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One of Nearest Brown Dwarfs is Actually Free-Floating Giant Planet, Astronomers Say

An artist’s conception of SIMP0136, a planetary-like member of the 200-million-year-old Carina-Near group. Image credit: NASA / JPL / Jonathan Gagne.
May 10, 2017 by News Staff

A team of astronomers led by the Carnegie Institution has discovered that what scientists had previously thought was one of the closest brown dwarfs to the Solar System is in fact a giant planet. An artist’s conception of SIMP0136, a planetary-like member of the 200-million-year-old Carina-Near group. Image credit: NASA / JPL / Jonathan Gagne. The planetary object in question, called SIMP J013656.5+093347 (SIMP0136 for short), is located approximately...

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A nesting cassowary-like dinosaur named Beibeilong sinensis in the act of incubating eggs. Image credit: Zhao Chuang.

Beibeilong sinensis: Paleontologists Identify New Species of Cassowary-Like Dinosaur

May 10, 2017 by News Staff

A team of paleontologists from Canada, China, the United States and Slovak Republic has identified a partial clutch of large dinosaur eggs with a closely...

Spherical bubbles preserved in 3.48 billion-year-old hot spring deposits in the Dresser Formation provide evidence for early microbial life having lived on land. Image credit: University of New South Wales.

Earliest Signs of Microbial Life on Land Found in 3.48-Billion-Year-Old Hot Spring Deposits

May 10, 2017 by News Staff

Fossil evidence of early microbial life has been found in ancient hot spring deposits in the Dresser Formation in the Pilbara Craton, Western Australia,...

Photo of the centimeter-sized silicon chip, which has two parallel superconducting oscillators and the quantum-circuit refrigerators connected to them. Image credit: Kuan Yen Tan / Aalto University.

Researchers Invent Nanoscale ‘Refrigerator’ for Quantum Computers

May 9, 2017 by News Staff

A team of researchers from the Department of Applied Physics at Aalto University in Finland has invented a quantum-circuit refrigerator, which can reduce...

A reconstruction of Homo naledi’s head by paleoartist John Gurche, who spent some 700 hours recreating the head from bone scans. The find was announced by the University of the Witwatersrand, the National Geographic Society and the South African National Research Foundation and published in the journal eLife. Image credit: John Gurche / Mark Thiessen / National Geographic.

Homo naledi Walked Earth More Recently than Thought

May 9, 2017 by News Staff

Dating of Homo naledi fossils from the Dinaledi Chamber of the Rising Star cave system, South Africa, shows that they were deposited between about 335,000...

Two female great tits. Image credit: Shirley Clarke / Fordingbridge Camera Club / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Study: Male Great Tits Choose Their Neighbors Based on Personality

May 9, 2017 by News Staff

Male great tits (Parus major) choose neighbors with similar personalities to their own, according to new research from the University of Oxford, UK. Johnson...

A Homo naledi skull, ‘Neo.’ Image credit: Hawks et al, doi: 10.7554/eLife.24232.

South African Cave System Yields Yet More Fossils of Homo naledi

May 9, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of paleoanthropologists announced today in the journal eLife the discovery of a second chamber in the Rising Star cave system, located...

Artist’s conception of early Earth. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Francis Reddy.

Early Earth was Barren, Smooth and Almost Entirely under Water, Research Suggests

May 8, 2017 by News Staff

About 4 billion years ago (Hadean eon), our planet was entirely different than it is now. It was barren, smooth and almost entirely under water with a...

A fungus gnat trapped in Baltic amber some 45-55 million years ago is carrying on the upper portion of its severed leg a pollen sac from an orchid. Image credit: George Poinar, Jr.

45-55 Million Year Old Orchid Pollinaria Attached to Pollinating Insect Found in Piece of Baltic Amber

May 8, 2017 by News Staff

A new study published in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society documents evidence of an orchid fossil trapped in Baltic amber that dates back 45-55...

Two New Species of Tarsiers Discovered in Indonesia

May 8, 2017 by News Staff

Two new tarsier species have been discovered in the forests of the northern peninsula of Sulawesi, Indonesia. The Gursky’s spectral tarsier (Tarsius...

This Hubble image shows the unusual object LEDA 18516. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Image Captures Collision of Two Spiral Galaxies

May 8, 2017 by News Staff

This new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures an ongoing cosmic collision between two massive galaxies. This Hubble image shows the...

