The newly discovered duck-billed dinosaur, Gonkoken nanoi, likely grew to around 13 feet long and weighed up to 1 ton, new analysis reveals. Paleontologists have unearthed a never-before-seen species of primitive duck-billed dinosaur in Chile — the likes of which has never been found in the Southern Hemisphere. The discoveryContinue Reading
White Gladis was so hellbent on stopping boats in the Strait of Gibraltar that she engaged in attacks instead of protecting her newborn calf. White Gladis, the orca that likely started the attacks on boats in Iberian waters, may have been so hellbent on stopping boats that she neglected herContinue Reading
Refractor to reflector, Schmidt-Cassegrain to Maksutov-Cassegrain – this is everything you need to know about the different types of telescopes. Telescopes gather and focus light using precisely-shaped mirrors and lenses (or a combination of both). The larger the telescope’s main mirror or lens, the more light is gathered and theContinue Reading
SN 2023ixf is the closest supernova to Earth in more than a decade — and the perfect excuse for intelligent aliens to get our attention, new SETI research suggests. Astronomers have their eyes on a new ultrabright explosion in space: a Type II supernova in the Pinwheel Galaxy (also knownContinue Reading
They are a poster child for imminent extinction, at risk from deforestation, climate change and bushfires. Yet, where I live in South Australia, they are so abundant they are in danger of eating themselves out of house and home. Koalas present something of a paradox. They are a poster childContinue Reading
Water ice falling into the planet’s upper atmosphere may create an excess UV emission The rings that make Saturn such a spectacle are probably heating its atmosphere and making it glow at ultraviolet wavelengths. Researchers detected an excess of ultraviolet emission in Saturn’s northern hemisphere that comes from hydrogen atoms.Continue Reading
The findings could aid the search for icy moons orbiting planets outside the solar system THE WOODLANDS, TEXAS — A young, ultrabright Jupiter may have desiccated its now hellish moon Io. The planet’s bygone brilliance could have also vaporized water on Europa and Ganymede, planetary scientist Carver Bierson reported MarchContinue Reading
Ethics should be as much of a guide as science and technology, an astrophysicist argues Astrophysicist Erika Nesvold once asked an executive of a company aiming to mine the moon how he planned to address risks that mining equipment might carry microbes from Earth and contaminate the moon (SN: 1/10/18).Continue Reading
Uracil, a component of RNA, was found in a sample collected by Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft Uracil, a building block of life, has been found on the asteroid Ryugu. Yasuhiro Oba and colleagues discovered the precursor to life in samples collected from the asteroid and returned to Earth by Japan’s Hayabusa2Continue Reading
THE WOODLANDS, TEXAS — Vestiges of a moon-forming cataclysm could have kick-started plate tectonics on Earth. The leading explanation for the origin of the moon proposes that a Mars-sized planet, dubbed Theia, struck the nascent Earth, ejecting a cloud of debris into space that later coalesced into a satellite. NewContinue Reading
