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Categories: Ecology: Extinction, Space: General

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Future space missions likely will send robots to scout out underground habitats for astronauts. Engineers have now developed a system that would enable autonomous vehicles to explore caves, lava tubes and even oceans on other worlds on their own.

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Astrophysicists have discovered the tightest ultracool dwarf binary system ever observed. The two stars are so close that it takes them less than one Earth day to revolve around each other. In other words, each star's 'year' lasts just 17 hours.

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In 2022 NASA embarked on a bold experiment to see if they could change an asteroid's velocity by smacking it with a ballistic probe -- kind of like hitting it with a hammer. This experiment was to test a potential technique to someday deflect an asteroid on a collision course to Earth. Perhaps, for the first time in the history of the universe, an intelligent planetary species sought ways to avoid its own potential extinction by threats from outer space (something the dinosaurs, who were wiped out 65 million years ago by a rogue asteroid, never evolved to accomplish).

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Astronomers offer new insight into how deflection missions can protect the planet from future Earth-bound asteroids and comets.

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Deforestation is resulting in reduced rainfall across large parts of the tropics, according to new research. People living in tropical forest communities have often complained that the climate gets hotter and drier once trees are cleared but until now, scientists have not been able to identify a clear link between the loss of tree cover and a decline in rainfall.

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Scientists identified about 140,000 molecular clouds in the Milky Way Galaxy from large-scale data of carbon monoxide molecules, observed in detail by the Nobeyama 45-m radio telescope. Using artificial intelligence, the researchers estimated the distance of each of these molecular clouds to determine their size and mass, successfully mapping the distribution of the molecular clouds in the Galaxy in the most detailed manner to date.

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Hurricanes are becoming more intense due to the climate crisis. Therefore, researchers have studied the wind speeds that different seabird species can withstand. The team was able to show that the individual species are well adapted to the average wind conditions in their breeding grounds, but use different strategies to avoid flying through the storm. Within their research, one behavior of the albatrosses particularly surprised the scientists.

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Centuries-old whaling records show how southern right whales are altering their feeding habits.

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Researchers have published an updated metric for prioritizing species' conservation that incorporates scientific uncertainty and complementarity between species, in addition to extinction risk and evolutionary distinctiveness.

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Cartilaginous fish have changed much more in the course of their evolutionary history than previously believed. Evidence for this thesis has been provided by new fossils of a ray-like shark, Protospinax annectans, which demonstrate that sharks were already highly evolved in the Late Jurassic.

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Scientists have detected the heaviest and youngest infant star ever discovered close to the black hole at the center of our Galaxy. They also identified the region where this 'impossible star' may have formed.

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A liquid nitrogen spray can remove almost all of the simulated moon dust from a space suit, potentially solving what is a significant challenge for future moon-landing astronauts.

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Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope's first year of interstellar observation, an international team of researchers was able to serendipitously view an exploding supernova in a faraway spiral galaxy.

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Australia's rarest bird of prey -- the red goshawk -- is facing extinction, with Cape York Peninsula now the only place in Queensland known to support breeding populations.

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While analyzing data from the first images of a well-known early galaxy taken by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers discovered a companion galaxy previously hidden behind the light of the foreground galaxy -- one that surprisingly seems to have already hosted multiple generations of stars despite its young age, estimated at 1.4 billion years old.

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A giant insect found in Arkansas has set historic records. The Polystoechotes punctata or giant lacewing is the first of its kind recorded in eastern North America in over 50 years. The giant lacewing was formerly widespread across North America, but was mysteriously extirpated from eastern North America by the 1950s. This discovery suggests there may be relic populations of this large insect yet to be discovered.

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The sustained loss of a once abundant species of sea urchin in the Caribbean could also result in the functional extinction of diverse coral species from the region's reefs, according to new research.

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Dinosaur claws had many functions, but now a team has shown some predatory dinosaurs used their claws for digging or even for display.

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Amphibians worldwide are affected by climate change and potentially one of the most threatened. Biologists found that some species of amphibians are more likely to be sensitive to climate change because they are not protected by state or federal regulations. The team determined that approximately 11 percent of anuran species are sensitive to climate change, but are not currently listed as at-risk either at the state, federal, or international levels.

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After more than 30 years, botanists have rediscovered Thismia kobensis, a type of mysterious-looking rare plant commonly referred to as 'fairy lanterns'. Thismia kobensis was presumed extinct and the surprise rediscovery of this Japanese variety has illuminated hidden aspects of fairy lanterns that have puzzled and fascinated botanists for centuries.