An image of the quasar 3C 186, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center A rare collision between two supermassive black holes (SMBH) appears to have sent the resulting merger speeding through the universe, making it one of the fastest-moving black holes we have ever seen. Astronomers have long puzzled over…
African forest elephants Will Burrard-Lucas Night has fallen; an elephant mother and her calf walk through Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park, which covers more than 4000 square kilometres of rainforest in the northern Republic of the Congo. This remarkable photograph above of the critically endangered African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) was captured using a camera trap. The…
The Athena lander in low lunar orbit Intuitive Machines Intuitive Machines’s Athena lander has made it to the moon, but it seems to have fallen over. The lander is still working, but it isn’t yet clear which parts of its mission it will still be able to accomplish. The spacecraft launched on board a SpaceX…
A specimen of Sirenobethylus charybdis preserved in amber Qiong Wu An extraordinary extinct wasp found preserved in amber may have used its abdomen to grasp other insects like a Venus flytrap before laying its eggs on them. “It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. It’s unlike any wasp or any other insect that is known…
The evolution of the anus may have driven the body plan of all advanced animals, including humans MattLphotography / Alamy The anus is a wildly successful innovation, but how did it evolve? A genetic analysis suggests it probably began as an opening used to release sperm that later fused with the gut – an example…
A cave orb spider blickwinkel/Alamy Spiders known for elaborate circular webs have altered their spinning style in dark spaces to create apparent tripwires for walking prey. Those that make circular webs are known as orb-weavers, and most of them trap mosquitoes, beetles and other flying insects in sticky spiral frame webs sparsely attached to outdoor…
Hanuman langurs have adapted their behaviour to thrive around human environments Ondrej Prosicky / Alamy A group of monkeys in India has developed a range of ingenious techniques to acquire food peacefully from devout tourists. Revered as holy at the Dakshineswar temple complex near Kolkata, Hanuman langurs (Semnopithecus entellus) quietly grab visitors’ legs, tug on…
A map of the sky assembled using data from the Gaia space telescope, with the centre of the Milky Way in the middle of the image ESA/Gaia/DPAC Astronomers have had a rare glimpse into the heart of the Milky Way thanks to an errant star expelled from the galactic centre. At the middle of our…
A mosaic image of asteroid Bennu composed of images collected by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona The asteroid Bennu is puzzling scientists, with samples from the space rock showing weirder properties than they expected. These include extremely high nitrogen levels and improbably magnetic properties. Scientists have been analysing clumps of rock from Bennu since…
Life Even animals with very small brains turn out to have cultural traditions, which poses a puzzler for biologists wondering what makes human culture unique By Colin Barras We all know the story: give every chimpanzee on the planet a typewriter and wait until something monumental occurs, either the recreation of the complete works of…
