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NASA Wants to Send Probe to Triton: Mission Trident

Voyager 2 image of Triton showing the south polar region with dark streaks produced by geysers visible on the icy surface. Image credit: NASA / JPL.
Jun 17, 2020 by News Staff

Trident, a new mission competing for selection under NASA’s Discovery Program, would explore Triton, a unique and highly active icy moon of Neptune. Voyager 2 showed that Triton has active resurfacing with the potential for erupting plumes and an atmosphere. Coupled with an ionosphere that can create organic snow and the potential for a subsurface ocean, Triton is an exciting exploration target to understand how habitable worlds may develop in our...

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π-Earth: Newfound Earth-Sized Exoplanet Orbits Its Star in 3.14 Days

Jun 17, 2020 by Natali Anderson

Using data from NASA’s Kepler/K2 mission, the SPECULOOS telescopes and the High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer (HIRES) on the Keck I telescope at W.M....

A Nenets man traveling on a sled pulled by three reindeer, Tambei region of the Yamal peninsula, June 2018. In his left hand he holds the khorei (a wood pole) and in his right the nenzamindya’sa (head rope), both of which are used to communicate with the reindeer during sledding. Image credit: Losey et al, doi: 10.1007/s10816-020-09455-w.

Earliest Evidence of Reindeer Domestication Found in Arctic Siberia

Jun 17, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

An international team of archeologists has unearthed numerous L-shaped barbed antler objects at three early sites — Ust’-Polui, Tiutei-Sale I,...

An artist’s conception of the HR 858 planetary system. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Study: 18% of Sun-Like Stars May Host Potentially Habitable Earth-Sized Exoplanets

Jun 16, 2020 by News Staff

New estimate suggests that 18% of Sun-like (G-type) stars could have a planet the size of Earth orbiting in their conservative habitable zone. There may...

An artist’s illustration of complex organic molecules in space. Image credit: Jenny Mottar / NASA.

Astronomers Detect Organic Molecules in Starless and Prestellar Regions of Nearby Stellar Nursery

Jun 16, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers have detected the signatures of two complex organic molecules, methanol and acetaldehyde, in starless and prestellar cores of the Taurus Molecular...

Rhombophryne ellae. Image credit: Mark Scherz.

New Species of Diamond Frog Discovered in Madagascar

Jun 16, 2020 by News Staff

German herpetologist Mark Scherz has discovered a new species of diamond frog living in northern Madagascar. Rhombophryne ellae. Image credit: Mark Scherz. The...

Earthquakes send sound waves through the Earth. Seismograms record the echoes as those waves travel along the core-mantle boundary, diffracting and bending around dense rock structures. Kim et al provide the first broad view of these structures, revealing them to be much more widespread than previously known. Image credit: Doyeon Kim, University of Maryland.

Geophysicists Find Dense Rock Structures near Earth’s Core

Jun 16, 2020 by News Staff

In a new study, a team of geophysicists from the University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins University and Tel Aviv University has analyzed echoes of seismic...

Curiosity Spots Earth and Venus from Martian Surface

Jun 16, 2020 by News Staff

The Mast Camera (Mastcam) onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has captured new images of Earth and Venus as seen from the surface of the Red Planet. Two...

Westby & Conselice present a cosmic perspective on the search for life and examine the likely number of CETI civilizations in our Milky Way Galaxy by utilizing the latest astrophysical information. Image credit: Angela Yuriko Smith.

Astronomers Say There Could Be 36 Communicating Extraterrestrial Civilizations in Milky Way

Jun 15, 2020 by News Staff

Using the assumption that intelligent life develops on exoplanets in a similar way as it does on Earth, a duo of researchers from the School of Physics...

Bone projectile points (A to H) and scrapers (I to K) from Fa-Hien Lena. Image credit: Langley et al, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aba3831.

48,000-Year-Old Arrowheads Unearthed in Sri Lanka

Jun 15, 2020 by News Staff

Archaeologists have found over a hundred bone arrow points at the Pleistocene cave site of Fa-Hien Lena in Sri Lanka. The artifacts were used to hunt tree-dwelling...

An artist’s impression of the Proxima Centauri system. Image credit: Lorenzo Santinelli.

