Showing 20 articles starting at article 121

< Previous 20 articles        Next 20 articles >

Categories: Paleontology: General, Space: Structures and Features

Return to the site home page

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Research reveals a shocking discovery about the history of our universe: the Milky Way Galaxy's last major collision occurred billions of years later than previously thought.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

In the first quintillionth of a second, the universe may have sprouted microscopic black holes with enormous amounts of nuclear charge, MIT physicists propose. The gravitational pull from these tiny, invisible objects could potentially explain all the dark matter that we can't see today.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, a team of astronomers studied the properties of a planet-forming disk around a young and very low-mass star. The results reveal the richest hydrocarbon composition seen to date in a protoplanetary disk, including the first extrasolar detection of ethane and a relatively low abundance of oxygen-bearing species. By including previous similar detections, this finding confirms a trend of disks around very low-mass stars to be chemically distinct from those around more massive stars like the Sun, influencing the atmospheres of planets forming there.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

In a parasitic first, a Baltic amber specimen has revealed that millions of years ago tiny worms known as nematodes were living inside of and feeding on the outer protective layer of pseudoscorpions.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

The identity of a prehistoric marine reptile has finally been revealed after experts discovered that some of its remains actually belonged to fish.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Scientists have detected what they believe to be a neutron star spinning at an unprecedentedly slow rate -- slower than any of the more than 3,000 radio emitting neutron stars measured to date.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Geobiologists reported a 550 million-year-old sea sponge that had been missing from the fossil record. The discovery sheds new light on a conundrum that has stumped zoologists and paleontologists for years.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

A rare exoplanet that should have been stripped down to bare rock by its nearby host star's intense radiation somehow grew a puffy atmosphere instead -- the latest in a string of discoveries forcing scientists to rethink theories about how planets age and die in extreme environments. Nicknamed 'Phoenix' for its ability to survive its red giant star's radiant energy discovered planet illustrates the vast diversity of solar systems and the complexity of planetary evolution -- especially at the end of stars' lives.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

A team of palaeontologists has discovered a fossil of a gigantic flying reptile from the Jurassic period with an estimated wingspan of more than three metres -- making it one of the largest pterosaurs ever found from that era.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

The sharks we know today as the open ocean's top predators evolved from stubby bottom dwellers during a dramatic episode of global warming millions of years ago.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

One of Earth's most consequential bursts of biodiversity -- a 30-million-year period of explosive evolutionary changes spawning innumerable new species -- may have the most modest of creatures to thank for the vital stage in life's history: worms.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

This fossil looks like a lumpy, rounded rock with a couple of exposed teeth that are a little worse for wear, having been submerged and tumbled along the floor of the Gulf of Mexico for thousands of years before washing up on a beach. But when it was X-rayed a doctoral student saw there was more to the fossil that met the eye: a hidden canine tooth that had not yet erupted from the jaw bone. It was just what researchers needed to identify the fossil as belonging to a Homotherium, a genus of large cat that roamed much of the Earth for millions of years.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

New research demonstrated a possible formation mechanism of intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters, star clusters that could contain tens of thousands or even millions of tightly packed stars. The first ever star-by-star massive cluster-formation simulations revealed that sufficiently dense molecular clouds, the 'birthing nests' of star clusters, can give birth to very massive stars that evolve into intermediate-mass black holes.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Over the last two years, scientists have used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to explore what astronomers refer to as Cosmic Dawn -- the period in the first few hundred million years after the big bang where the first galaxies were born.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

A large fossil discovery has helped shed light on the history of dinosaurs in Wales.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Fossils found on the shoreline of Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe represent a completely new dinosaur species. This remarkable find, named Musankwa sanyatiensis, marks only the fourth dinosaur species named from Zimbabwe.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Researchers have applied the well-understood and highly verified quantum field theory, usually applied to the study of the very small, to a new target, the early universe. Their exploration led to the conclusion that there ought to be far fewer miniature black holes than most models suggest, though observations to confirm this should soon be possible. The specific kind of black hole in question could be a contender for dark matter.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Using ancient DNA extracted from the toe bone of a museum specimen, biologists have sequenced the genome of an extinct, flightless bird called the little bush moa, shedding light into an unknown corner of avian genetic history. The work is the first complete genetic map of the turkey-sized bird whose distant living cousins include the ostrich, emu, and kiwi.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

An exceptionally rare fossilized porcupine skeleton discovered in Florida has allowed researchers to trace the evolutionary history for one of North America's rarest mammals.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Researchers have now seen the formation of three of the earliest galaxies in the universe, more than 13 billion years ago. The sensational discovery contributes important knowledge about the universe.