Science

Astrophotographer Jacint Roger has spotted a small object in a sequence of images of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko taken by ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft on October 21, 2015. At that time, the spacecraft was at over 250 miles (400 km) away from the comet’s center. The Rosetta team is now looking into this large …

In a new study, an international team of researchers analyzed data from the Danish Diet, Cancer and Health cohort that monitored the diets of 53,048 Danes over 23 years, and found that people who habitually consumed moderate to high amounts of foods rich in flavonoids — a class of polyphenolic …

An energetic head-on collision between a large planetary embryo and the proto-Jupiter about 4.5 billion years ago could explain puzzling gravitational readings from NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which suggest that Jupiter’s core is less dense and more extended that expected. An artist’s impression of a collision between the proto-Jupiter and a …

The fossilized bones of a large-sized penguin species that lived during the Paleocene epoch (between 66 and 56 million years ago) have been discovered in New Zealand. A pair of extant penguins. Image credit: Martin Fuchs. Named Crossvallia waiparensis, the ancient penguin was about 5.2 feet (1.6 m) tall — …

Crocodiles — and their plant-eating ancestors — have thin tooth enamel, a trait that is in stark contrast to humans and other hard-biting species, according to new research. Sellers et al found regardless of tooth position, age, or diet, crocodiles do not have thick tooth enamel. Image credit: Pexels. “Once …

  The conventional wisdom is that if you want to look at more distant objects in the universe, you need a bigger telescope. What if you didn’t have to build one, though? A new analysis claims it may be possible to use the Earth’s atmosphere as a giant lens to …

  Jupiter may have been struck by a huge protoplanet long ago, spreading the heavy material inside the planet’s core across a much wider area inside the planet than we’d typically expect to find. That’s the current theory of researchers examining data beamed back by the NASA probe Juno, which …

Interplanetary shocks are a type of collisionless shock — events where particles transfer energy through electromagnetic fields instead of directly bouncing into one another. These shocks are a phenomenon found throughout the Universe, including in supernovae, black holes and distant stars. NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission has obtained unprecedented high-time …

A team of researchers from the University of Oxford and IBM Research-Zürich has, for the first time, synthesized and characterized a ring of 18 carbon atoms.   Cyclo[18]carbon. Image credit: Kaiser et al. Carbon, one of the most abundant elements in the Universe, is capable of forming many different forms …

In a study published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, a team of scientists from Rutgers University and elsewhere looked for alcohol-induced DNA changes in pregnant women and their children. The researchers found changes to two genes in women who drank moderate to high levels of alcohol during …