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This composite image of the Crab Nebula was assembled by combining data from five telescopes spanning nearly the entire breadth of the electromagnetic spectrum: the VLA (radio) in red; Spitzer (infrared) in yellow; Hubble (visible) in green; XMM-Newton (ultraviolet) in blue; and Chandra (X-ray) in purple. Image credit: NASA / ESA / NRAO / AUI / NSF / G. Dubner, University of Buenos Aires.

Astronomers Create Stunning 3D Visualization of Crab Nebula

Jan 22, 2020 by News Staff

In 1054 CE, Chinese sky watchers witnessed the sudden appearance of a ‘new star’ in the heavens, which they recorded as six times brighter than Venus,...

African gray parrots (Psittacus erithacus). Image credit: Andrew Bernard / CC BY 2.0.

African Gray Parrots Help Partners Obtain Food Rewards

Jan 22, 2020 by News Staff

African gray parrots (Psittacus erithacus) voluntarily and spontaneously help familiar parrots to achieve a goal, without obvious immediate benefit to...

Composite aeromagnetic anomaly map of the Yarrabubba impact structure within the Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia, showing the locations of key outcrops and samples used in this study. The image combines the total magnetic intensity (TMI, cool to warm colors) with the second vertical derivative of the total magnetic intensity (2VD, grayscale) data. The demagnetized anomaly centered on the outcrops of the Barlangi granophyre is considered to be the eroded remnant of the central uplift domain, which forms the basis of the crater diameter of 70 km. Prominent, narrow linear anomalies that cross-cut the demagnetized zone with broadly east-west orientations are mafic dykes that post-date the impact structure. Image credit: Erickson et al, doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-13985-7.

Earth’s Oldest Known Meteorite Impact Structure Identified

Jan 22, 2020 by News Staff

The 70 km- (43.5-mile) diameter Yarrabubba impact structure in Western Australia is approximately 2.23 billion years old, according to new research led...

Monkeys fresco on the north wall of Room 6 of Building Complex Beta at Akrotiri, Thera. Image credit: Thera Akrotiri Excavations.

Researchers May Have Solved Mystery of Akrotiri’s Monkey Frescoes

Jan 22, 2020 by The Conversation

The blue monkeys painted on the walls of Akrotiri on the Greek island of Santorini are among many animals found in the frescoes of this 3,600-year-old...

This illustration shows the surroundings of a black hole feeding on ambient gas as mapped using ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory. Image credit: ESA.

Astronomers Map Surroundings of Supermassive Black Hole

Jan 22, 2020 by News Staff

As material spirals towards a black hole, it is heated up and emits X-rays that, in turn, echo and reverberate as they interact with nearby gas. These...

An artist’s conception of a dwarf galaxy, its shape distorted, most likely by a past interaction with another galaxy, and a massive black hole in its outskirts (pullout). The black hole is drawing in material that forms a rotating disk and generates jets of material propelled outward. Image credit: Sophia Dagnello, NRAO / AUI / NSF.

Wandering Massive Black Holes Detected in Nearby Dwarf Galaxies

Jan 21, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using NSF’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory have observed 111 nearby dwarf galaxies within...

Alucita udovichenkoi, an adult male. Image credit: Kovtunovich et al.

Entomologists Discover New Species of Many-Plumed Moth

Jan 21, 2020 by Sergio Prostak

A species of many-plumed moth believed to be new to science has been discovered in South Africa. Alucita udovichenkoi, an adult male. Image credit: Kovtunovich...

This scanning electron microscope image shows a tardigrade. Image credit: Diane Nelson, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.

Could Invisible Extraterrestrial Life Forms Really Exist Among Us?

Jan 21, 2020 by The Conversation

Life is pretty easy to recognize. It moves, it grows, it eats, it excretes, it reproduces. Simple. In biology, researchers often use the acronym ‘MRS-GREN’...

A Magellanic penguin (Spheniscus magellanicus) on a bluff on Isla de los Estados, Argentina. Image credit: Ulises Balza / Wildlife Conservation Society.

Researchers Discover New Colony of Magellanic Penguins

Jan 21, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

A team of scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WSC), the CADIC-CONICET and Argentina’s National Parks Administration has discovered a new...

