In what is perhaps the strangest update we’ve heard from ecologists in a while, a Brazilian researcher has documented – on video – a moth feeding on the tears of a sleeping bird.
The researcher, Leandro João Carneiro de Lima Moraes from the National Institute of Amazonian Research, was conducting amphibian and reptile surveys in the Brazilian Amazon last November when he noticed the behavior – twice in one night – and got it on camera.
Though a human observ ...read more
It has been quiet at Kīlauea in Hawaii. The eruption on the lower East Rift Zone that captured the planet's attention over the summer trickled to a stop in late August and since then there hasn't been much going on at all at the giant shield volcano. In fact, the Hawaii Volcano Observatory reports that carbon dioxide emissions at Kīlauea are lower than anything they've seen in over a decade. Earthquakes and collapses are now infrequent on the volcano and nary a lava flow can be se ...read more
There's Big Bird and then there's really big birds. The elephant birds of Madagascar, which went extinct about a thousand years ago, have long been counted among the largest birds ever to walk the planet. But a second look at the bones they left behind has led researchers to rethink the birds' family tree — and just how big they got.
Before we get into details of the new research, here's the tidbit I know you want: Newly designated species Vorombe titan, an extinct flightless bird f ...read more
Where did Mars’ moons come from? It’s a question that is deceptively difficult to answer, with two competing theories: Either the moons were captured, or they came from Mars itself. Though the obvious answer remains elusive, new “old” evidence uncovered from within 20-year-old data indicates that Mars’ moon Phobos may have formed following an impact on the Red Planet.
The evidence, published September 24 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, comes from ...read more
For decades, scientists have been scanning Mars’ surface for signs of ancient life. But by digging a little bit deeper, they’ve come across historic habitable zones in unexpected places.
After expanding their search, a team of researchers found that the Red Planet’s ancient subsurface could have housed microbial life for hundreds of millions of years. By borrowing hydrogen electrons from water, microbes could’ve had enough energy to not only survive underground ...read more
Sunshine on a biting fall day can feel blissful. But too much time spent basking in the sun’s ultraviolet rays can lead to sunburn and increase the risk of developing skin cancer, cataracts and wrinkles. Now, researchers have made a cheap, wearable device that keeps tabs on UV exposure. The new tech could mean soaking up the sun without overdosing on radiation.
Vipul Bansal, an applied chemist and nanobiotechnologist at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia, wanted to m ...read more
A version of this article originally appeared on The Conversation.
On a crisp California afternoon in early December 1968, a square-jawed, mild-mannered Stanford researcher named Douglas Engelbart took the stage at San Francisco’s Civic Auditorium and proceeded to blow everyone’s mind about what computers could do. Sitting down at a keyboard, this computer-age Clark Kent calmly showed a rapt audience of computer engineers how the devices they built could be utterly different kinds o ...read more
After falling past the event horizon — the point of no return — nothing can escape a black hole. While the depths of black holes may forever remain a mystery, astronomers can observe the regions around them. In a paper published September 3 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a team of researchers reported, for the first time, spotting a clump of matter falling directly into a distant black hole at nearly one-third the speed of light.
The observations, which co ...read more
