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Newborn Pluto Was Hot and Had Subsurface Ocean: Study

This high-resolution image of Pluto was taken by New Horizons on July 14. Pluto’s surface sports a remarkable range of subtle colors, enhanced in this view to a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges, and deep reds. Many landforms have their own distinct colors, telling a complex geological and climatological story that scientists have only just begun to decode. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.
Jun 23, 2020 by News Staff

Pluto is thought to possess a subsurface ocean beneath its thick ice shell. It has generally been assumed that the dwarf planet formed out of cold material and then later developed its ocean due to warming from radioactive decay. By combining numerical simulations with geological observations by NASA’s New Horizons mission, a team of researchers from the University of California Santa Cruz and the Southwest Research Institute demonstrated that Pluto...

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Tanyrhinichthys mcallisteri was most likely a bottom-cruising predator similar in general ecomorphology to modern sturgeon. Image credit: Nobu Tamura.

Paleontologists Redescribe Enigmatic Carboniferous-Period Fish

Jun 23, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

A team of U.S. paleontologists has redescribed the morphology of a long-snouted ray-finned fish called Tanyrhinichthys mcallisteri and created a more complete...

An artist’s impression of a hot-Jupiter exoplanet. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Astronomers Find Youngest Known Hot Jupiter

Jun 23, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered a transiting hot-Jupiter...

The discovery of a spike of mercury in 252-million-year-old rock at locations around the world gives evidence for the prevailing theory that volcanic eruptions caused the end-Permian extinction. Image credit: Margaret Weiner / University of Cincinnati Creative Services.

Coal-Burning Contributed to End-Permian Mass Extinction

Jun 23, 2020 by News Staff

An international team of geologists has found the first direct evidence that volcanic eruptions in the southern part of the Siberian Traps region 252 million...

The 2-km-wide ring of shafts around the great henge at Durrington Walls and the famous site at Woodhenge. Image credit: Gaffney et al, doi: 10.11141/ia.55.4.

Archaeologists Find Giant Ring of Shafts near Stonehenge

Jun 22, 2020 by News Staff

Archaeologists have discovered a 4,500-year-old ring of large ‘shafts’ around the great henge at Durrington Walls and the famous site at Woodhenge,...

Air Force Tech Sgt. Joseph Anthony, medical technician with the 911th Aeromedical Staging Squadron, administers a vaccination to a member of the U.S. Army Reserve’s 336 Engineering Company Command and Control, Chemical Radiological and Nuclear Response Enterprise Team at the Pittsburgh International Airport Air Reserve Station, Pennsylvania, April 11, 2019. Image credit: Joshua J. Seybert, U.S. Air Force.

Live Attenuated Vaccines Could Protect against Most Severe COVID-19 Symptoms

Jun 22, 2020 by News Staff

Dr. Paul Fidel, Jr., from Louisiana State University Health – School of Dentistry and Professor Mairi Noverr from Tulane University School of Medicine...

View of the wall paintings on the western wall of a house in Chajul, Guatemala. The panel features a possible dwarf with a long stick (individual 1) striding behind the backs of two musicians wearing Spanish costumes (individuals 2 and 3), and approached by a man in Indian-Spanish attire (individual 4). The first musician (individual 2) is shown playing a short wind instrument, probably a flute (xhuli aj) or a chirimía -- instruments still popular in traditional music of the Ixil Maya. The chirimía is a form of a double-reed woodwind instrument (resembling an oboe), which was introduced by the Spaniards. The second musician plays a large drum, beating it with sticks with rounded heads. The same set of instruments (large drum and flute/chirimía) is used today to accompany different feasts and ritual ceremonies. Individuals 1-3 wear typical European costume, comprising a short mantle worn over one shoulder; a kaftan with puffed sleeves and ruff; a broad belt with its loose end dangling to the front, long slim trousers (or perhaps short trousers and stockings); and heeled shoes with long, pointed toes. The individuals wear hats with broad brims adorned with a feather or brush made from animal hair. The only legible fragment of inscription, located above the drummer's head, reads ‘…CADORES’, which probably refers to the word ‘tocadores’, or ‘musicians.’ A figure, possibly a dancer (individual 4), is shown striding towards the musicians, holding a green object resembling a bottle in his extended hand. His costume comprises both European and Indian elements. Image credit: R. Słaboński.

Spectacular Maya Wall Paintings Discovered in Guatemala

Jun 22, 2020 by Sergio Prostak

An unparalleled set of Maya wall paintings, most probably from the 17th to 18th centuries CE, discovered in a local house in the Guatemalan city of San...

A reconstruction of a Jurassic dinosaur track-maker from southern Queensland in front of a silhouette of the largest known Tyrannosaurus rex. Image credit: Anthony Romilio.

Carnivorous Dinosaurs as Big as T. rex Lived in Jurassic Australia

Jun 22, 2020 by News Staff

Paleontologists have analyzed 151- to 165-million-year-old dinosaur footprints from 11 sites in southern Queensland, most of which produced large (length...

This Hubble image shows the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 5907. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / R. de Jong / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.

Hubble Space Telescope Snaps Image of NGC 5907

Jun 22, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

NASA has released a stunning image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 5907. This Hubble image shows the edge-on...