Astronomers Confirm Two Planets in Proxima Centauri System

Jun 15, 2020 by Sergio Prostak

Astronomers have finally confirmed the existence of two exoplanets — Proxima b and c — orbiting Proxima Centauri, the Sun’s closest stellar...

This anaglyph image can be viewed with red-blue stereo glasses to reveal Proxima Centauri’s distance from its background. Image credit: Siding Spring node, Las Cumbres Observatory / NASA / Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

New Horizons Obtains Parallax Measurements for Two Nearby Stars

Jun 15, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers have long used a so-called parallax effect — how a star appears to shift against its background when seen from different locations —...

This Hubble image shows a massive galaxy cluster (center); along its borders reddish dots are visible; these are copies of the same galaxy called PLCK G045.1+61.1, which is 12 billion light-years away. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / B. Frye.

Hubble Uses Gravitational Lens to Capture Extremely Distant Starburst Galaxy

Jun 15, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Thanks to the presence of a cosmic lens, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope got a close-up look at PLCK G045.1+61.1, a starburst galaxy located approximately...

Paaru, one of the red pandas tracked by the study. Image credit: James Houston, Red Panda Network.

Researchers Use GPS Collars to Track Red Pandas

Jun 14, 2020 by Sergio Prostak

An international team of scientists has conducted a GPS tracking collar study on red pandas (Ailurus fulgens) in eastern Nepal. This is the first time...

Cosmic rays striking Venus’ atmosphere eject neutrons that gradually fly into space. As neutrons move to higher altitudes, more time passes, and more neutrons radioactively decay. MESSENGER counted the number of neutrons seen at various altitudes, allowing researchers to home in on where neutron numbers start falling off. Using models, researchers can then estimate the neutron lifetime. Image credit: Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

NASA’s MESSENGER Mission Carries Out Space-Based Measurements of Neutron’s Lifetime

Jun 12, 2020 by News Staff

Using data acquired in 2007 and 2008 during flybys of Venus and Mercury by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, researchers found the neutron lifetime to be...

Almarri et al present a comprehensive analysis of structural variation in the Human Genome Diversity panel, a high-coverage dataset of 911 samples from 54 diverse worldwide populations, and identify, in total, 126,018 variants, 78% of which were not identified in previous global sequencing projects. Image credit: Almarri et al, doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.05.024.

Researchers Identify 126,018 Human Genetic Variations

Jun 12, 2020 by News Staff

A team of scientists from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the Francis Crick Institute, and EMBL-EBI has created a comprehensive structural variation atlas...

Bipedal crocodylomorph trackmakers. Image credit: Anthony Romilio.

Cretaceous-Period Crocodiles from Korea Walked on Two Legs

Jun 12, 2020 by News Staff

Multiple, well-preserved trackways made by large crocodylomorphs, extinct ancestors of modern-day crocodiles, between 110 and 120 million years ago (Cretaceous...

The Shirai’s spurdog (Squalus shiraii): lateral (A-C) and ventral (D, E) views. Scale bars - 50 mm. Image credit: Viana & Carvalho, doi: 10.3897/zse.96.51962.

New Species of Deep-Water Dogfish Shark Discovered

Jun 12, 2020 by Sergio Prostak

Marine biologists have discovered a new species of the shark genus Squalus in the tropical waters off southern Japan. The Shirai’s spurdog (Squalus shiraii):...

An artist’s impression of the Peter Pan disk around WISE J080822.18-644357.3, a red dwarf located about 331 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Carina. Image credit: Jonathan Holden / NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Astronomers Reveal Secrets of ‘Peter Pan’ Protoplanetary Disks

Jun 11, 2020 by News Staff

Peter Pan disks are a recently-discovered class of long-lived protoplanetary disks around low-mass stars that survive 5-10 times longer than typical protoplanetary...

View of a new phase of liquid crystal as seen under the microscope. Image credit: Chen et al, doi: 10.1073/pnas.2002290117.

Researchers Confirm Existence of Elusive Phase of Liquid Crystals

Jun 11, 2020 by News Staff

A team of scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Utah has confirmed the existence of a ferroelectric nematic phase of...

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