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Stormquakes offshore North America and seismic stations from 2006 to 2015. The located stormquakes are shown as the red circles, and the seismic stations are shown as triangles. Due to the location uncertainties, some of the apparent stormquake locations are beyond the coastlines. The yellow contours show regions where stormquakes were detected. The orange contour shows a comparison region offshore Mexico that has been struck by hurricanes but without excitation of stormquakes. The insert shows earthquakes (blue dots) reported in the International Seismological Centre catalog with magnitudes greater than 3 and shallower than 40 km from 2006 to 2015. Image credit: Fan et al, doi: 10.1029/2019GL084217.

New Geophysical Phenomenon Discovered: Stormquakes

Oct 22, 2019 by News Staff

Energetic storms generate strong ocean waves, which can interact with shallow seafloor features located near the edge of continental shelves known as ocean...

The Stepped Street: signs of rock-cutting and smoothing of bedrock. Image credit: A. Peretz, Israel Antiquities Authority.

Ancient ‘Stepped Street’ in Jerusalem Commissioned by Pontius Pilate, Archaeologists Say

Oct 22, 2019 by News Staff

For over a century, excavations in Jerusalem have been uncovering segments of the city’s Roman-period network of streets, particularly the so-called...

The moons of our Solar System are brimming with unusual landscapes. However, sometimes they look a little more familiar, as in this new radar image from the Cassini orbiter. The image shows dark streaks carved into dunes reminiscent of those we might find on a beach on Earth, or raked with flowing lines in a Japanese Zen garden — but this scene is actually taking place on Saturn’s moon Titan. While our sand is composed of silicates, the ‘sand’ of these alien dunes is formed from grains of organic materials about the same size as particles of our beach sand. The small size and smoothness of these grains means that the flowing lines carved into the dunes show up as dark to the human eye. While previous images have spotted these eerily familiar patterns on Titan's dunes, this new image (colorized) shows them in greater detail. The image was obtained by Cassini's radar mapper on July 10, 2013. The vertical seam near the center is an artifact of radar image data processing. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Sci-News.com.

Researchers Unravel Origin and Chemical Composition of Titan’s Mysterious Dunes

Oct 22, 2019 by News Staff

Vast longitudinal dunes up to 330 feet (100 m) in height in the equatorial deserts of Saturn’s moon Titan are the Solar System’s most monumental surface...

An aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis). Image credit: David Haring.

Scientists Find Pseudothumbs in Aye-Aye’s Hands

Oct 22, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of researchers from North Carolina State University and CNRS have found that aye-ayes (Daubentonia madagascariensis) possess pseudothumbs...

This image of Tycho’s SNR from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory reveals an intriguing pattern of bright clumps and fainter holes. To emphasize these features, two narrow ranges of X-ray energies were selected to isolate material (silicon, colored red) moving away from Earth, and moving towards us (also silicon, colored blue). The other colors in the image (yellow, green, blue-green, orange and purple) show a broad range of different energies and elements, and a mixture of directions of motion. Chandra’s X-ray data are shown alongside an optical image of the stars in the same field of view from the Digitized Sky Survey. Image credit: NASA / CXC / RIKEN / NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / T. Sato et al / DSS.

Chandra Sheds New Light on Tycho’s Supernova Remnant

Oct 21, 2019 by News Staff

X-ray images of Tycho’s supernova remnant (Tycho’s SNR) show a pattern of bright clumps and fainter holes. By comparing new data from NASA’s Chandra...

A plutonium dioxide nanoparticle. Image credit: Kristina Kvashnina.

Physicists Create Unexpected New Form of Plutonium

Oct 21, 2019 by News Staff

Physicists using the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility have created a new compound of plutonium (Pu) with an unexpected, pentavalent oxidation state...

Elliot et al show that fatty tissue is present within the airway wall and is related to BMI, wall thickness and the number of inflammatory cells. The accumulation of airway fatty tissue in overweight individuals may therefore contribute to airway pathophysiology. Image credit: Kalhh.

Fatty Tissue Accumulates in Airways of Overweight and Obese People, New Study Finds

Oct 21, 2019 by News Staff

According to a new study published in the European Respiratory Journal, fatty tissue accumulates within the airway walls of people who are overweight or...

Spectacled Flowerpecker: New Species of Bird Discovered

Oct 21, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of ornithologists led by by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History has discovered and scientifically...

This image snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope shows a galaxy called IC 4653. This color composite was made from separate exposures taken in the visible and infrared regions of the spectrum with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Two 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 / D. Rosario, CEA, Durham University.