This image from the eROSITA X-ray telescope shows the energetic Universe. As eROSITA scans the sky, the energy of the collected photons is measured with an accuracy ranging from 2% - 6%. To generate this image, in which the whole sky is projected onto an ellipse (so-called Aitoff projection) with the center of the Milky Way in the middle and the body of our Galaxy running horizontally, photons have been color-coded according to their energy (red for energies 0.3-0.6 keV, green for 0.6-1 keV, blue for 1-2.3 keV). The red diffuse glow away from the galactic plane is the emission of the hot gas in the vicinity of the Solar System (the Local Bubble). Along the plane itself, dust and gas absorb the lowest energy X-ray photons, so that only high-energy emitting sources can be seen, and their color appears blue in the image. The hotter gas close to the Galactic center, shown in green and yellow, carries imprinted the history of the most energetic processes in the life of the Milky Way, such as supernova explosions, driving fountains of gas out of the plane, and, possibly, past outburst from the now dormant supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way. Piercing through this turbulent, hot diffuse medium, are hundreds of thousands of X-ray sources, which appear mostly white in the image, and uniformly distributed over the sky. Among them, distant active galactic nuclei are visible as point sources, while clusters of galaxies reveal themselves as extended X-ray nebulosities. In total, about one million X-ray sources have been detected in this image. Image credit: Jeremy Sanders, Hermann Brunner & the eSASS team / Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics / Eugene Churazov & Marat Gilfanov, IKI.

eROSITA X-Ray Telescope Captures Hot, Energetic Universe

Jun 19, 2020 by News Staff

A new all-sky image from the eROSITA X-ray telescope onboard the Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) space observatory contains over one million objects, about...

An artist’s impression of a water-world exoplanet. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Ocean Worlds May Be Common in Our Milky Way Galaxy

Jun 19, 2020 by News Staff

A team of U.S. astronomers has calculated internal heating rates for 53 terrestrial exoplanets and found that all of them are likely to have volcanic activity...

Paleontologists Find Giant Soft-Shelled Egg of Cretaceous-Period Marine Reptile in Antarctica

Jun 19, 2020 by News Staff

A giant fossilized egg of an extinct marine reptile has been found in the 68-million-year-old nearshore marine deposits in Antarctica. An artist’s rendering...

Hubble Observes Two Young, Rapidly Evolving Planetary Nebulae: NGC 6302 and NGC 7027

Jun 19, 2020 by News Staff

Planetary nebulae, whose stars shed their layers over thousands of years, can turn into crazy whirligigs while puffing off shells and jets of hot gas....

Event display of a candidate four-top-quark event, where two of the top quarks decay leptonically -- one with a resulting muon (red) and one with an electron (green) -- and two top quarks decay hadronically (green and yellow rectangles). The jets -- b-tagged jets -- are shown as yellow (blue) cones. Image credit: ATLAS Collaboration / CERN.

Physicists Find Strong Evidence of Four-Top Quark Production

Jun 18, 2020 by News Staff

Physicists from the ATLAS Collaboration CERN’s Large Hadron Collider have uncovered strong evidence of the production of four top quarks. This rare process...

An artist’s impression of a magnetar. Image credit: ESA.

Astronomers Discover Youngest Magnetar Ever

Jun 18, 2020 by News Staff

Using NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, ESA’s XMM-Newton observatory, NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), and ground-based...

The exceptionally preserved Protoceratops specimen includes six embryos that preserve nearly complete skeletons. Image credit: M. Ellison / American Museum of Natural History.

Eggs of Earliest Dinosaurs Had Soft, Leathery Shells

Jun 18, 2020 by News Staff

A team of paleontologists from the United States, Canada and Argentina has analyzed the fossilized eggs of two different non-avian dinosaurs, Protoceratops...

A group of Neanderthals in a cave. Image credit: Tyler B. Tretsven.

Researchers Sequence Genome of Neanderthal Woman from Chagyrskaya Cave

Jun 18, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

An international team of researchers has sequenced and analyzed the genome of an 80,000-year-old Neanderthal woman from Chagyrskaya Cave in the Altai Mountains,...

An artist’s impression of ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter detecting the green glow of oxygen in the Martian atmosphere. This emission, spotted on the dayside of Mars, is similar to the night glow seen around Earth’s atmosphere from space. Image credit: ESA.

ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter Detects Glowing Oxygen in Martian Atmosphere

Jun 18, 2020 by News Staff

Using data from the NOMAD (Nadir and Occultation for Mars Discovery) ultraviolet and visible spectrometer instrument on board ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas...

SOHO-4000 is seen here in an image from the SOHO alongside its 3,999th comet discovery. The two comets are relatively close at approximately 1 million miles apart, suggesting that they could have been connected together as recently as a few years ago. Image credit: ESA / NASA / SOHO / Karl Battams.

SOHO Spacecraft Discovers Its 4,000th Comet

Jun 17, 2020 by News Staff

The ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) detected its 4,000th comet on June 15, 2020. SOHO-4000 is seen here in an image from the SOHO alongside...

Keraphyton mawsoniae: (A) specimen before preparation; (B) general view of stem showing the 4 rib systems (Ia, Ib, IIa and IIb); (C) central segment and four fundamental ribs; (D) rib system Ib showing a short branch dividing into two equal ultimate ribs at right and a long branch producing at least three long ultimate ribs at left; (E) long branch of rib system IIa producing short ultimate ribs; (F) short branch of rib system IIa dividing into two ultimate ribs; (G) long branch of rib system IIb producing short ultimate ribs; (H) long branch of rib system Ia producing long, but broken, ultimate ribs. Abbreviations: cs - central segment, fr - fundamental rib, ic - inner cortex, oc - outer cortex, Lb - long branch, sb - short branch. Yellow arrowheads indicate ultimate ribs. (DH) are all oriented with the cortex of the axis towards the top of the photo. Scale bars - 500 μm, (B) - 2 mm. Image credit: Champreux et al, doi: 10.7717/peerj.9321.

360-Million-Year-Old Fossil Reveals Extinct Species of Fern-Like Plant

Jun 17, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have identified a new genus and species of fern-like plant from a single fossilized specimen collected in the New England region of New...

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