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IceCube Confirms Observation of Astrophysical Muon Neutrinos

A graphic of one of the highest-energy neutrino events is superimposed on a view of the IceCube Neutrino Observatiory at NSF’s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Image credit: IceCube Collaboration.
Aug 21, 2015 by News Staff

Physicists using the IceCube Neutrino Observatory – a cubic-kilometer-sized detector sunk into the ice sheet at the South Pole – have announced a new observation of high-energy neutrinos that originated beyond the Solar System, and beyond our Milky Way Galaxy. The first evidence for astrophysical neutrinos was announced by the team in November 2013. The results published this week in the journal Physical Review Letters are the first independent...

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This image shows an open star cluster known as IC 4651. Image credit: ESO.

Astronomers Capture Image of Open Star Cluster IC 4651

Aug 20, 2015 by News Staff

This incredible image of the open star cluster IC 4651 was captured using the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-m telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory,...

The Eurasian jackdaw (Corvus monedula). Image credit: Joost J. Bakker / CC BY 2.0.

Eurasian Jackdaws Can Recognize Individual Human Faces

Aug 20, 2015 by News Staff

A new study, led by Dr Gabrielle Davidson at the University of Cambridge, shows that wild Eurasian jackdaws (Corvus monedula) recognize individual human...

This artist’s concept of a young solar system shows gas giants forming first, while the gas nebula is present. Prof Martin Duncan and co-authors used computer simulations to nail down how Jupiter and Saturn evolved in our own Solar System. These calculations show that the cores of gas giants likely formed by gradually accumulating a population of ‘planetary pebbles’ - icy objects about a foot in diameter. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Researchers Shed New Light on How Gas Giants Formed in Early Solar System

Aug 20, 2015 by News Staff

In a paper published online today in Nature, an international team of scientists explains how the cores of gas giants formed through the accumulation of...

Selenops banksi on Barro Colorado Island, Republic of Panama, as typically encountered on a tree trunk during daylight hours. Scale bar - 1 cm. Image credit: Stephen P. Yanoviak et al.

Scientists Discover Gliding Spiders in Peru, Panama

Aug 20, 2015 by News Staff

Spiders of the genus Selenops (Araneae: Selenopidae) have a unique ability to control their gliding fall, as if they were skydivers, according to a team...

This false-color image shows carbon nanofibers. Image credit: Stuart Licht.

Scientists Turn Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide into Nanofibers

Aug 20, 2015 by News Staff

A group of researchers led by Dr Stuart Licht of George Washington University has developed a novel method to economically convert atmospheric carbon dioxide...

A male Allen’s hummingbird (Selasphorus sasin) near Santa Cruz, CA. Image credit: Shravans14 / CC BY-SA 4.0.

Hummingbird Tongues Work Like Elastic Micropumps, Study Shows

Aug 19, 2015 by News Staff

Since the 1830s, ornithologists have assumed that hummingbirds drink by capillary action (wicking), the passive process of a fluid rising into a narrow...

Early canids Hesperocyon (left) and Sunkahetanka were both ambush-style predators. Image credit: Mauricio Anton.

Canids Evolved with Climate Change, Says New Study

Aug 19, 2015 by News Staff

A new study of North American canid fossils published in the journal Nature Communications suggests that the evolutionary path of the family Canidae (dogs...

This is an artist's reconstruction of female Homo from Dmanisi, Georgia. Image credit: Elisabeth Daynes, via tabula.ge.

1.8-Million-Year-Old Modern Human-Like Hand Bone Found in Tanzania

Aug 19, 2015 by News Staff

A fossil specimen unearthed at the Philip Tobias Korongo site, Olduvai Gorge, could be the oldest ‘anatomically modern’ human hand bone, says an international...

Formation of nucleobases in meteorite impact reactions. Image credit: Yoshihiro Furukawa.

Meteorite Impacts on Early Oceans May Have Created DNA Building Blocks

Aug 18, 2015 by News Staff

Meteorite impact reactions may have generated building blocks for life in the oceans of the prebiotic Earth, says a team of scientists led by Dr Yoshihiro...

Palaeoplethodon hispaniolae, lying trapped for more than 20 million years in a piece of amber, is almost perfectly preserved; note the leg and foot, in lower center of image, that lacks normal toes. Image credit: George Poinar, Jr. / Oregon State University.

20 Million-Year-Old Salamander Found Preserved in Dominican Amber

Aug 18, 2015 by News Staff

A unique fossil of a 20 million-year-old salamander has been found encased in a chunk of amber from an unlikely place – the Dominican Republic, where...