Hubble Observes Dwarf Spiral: IC 4653

Oct 21, 2019 by Enrico de Lazaro

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a beautiful picture of the dwarf spiral galaxy IC 4653. This image snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope...

Adaptive Genetic Variants from Archaic Hominins Found in Melanesians

Oct 19, 2019 by News Staff

Modern individuals from the Pacific islands of Melanesia harbor adaptive copy number variants (CNVs) that they inherited from two groups of our evolutionary...

The top row of this mosaic features Hubble images of three spiral galaxies, each of which weighs several times as much as the Milky Way. The bottom row shows three even more massive spiral galaxies that qualify as super spirals, which were observed by the ground-based Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The galaxy at lower right, 2MFGC 08638, is the most massive super spiral known to date, with a dark matter halo weighing at least 40 trillion Suns. Image credit: NASA / ESA / P. Ogle & J. DePasquale, STScI / SDSS.

Super Spirals Spin Faster Than Expected, Astronomers Say

Oct 18, 2019 by News Staff

Super spirals are the most massive star-forming disk galaxies in the Universe. They are much larger, brighter, and more massive than our own Milky Way...

This artist’s rendering shows a white dwarf star with two planets. Image credit: Mark Garlick.

Rocky Exoplanets Often Have Earth- and Mars-Like Internal Properties

Oct 18, 2019 by News Staff

White dwarfs are dense, burned-out remnants of normal stars. Due to their strong gravitational pull, surface atmospheres of these ancient objects should...

Saurornitholestes langstoni. Image credit: Jan Sovak.

Nearly Complete Specimen of Saurornitholestes langstoni Unearthed in Canada

Oct 18, 2019 by News Staff

A fossil site in Canada has yielded the best-preserved specimen of the dromaeosaurid dinosaur Saurornitholestes langstoni ever found. Saurornitholestes...

An artist’s impression of gas flowing like a waterfall into a protoplanetary disk gap, which is most likely caused by an infant planet. Image credit: NRAO / AUI / NSF / S. Dagnello.

ALMA Finds Gas Waterfalls in Planet-Forming Disk around HD 163296

Oct 18, 2019 by News Staff

At three locations in the protoplanetary disk around HD 163296, a young star located approximately 400 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius,...

Gigantic dinosaurs like the sauropod Diplodocus, which weighed over 15 tons and was longer than an 18-wheeler truck, would have had problems with potentially lethal overheating. Hot blood from the body core would have been pumped to the head, damaging the delicate brain. The new study shows that in sauropods, evaporation of moisture in the nose and mouth would have cooled extensive networks of venous blood destined for the brain. Other large dinosaurs evolved different brain-cooling mechanisms, but all involving evaporative cooling of blood in different regions of the head. Image credit: Michael Skrepnick / WitmerLab, Ohio University.

Giant Dinosaurs Evolved Various Brain-Cooling Mechanisms: Study

Oct 17, 2019 by News Staff

Different groups of gigantic dinosaurs had different thermoregulatory strategies to help moderate brain temperatures in the face of high heat loads, according...

Photograph of the collection of bronze objects from the battlefield site in the Tollense Valley, Germany. Image credit: V. Minkus.

Archaeologists Find Personal Equipment of Bronze Age Warrior

Oct 17, 2019 by News Staff

Archaeologists have unearthed a collection of 31 metal objects, including a bronze tool with a birch handle, a knife, a chisel, bronze cylinders, and ingot...

Arapaima gigas. Image credit: Shizhao / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Arapaima Fish Scales are One of Nature’s Toughest Flexible Materials

Oct 17, 2019 by News Staff

Arapaima gigas is a large Amazonian fish (weighing up to 150 kg) living primarily in seasonal lakes infested with ferocious piranhas. The freshwater giant...

An artist’s impression of the center of the barred spiral galaxy Messier 77. ALMA discovered two counter-rotating flows of gas around the black hole. The colors in this image represent the motion of the gas: blue is material moving toward us, red is moving away. Image credit: NRAO / AUI / NSF / S. Dagnello.

ALMA Spots Counter-Rotating Disks around Supermassive Black Hole in Messier 77

Oct 17, 2019 by News Staff

Supermassive black holes, millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun, are found at the centers of galaxies. Many of these enormous objects are hidden...

Açaí palms (Euterpe oleracea) in Summit Park, Panama. Image credit: Dick Culbert / CC BY 2.0.

Scientists Find Antimalarial Compounds in Amazonian Acai Berries

Oct 17, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of researchers from Brazil, the United States and Sweden has found that polyphenols found in berries of the açaí palm (Euterpe...