Science

A technique known as laser-stimulated fluorescence imaging has allowed researchers to reconstruct a Jurassic-era dinosaur with unprecedented accuracy, which may also unlock clues to the origin of flight. University of Hong Kong scientists conducted laser-stimulated fluorescence imaging on specimen samples of Anchiornis—a feathered bird with four wings and “drumstick-shaped” legs first discovered in northeast China in 2009. At a news ... Read More »

A team of scientists has announced the discovery of 3.77 billion-year-old rocks that contain the tiny fossilized remnants of fossilized bacteria. Tiny filaments and tubes formed by bacteria that lived on iron were found encased in quartz layers in the Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt (NSB), Quebec, Canada. The NSB contains some of the oldest sedimentary rocks known on Earth which likely ... Read More »

Musk’s aerospace company SpaceX announced Monday it’s accepted a “significant deposit” from two private citizens to take a trip around the moon in late 2018. The two space tourists are expected to begin training and undergo health and fitness tests later this year. According to Reuters and the Los Angeles Times, the proposed orbital flight would be 100% self-funded, would ... Read More »

An unknown burning object flying across the sky has sent the internet buzzing over what it is. Lee-Anne Peters captured footage of the object over Hobart, on the Australian island of Tasmania on Tuesday. Airservices Australia tried to calm the masses that witnessed the suspected extra-terrestrial phenomenon, saying it was nothing more than a commercial aircraft passing through clouds with ... Read More »

A rare bag of moon dust collected during NASA’s first lunar mission is back in the hands of an Inverness woman after the space agency returned the extraterrestrial rock and soil samples to her Monday following a federal judge’s order last week. Nasa officials handed over the lunar dust bag — the only known one of its kind — at ... Read More »

NOAA’s new satellite successfully captures a large coronal hole on the surface of the sun. The Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) onboard the satellite has taken its first solar images, and NOAA has stitched them together to create a video that you can watch after the break. The images, taken on January 29th, show a large coronal hole in the sun’s ... Read More »

Most U.S. wildfires aren’t wild. A new study shows humans sparked 84 percent of blazes over two decades — and almost doubled the acreage burned. The work, conducted by Bethany Bradley at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Jennifer Balch of the University of Colorado-Boulder, looked at the ignition and effects of 1.5 million fires that sparked up between 1992 ... Read More »

NASA plans to launch the Solar Probe Plus mission to the Sun which is about 149 million kilometres from the Earth. In 2018, NASA plans to launch the robotic Solar Probe Plus mission in an elliptical orbit within 4 million miles (6 million km) of our host star. “This is going to be our first mission to fly to the ... Read More »

NASA’s Science Mission Directorate has elected to maintain the $1.13 billion Juno mission spacecraft at Jupiter in its current 53-day orbit rather than attempt a once-planned propulsive maneuver that would cut the orbital period to 14 days. Researchers had hoped to tighten Juno’s orbit so that it circles around Jupiter every 14 days. But a braking burn of Juno’s engine, ... Read More »

New study suggests rising temperatures in small bodies of water, like ponds, could accelerate global warming. The researchers experimentally warmed an array of ponds over seven years by 4-5ºC and studied the impacts on greenhouse gas emissions and rates of metabolism. Changes observed after the first year became “amplified” over a longer period, according to the study by the University ... Read More »

A huge, hairy mysterious sea creature has washed up on a beach in the Philippines. It looks like something out of a weird alien movie rather than an actual sea creature, but who’s asking us? We’re not marine biologists. What we do know is that this was by no means a cute furry animal when it was swimming around the ... Read More »