Page 566 | Sci.News: Breaking Science News

This image of Pluto’s surface was taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft shortly before closest approach to the dwarf planet on July 14, 2015. The scene is about 130 miles (210 km) across. The Sun illuminates the scene from the left, and north is to the upper left. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

New Horizons Delivers New Close-Ups of Pluto and Charon

Oct 19, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s New Horizons team has released new close-up images of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon. The images were taken by New Horizons’ Long Range...

This image from Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 shows the spiral galaxy Messier 94. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Captures Stunning Image of Messier 94

Oct 19, 2015 by Natali Anderson

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this vivid image of Messier 94. This image from Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 shows the...

Musa nanensis: male inflorescence. Image credit: P. Srisanga.

Musa nanensis: New Species of Wild Banana Discovered in Thailand

Oct 18, 2015 by News Staff

A team of Thai botanists has announced the discovery of what they say is a new species of wild banana. Musa nanensis: male inflorescence. Image credit:...

This image from Cassini shows battered terrain around the north pole of Enceladus. Craters crowd and overlap each other, each one recording an impact in the moon’s distant past. The moon’s north pole lies approximately at the top of this image. North on Enceladus is up. The view was acquired at a distance of 4,000 miles (6,000 km) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 8 degrees. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

New Close-Up Photos of Saturn’s Moon Enceladus Released by NASA

Oct 18, 2015 by News Staff

NASA scientists have released the best views yet of the northern extremes of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The images were collected as the agency’s Cassini...

A honeybee foraging on a citrus flower, which is one of the flowers whose nectar contains caffeine. Image credit: Jon Sullivan.

Plants Use Caffeine-Laced Nectar to Trick Honeybees into Pollination

Oct 17, 2015 by News Staff

According to a new paper in the journal Current Biology, honeybees may select caffeinated nectar over an uncaffeinated but otherwise equal-quality alternative....

Paleontologists used a novel technique to find out dinosaurs’ body temperatures based on their eggshells. Image credit: Gerald Grenet-Tinnes.

Some Dinosaurs May Have Liked to Sunbathe, Paleontologists Say

Oct 17, 2015 by News Staff

Some species of dinosaurs had the ability to warm themselves by drawing heat from the Sun, according to an international team of paleontologists from the...

This Pluto mosaic was made from New Horizons LORRI images taken on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 49,700 miles (80,000 km). This view is projected from a point 1,118 miles (1,800 km) above Pluto’s equator, looking northeast over the dark, cratered Cthulhu Regio toward the bright, smooth expanse of icy plains called Sputnik Planum. Pluto’s North Pole is off the image to the left. This mosaic was produced with panchromatic images from the New Horizons LORRI camera, with color overlaid from the Ralph color mapper onboard New Horizons. Image credit: S.A. Stern et al, doi: 10.1126/science.aad1815.

New Horizons Team Releases First Scientific Results from Flyby of Pluto System

Oct 16, 2015 by News Staff

The dwarf planet Pluto displays a wide variety of geological landforms, including those resulting from glaciological and surface-atmosphere interactions...

A monochrome mosaic of the Moon from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, centered in the middle of the South Pole-Aitken Basin. Image credit: NASA / Goddard / Arizona State University.

Strange Structure near Moon’s South Pole Has Volcanic Origin, Scientists Say

Oct 15, 2015 by News Staff

Mafic Mound, a distinctive and enigmatic feature near the Moon’s south pole, is a volcanic structure unlike any other found on the surface of the Earth’s...

Perinatal specimens of Saurolophus angustirostris: bones on the right side of the block show a certain degree of articulation, whereas bones on the left are disarticulated. Image credit: Dewaele L et al.

Paleontologists Find Fossilized Hadrosaur Nest in Mongolia

Oct 15, 2015 by News Staff

An international team of paleontologists from Belgium, France and Mongolia, has unearthed an exceptional block of perinatal specimens (babies) of the giant...

