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The Psyche spacecraft has been steadily making its way to its asteroid target, a fascinating metal-rich asteroid also named Psyche. This world is believed to be what remains of the metallic core of an almost-planet, but the story might be a lot more complex, as recent research suggests. The mission still has a long way […]

The states that make up the USA are no stranger to picking an animal and making it an emblem of the region. There are plenty of great animals to choose from – but why stick to living ones when you can pick a dinosaur too?  Not all of the states have an officially designated state […]

The jumping spider genus Habronattus consists of around 100 species that all diverged from each other within the last 2.5 million years. To breed, the males typically perform displays involving movement, vibrations, and ornamentation. Sometimes the males of these species will even perform successful mating displays to females of different species. By doing this, they’ve […]

With the announcement of a new moon around planet Uranus, it came to our attention that some people are shocked to find out that we do not know exactly how many moons are around the planets that exist in the Solar System. Finding moons nowadays is a lot more challenging than you might think. Mercury […]

An oxide of strontium, iron, and cobalt can absorb and release oxygen, depending on the gases passing over it, with a high number of cycles. This means it could fill a gap in our production of fuel cells that turn hydrogen into electricity, as well as a variety of other potential applications. The rest of […]

For the first time, researchers have managed to establish what looks like a causal and reciprocal relationship between the bacteria in our guts and insomnia. The work indicates that certain bacteria can increase the risk of suffering this sleep disorder, while others can help prevent it. However, the results show that insomnia itself can alter […]

Around 140,000 years ago, a Neanderthal and a modern human got it on. We know nothing about the situation that led to this interaction. We don’t know which parent came from which species, but we do know that they had a child who died around the age of five. A team of researchers from Tel […]

A resurrection ritual, the first sunrise, and a musical game are among the scenes that were painted onto the walls of a cave in Missouri by Native American communities 1,000 years ago. Known as Picture Cave, the site has been studied by archaeologists since the early 1990s, yet it is only now – and with […]

Prehistoric paintings found deep inside a perilously inaccessible cave in the French Pyrenees reveal how ancient hunter-gatherers risked their necks to conduct ritual activities in the bowels of the Earth. Known as Etxeberri Cave, the site is considered one of the most challenging caverns to have been explored by Palaeolithic humans, and may have been […]

Astronomers have for the first time tracked the transformation of a dying star for over a century. The subject in question is the so-called “spirograph” Planetary Nebula IC418, an aged star that is shedding off its outer layers, forming these beautiful patterns. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or […]

Pharma company Invivyd, Inc. just announced it is working with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on a pathway to rapid approval for a product it calls an “alternative” to COVID-19 vaccines. The novel monoclonal antibody-based treatment, catchily named VYD2311 for now, offers a different way of preventing COVID infections compared with the existing […]

New Jersey officials are currently investigating the origins of a malaria case in Morris County, after it was found that the person who fell ill had no recent history of international travel. A joint statement from the New Jersey Departments of Health (NJDOH) and Environmental Protection (NJDEP) released on August 18 announced the investigation, and […]

Let’s face it, the sea is full of proper freaky looking creatures, from Barbie lobsters to disco worms and everything in between. However, normally in the shark world, the species relies on sharp teeth and speed to make an impression. Well, one shark species has taken a rather different approach from stealthy gray. For the […]

JWST has spotted the 29th moon of Uranus, finding an object that’s probably the size of a small city 2.7 billion kilometers away. Within six years of discovering Uranus, William Herschel had found two moons. Although Herschel thought he had found four more, it took 64 years before the next two real discoveries. In the […]

Trails left in ancient rock have been attributed to fish getting the hang of the then-newfangled concept of crawling. If correct, this would push back the conquest of the land by vertebrates by 10 million years. That’s assuming these pioneers didn’t just nope it out back to the water (like whales later would), until braver […]

There are plenty of species that we know exist, but the finer points of their day-to-day lives, breeding behavior, and ecology have not been extensively studied. In the Paraguay River basin in Brazil, a species of catfish has been observed shimming their way up the side of waterfalls in great numbers, a behavior that has […]

Researchers have recently discovered an impressive hydrothermal system in the western Pacific Ocean, and according to the team, it’s “challenging long-held assumptions” about where hydrogen is generated beneath the waves. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. To say this newly found field […]

The Atacama Desert might be one of the driest places on the planet, but even this barren landscape can occasionally bloom into a sea of colorful flowers – and we won’t have to wait long until the next time it does. Speaking to UPI, Jorge Carabantes, the head of protected areas at Chile’s National Forestry […]

It’s strange, then, that we know so little about them. Oh, sure, we know how they looked – more or less, anyway – and what they ate, stuff like that. But how did they act? How did they move? A new study suggests the answer isn’t quite what we were taught – at least in […]

It’s something of a rite of passage for anyone who lives by the seaside to get pooped on by a bird, and now a new study has discovered that aerial pooping really does seem to be a preference among seabirds. Using cameras strapped to the bodies of streaked shearwaters, it recorded how the birds will […]