Category archives: Weekly Selection

Fish communicate to stay close to each other Fish use calls to stick together as a group, a new study suggests. Researchers played recordings of bigeye vocalizations for captive wild bigeyes, and noted that their own vocalizations increased and they swam more closely together than they did when no recordings were played. “This study means […]

Ancient grooves may be evidence of dinosaur mating ritual Four sites found in Colorado exhibit fossilized grooves that may have been made by dinosaurs doing a bird-like mating dance more than 100 million years ago. Scientists say the gouges could have been made by theropods performing a mating ritual common to modern birds. The Washington […]

Mystery of disappearing electrons may be solved A band of invisible meteor dust drifting to Earth may be behind the disappearance of electrons in the high atmosphere that’s had scientists baffled since the 1960s Electrons are produced high above Earth when the sun’s ultraviolet rays interact with atmospheric nitric oxide, but a big drop has […]

How information might be retrieved from a black hole There may be a way to retrieve a bit of information from inside a black hole. A team of physicists from the California Institute of Technology theorizes that the information can be gleaned by using Hawking radiation exiting the black hole and quantum teleportation. Science Crows […]

Plesiosaurs swam ancient oceans like penguins Plesiosaurs swam much like penguins do, using their front flippers to propel themselves and their back ones to control their direction. How the ancient marine reptiles moved through water was unclear since its fossils were discovered about 200 years ago. Researchers developed a computer model based on a nearly […]

Unfossilized dinosaur blood vessels discovered Blood vessels from an 80 million-year-old duck-billed dinosaur never fossilized and still hold tissue. The vessels are from the leg bone of a Brachylophosaurus canadensis found in Montana. To determine that the vessels were truly organic matter from the dinosaur and not bacteria, scientists used high-resolution mass spectroscopy and detected […]

Universe isn’t a hologram, experiment determines A controversial experiment at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory has found no evidence supporting the theory that the universe is a giant hologram. The Holometer searched for a kind of holographic noise using interferometers, but nothing has been detected. Science Sonic tractor beam developed A tractor beam that lifts […]

Strands of dark matter may create “beard” around Eart Earth may have a “beard” of dark matter shooting out from it, and the roots may hold a wealth of information about the elusive stuff and Earth itself. The model shows how dark matter streams may interact with a planet’s gravity, passing straight through and producing […]

Lots of dark matter may lurk inside dwarf galaxy Triangulum II, a dwarf galaxy that doesn’t have any star-forming regions, may harbor a vast amount of dark matter. The discovery was made while attempting to measure Triangulum II’s mass. “The total mass I measured was much, much greater than the mass of the total number […]

Stability improved by allowing plasma closer to fusion reactor walls Researchers studying magnetic confinement fusion have found that allowing plasma to get closer to reactor walls may make the system more stable. It was a scary proposition because if their experiment didn’t work, it would have melted the reactor. Teams from China and the US […]