Although Mimas and Pandora, shown here, both orbit Saturn, they are very different moons. The shapes of moons can teach planetary scientists much about their history. This image was captured on July 26, 2015, when Cassini was nearly 904,000 miles (1.4 million km) from Mimas and 485,000 miles (781,000 km) from Pandora. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

Cassini Captures Amazing View of Saturn’s Moons Mimas and Pandora

Oct 15, 2015 by Sergio Prostak

This newly released image from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows two of Saturn’s moons, Mimas and Pandora, and the planet’s rings. Although Mimas and...

Sommera cusucoana: tip of shoot with flower, developing fruits, and leaf pair emerging between pair of stipules. Image credit: A.C. Dietzsch.

Scientists Uncover New Coffee Tree Species in Honduras

Oct 15, 2015 by News Staff

A new species of coffee tree has been described from the Cusuco National Park, a national park in Honduras. Sommera cusucoana: tip of shoot with flower,...

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

Anatomically Modern Homo sapiens Arrived in Southern Asia at least 80,000 Years Ago

Oct 15, 2015 by News Staff

A discovery of 47 human teeth from the Fuyan Cave in the Chinese province of Hunan indicates that anatomically modern Homo sapiens were present in southern...

Life reconstruction of Spinolestes xenarthrosus. Image credit: Oscar Sanisidro.

Spinolestes xenarthrosus: Cretaceous Fossil Reveals Early Evolution of Hair

Oct 14, 2015 by News Staff

An international team of paleontologists has discovered a 125-million-year-old ancient mammal fossil, which has been named a new species, in Spain. According...

This image shows part of the Coalsack Nebula, an opaque interstellar dust cloud that obscures the light of the background Milky Way stars; dust grains in the cloud redden the starlight that reaches us by absorbing blue light preferentially. Image credit: ESO.

ESO Astronomers Zoom in on Mysterious Coalsack Nebula

Oct 14, 2015 by News Staff

This image from the Wide Field Imager, a camera installed on the MPG/ESO 2.2-m telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, shows part of the huge...

This global map of Jupiter was made during the Hubble OPAL Program. The map was observed on 19 January 2015, from 2:00 UTC to 12:30 UTC. Image credit: NASA / ESA / A. Simon, GSFC / M. Wong, University of California, Berkeley / G. Orton, JPL-Caltech.

New Global Maps of Jupiter Unveiled

Oct 14, 2015 by News Staff

A team of astronomers from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the University of California, Berkeley,...

Babies are able to learn abstract relations before the first year of life. Image credit: Kang Heungbo.

Infants Need Free Tongue Movement to Distinguish Speech Sounds, Say Scientists

Oct 13, 2015 by News Staff

A team of researchers led by Dr Alison Bruderer, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia, has discovered a direct link between tongue...

Composite image of an edge-on spiral galaxy with a radio halo produced by fast-moving particles in the galaxy’s magnetic field. In this image, the large, grey-blue area is a single image formed by combining the radio halos of 30 different galaxies. At the center is a visible-light image of one of the galaxies, NGC 5775, made using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This visible-light image shows only the inner part of the galaxy’s star-forming region, outer portions of which extend horizontally into the area of the radio halo. Image credit: Jayanne English, University of Manitoba / Judith Irwin & Theresa Wiegert, Queen’s University / CHANG-ES Consortium / NRAO / AUI / NSF / NASA / STScI.

Giant Radio Halos around Spiral Galaxies More Common than Thought

Oct 13, 2015 by News Staff

Using one of the world’s greatest radio observatories, National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Large Array (VLA), a group of astronomers has found...

Stonehenge, a famous prehistoric monument in Wiltshire, England.

Stonehenge’s Builders Were Heavy Meat-Eaters, Archaeologists Say

Oct 13, 2015 by News Staff

Archaeologists from Germany and the United Kingdom have revealed insights into cuisine choices and eating habits at Durrington Walls, a Neolithic settlement...

This global digital map of Titan was created using images taken by Cassini’s imaging science subsystem (ISS). The mean radius of Titan used for projection of this map is 1,600 miles (2,575 km). Titan is assumed to be spherical until a control network is created at some point in the future. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

NASA Releases Updated Maps of Saturn’s Moon Titan

Oct 13, 2015 by News Staff

NASA has released a global digital map of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, and two polar stereographic maps its northern and southern hemispheres. This...