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ScienceSpace
Astronomers Found an Ancient Galaxy with a Halo of Dark Matter
Some 163,000 light-years from the Milky Way is a much smaller, much more ancient galaxy: Tucana II, so named for the tropical bird-resembling constellation in which it sits. Sitting at the periphery of our galaxy’s gravitational pull, Tucana II provides researchers with the opportunity to understand the composition of the earliest galactic structures in the … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
Ridiculously Tiny Chameleons Discovered in Madagascar
Researchers have found a minuscule chameleon in Northern Madagascar, which they believe to be the smallest reptile on the planet. Small body, big attitude—just look at that face. The chameleon is Brookesia nana, abbreviated to B. nana (if you squint, it does kind of look like a banana). Females of the species are larger than … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
How Do Some Dogs Learn Words So Quickly?
Vicky Nina, a Yorkshire terrier, and Whisky, a border collie, were given a straightforward task that few dogs can complete: Amid a trove of toys the two pets were already familiar with, they had to identify a new toy by name—more specifically, by the fact that it was the only object they didn’t know the … Continued
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EartherEarth Science
The Atlantic Ocean Is Getting Wider Thanks to Upwelling Magma
In March 2016, a research team dropped 39 seismometers to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean off the western tip of Africa, to listen for the rumblings of earthquakes near and far. A year later, they’ve found a hidden story of how the continents are growing farther apart—not pulled from either side by subduction zones, … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
‘Extinct’ Volcano Mouse Is Actually Doing Fantastic
When a colossal plume of ash and lava exploded from Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991, few people probably had their minds on the animal life in the area, much less one species of rodent. The Pinatubo mouse was feared extinct after the eruption, but 30 years later, it turns out that the scrappy … Continued
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Earther
Gray Whales Off Baja California Are Dying En Masse, and Scientists Don’t Know Why
An unusual mortality event of gray whales off the coast of Mexico is disturbingly persistent, according to a study published this week in the Marine Ecology Progress Series. The die-off began in 2019, and the gray whale death count is currently at 384, though the actual number may be higher. Unusual mortality events describe the … Continued
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ScienceSpace
Astronomers Have Spotted a Weirdo ‘Jupiter’ With a Four-Day Year
Nearly 600 light-years from Earth, the exoplanet known as WASP-62b whips around its host star at a breakneck pace. The planet is a hot Jupiter, and despite its gassy constitution, its atmosphere is completely cloudless, according to a study published this month in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. WASP-62b was first detected in 2012 in a … Continued
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ScienceSpace
Ammonia May Lurk in the Ice of Saturn’s Moons, a Clue to Possible Oceans
Thirteen years ago, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft was orbiting Saturn, not yet through its first mission, when a set of telescopes on board observed an unknown ultraviolet signal. The intriguing data was only recently inspected, though, and an international research team now suspects it may indicate the presence of hydrazine on Saturn’s second-largest moon, Rhea. The … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
Researchers Say They’ve Found the Ancient Dens of Giant Carnivorous Worms
Twenty million years ago, the shores of northern Taiwan were sandstone sediments at the bottom of the sea, where 6-foot-long worms lurked in their burrows, waiting for unsuspecting prey to pass overhead. Now, a team of geoscientists have chronicled 319 trace fossils of those carnivorous marine worms, whose dens fossilized in the Miocene muck. “In … Continued
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ScienceSpace
What Does Mars Sound Like? The Perseverance Rover Is Going to Find Out
Nothing on the hills seems to be alive, so the rocky terrain of Mars will be filled with the sounds of solitude when the NASA’s Perseverance rover lands in Jezero Crater next month. One of the rover’s many tasks will be listening to the Martian environment with microphones—the first effort at acoustic data collection made … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
At Long Last, Paleontologists Scrutinize a Dinosaur Cloaca
Despite the huge number of dinosaur fossils found, from bones to feathers, precious little exists in the fossil record to explain dinosaur defecation, urination, or copulation. Thankfully, all three occasions happened in one place, and researchers have now achieved the first comprehensive look at the preserved exterior of a dinosaur cloaca. This particular cloaca was … Continued
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SciencePhysics
A Prime Suspect for Dark Matter Might Be Escaping From Neutron Stars
After axions were first theorized by physicists in the suburbs of Chicago 45 years ago, they quickly became a robust candidate for explaining dark matter. All this time, though, the ultra-small particles have remained hypothetical. Now, a team of astrophysicists have proposed that axions may be responsible for an excess of X-ray emissions seen coming … Continued
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ScienceSpace
This Black Hole Is Really Taking Its Time Eating a Poor Star
On November 14, 2014, a telescope spotted a burst of light in a galaxy 570 million light-years away. It was thought to be a supernova, an arrestingly bright explosion that marks a star’s death. This week, astronomers revealed that the burst was not a supernova after all, but rather a black hole having dinner—one of … Continued
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SciencePhysics
Astronomers Detected Gravitational Waves. Now They Want to See the Cosmic Ocean
Using a signal from dozens of rapidly spinning, dead stars, astrophysicists have gotten closer to realizing their goal of detecting a background rumble of gravitational waves in the universe. When the existence of gravitational waves was confirmed in 2016, a new field of astrophysical research opened up. Two black holes collided, sending out a ripple … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
Tasmanian Tigers and Wolves Evolved Uncannily Similar Skulls
The extinct thylacine had the stripes of a tiger, the body of a canid, and the pouch of a kangaroo. These ill-fated, predatory marsupials are a classic example of convergent evolution, in which species independently evolve the same traits, and a new study breaks down just how remarkably similar Tasmanian tigers’ skulls were to those … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
Newborn Megalodons Were Larger Than Adult Humans and Probably Ate Their Siblings
Picture this: It’s about 20 million years ago, and you’re inside the giant womb of an extremely pregnant Otodus megalodon. Everything’s hunky-dory—some baby sharks have already hatched, and others are on the way. But before any more of those egg-bound brethren can emerge, one of the baby sharks wriggles over and gobbles them up. That … Continued
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ScienceSpace
Meteorites From the Beginning of the Solar System May Have Carried Water Quite Recently
Meteorites that formed in the earliest days of the solar system may contain liquid water, according to new research, lending credence to the theory that meteorites brought water and other precursors for life to our planet billions of years ago. Carbonaceous chondrites are a special group of meteorites that trace their origins back to the … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
Researchers Take Another Look at Platypus DNA, and Yup, Still Weird
Waddling, wriggling, ambling, digging, laying eggs. There’s no shortage of verbiage when it comes to describing monotremata—the taxonomic order made up of only two animals, the platypus and the echidna. Rattling off the numerous weird traits of these creatures is trope in news coverage—and it’s near impossible to avoid, since they are mammals that lay … Continued
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ScienceSpace
Physicists Are Looking for Dark Matter in Tiny, Ancient Black Holes
On the night of November 23, 2014, a powerful telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii was trying to pick out the enigmatic movements of a black hole traveling through space. In the seven hours the telescope peered at the cosmos, it may have caught one, as a structure about the size of Earth eclipsed a … Continued
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ScienceSpace
Astronomers Calculate Universe’s Age With Atacama Desert Telescope
High up in Chile’s Atacama Desert, miles away from the dull glow of light pollution, the secluded Atacama Cosmology Telescope is in prime position to search the sky for answers. The question most recently on its mind? The age of the universe, a cosmic quandary that can be answered in different ways, depending on how … Continued