This star-forming region is one of many in M33 that's birthing new stars from massive clouds of dust and gas. (Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA) Astronomers have witnessed a rare event: the birth of massive stars 2.73 million light-years away in the Triangulum Galaxy (Messier 33). At the center of two giant colliding gas clouds are some 10 young stars with masses tens of times that of the Sun. Their discovery indicates that such cloud-cloud collisions are a main pathway to creating giant stars in ...read more

The Mars 2020 rover will be equipped with a helicopter, as seen in this artist's concept, that will fly above the Red Planet's surface like no craft before it. (NASA/JPL) Just under a year before launch, NASA’s unnamed Mars 2020 rover is getting ready for its big mission with the new addition of the Mars Helicopter Scout. The Helicopter Scout will be the first rotorcraft to fly on another planet. And though the mission is considered high-risk, it could also come with a high reward. I ...read more

The Astro suit designed by ILC Dover. (Credit: ILC Dover) Fifty years after Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon wearing an ILC Dover-made spacesuit, the Delaware-based aerospace manufacturing company is coming out with two brand-new designs. The company announced two new spacesuits on Aug. 28 called Astro and Sol. Unlike other suits the company has produced, like the extravehicular mobility unity (EMU) and the Apollo suit, these new spacesuits are built with adaptability in mind. A ...read more

Charles II, the last of the Spanish Hapsburgs. Generations of inbreeding left him infertile, in addition to numerous additional health problems. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons) Inbreeding, or mating between two closely-related people, is a strong taboo across the world. There's good reason for this, of course. The potential for sexual abuse and lasting trauma is high, and the odds of inheriting rare genetic diseases goes up exponentially among children who are the result of inbreeding. But in ...read more

(Credit: l i g h t p o e t/Shutterstock) Prominent scientists can be guiding beacons for an entire field. Their work can define research for years to come, and sets a precedent for successive generations. The life of an eminent researcher is obviously a boon to science. But, says a new study, their death might be important as well. Now researchers discover the death of a science superstar also has a major impact on research. Reporting in the August issue of the American Economic R ...read more

The crescent of Neptune and Triton, captured by Voyager 2 on August 25, 1989, as the spacecraft was fleeing from the planet toward interstellar space. (Credit: NASA-JPL) Thirty years ago this week, the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew past Neptune, providing the first up-close look at the last planet in the solar system*. The anniversary tugged generously at my heart. You see, I fell in love with Neptune as a kid, back when I was in the second grade. We all had to read about a planet and tell a ...read more

Having an MRI scan can be a noisy, unusual, and sometimes stressful experience. But can it also be a social one? In a new paper, neuroscientists Benjamin O. Turner and colleagues ask whether telling people that their MRI scan will be a "mind reading" procedure is enough to alter brain activity through 'implied social presence'. As the authors put it: If people believe that a technology can ‘see’ their internal thoughts, will people alter what they think about? In an ele ...read more

A reconstruction of the skull of Australopithecus afarensis. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons) 1.2 to 4.4 million years ago was a happening time in human evolution. It’s when our evolutionary branch — the hominins — diversified into about a dozen species, collectively known as Australopiths. The most famous of these creatures is Lucy, the partial skeleton of a roughly 3-foot-6-inch female discovered in the 1970s. But Lucy is just one of many Australopiths known to science. Ove ...read more

Stegosaur expert Susie Maidment of London’s Natural History Museum is studying rock strata in order to pin down the precise dates of dinosaur fossils from the Late Jurassic — the better to understand the biology and evolution of these ancient beasts. (Credit: Emily Osterloff/Natural History Museum) At the base of a pale hill in the badlands of northeastern Wyoming, Susie Maidment hits her hammer against stone. She breaks off a fist-sized chunk, grabs a loose piece between her fing ...read more

By Molly Schools This post is part of a collaboration between SciStarter and Career in STEM, in which writers spotlight different citizen science projects, interview project leaders about their careers, and create educational content for teachers and students. This series is available on the Science Connected, Career in STEM, SciStarter, and Discover Magazine blog platforms. As the sun sinks low below the horizon and the crisp night air begins to descend, a miraculous sight can be seen i ...read more