Page 69 | Sci.News: Breaking Science News

Xibalbanus tulumensis. Image credit: Pinheiro-Junior et al., doi: 10.1186/s12915-024-01955-5.

Toxins Found in Venom of Crustacean from Mayan Underwater Caves Have Pharmacological Potential

Oct 4, 2024 by Sergio Prostak

Xibalbanus tulumensis, a venomous remipede found in anchialine caves on the Yucatán Peninsula, is the only crustacean for which a venom system has been...

A lower-fungus-farming worker of the rare fungus-farming ant species Mycetophylax asper, collected in Santa Catarina, Brazil, in 2014, on its fungus garden. Image credit: Don Parsons.

Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Impact Turned Ants into Fungus Farmers, Study Says

Oct 4, 2024 by News Staff

Fungus-farming ants cultivate multiple species of fungi for food, but the history of fungus-ant co-evolution is poorly known. In a new study published...

This illustration shows the distribution of permanently shadowed regions (in blue) on the Moon poleward of 80 degrees south latitude. They are superimposed on a digital elevation map of the lunar surface (gray) from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter instrument on board NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Image credit: NASA / GSFC / Timothy P. McClanahan.

Lunar Ice Deposits are More Extensive than Previously Thought

Oct 3, 2024 by News Staff

Prior studies found signs of ice in the permanently shadowed regions near the south pole of the Moon, including areas within Cabeus, Haworth, Shoemaker...

An artist’s concept of 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1’s outgassing activity as seen from the side. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / L. Hustak, STScI.

Webb Spots Outgassing Regions on Active Centaur

Oct 3, 2024 by News Staff

Centaurs are former trans-Neptunian objects that have been moved inside Neptune’s orbit by subtle gravitational influences of the planets in the last...

Maglieri et al. explored the presence and possible functions of open mouth display during solitary, interspecific (human-dolphin), and intraspecific free play. Image credit: Maglieri et al., doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.110966.

Study: Bottlenose Dolphins ‘Smile’ at Each Other during Their Playful Interactions

Oct 3, 2024 by News Staff

Play is a widespread behavior present in distant species that, in its social form, relies on complex communication. Playful communication has been largely...

NASA’s high-flying ER-2 airplane carries instrumentation in this artist’s impression of the Airborne Lightning Observatory for Fly’s Eye Geostationary Lightning Mapper Simulator and Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (ALOFT) mission to record gamma rays (colored purple for illustration) from thunderclouds. Image credit: NASA / ALOFT team.

Gamma-Ray Emission from Tropical Thunderstorms Takes More Forms Than Previously Thought

Oct 3, 2024 by News Staff

There’s more to thunderclouds than rain and lightning. Along with visible light emissions, thunderclouds can produce intense bursts of gamma rays that...

The 2-billion-year-old mafic rock from the Bushveld Igneous Complex revealed that indigenous microbes (stained green) are colonizing veins filled with clay minerals. Image credit: Suzuki et al., doi: 10.1007/s00248-024-02434-8.

Microbiologists Find Living Microbes in 2-Billion-Year-Old Rock

Oct 3, 2024 by News Staff

Researchers from the University of Tokyo and elsewhere have found pockets of living microbes in mineral-filled veins within 2-billion-year-old rock from...

Gondwanax paraisensis. Image credit: Rodrigo Temp Müller, doi: 10.1016/j.gr.2024.09.007.

New Species of Dinosaur Relative Discovered in Brazil

Oct 2, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new genus and species of silesaurid being named Gondwanax paraisensis has been identified from the fossilized remains discovered in Southern Brazil. Gondwanax...

This artist’s concept illustrates how tightly the three stars in the TIC 290061484 system orbit each other. If they were placed at the center of our solar system, all the stars’ orbits would be contained a space smaller than Mercury’s orbit around the Sun. The sizes of the triplet stars and the Sun are also to scale. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

TESS Discovers Record-Breaking Triply-Eclipsing Triple Star

Oct 2, 2024 by News Staff

TIC 290061484 contains a pair of stars orbiting each other every 1.8 days, and a third star that circles the pair in just 25 days. The discovery smashes...

