Category archives: Weekly Selection

Gravitational waves predicted by Einstein heard by LIGO Gravitational waves from the collision of two black holes about 1.3 billion years ago have been detected by Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, confirming a prediction Albert Einstein made a century ago in his general theory of relativity. The sound came through as a chirp first […]

Unusual nasal dome allowed ancient beast to trumpet like a dinosaur An ancient wildebeest-like creature that lived during the Ice Age had an unusual skull shape that enabled it to bellow like a dinosaur, according to researchers who found the skull fossils on what is now Kenya’s Rusinga Island. Rusingoryx atopocranion, which lived between 75,000 […]

Massive gas cloud boomeranging back to Milky Way A massive gas cloud that was almost ejected from the Milky Way is hurtling back to our galaxy, according to findings gathered from new observations by the Hubble Space Telescope. Dubbed the Smith Cloud, it is expected to smash into the galactic plane in about 30 million […]

Noodle-, hazelnut-shaped plasma lenses may be hiding in Milky Way Scientists are learning more about the shape of mysterious plasma lenses, which seem to invisibly float around the Milky Way, detected through radio waves. Researchers were able to detect a lengthy lensing event that gave them an idea of the shapes of the lenses. Space.com […]

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 […]