Hayabusa2 on its way back to Earth with asteroid material Japan’s Hayabusa2 has left the asteroid Ryugu and is on its way back to Earth, bringing with it samples of subsurface material. The spacecraft will return sometime at the end of next year. Nature Sun’s plasma jets formed by magnetic field shifts Spicules of plasma […]
Remains of woolly mammoths found in Mexico pits The remains of 14 woolly mammoths have been found in pits in Mexico dug about 15,000 years ago by humans, according to officials with the National Institute of Anthropology and History. “[The discovery] represents a watershed, a touchstone on what we imagined until now was the interaction […]
AI outplays most humans in StarCraft II video game An artificial intelligence developed by tech firm DeepMind is better at playing the strategic video game StarCraft II than most human players, and its prowess is detailed in a study published in Nature. “Ever since computers cracked Go, chess, and poker, StarCraft has emerged by consensus […]
Unexpected extra digit found on aye-aye lemur The already unusual aye-aye lemur has revealed another secret to researchers — a spare thumb hidden in its palm. Over time, the animals became so adept at tap foraging, they lost their ability to grip, but may have used their pseudo thumbs to make up for it. The […]
Moon has relatively recent ice deposits Researchers say most of the ice on the moon’s south pole is more than 3 billion years old, possibly produced by volcanoes or asteroids, and younger ice deposits may have come from meteorites or solar wind instead. The ice could serve as a source of water or rocket fuel […]
Voyager data measure higher pressure at fringes of solar system The Voyager probes have provided NASA scientists with data that suggest the pressure at the outer edges of our solar system is much higher than previously believed. Astronomers also discovered a reduction in the intensity of cosmic rays there. ScienceAlert Bronze Age households had mix […]
Gene editing gives fruit flies monarch abilities Researchers have edited the genes of fruit flies to make them able to digest the toxins in milkweed like monarch butterflies do. It took just three genetic tweaks to give the fruit flies that ability. Science News Bumblebees lose sleep over parental duties Bumblebees have been observed refraining […]
Organisms lived on Earth 3.5B years ago Organic matter dating back 3.5 billion years has been identified in stromatolites first discovered in Australia in the 1980s. “The organic matter that we found preserved within pyrite of the stromatolites is exciting; we’re looking at exceptionally preserved coherent filaments and strands that are typically remains of microbial […]
Altered Ebola virus induces immune response in monkeys Researchers found that exposure to a slightly altered Ebola virus induced an immune response in monkeys that protected them from the parent virus. The goal is to produce a drug that knocks out the VP35 protein in the Ebola virus, although researchers cautioned that it may not […]
Hubble snaps stunning photo of Saturn Saturn and its rings shine in an image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and released by NASA and the European Space Agency on Thursday. The image, taken on June 20, also shows four of Saturn’s moons: Enceladus, Mimas, Janus and Tethys. Space.com Assessing the long reach of microplastics […]