Page 87 | Sci.News: Breaking Science News

An artist’s impression of Gliese 12b and its host star. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / R. Hurt, Caltech-IPAC.

Potentially Habitable Earth-Sized Exoplanet Discovered around Gliese 12

May 23, 2024 by News Staff

Using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and many other telescopes, two teams of astronomers have discovered a temperate, Earth-sized...

A volunteer marine soldier in simulated combat wearing the Dendra armor replica during the empirical study. Image credit: Andreas Flouris / Marija Marković.

Ancient Mycenaean Armor Was Suitable for Extended Combat, Research Confirms

May 23, 2024 by News Staff

A 3,500-year-old suit of Mycenaean bronze armor from the Greek village of Dendra may have been used in battle, not just for ceremonial purposes as previously...

Recent experiments have demonstrated that carnivores and ungulates in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America fear the human ‘super predator’ far more than other predators. Australian mammals have been a focus of research on predator naiveté because it is suspected they show atypical responses. To experimentally test if mammals in Australia also most fear humans, McGann et al. quantified the responses of four native marsupials (eastern gray kangaroo, Bennett’s wallaby, Tasmanian pademelon, common brushtail possum) and introduced fallow deer to playbacks of predator (human, dog, Tasmanian devil, wolf) or non-predator control (sheep) vocalizations. Image credit: Pen_ash.

Australian Marsupials Fear Humans Far More Than Any Other Predator, New Study Shows

May 23, 2024 by News Staff

Scientists from the University of Tasmania and Western University have experimentally demonstrated that kangaroos, wallabies and other Australian marsupials...

The site of Taguatagua 3 in Chile: (A) combustion feature spatially associated with gomphothere cervical vertebrae and skull fragments; (B) sacral and caudal vertebrae, vertebral discs, and unfused coxal portions; note the distance between the first sacral vertebra and its vertebral disc; (C) end scraper in situ; (D) core debitage in situ spatially associated with gomphothere remains. Image credit: Labarca et al., doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0302465.

12,500-Year-Old Settlement Discovered in Chile

May 22, 2024 by News Staff

Around 12,440-12,550 years ago, hunter-gatherers returned regularly to Tagua Tagua Lake in Chile to hunt ancient elephant relatives called gomphotheres...

Koleken inakayali. Image credit: Gabriel Díaz Yantén.

Fossils from New Species of Carnivorous Dinosaur Discovered in Argentina

May 22, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new genus and species of furileusaurian abelisaurid that lived during the Cretaceous period has been identified from fossilized skeletal remains found...

Conceptual art shows the rare earth element promethium in a vial surrounded by an organic ligand. Image credit: Jacqueline DeMink / Thomas Dyke / ORNL.

Scientists Determine Properties of Extremely Rare Element: Promethium

May 22, 2024 by News Staff

Promethium is extremely rare, with only about 0.5 kg naturally occurring in Earth’s crust at any given time. Conceptual art shows the rare earth element...

This high-resolution image of Pluto was taken by New Horizons on July 14. Pluto’s surface sports a remarkable range of subtle colors, enhanced in this view to a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges, and deep reds. Many landforms have their own distinct colors, telling a complex geological and climatological story that scientists have only just begun to decode. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

Pluto’s Subsurface Ocean is 8% Denser than Seawater on Earth, Study Suggests

May 21, 2024 by News Staff

Planetary researchers from Washington University in St. Louis and the Lunar and Planetary Institute have used mathematical models and unprecedented high-resolution...

The studied Psittacosaurus specimen under natural (upper half) and UV light (lower half) showing the orange-yellow fluorescence of the fossilized skin. Image credit: Zixiao Yang.

Study: Some Feathered Dinosaurs Had Reptile-Style Scales and Bird-Like Skin with Feathers

May 21, 2024 by News Staff

The evolution of feathers is associated with novel skin ultrastructures, but the fossil record of these changes is poor and thus the critical transition...

The water course of the ancient Ahramat Branch of the Nile. Image credit: Ghoneim et al., doi: 10.1038/s43247-024-01379-7.

Majority of Egyptian Pyramids Was Built along Long-Lost Branch of Nile, Archaeologists Say

May 21, 2024 by News Staff

Archaeologists in Egypt have identified segments of a 64-km-long extinct branch of the river Nile, which they name the Ahramat Branch, running at the foothills...

Felidae, a highly diverse carnivoran family, emerged during the Oligocene in Eurasia and quickly spread worldwide during the Miocene. Although Felidae represents the sole extant cat-like clade, the sabertoothed morphotype is a textbook example of iterative evolution, having evolved many times among placentals, marsupials, and gorgonopsians. Nimravidae is a well-diversified yet fully extinct carnivoran clade that extensively explored a range of cat-like morphologies, and although they have been commonly called ‘false cats’ or ‘false sabertooth cats’ in opposition to the ‘true cats,’ they evolved cat-like morphologies, including both saber-toothed and non-saber-toothed forms, tens of millions of years prior to the appearance of felids. Image credit: Narimane Chatar / Université de Liège.

