This week a lone stingray in a North Carolina aquarium was found to be pregnant and the idea of the world’s first shark-ray hybrid was put forward, a 280-million-year-old fossil was identified as a partial forgery, and Earth has received a power beam sent from space for the first time. Finally, we take a closer look at the peculiar pink fairy armadillo.
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NASA Just Received Laser And Radio Messages Together From Even Deeper Space
Over the last few months, NASA has been using its Psyche spacecraft to test a whole new communication system. The probe’s main mission is to visit an asteroid of the same name (16 Psyche) but on its journey there it has been sending laser messages back to Earth. Now, new tests have shown even more exciting ways to communicate with spacecraft beyond Earth. Read the full story here
Shark-Ray Hybrid? Aquarium Suggests Shark May Have Impregnated Its Lone Stingray
There’s a bit of a mystery going on at the Aquarium and Shark Lab in Hendersonville, North Carolina, after a stingray became pregnant despite no male stingrays being present. While an interesting mystery in its own right, the case has drawn extra attention after suggestions by the head of the aquarium that the stingray could have been impregnated by a shark. Read the full story here
13-Year-Old Boy Cured Of Terminal Brain Tumor In World First
For the first time ever, a child suffering from a deadly type of brain tumor known as a diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) has been completely cured. Until now, doctors had only been able to offer radiotherapy in an attempt to slow the cancer’s growth, yet this breakthrough offers hope for a more effective treatment. Read the full story here
280-Million-Year-Old Mystery Solved As Forged Fossil’s “Skin” Identified As Paint
A magnificent fossil find was made in the Italian Alps in 1931. The specimen retrieved was thought to show remarkable preservation of an ancient reptile’s soft tissues, but that wasn’t the whole story. Now, a new study has revealed what makes this unusually well-preserved fossil so unusual: that “soft tissue” is, in fact, just black paint on a carved surface. Read the full story here
Earth Has Received Power Beamed From A Satellite In Space For The First Time
In the video game Simcity 2000, one of the futuristic types of energy plants was a microwave power plant where solar energy was collected in space and transmitted back down to Earth. That idea is now a reality. Since June last year, an experiment in space has been transmitting energy down to Earth via solar panels on a satellite in orbit and now we have the first results of how the experiment is going. Read the full story here
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Feature of the week:
Pink Fairies: The World’s Smallest Armadillo Has A Unique Double Skin
There are over 20 species of armadillo alive today, but among them is one that stands out for a myriad of reasons. But it’s not the pink fairy armadillo’s (unsurprisingly) pink coloration that makes it so peculiar, it was recently discovered that they also have a trait that’s never been seen in any other mammal before. Read the full story here
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Source Link: NASA Received Laser And Radio Messages From Even Deeper Space, 13-Year-Old Boy Cured Of Terminal Brain Tumor, And Much More This Week