CERN Physicists Compare Light Nuclei and Antinuclei

Aug 18, 2015 by News Staff

Physicists from the ALICE experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider have measured the difference between mass-to-charge ratios for antideuterons and...

Moon. Image credit: Gregory H. Revera / CC BY-SA 3.0.

LADEE Confirms Presence of Neon in Lunar Exosphere

Aug 18, 2015 by News Staff

While planetary researchers have speculated on the presence of the noble gas neon in the Moon’s atmosphere (called a surface boundary exosphere) for...

A large intact specimen of Montsechia vidalii. Image credit: David Dilcher.

Montsechia vidalii: Paleontologists Identify One of Earliest Flowering Plants

Aug 18, 2015 by News Staff

A team of paleontologists from the United States, France, Germany and Spain has identified a Lower Cretaceous freshwater plant named Montsechia vidalii...

This image from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows a part of Dione’s surface that is covered by linear, curving features, called chasmata. The Voyager spacecrafts observed Dione in 1980 showing a complex surface structure, with wispy features on its trailing hemisphere. The nature of these features was unclear until 2004, when the Cassini spacecraft showed that they weren’t surface deposits of frost, as some had suspected, but rather a pattern of bright icy cliffs among myriad fractures. One possibility is that this stress pattern may be related to Dione’s orbital evolution and the effect of tidal stresses over time. This view looks toward the trailing hemisphere of Dione. Cassini obtained the image with its narrow-angle camera on April 11, 2015. The view was acquired at a distance of 68,000 miles (110,000 km) from Dione. North on Dione is up. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft to Make Final Close Flyby of Saturn’s Moon Dione

Aug 17, 2015 by News Staff

Cassini’s closest approach, within 295 miles (474 km) of Dione’s surface, will occur today, August 17. This flyby will be the fifth targeted encounter...

This image shows a collisional ring galaxy called the Kathryn’s Wheel. The image measures approximately 4 arcminutes across, and was taken by the Cerro-Tololo InterAmerican Observatory 4-m telescope in Chile. Image credit: Ivan Bojicic / Quentin A. Parker et al.

Kathryn’s Wheel: Astronomers Discover Nearest Collisional Ring Galaxy

Aug 17, 2015 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers announced yesterday the discovery of the closest collisional ring galaxy to our Milky Way. This image shows a collisional...

This Hubble image shows the nebula M1-67 around the Wolf-Rayet star WR 124. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Judy Schmidt, geckzilla.com.

Hubble Snaps Stunning Image of Wolf-Rayet Star

Aug 17, 2015 by News Staff

The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a beautiful image of a Wolf-Rayet star surrounded by a nebula of...

The King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver by James Gillray, 1803. Image credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Scientist Deciphers Mystery Words from Gulliver’s Travels

Aug 16, 2015 by News Staff

According to Prof Irving Rothman from the University of Houston, mystery words in Jonathan Swift’s famous novel, Gulliver’s Travels, are, in fact,...

These Hubble images show elliptical galaxies with dark, wispy dust lanes, the signature of a recent galaxy merger. The dust is the only relic of a smaller galaxy that was consumed by the larger elliptical galaxy. The X in the images marks the location of supernova explosions that are associated with the galaxies. Each supernova may have been gravitationally kicked out of its host galaxy by a pair of central supermassive black holes. When two galaxies merge, so do their supermassive black holes. Prof Foley suggests the supernovae were stars that were once part of double-star systems. These systems wandered too close to the binary black holes, which ejected them from their galaxies. Eventually, the stars in each system moved close enough together to trigger a supernova blast. These outcast supernovae are located at various distances from their home galaxies. SN 2000ds (left) is at least 12,000 light-years from its galaxy, NGC 2768; SN 2005cz (right) is at least 7,000 light-years from its galaxy, NGC 4589. NGC 2768 resides 75 million light-years from Earth, and NGC 4589 is 108 million light-years away. Image credit: NASA / ESA / R. Foley, University of Illinois.

Astronomer Throws Light on Origins of Outcast Supernovae

Aug 16, 2015 by News Staff

Outcast supernovae that explode all alone in space present a scientific mystery. Prof Ryan Foley from the University of Illinois has developed a theory...

This image shows a colony of Florida carpenter ants (Camponotus floridanus) with major and minor workers taking care of the brood. Image credit: Juergen Leibig.

Ants Can Distinguish Nestmates from Non-Nestmates with Smell

Aug 15, 2015 by News Staff

A team of scientists, directed by Dr Anandasankar Ray from the University of California – Riverside, has found that ants communicate using hydrocarbon...

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