An artist's rendition shows the dark matter halo (blue) that astronomers believe surrounds the Milky Way. (Credit: ESO/L. Calçada)
A massive clump of dark matter may have plowed through a conga line of stars streaming around the Milky Way, according to new research presented Tuesday at the 234th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
The research, led by Ana Bonaca of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, reveals a curious abnormality in an otherwise uniform strea ...read more
The Large Underground Xenon experiment in South Dakota is one of many projects searching for dark matter and coming up empty. (Credit: LUX Collaboration)
Dark matter, the invisible material that so far shows itself only through the pull of its gravity, was first proposed nearly a century ago. It took another half-century to truly ignite the physics community. But at this point, a plethora of highly advanced projects have gone hunting for dark matter and come up empty.
Now scientists arou ...read more
A hoverfly on a cluster of yellow mustard flowers. (Credit: Dave Hansche/Shutterstock)
Billions of hoverflies from Europe descend on southern Britain each spring. The black and yellow striped bugs are no more than half an inch in length but make the long trek to Britain for the summer.
Once they arrive, the hoverflies pollinate flowers and lay eggs. The fly populations have remained stable unlike those of honeybees and other insects, which have dropped in recent years, researchers fi ...read more
Our Milky Way, shown here in an artist's concept, has strange "ripples" in its outlying regions. New research indicates those ripples were caused by a collision with a dwarf galaxy called Antlia 2. (Credit: ESA)
The Milky Way likely collided with a recently discovered dwarf galaxy called Antlia 2 less than a billion years ago, according to new research presented Wednesday at the 234th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
The research, spearheaded by Sukanya Chakrabarti& ...read more
(Credit: photo-nic.co.uk nic/Unsplash)
By now, you probably know that spending time in nature — hiking through a forest, walking through a park, even hanging out on a beach — is good for your health. There has been many a study on how outside time can lower a person’s risk for developing things like Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and can alleviate symptoms of some mood and mental disorders.
Now, researchers have begun to quantify how much time you’d ne ...read more
The Iris Nebula is captured here by Spitzer. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope was launched in 2003 on a mission to spend five years exploring the cosmos in infrared light. That means it excels at capturing images and chemical signatures of warm objects, like the glow of gas in nebulas and galaxies, or the composition of planets in still-forming alien solar systems. It even found a new ring of Saturn.
In recent years, it’s been operating with just one instrum ...read more
(Credit: Ehrman Photographic/Shutterstock)
(Inside Science) -- A gangrene-inducing bite in Africa, 40 years of curiosity, and backyard experiments her daughters still complain about have all come together to tell Alison Cobb one thing: Stripes help zebras keep their cool. New research published this week in the Journal of Natural History shows stripes may create air flows that give zebras a kind of natural air conditioning system that helps them ward off the blazing s ...read more
(Credit: Willrow Hood/Shutterstock)
Let's say I have an idea for a great invention one day — a series of pneumatic tubes that would shoot pods with people inside between cities at hundreds of miles an hour. My "Superloop" sounds like a sure-fire hit, but I don't have the resources to pull the project off, and what's more, the technology to build it isn't actually there yet.
But I don't want someone with more money to come along and snag the invention from me — I did do the hard ...read more
Cassini's view of Saturn on January 2, 2010. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)
Since Cassini plunged into Saturn’s atmosphere in 2017, ending its 13-year mission, scientists have continued to comb through the rich store of data it sent back, especially during its last year, when it dove closer to Saturn’s rings than ever before.
Among the findings are a deep look at the complex ring system, which hid more structure than scientists expected, including “st ...read more
A Galapagos Finch. (Credit: Ryan M. Bolton/Shutterstock)
Nearly 200 years ago Charles Darwin voyaged to the Galapagos islands and began to formulate his theory of evolution -- largely thanks to his observations of how finches' beaks varied in shape from island to island. But now, the finches' famous beaks might be in trouble, thanks to a small, blood-sucking visitor.
An invasive insect, called Philornis downsi, is finding a home in the nests of almost every species of ground bird on the ...read more