The center of this infographic shows the sharpest-ever image of the cloud of charged particles trapped in Earth’s magnetic field, while the insets show measurements of high-energy ions and electrons detected along the JUICE’s flyby route. Image credit: ESA / NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Josh Diaz.

JUICE Captures Sharpest Ever Image of Earth’s Radiation Belt

Oct 2, 2024 by News Staff

In August 2024, ESA’s JUpiter ICy Moons Explorer (JUICE) made history with a daring Moon-Earth flyby and double gravity assist maneuver. As the spacecraft...

Like dogs, coyotes have a well-developed LAOM that gives both species the ability to make ‘puppy dog eyes.’ Image credit: Cunningham et al., doi: 10.1098/rsos.241046.

Coyotes Can Do ‘Puppy Dog Eyes’ Too, New Study Shows

Oct 2, 2024 by News Staff

Recent studies suggest that a muscle called the levator anguli oculi medialis (LAOM) is unique to dogs (Canis familiaris) and evolved due to domestication....

Darren Williams & Michael Zugger examined the concept of collision-less binary exchange for capturing massive satellites -- comparable to and larger than the Moon -- around terrestrial-mass objects either inside or outside the Solar System.

Young Earth May Have Captured Moon from Space, Research Suggests

Oct 2, 2024 by News Staff

The Moon may have been captured during a close encounter between a young Earth and a terrestrial binary (a system of the Moon and another rocky object),...

Protopapa et al. detected carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide spectral signatures on Charon using Webb telescope observations (white), which extend the wavelength coverage of previous New Horizons flyby measurements (pink). Image credit: S. Protopapa / SwRI / NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / JHUAPL.

Webb Detects Carbon Dioxide and Hydrogen Peroxide on Charon’s Surface

Oct 1, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Using data from the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) onboard the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have detected carbon dioxide...

Han et al. found that erosion from a river network about 75 km from Mount Everest is carving away a substantial gorge; the loss of this landmass is causing the mountain to spring upwards by as much as 2 mm a year and has already increased its height by between 15 and 50 m over the past 89,000 years. Image credit: Truthseeker08.

Nearby River is Pushing Up Peak of Mount Everest, Study Suggests

Oct 1, 2024 by News Staff

Mount Everest, also known as Chomolungma in Tibetan or Sagarmāthā in Nepali, is about 15 to 50 m taller than it would otherwise be because of uplift...

Cradled within the fiery petals of the Rosette Nebula is NGC 2244, the young star cluster which it nurtured. Image credit: CTIO / NOIRLab / DOE / NSF / AURA / T.A. Rector, University of Alaska Anchorage & NSF’s NOIRLab / D. de Martin & M. Zamani, NSF’s NOIRLab.

NOIRLab Celebrates 5th Anniversary with Stunning Image of Rosette Nebula

Oct 1, 2024 by News Staff

The new image of the Rosette Nebula was taken by the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), mounted on NSF’s Víctor M. Blanco 4-m telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American...

A map of the East Pacific Rise region where the discovery of an ancient seafloor was made. Image credit: Jingchuan Wang.

Geoscientists Discover Mysterious Subduction Zone beneath Pacific Ocean

Oct 1, 2024 by News Staff

During the Mesozoic era, between 250 and 120 million years ago, an ancient seafloor sank deep into Earth in the East Pacific Rise, a tectonic plate boundary...

An artist’s impression of Barnard b. Image credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser.

Astronomers Detect Sub-Earth-Mass Exoplanet around Barnard’s Star

Oct 1, 2024 by News Staff

An exoplanet at least half the mass of Venus orbits Barnard’s star, the closest single star to the Sun, once every 3.15 days. An artist’s impression...

Campananeyen fragilissimus. Image credit: Fundación Azara.

Paleontologists Unveil New Species of Sauropod Dinosaur

Sep 30, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Fossilized remains found in Patagonia, Argentina back in 2009 represent a new genus and species of plant-eating dinosaur that belonged to a group called...

An illustration of the strong interaction in the proton-deuteron system produced in proton-proton collisions at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. Image credit: ALICE / CERN.

CERN Physicists Explore Strong Interaction of Three-Body Systems

Sep 30, 2024 by News Staff

Three-body nuclear systems are key to many aspects of modern nuclear physics, such as understanding the equation of state of high-density nuclear matter...