Bathymetric map of recent Hawaiian volcanism, highlighting the Loa and Kea tracks. Solid lines represent the geochemically distinct Loa (blue) and Kea (red) volcanic trends. The dashed lines are an estimate of the future projection of these trends based on the team’s hypothesis. Before the emergence of the Loa and Kea tracks, Kea-type lavas were overlain by Loa-type lavas at Ko’olau and Kaua’i. The encircled number indicates the approximate age at which Loa trend lavas first appeared at Ko’olau. Image credit: Jones et al, doi: 10.1038/nature22054.

Geoscientists Finally Solve Mystery of Hawaiian Volcanoes

May 6, 2017 by News Staff

New research has solved a long-standing mystery of how the world’s biggest and most active volcanoes formed in Hawaii. Bathymetric map of recent Hawaiian...

As Cassini made its first-ever dive through the gap between Saturn and its rings on April 26, 2017, its wide-angle camera took a series of rapid-fire images that were used to make this movie sequence. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Stunning NASA Video Shows Cassini’s First ‘Grand Finale’ Dive

May 5, 2017 by News Staff

A new movie sequence of images from Cassini shows the view as the orbiter swooped over Saturn during the first of its ‘Grand Finale’ dives between...

A light-activatable 4 x 4 droplet array. Image credit: Restrepo Schild et al, doi: 10.1038/srep46585.

Researchers Create Synthetic, Soft Tissue Retina

May 5, 2017 by News Staff

A synthetic, soft tissue retina developed by researchers at the University of Oxford, UK, could offer fresh hope to visually impaired people. Until now,...

Galeamopus pabsti in its environment in the Late Jurassic of North America. An Allosaurus and two Ceratosaurus are feeding on a carcass of Galeamopus pabsti. Image credit: Davide Bonadonna.

Galeamopus pabsti: New Species of Long-Necked Dinosaur Identified

May 5, 2017 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new species of sauropod dinosaur that lived about 152 million years ago (Jurassic period) has been identified from fossils found in Wyoming. Galeamopus...

With the final observation of the distant galaxy cluster Abell 370 -- approximately 6 billion light-years away -- the Frontier Fields program came to an end. Abell 370 is one of the very first galaxy clusters in which astronomers observed the phenomenon of gravitational lensing, the warping of spacetime by the cluster’s gravitational field that distorts the light from galaxies lying far behind it. This manifests as arcs and streaks in the picture, which are the stretched images of background galaxies. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / HST Frontier Fields.

Abell 370: Hubble Team Releases New ‘Frontier Fields’ Image

May 4, 2017 by News Staff

This new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is one of the best ever views of the massive galaxy cluster Abell 370. The image (hi-res version)...

Stages of liver disease. Image credit: National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Researchers Identify Liver Fibrosis-Causing Protein

May 4, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of scientists has identified a long-sought protein that causes liver fibrosis (scarring), paving the way for new treatments. The...

This VISTA image of the Small Magellanic Cloud shows millions of stars. Image credit: ESO / VISTA / VMC.

VISTA Telescope Takes Biggest Infrared Image Ever of Small Magellanic Cloud

May 3, 2017 by News Staff

This enormous image (zoomable version), captured with ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope (VISTA), is the largest infrared image (43,223 x 38,236...

Artist’s illustration of the Epsilon Eridani system. In the right foreground, the Jupiter-mass planet Epsilon Eridani b is shown orbiting its star at the outside edge of an asteroid belt. In the background can be seen another narrow asteroid or comet belt plus an outermost belt similar in size to our Solar System’s Kuiper Belt. The similarity of the structure of the Epsilon Eridani system to our Solar System is remarkable, although Epsilon Eridani is much younger than our Sun. Image credit: NASA / SOFIA / Lynette Cook.

Epsilon Eridani System is Remarkably Similar to Our Own

May 3, 2017 by News Staff

New observations from the joint German-U.S. Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), the largest airborne observatory in the world, indicate...

Varanus douarrha. Image credit: Valter Weijola.

Varanus douarrha: Researchers Rediscover Long-Lost Species of Monitor Lizard

May 3, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of researchers has found and re-described a species of monitor lizard, Varanus douarrha, from the island of New Ireland in the Bismarck...

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