Moons crashing together may have created Saturn’s rings Saturn’s iconic rings may be the result of a collision between two moons made of ice and rocks. Scientists simulated almost 200 collision scenarios and found that the impact of two moons roughly the size of Saturn’s current moons could disperse into icy rings, consistent with the […]
Galaxies from the early Universe are more like our own Milky Way than previously thought, flipping the entire narrative of how scientists think about structure formation in the Universe. Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of researchers has discovered that galaxies like our own Milky Way dominate throughout the universe and […]
Human bones in Spanish cave were likely used as tools Ancient humans excavated and modified the skeletons of their buried ancestors to possibly use as tools, according to a study from scientists studying remains at the Cueva de los Marmoles cave in southern Spain. Researchers identified the remains of at least 12 people buried between […]
Billions of tiny particles packed into rechargeable lithium-ion battery electrodes are responsible for storing charge and making it available when it’s needed to do work. X-ray movies of this process show the particles absorbing and releasing lithium ions as the battery charges and discharges. Now, in an important step forward, researchers have used a type […]
NASA’s MOXIE experiment generates oxygen on Mars NASA’s first mission to generate oxygen on Mars — the “Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment,” or MOXIE — has successfully concluded, the agency announced. The toaster-sized device on the Perseverance rover has produced 122 grams of oxygen that is at least 98% pure, which could be scaled […]
As the Earth’s human population grows, greenhouse gas emissions from the world’s food system are on track to expand. A new study demonstrates that state-of-the-art agricultural technology and management can not only reduce that growth but eliminate it altogether by generating net negative emissions – reducing more greenhouse gas than food systems add. Employing additional […]
A new type of bird-like dinosaur Scientists have studied a newly discovered fossil of a bird-like dinosaur likely between 148 to 150 million years old that may be the youngest member of the Jurassic avialans. The creature, called Fujianvenator prodigiosus, was about the size of a pheasant, had long legs that were likely used for […]
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has begun the study of one of the most renowned supernovae, SN 1987A (Supernova 1987A). Located 168,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, SN 1987A has been a target of intense observations at wavelengths ranging from gamma rays to radio for nearly 40 years, since its discovery in February […]
Human ancestors nearly went extinct a million years ago Humans almost faced extinction between 813,000 and 930,00 years ago when human ancestors’ population fell to about 1,280. Researchers studied the genomes of over 3,150 present-day people and found that human ancestors experienced a bottleneck for about 117,000 years, which may have driven the evolutionary divergence […]
Just like our hands, certain organic molecules relate to each other like an image and its reflection – a phenomenon that chemists call “chirality” or “handedness”. The two mirror images of the same molecule, namely both enantiomers, often possess different biological properties. This is key, for example, for drug discovery, as many times only one […]