Science

Hurricanes in the Earth’s low atmosphere are well known; however, disturbances resembling hurricanes had never before been detected in the upper atmosphere. An artist’s impression of a space hurricane. Image credit: Qing-He Zhang, Shandong University. “Until now, it was uncertain that space plasma hurricanes even existed, so to prove this …

  NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe in 2018, but the spacecraft just returned an amazing shot of Venus from its most recent flyby. According to NASA, Parker spotted a previously unseen glow that could be a product of oxygen in the inhospitable planet’s atmosphere. The unexpected clarity of surface …

Four commonly used artificial sweeteners – saccharine, sucralose, aspartame, and acesulfame potassium — can promote the horizontal transfer of antibiotic resistance genes, according to new research. This digitally colorized, scanning electron microscopic (SEM) image, depicts a clump of yellow-colored, spheroid shaped, Staphylococcus aureus bacteria that were enmeshed in a blue-colored, …

New images of NASA’s Perseverance rover, along with its parachute, heat shield and descent stage, were captured by the CaSSIS camera aboard ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) on February 23, 2021. TGO spotted the Perseverance rover, along with its parachute and back shell, heat shield and descent stage, in the …

Caffeine, a psychostimulant commonly used to combat high sleep pressure on a daily basis, alters gray matter structures; however, the effect appears to be temporary, according to new research from the University of Basel. Lin et al. examined whether daily caffeine intake affects human gray matter through the mediation of …

Scientists have extracted and sequenced mitochondrial DNA from a partial femur of an ancient dog that lived in Alaska 10,150 years ago. Their results, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, demonstrate that the animal belonged to a lineage of dogs that diverged from Siberian dogs around 16,700 …

A 2-m- (6.6-foot) long painting of a kangaroo in a rock shelter in the north-eastern Kimberley region of Western Australia is dated to between 17,500 and 17,100 years on the basis of the ages of three overlying and three underlying wasp nests. Traditional Owner Ian Waina inspecting a naturalistic painting of …

Scientists have discovered a vivid porphyrin-based biofluorescence in two species of springhares, Pedetes capensis and Pedetes surdaster. Captive Pedetes capensis photographed under visible light (three insets) and under 395 nm UV light with a 470 nm longpass filter to documenting the orange to red biofluorescence ( 650 nm) of springhare. Images …

In a study published in the journal Science Advances, a team of European astronomers shows that water can be delivered to a terrestrial planet in the form of ‘pebble snow’ in the early phases of the planet’s growth. An artist’s impression of a water-world exoplanet. Image credit: Sci-News.com. “All our …

  The general idea of a stellar object with such intense gravity that even light cannot escape dates back to the late 18th century. However, it wasn’t until Einstein’s contributions in the early 20th century that we had the necessary theoretical underpinnings to go looking for such an object. Cygnus …