This image from the FORS instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows the emission nebula Gum 26. Image credit: ESO.

VLT Sees Newborn Stars in Emission Nebula Gum 26

Jan 20, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has released a stunning image snapped by the FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph (FORS) instrument on...

Hansen Wheat & Temrin provide the first empirical evidence that wolves, and not only dogs, express interspecific play with a human based on social-communicative cues. This image shows a wolf puppy named Flea, who comes from a non-fetching litter born in 2015. Image credit: Christina Hansen Wheat.

Wolf Puppies Play Fetch Too, Researchers Find

Jan 20, 2020 by News Staff

In a series of experiments, a duo of researchers from the Department of Zoology at Stockholm University has observed eight-week-old wolf puppies spontaneously...

Reconstruction of Parioscorpio venator. Structures outlined in gray are inferred based on Proscorpius osborni. Structures highlighted with gray infilling are the preserved elements of the pulmonary-cardiovascular system. Image credit: Wendruff et al, doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-56010-z.

Fossils of Earliest Known Scorpion Discovered

Jan 20, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

The exceptionally preserved fossils of the oldest species of scorpion ever found have been unearthed in Wisconsin, the United States. Reconstruction of...

Parecis titis (Plecturocebus parecis) in the forest reserve of the UHE Rondon II hydroelectric plant, municipality of Pimenta Bueno, Rondônia, Brazil. Image credit: Alberto Caldeiras.

New Species of Titi Monkey Discovered in Brazil

Jan 20, 2020 by Natali Anderson

An international team of researchers has discovered a new species of titi monkey living in the forests of Brazil. Parecis titis (Plecturocebus parecis)...

This Hubble image shows NGC 1022, a face-on barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation of Cetus, approximately 62 million light-years away. The image is made up of observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in the infrared and optical parts of the spectrum. Three filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / A. Seth.

Hubble Views Face-On Barred Spiral Galaxy

Jan 20, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a beautiful spiral galaxy called NGC 1022. This Hubble image shows NGC 1022, a face-on barred spiral galaxy...

This HRSC image shows plumes of dust clouds over the ice cap at Mars’ north pole. The landscape here is a rippled mix of color. Dark red and ochre-hued troughs appear to cut through the icy white of the polar cap; these form part of a wider system of depressions that spiral outwards from the very center of the pole. Visible to the left of the frame are a few extended streams of clouds, aligned perpendicularly to a couple of the troughs. These are thought to be caused by small local storms that kick up dust into the Martian atmosphere, eroding scarps and slopes as they do so and slowly changing the appearance of the troughs over time. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

ESA’s Mars Express Orbiter Sees Dust Clouds over Martian North Pole

Jan 17, 2020 by News Staff

The High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) onboard ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft has captured a new image of the icy cap at the Martian north pole, complete...

An artist’s rendering of what Wulong bohaiensis might have looked like. Image credit: Erick Toussaint.

New Feathered Dinosaur Species Identified in China

Jan 17, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists in China have identified a new species of microraptorine dromaeosaur closely related to the famous dinosaur Velociraptor. An artist’s...

An artist’s rendering shows G-objects, with the reddish centers, orbiting the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. The black hole is represented as a dark sphere inside a white ring (above the middle of the rendering). Image credit: Jack Ciurlo.

Astronomers Spot Four New G-Objects near Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole

Jan 17, 2020 by News Staff

At the center of our Milky Way Galaxy lurks Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole that is four million times the mass of the Sun. Recently, two unusual...

In this illustration, one photon (purple) carries a million times the energy of another (yellow). Image credit: NASA / Sonoma State University / Aurore Simonnet.

Physicists Observe ‘Billions of Billions’ of Entangled Electrons

Jan 17, 2020 by News Staff

An international team of physicists says they have observed quantum entanglement among ‘billions of billions’ of flowing electrons in thin films of...

No one knows what dark matter is, but this invisible form of matter makes up roughly a quarter of the Universe. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Astrophysicists are Taking Dark Matter’s Temperature

Jan 16, 2020 by News Staff

Astrophysicists have very little idea of what dark matter is and they have yet to detect a dark matter particle. But they do know that the gravity of clumps...