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Categories: Offbeat: Paleontology and Archeology, Space: Astronomy

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Two samples from Mars together deliver clear evidence of the origin of Martian organic material. The study presents solid evidence for a prediction made over a decade ago that could be key to understanding how organic molecules, the foundation of life, were first formed here on Earth.

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Astronomers have discovered the first millisecond pulsar in the stellar cluster Glimpse-CO1.

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Scientists discovered the oldest fossil grapes in the Western Hemisphere, which help show how after the death of the dinosaurs, grapes spread across the world.

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Hydrothermal vents can be found around the world at the junctions of drifting tectonic plates. But there are many hydrothermal fields still to be discovered. During a 2022 expedition of the MARIA S. MERIAN, the first field of hydrothermal vents on the 500-kilometer-long Knipovich Ridge off the coast of Svalbard was discovered.

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A recent discovery by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) confirmed that luminous, very red objects previously detected in the early universe upend conventional thinking about the origins and evolution of galaxies and their supermassive black holes.

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Bringing us one step closer to solving the 'missing satellites problem,' researchers have discovered two new satellite galaxies.

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An international team of researchers combine orbital imagery with seismological data from NASA's Mars InSight lander to derive a new impact rate for meteorite strikes on Mars. Seismology also offers a new tool for determining the density of Mars' craters and the age of different regions of a planet.

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The majority of stars in our galaxy are home to planets. The most abundant are the sub-Neptunes, planets between the size of Earth and Neptune. Calculating their density poses a problem for scientists: depending on the method used to measure their mass, two populations are highlighted, the dense and the less dense. Is this due to an observational bias or the physical existence of two distinct populations of sub-Neptunes? Recent work argues for the latter.

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The last population of woolly mammoths was isolated on Wrangel Island off the coast of Siberia 10,000 years ago, when sea levels rose and cut the mountainous island off from the mainland. A new genomic analysis reveals that the isolated mammoths, who lived on the island for the subsequent 6,000 years, originated from at most 8 individuals but grew to 200--300 individuals within 20 generations. The researchers report that the Wrangel Island mammoths' genomes showed signs of inbreeding and low genetic diversity but not to the extent that it can explain their ultimate (and mysterious) extinction.

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Researchers have described some of the best-preserved three-dimensional trilobite fossils ever discovered. The fossils, which are more than 500 million years old, were collected in the High Atlas of Morocco and are being referred to by scientists as 'Pompeii' trilobites due to their remarkable preservation in ash.

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We often think of species as separate and distinct, but sometimes they can interbreed and create hybrids. When this happens consistently in a specific area, it forms what's known as a hybrid zone. These zones can be highly dynamic or remarkably stable, and studying them can reveal key insights into how species boundaries evolve -- or sometimes blur. Researchers now describe a hybrid zone between two manakin species in Panama that has overall remained relatively stable over the past 30 years.

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Researchers have identified the likeliest timeline of the famous Hellenistic-era Kyrenia shipwreck, discovered and recovered off the north coast of Cyprus in the 1960s.

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Researchers continue to expand the case for the Younger Dryas Impact hypothesis. The idea proposes that a fragmented comet smashed into the Earth's atmosphere 12,800 years ago, causing a widespread climatic shift that, among other things, led to the abrupt reversal of the Earth's warming trend and into an anomalous near-glacial period called the Younger Dryas.

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Made famous in 1995 by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the Pillars of Creation in the heart of the Eagle Nebula have captured imaginations worldwide with their arresting, ethereal beauty. Now, NASA has released a new 3D visualization of these towering celestial structures using data from NASA's Hubble and James Webb space telescopes. This is the most comprehensive and detailed multiwavelength movie yet of these star-birthing clouds.

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Solar physicists have revealed the interior structure of the sun's supergranules, a flow structure that transports heat from the sun's hidden interior to its surface. The researchers' analysis of the supergranules presents a challenge to the current understanding of solar convection.

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If aliens modified a planet in their solar system to make it warmer, we'd be able to tell. A new study identifies the artificial greenhouse gases that would be giveaways of a terraformed planet.

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For the first time, a phenomenon astronomers have long hoped to directly image has been captured by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). In this stunning image of the Serpens Nebula, the discovery lies in the northern area of this young, nearby star-forming region.

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Astronomers uncovered that a well-known X-ray binary, whose exact nature has been a mystery to scientists until now, is actually a hidden ultraluminous X-ray source.

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The history of how stars and galaxies came to be and evolved into the present day remains among the most challenging astrophysical questions to solve yet, but new research brings us closer to understanding it. New insights about young galaxies during the Epoch of Reionization have been revealed. Observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) of the galaxy Cosmic Gems arc (SPT0615-JD) have confirmed that the light of the galaxy was emitted 460 million years after the big bang. What makes this galaxy unique is that it is magnified through an effect called gravitational lensing, which has not been observed in other galaxies formed during that age.

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Some 1,000 years ago, a small band of Polynesians sailed thousands of miles across the Pacific to settle one of the world's most isolated places -- a small, previously uninhabited island they named Rapa Nui. Eventually, their numbers ballooned to unsustainable levels, they wrecked the environment, and their civilization collapsed. At least that is the longtime story, told in academic studies and popular books. A new study challenges this narrative of 'ecocide' saying that Rapa Nui's population never spiraled to unsustainable levels.