554, an elliptical galaxy located...