NASA’s Juno spacecraft could be sent to intercept the interstellar object NASA/JPL-Caltech An interstellar object currently hurtling through our solar system will loop around the sun and disappear back into the remote depths of the cosmos within months. Astronomers will be able to capture images as comet 3I/ATLAS traverses our region of space, but do…
Strawberry squid, colour lithograph Smithsonian Libraries, Washington, DC Salt water covers seven-tenths of Earth’s surface and is where life began. So it is no surprise that our oceans are home to a wide diversity of creatures of all shapes, colours and evolutionary strategies. ‘Pilchard (Argentina carolina)’, hand-coloured engraving from Mark Catesby National Agricultural Library, Beltsville,…
Illustration of Tyrannosaurus rex Roger Harris/Getty Images/Science Photo Library A closer look at the skulls of gigantic dinosaurs reveals some preferred to shred their prey, while others attacked with bone-crushing force. Andre Rowe and Emily Rayfield at the University of Bristol in the UK looked at the skulls of 18 species of theropods from across…
NASA’s largest interplanetary probe tested its radar during a Mars flyby. The results include a detailed image and bode well for the mission at Jupiter’s moon Europa. As it soared past Mars in March, NASA’s Europa Clipper conducted a critical radar test that had been impossible to accomplish on Earth. Now that mission scientists have…
Researchers from the University of Adelaide, New Zealand’s Manaaki Whenua-Landcare Research and University of Auckland have discovered that more than 80 per cent of parasites detected in kākāpō poo prior to the 1990s are no longer present in contemporary populations. The project used ancient DNA and microscopic techniques to sample faeces dating back more than…
Florida’s Avon Park bombing range is teeming with life. Over 40 at-risk species occupy this 106,000-acre expanse used by the U.S. Air Force for training exercises. Conservation biologists from Michigan State University are using the range to test something other than weapons: innovative strategies to save threatened species. Using decades’ worth of monitoring data, researchers…
Some butterflies can smell others of the same species, allowing them to identify each other in areas where multiple species all look the same, new research finds. A large international team has genetically mapped glasswing butterflies found across Central and South America, rewriting the evolutionary tree and highlighting six new species. The team includes experts…
Following a successful launch on July 30, the NISAR satellite will orbit Earth for at least three years, using its sophisticated radar systems to scan nearly all the planet’s land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days. NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will jointly operate the spacecraft and gather science of high…
Paleontologists have identified a new species of ancient marine reptile from Germany’s world-renowned Posidonia Shale fossil beds, expanding our understanding of prehistoric ocean ecosystems that existed nearly 183 million years ago. The newly classified species, named Plesionectes longicollum (“long-necked near-swimmer”), represents a previously unknown type of plesiosauroid — the group of long-necked marine reptiles that…
A volcano in far eastern Russia has erupted for the first time in more than 500 years, which experts say may be linked to last week’s massive earthquake. The Krasheninnikov Volcano in Kamchatka threw up an ash plume up to six kilometres (3.7 miles) high overnight. There are no threats to populated areas, Russia’s emergency…
