Using data from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-Wave Astronomy (CARMA) and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have observed a cosmic boomerang effect — molecular gas streams that are stripped away from a galaxy only to circle back and return later — in the northwest quadrant of NGC 4921, a spiral galaxy in the Coma...
Titan, Saturn’s icy moon, is an ideal planetary body to study prebiotic chemistry, origins of life, and the potential habitability of an extraterrestrial environment. It has a nitrogen-based atmosphere, complex organic chemistry fueled by radiation from the Sun and Saturn’s magnetosphere, hydrocarbon lakes, organic dunes on the equator, and seasonal evaporation and precipitation of hydrocarbons...
New research shows that Machu Picchu, an ancient Incan citadel set high in the Andes Mountains in Peru, was occupied from about 1420 to 1532 CE, with activity beginning two decades earlier than suggested by the textual sources. Machu Picchu, the famous 15th-century Inca site near Cusco, in southern Peru. Image credit: Oleg Dyachenko. Machu Picchu, located about 80 km (50 miles) from Cusco, Peru,...
A new species of the mosasaur genus Ectenosaurus has been identified from the fossilized remains found in western Kansas, the United States. A life reconstruction of the plioplatecarpine mosasaur Angolasaurus bocagei, alongside the turtle Angolachelys mbaxi. Image credit: Henry Sharpe / CC BY-SA 4.0. The newly-identified mosasaur species lived during the Late Cretaceous epoch, some 80 million years...
Tardigrades utilize a tetrapod-like stepping pattern remarkably similar to that observed in insects, despite significant disparities in size and skeletal structure between the two groups, according to new research led by scientists from Rockefeller and Princeton Universities. Hypsibius exemplaris. Image credit: Tarushika Vasanthan & Jonathon Stone, doi: 10.22120/jwb.2020.96855.1037. The vast...
An international team of experimental physicists from the United States and Sweden has made the first direct observation of how hydrogen atoms in water molecules tug and push neighboring molecules when they are excited with laser light. Yang et al. made the first direct observation of atomic motion in liquid water molecules that have been excited with laser light. Image credit: Greg Stewart / SLAC...
Vitamin D do not have a beneficial effect on muscle function, strength, or mass in non-athletes and may in some cases even have a negative effect, according a new review of previous studies published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. Effects of vitamin D supplementation did not differ from placebo. Image credit: Virat Maurya. “Data regarding effects of vitamin D on muscle function are...
Researhers have sequenced the genomes of two living and three extinct rhinoceros species and compared them to existing data from the remaining three living species and a range of outgroups. A paleoartist’s reconstruction of the three extinct species whose genomes were sequenced by Liu et al.: in the foreground is a Siberian unicorn (Elasmotherium sibiricum), and close behind are two Merck’s rhinoceroses...
Reconstructing the emergence and weathering of Earth’s continental crust in the Archean eon is crucial for our understanding of early ocean chemistry, biosphere evolution and the onset of plate tectonics. An artistic conception of the early Earth. Image credit: Simone Marchi / NASA. Once land becomes established through dynamic processes like plate tectonics, it begins to weather and add crucial...
Body is one of ten attributes defined by the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) that contributes to the overall quality rating of coffee, and, consequently, to the value ascribed to coffee beans. The SCA describes coffee body as the ‘tactile feeling’ of the liquid in the mouth. In a new study, a team of researchers at the Ohio State University investigated compounds that impact tactile sensations...