ScienceDaily: Strange Science News |
| Meet a colorful but colorblind spider Posted: 14 Jan 2022 07:30 AM PST An international team of researchers found that the brightly colored jumping spider Saitis barbipes could not see its own vivid reds. |
| Unusual team finds gigantic planet hidden in plain sight Posted: 13 Jan 2022 04:41 PM PST An astronomer and a group of eagle-eyed citizen scientists have discovered a giant gas planet hidden from view by typical stargazing tools. |
| Posted: 13 Jan 2022 12:13 PM PST Organic molecules found in a meteorite that hurtled to Earth from Mars were synthesized during interactions between water and rocks that occurred on the Red Planet about 4 billion years ago, according to new analysis. |
| New insights into seasons on a planet outside our solar system Posted: 13 Jan 2022 09:07 AM PST Imagine being in a place where the winds are so strong that they move at the speed of sound. That's just one aspect of the atmosphere on XO-3b, one of a class of exoplanets (planets outside our solar system), known as hot Jupiters. The eccentric orbit of the planet also leads to seasonal variations hundreds of times stronger than what we experience on Earth. |
| New explanation for Moon’s half-century magnetic mystery Posted: 13 Jan 2022 08:14 AM PST A new study reveals how the diminutive Moon could have been an occasional magnetic powerhouse early in its history, a question that has confounded researchers since NASA's Apollo program began in the 1960s. |
| ALMA catches 'intruder' redhanded in rarely detected stellar flyby event Posted: 13 Jan 2022 08:14 AM PST Scientists made a rare detection of a likely stellar flyby event in the Z Canis Majoris (Z CMa) star system. An intruder -- not bound to the system -- object came in close proximity to and interacted with the environment surrounding the binary protostar, causing the formation of chaotic, stretched-out streams of dust and gas in the disk surrounding it. |
| 'Slushy' magma ocean led to formation of the Moon’s crust Posted: 13 Jan 2022 06:21 AM PST Scientists have shown how the freezing of a 'slushy' ocean of magma may be responsible for the composition of the Moon's crust. |
| Machine learning for morphable materials Posted: 12 Jan 2022 12:49 PM PST Flat materials that can morph into three-dimensional shapes have potential applications in architecture, medicine, robotics, space travel, and much more. But programming these shape changes requires complex and time-consuming computations. Now, researchers have developed a platform that uses machine learning to program the transformation of 2D stretchable surfaces into specific 3D shapes. |
| The ‘Platypus’ of the crab world was an active predator that lurked the Cretaceous seas Posted: 12 Jan 2022 11:51 AM PST Researchers describe the unusually large optical features of Callichimaera perplexa, a 95-million-year-old crab fossil discovered in Colombia. The findings suggest Callichimaera perplexa was a highly visual, swimming predator. |
| Under a moon spell: Shark attacks related to lunar phases Posted: 12 Jan 2022 11:51 AM PST New research suggests that more shark attacks occur during fuller phases of the moon. While the exact cause remains unclear, the researchers found that more shark attacks than average occur during periods of higher lunar illumination and fewer attacks than average occur during periods of lower illumination. Many different types of animals show behaviors that are linked to moon phases yet few studies to date have looked at the connections between lunar phases and shark attacks. |
| Cosmic 'spider' found to be source of powerful gamma-rays Posted: 12 Jan 2022 11:50 AM PST Astronomers have discovered the first example of a binary system where a star in the process of becoming a white dwarf is orbiting a neutron star that has just finished turning into a rapidly spinning pulsar. The pair is a 'missing link' in the evolution of such binary systems. |
| Oxygen ions in Jupiter's innermost radiation belts Posted: 12 Jan 2022 11:50 AM PST Researchers find high-energy oxygen and sulfur ions in Jupiter's inner radiation belts -- and a previously unknown ion source. |
| 1,000-light-year wide bubble surrounding Earth is source of all nearby, young stars Posted: 12 Jan 2022 09:15 AM PST The Earth sits in a 1,000-light-year-wide void surrounded by thousands of young stars -- but how did those stars form? For the first time, astronomers have retraced the history of our galactic neighborhood, showing exactly how the young stars nearest to our solar system formed. |
| Newly discovered type of 'strange metal' could lead to deep insights Posted: 12 Jan 2022 09:14 AM PST A new discovery could help scientists to understand 'strange metals,' a class of materials that are related to high-temperature superconductors and share fundamental quantum attributes with black holes. |
| Rubber material holds key to long-lasting, safer EV batteries Posted: 12 Jan 2022 09:14 AM PST For electric vehicles (EVs) to become mainstream, they need cost-effective, safer, longer-lasting batteries that won't explode during use or harm the environment. Researchers may have found a promising alternative to conventional lithium-ion batteries made from a common material: rubber. |
| Rugby ball-shaped exoplanet discovered Posted: 12 Jan 2022 08:01 AM PST With the help of the CHEOPS space telescope, an international team was able to detect the deformation of an exoplanet for the first time. Due to strong tidal forces, the appearance of the planet WASP-103b resembles a rugby ball rather than a sphere. |
| New evidence of a gravitational wave background Posted: 12 Jan 2022 07:56 AM PST The results of a comprehensive search for a background of ultra-low frequency gravitational waves has been announced by an international team of astronomers. |
| Posted: 11 Jan 2022 04:30 PM PST Animal farming has traditionally fulfilled human nutritional requirements for protein, but insects may serve as an alternative for direct human consumption in the future. Researchers are working to lay a foundation to develop efficient protein isolation techniques by determining the nutritional and functional properties of protein for cricket, locust and silk worm pupae powders. |
| Twelve for dinner: The Milky Way’s feeding habits shine a light on dark matter Posted: 11 Jan 2022 12:37 PM PST Astronomers are one step closer to revealing the properties of dark matter enveloping our Milky Way galaxy, thanks to a new map of twelve streams of stars orbiting within our galactic halo. |
| Tasmanian devils have just broken the laws of scavenging – and scientists are puzzled Posted: 11 Jan 2022 08:20 AM PST Scavengers are supposed to have generalist diets and eat whatever they can find. But a new study shows Australia's Tasmanian devils have their own specific tastes and preferences -- in other words, they're picky eaters. |
| Researchers switch off gene to switch on ultraviolet in butterfly wings Posted: 10 Jan 2022 03:49 PM PST Researchers have identified a gene that determines whether ultraviolet iridescence shows up in the wings of butterflies. The team showed that removing the gene in butterflies whose wings lack UV coloration leads to bright patches of UV iridescence in their wings. According to the researchers, the gene plays a critical role in the evolutionary process by which species become distinct from one another. |
| The ‘surprisingly simple’ arithmetic of smell Posted: 10 Jan 2022 11:53 AM PST Researchers studying locusts have found that the presence of smell can be determined by simply adding and subtracting the presence of certain neurons. |
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