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While routinely scanning the sky for the burnt-out remnants of dying stars, scientists stumbled upon a strange cosmic signal. After running a few more tests, they were stunned.
One of their observed stellar corpses, a white dwarf star more than 1,000 light-years from Earth that spins once every 15 minutes, had a peculiar appearance. Its orb-like surface possessed two different elements on either of its sides, weirdly divided like a basketball sliced down the middle. On one face, the researchers identified traces of hydrogen — on the other, helium. Though the split may not be exactly 50-50, the breakup the researchers saw was apparent enough to leave them scratching their heads.
"While it is not uncommon to encounter insects parasitized by 'zombie' fungi in the wild, it is a rarity to witness large spiders succumbing to these fungal conquerors," said evolutionary biologist Roberto García-Roa, who took the photograph.
The large spider was found with a parasitic fungus bursting through its body. (Image credit: Roberto García-Roa)
Chemical analyses of the contents of a 2,000-year-old flask found a familiar scent: patchouli
A surprisingly well-preserved perfume bottle is providing a rare olfactory window to ancient Rome — and letting in a familiar smell.
Chemical analyses of the contents of a 2,000-year-old bottle reveal that one of its ingredients was patchouli, researchers report May 23 in Heritage. The earthy scent is a staple in modern perfumes, but its use by the Romans was unknown until now.
While the contents inside this 2,000-year-old quartz bottle didn’t smell like much when it was unsealed, chemical analyses revealed its once-heady perfume: patchouli.
Astronomers are scouring the cosmos for fingerprints of the invisible — tiny clumps of pure dark matter that might solve a long-standing cosmic mystery.
Dark cosmic lenses reveal themselves by warping and magnifying faraway starlight. Scientists hope these lenses will be the key to unlocking the nature of dark matter.
Scientists have struggled to accurately forecast the strength of the sun’s 11-year cycle — even after centuries of solar observations.
As the solar cycle marches toward maximum, sunspots migrate toward the sun’s equator. This composite image is made from six months’ worth of observations from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
If you saw grains of sand rolling uphill you might be forgiven for thinking you were watching a Christopher Nolan movie. But scientists have recently figured out how a sand-like material can be made to flow back up slopes, without rewinding time.
Their work using lasers gives scientists a tool to observe and possibly even manipulate electrons, which could spur breakthroughs in fields such as electronics and chemistry, experts told AFP.
Attoseconds are the scale at which electrons travel around their atoms. (A Luna Blue/Verve+/Getty Images)
Researchers have proposed a "missing" scientific law for the evolution of life, minerals, planets, stars and pretty much everything else in the universe.
This new law identifies "universal concepts of selection" that drive systems to evolve, whether they're living or not. It addresses the tendency for natural systems in the universe to become more complex over time.
The research team behind the law, which included philosophers, astrobiologists, a theoretical physicist, a mineralogist and a data scientist, have called it "the law of increasing functional information."
A vast "canyon of fire" at least double the width of the United States was carved into the sun's southern hemisphere Wednesday (Oct. 31).
The culprit? A large magnetic filament eruption from the sun, according to spaceweather.com. This activity generated a canyon roughly 6,200 miles wide (10,000 km) and 10 times as long.
New beauty shots of Jupiter, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, reveal a speedy jet stream encircling the equator at an altitude never imaged before.
This false-color infrared image of Jupiter from the James Webb Space Telescope reveals new details in the planet’s atmosphere (brightness indicates altitude) as well as a glimpse at auroras (red) over the poles.
According to a new analysis of their gene expression, starfish and other echinoderms lack the architecture for an actual body.
They are essentially just mobile heads that sprouted the ability to crawl, say a team led by biologists Laurent Formery and Chris Lowe of Stanford University.
Exoplanets are planets that orbit stars other than the sun and thus exist outside the solar system. The word "exoplanet" derives from the term "extrasolar planet," which hints at its existence beyond the influence of our star.
Prior to the 1990s, humanity had never observed a planet beyond the solar system and thus could not confirm such worlds existed. In the more than three decades since the first discovery of an exoplanet, NASA's exoplanet catalog has burgeoned. As of 2023, the exoplanet catalog contains over 5,500 confirmed exoplanets and almost 10,000 additional candidate exoplanets.
Exoplanets are worlds that orbit stars other than the sun. (Image credit: Science Photo Library via Getty Images)
Seventy-one years ago, a schoolboy in Scotland was digging up potatoes as a punishment when he discovered an ancient Egyptian statue — the first in a collection of ancient Egyptian sculptures and artifacts buried in the grounds of his school. Now, researchers have finally worked out how the artifacts got to the British Isles.
A nearly 4,000-year-old red sandstone statue head was unearthed at Melville House in Scotland in 1952. (Image credit: National Museums Scotland)
