Science

NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft has discovered evidence of significant hydration near the Martian equator. Mars Odyssey spotted possible water ice in the Medusa Fossae area of Mars, which is in an equatorial region of the planet to the lower left in this view. Image credit: Steve Lee, University of Colorado …

A new study has found that chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) can use tools spontaneously to solve a task, without needing to watch others first. Chimpanzee tool-use is fuelled mainly by individual learning, according to the study. Image credit: Marcel Langthim. University of Birmingham researchers Elisa Bandini and Claudio Tennie looked for …

The world is a big place, but SpaceX is looking to make it feel a bit smaller with a new mode of transportation. At the recent International Astronautical Congress (IAC), CEO Elon Musk gave an update on the company’s Mars colonization rocket. What really stole the show was a new …

A new study led by University of Adelaide researcher Jeremy Austin traces the history of Tasmanian tiger (thylacine) populations over the last 30,000 years. A pair of thylacines, a male and female, c. 1905. Image credit: Smithsonian Institutional Archives / E. J. Keller, National Zoological Park. The thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) …

Sorghum was domesticated from its wild ancestor more than 5,000 years ago, according to archaeological evidence uncovered by University College London archaeologist Dorian Fuller and colleagues in Sudan. Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor). Image credit: Pethan, Botanical Gardens, Utrecht University / CC BY-SA 3.0. Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) is a native African grass …

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration report the first joint detection of gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space and time, first predicted by Albert Einstein more than a century ago. This is the fourth announced detection of a signal from two black holes in their final …

New research, reported in the journal Nature, changes scientists’ understanding of how terrestrial planets attain their physical and chemical characteristics. A young planetary system. Image credit: NASA / FUSE / Lynette Cook. Planets grow by a process of accretion (a gradual accumulation of additional material) in which they collisionally combine …

Strange formations are found at the highest altitudes on the surface of the dwarf planet Pluto. They resemble giant knife blades of ice and can soar many hundreds of feet into the sky. According to new research published in the journal Icarus, these structures are made almost entirely of methane …

A new rodent species with an unusual lifestyle has been discovered on Vangunu — an island, part of the New Georgia Islands in the Solomon Islands — by an international team of researchers. This is an illustration of Uromys vika. Image credit: Velizar Simeonovski, Field Museum. This new rat was …

An antibody that protects against dengue virus is also effective against Zika in mice, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Immunology. This is a digitally-colorized transmission electron microscopic (TEM) image of Zika virus. Virus particles, here colored blue, are 40 nm in diameter, with an outer …