New Study Uncovers Secrets of Saber-Tooth Evolution

May 21, 2024 by News Staff

Paleontologists from the University of Liège and elsewhere have investigated the evolutionary patterns behind the development of saber teeth in two groups...

Mediterranean diet is inversely associated with the severity of symptoms related to anxiety and stress.

Mediterranean Diet Reduces Anxiety and Lessens Stress, Study Suggests

May 21, 2024 by Natali Anderson

In new research, scientists from the University of the Sunshine Coast and the University of South Australia found that adherence to a Mediterranean diet...

The Hitra man was around 169 cm tall, fair-haired and blue-eyed. Image credit: Thomas Foldberg / Åge Hojem / NTNU University Museum.

Norwegian Archaeologists Unveil Face of Stone Age Hitra Man

May 20, 2024 by News Staff

The 4,000-year-old skeletal remains of a Scandinavian man were found in 1916 on the island of Hitra, Norway. The Hitra man was around 169 cm tall, fair-haired...

This artist’s concept shows what the exoplanet WASP-107b could look like based on recent data gathered by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope along with previous observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Ralf Crawford, STScI.

Why is Cotton-Candy Exoplanet WASP-107b So Puffy?

May 20, 2024 by News Staff

A surprisingly low amount of methane and a super-sized core hide within WASP-107b, a super-Neptune exoplanet approximately 212 light-years away in the...

Douglassarachne acanthopoda. Image credit: Paul Selden & Jason Dunlop, doi: 10.1017/jpa.2024.13.

308-Million-Year-Old Fossil of Remarkable Spiny Arachnid Found in Illinois

May 20, 2024 by News Staff

The forests of the Late Carboniferous period (about 300-320 million years ago) harbored a great variety of arachnids. In addition to the familiar spiders,...

Using the latest archaeological data, hindcasted climate projections, and age-structured demographic models, Bradshaw et al. demonstrate evidence for early arrival (14,257 to 13,182 years ago) to Cyprus and predicted that large groups of people (1,000 to 1,375) arrived in 2 to 3 main events occurring within less than 100 years to ensure low extinction risk. Image credit: Bradshaw et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2318293121.

Hunter-Gatherers Settled in Cyprus Thousands of Years Earlier than Previously Thought

May 20, 2024 by News Staff

Because of persisting narratives of isolation, inaccessibility, and unattractiveness, the initial peopling of one of the eastern Mediterranean islands...

This Hubble image shows NGC 4689, a spiral galaxy located 52 million light-years away in the constellation of Coma Berenices. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / D. Thilker / J. Lee / PHANGS-HST Team.

Hubble Snaps Incredible Image of NGC 4689

May 20, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured this vivid image of NGC 4689, a jewel-bright spiral galaxy in the constellation of...

This image shows a region near the center of our Milky Way Galaxy in X-ray and radio light. At the bottom of the image, near the center, is a brilliant, tangled knot of material that resembles a paint splatter. This is the brightest region in the image, and it contains the supermassive black hole at the center of our Galaxy, known as Sagittarius A*. The lower third of the image resembles an angry firestorm. Streaks of red and orange are scattered in every direction, as if a legion of embers from a fire crackled and popped into the air all at once. Flame-like structures lick toward the center from our right. Much of the image is infused with wispy blue clouds showing X-rays detected by Chandra. At a few points, the wispy blue clouds seem to form into balls of teal colored light and are known as dust halos. They are caused by X-rays from bright X-ray sources reflecting off dust surrounding the sources. These dust halos resemble underwater lights glowing in a cloudy swimming pool at night. Rising up from Sagittarius A* in the center of the image is a pillar of blue light referred to as a chimney. This chimney of hot gas is surrounded by red clouds that are filled with stars, presenting themselves as tiny red flecks. Near the top of the blue pillar is a streak of light blue, outlined by an illustrated, gray box. This streak is referred to as the chimney exhaust vent. Just to our left is another illustrated box that shows the close-up image of the chimney vent as observed by Chandra. Image credit: NASA / CXC / Universe of Chicago / Mackey et al. / NRF / SARAO / MeerKAT / SAO / N. Wolk.

Milky Way’s Center is Venting, Astronomers Say

May 17, 2024 by News Staff

Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have discovered an ‘exhaust vent’ funneling hot gas away from Sagittarius A*, the supermassive...

HP Tau, a trio of dazzling stars some 550 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus, blaze brilliantly from the hollowed-out cavity of a reflection nebula in the new Hubble image. Image credit: NASA / ESA / G. Duchene, Universite de Grenoble I / Gladys Kober, NASA & Catholic University of America.

Hubble Space Telescope Spots Triple-Star System in Taurus

May 16, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

The Hubble team has released a stunning image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the triple-star star system HP Tau. HP Tau, a trio of dazzling...

Still images from UAV drone video showing datalogger placement and respiration. Image credit: McRae et al., doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0302758.

Killer Whales Take Single Breath between Dives, Marine Scientists Confirm

May 16, 2024 by News Staff

To gather information on the animals’ habits, University of British Columbia’s Professor Andrew Trites and his colleagues used drone footage and biological...