The zodiacal light is sunlight reflected by interplanetary dust in the inner Solar System. Variations in the zodiacal light with ecliptic latitude reveal discrete bands of dust orbiting near the ecliptic plane. NASA’s Juno spacecraft, in transit from Earth to Jupiter, recorded a sufficient number of impacts with these dust …
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(Credit: Eduard Muzhevskyi/Getty Images) Exploring the universe in Star Trek is as easy as firing up the warp drive and zipping off to the next adventure, but real life is much more tedious without faster-than-light (FTL) travel. Physicists have speculated on the possibility of a real warp drive for …
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Humans were present in Florida by 14,000 years ago, and until recently, it was believed The Bahamas — located only a few km away — were not colonized until about 1,000 years ago. New evidence indicates that Lucayans — an Arawakan-speaking Taíno people, whose name translates as ‘island men’ in …
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The so-called Mount Holly mammoth (Mammuthus sp.) lived approximately 12,800 years ago in what is now New England, a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States, and potentially overlapped with the first human settlers of the region, according to new research from Dartmouth College. The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus …
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Viruses may be the missing piece of the puzzle that could help explain how soft microbial mats transition into hard stromatolites that are prevalent in such places as Shark Bay and the Pilbara in Australia. Stromatolites at Shark Bay, Western Australia. Image credit: Paul Harrison / CC BY-SA 3.0. Stromatolites …
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New research led by the University of Cambridge and the Marine Biological Laboratory demonstrates that common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) can tolerate delays to obtain food of higher quality. The common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis). Image credit: Roger Hanlon. The common cuttlefish is a cephalopod native to the Mediterranean Sea, North Sea, …
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The NASA Perseverance rover touched down on Mars last month, kicking off what we all hope will be many years studying the red planet. Perseverance isn’t the only robot in that part of the solar system. The ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) is one of several missions looking down …
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Paleontologists have identified a new genus and species of rebbachisaurid dinosaur from a fossil uncovered in Uzbekistan. Life reconstruction of Dzharatitanis kingi. Image credit: Alexander Averianov. The newly-discovered dinosaur roamed Earth approximately 92 million years ago, during the Turonian stage of the Late Cretaceous epoch. Dubbed Dzharatitanis kingi, it belongs …
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University of Queensland’s Dr. Anthony Romilio has examined the ‘Meidum Geese,’ a painting from the Chapel of Itet at Meidum in Egypt. A Meidum goose (left), life reconstruction (center) and a modern red-breasted goose (right). Image credit: A. Romilio / Tambako the Jaguar. The Meidum Geese painting was found in …
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Osteomorphs are found in the blood and bone marrow, and fuse together to form osteoclasts, the cells that are specialized in resorbing bone. Osteomorph upregulated genes are implicated in rare and common bone diseases in humans. Osteoclasts are large multinucleated bone-resorbing cells formed by the fusion of monocyte/macrophage-derived precursors that …
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