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Categories: Anthropology: General, Space: Structures and Features

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It takes more than a galaxy merger to make a black hole grow and new stars form: machine learning shows cold gas is needed too to initiate rapid growth -- new research finds.

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NASA's Juno spacecraft has directly measured charged oxygen and hydrogen molecules from the atmosphere of one of Jupiter's largest moons, Europa. These observations provide key constraints on the potential oxygenation of its subsurface ocean.

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Scientists provide fresh insights on the origins of life, presenting compelling evidence supporting the 'RNA World' hypothesis. The study unveils an RNA enzyme that can make accurate copies of other functional RNA strands, while also allowing new variants of the molecule to emerge over time. These remarkable capabilities suggest the earliest forms of evolution may have occurred on a molecular scale in RNA, and also bring scientists one step closer to re-creating autonomous RNA-based life in the laboratory.

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Plant biologists have uncovered an evolutionary mystery over 100 million years in the making. It turns out that sometime during the last 125 million years, tomatoes and Arabidopsis thaliana plants experienced an extreme genetic makeover. Just what happened remains unclear. But the mystery surrounds CLV3, a gene key to healthy plant growth and development.

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Looking deeply into space and time, astronomers have studied the exceptionally luminous galaxy GN-z11, which existed when our 13.8 billion-year-old universe was only about 430 million years old.

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Astronomers can use supercomputers to simulate the formation of galaxies from the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago to the present day. But there are a number of sources of error. An international research team has spent a hundred million computer hours over eight years trying to correct these.

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Up to a certain point, very luminous stars can have a positive effect on the formation of planets, but from that point on the radiation they emit can cause the material in protoplanetary discs to disperse.

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A technique originally devised to extract DNA from woolly mammoths and other ancient archaeological specimens can be used to potentially identify badly burned human remains, according to research.

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Using archival data from the Gemini North telescope, a team of astronomers has measured the heaviest pair of supermassive black holes ever found. The merging of two supermassive black holes is a phenomenon that has long been predicted, though never observed. This massive pair gives clues as to why such an event seems so unlikely in the Universe.

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Researchers have found water vapor in the disc around a young star exactly where planets may be forming. Water is a key ingredient for life on Earth, and is also thought to play a significant role in planet formation. Yet, until now, we had never been able to map how water is distributed in a stable, cool disc -- the type of disc that offers the most favorable conditions for planets to form around stars.

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An international team of astronomers obtained observational evidence for the creation of rare heavy elements in the aftermath of a cataclysmic explosion triggered by the merger of two neutron stars.

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Thousands of historic and archaeological sites in Georgia are at risk from tropical storm surges, and that number will increase with climate change, according to a new study.

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Scientists working with data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have obtained the first full spectra of some of the earliest starlight in the universe. The images provide the clearest picture yet of very low-mass, newborn galaxies, created less than a billion years after the Big Bang, and suggest the tiny galaxies are central to the cosmic origin story.

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Potters of different cultural backgrounds learn new types differently, producing cultural differences even in the absence of differential cultural evolution. The research has implications for how we evaluate the difference of archaeological artifacts across cultures.

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While many aspects of Philistine culture are well-documented, the specifics of Philistine religious practices and deities have long remained shrouded in mystery. A recent study contributes valuable new data to our understanding of the Philistine's ritual practices. The discovery of numerous plants in two temples unearthed at the site unraveled unprecedented insights into Philistine cultic rituals and beliefs -- their temple food ingredients, timing of ceremonies, and plants for temple decoration.

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When a star like our Sun reaches the end of its life, it can ingest the surrounding planets and asteroids that were born with it. Now, researchers have found a unique signature of this process for the first time -- a scar imprinted on the surface of a white dwarf star.

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NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has found the best evidence yet for emission from a neutron star at the site of a recently observed supernova. The supernova, known as SN 1987A, was a core-collapse supernova, meaning the compacted remains at its core formed either a neutron star or a black hole. Evidence for such a compact object has long been sought, and while indirect evidence for the presence of a neutron star has previously been found, this is the first time that the effects of high-energy emission from the probable young neutron star have been detected.

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Luke Skywalker's childhood might have been slightly less harsh if he'd grown up on a more temperate Tatooine -- like the ones identified in a new study. According to the study's authors, there are more climate-friendly planets in binary star systems -- in other words, those with two suns -- than previously known. And, they say, it may be a sign that, at least in some ways, the universe leans in the direction of orderly alignment rather than chaotic misalignment.

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Astronomers have characterized a bright quasar, finding it to be not only the brightest of its kind, but also the most luminous object ever observed. Quasars are the bright cores of distant galaxies and they are powered by supermassive black holes. The black hole in this record-breaking quasar is growing in mass by the equivalent of one Sun per day, making it the fastest-growing black hole to date.

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A detailed survey of the volcanic underwater deposits around the Kikai caldera in Japan clarified the deposition mechanisms as well as the event's magnitude. As a result, the research team found that the event 7,300 years ago was the largest volcanic eruption in the Holocene by far.