(Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Calzetti)
Some 30 million light-years from Earth, a faint monster lurks in the constellation Cetus the Whale. Astronomers dub the object UGC 695, and astronomers recently caught this image of it using the Hubble Space Telescope.
It’s a galaxy fainter than even the background brightness of our planet’s atmosphere, which makes it tough to see with Earth-bound telescopes.
These so-called “low-surface-brightness galaxies” get thei ...read more
A true color approximation of Jupiter's moon Io taken by the Galileo spacecraft in 1999. (credit: PIRL/University of Arizona)
A volcano spread across an area greater than Lake Michigan could erupt any day. Located on Jupiter’s moon Io scientists predict that Loki, named after the Norse trickster god, is due to explode sometime in mid-September. The volcano last erupted in May 2018, an event also predicted by scientists.
“Loki volcano is huge — 200 kilometers across ...read more
Native Americans have been visiting Calvert Island off the Canadian coast for more than 10,000 years. (Credit: Pacific Northwest Sailing/Shutterstock)
Humans have long found comfort on Calvert Island, just off the coast of mainland British Columbia. For millennia, they have climbed the island’s rocky outcrops, walked through its rainy conifer forests, and waded through its chilly intertidal pools to collect crabs, mussels, and other marine life.
There, in 2014, a group of Canadian re ...read more
This is an estimate of what Denisovan's may have looked like, based on a new DNAS analysis technique. (Credit: Maayan Harel)
Every time archaeologists pry the remains of a newly-identified human ancestor from the earth, there’s one question we care about most: What did they look like? For the first time, researchers have tried to answer that burning query about Denisovans, one of the most intriguing ancient relatives on our family tree.
Discovered in 2010 in a Siberian cave, these an ...read more
Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria grown in culture. (Credit: Sirirat/Shutterstock)
Three years ago, a woman in upstate New York was charged with drunk driving and then exonerated when she proved her high blood alcohol level was the result of a rare condition in which her body brews its own alcohol. At the time, the bizarre story made national headlines. Now, auto-brewery syndrome, as the condition is called, may have helped researchers unlock some of the secrets of a common but little-understo ...read more
An artist’s concept of a ring of dust orbiting Tabby’s Star. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
About
four years ago, one star gained notoriety when some astronomers suggested its
weird light pattern could be signs of artificial “alien megastructures” blocking the
star’s light. Though scientists generally say that clouds of gas and dust are most
likely the culprit, the source of that gas and dust remains a mystery.
One possibility is that the star, formally called KI ...read more
A sign in the Democratic Republic of the Congo warns people that Ebola is in the area. (Credit: Sergey Uryadnikov/Shutterstock)
The Ebola virus continues to ravage populations across Africa. But earlier this week, researchers reported that they've figured out what makes Ebola just so virulent. One particular protein is giving Ebola its punch, and researchers know how to switch it off. The find could lead to new vaccines and may give a huge boost to Ebola research safety.
Ebola's Sneak At ...read more
Misophonia is an aversive reaction to specific sounds that emerges in childhood, most often with annoyance that quickly turns to anger. (Credit: mamaza/Shutterstock)
It was the salads that got me. On nights when my parents started off dinner with some leafy greens, I left the room. The habit quickly became a ritual, and to my family’s credit – or not – no one ever remarked on it. It was just another quirk, like biting fingernails, or sticking your tongue out when you c ...read more
This artist's concept captures the catastrophic collision that destroyed the parent body, which was bigger than any known asteroid break-up in the past 3 billion years.
(Credit: Don Davis/Southwest Research Institute.)
A giant collision between two asteroids may have triggered a global ice age that hit Earth some 466 million years ago. The cosmic crash — which took place between Mars and Jupiter and destroyed an asteroid some 93 miles (150 km) wide — created a thick plume of dust ...read more
(Credit: ValentinaKru/Shutterstock)
It’s been more than a decade since the first lab-grown organ (a more-or-less functional replacement bladder) was successfully implanted into a human body. But in the time since tens of thousands of people have been added to the organ donor waiting list in America alone.
Scientists are still figuring out how to grow organs at a scale — and price — that can meet the needs of thousands of patients a year. One of the big challenges to crea ...read more
