For the first time, astronomers combined Hubble and Webb space telescopes to hunt down some of the smallest, faintest objects ever spotted in the outer Solar System. This artist’s concept depicts a trans-Neptunian object. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Leah Hustak, STScI. Two teams of astronomers led by University of Victoria and Northern Arizona University PhD candidates used Hubble’s visible-light...

After nearly eight years and billions of kilometers of travel, BepiColombo — a science mission led by ESA in close collaboration with JAXA — has begun its long-awaited arrival at the smallest and innermost planet in our Solar System. An artist’s impression of the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft in cruise configuration, with Mercury in the background. On its 7.2 year journey to the innermost...

Scientists from Curtin University and the University of York have pinpointed the origin of the Devil’s Arrows, the three towering gritstone megaliths that have stood on the edge of Boroughbridge, Yorkshire, for roughly 4,000 years, ending a long-running archaeological debate. The Devil’s Arrows, the three towering gritstone megaliths on the western outskirts of Boroughbridge, Yorkshire, the United...

Paleontologists in North Dakota have unearthed a set of 66.5-million-year-old fossilized footprints that can be confidently attributed to a full-grown Tyrannosaurus rex. The Tyrannosaurus rex trackway in the Hell Creek Formation in North Dakota, the United States. Image credit: Kent Hups. The newly discovered trackway is roughly 7 m (23 foot) long, and consists of four large, three-toed prints, each...

In experiments in Thailand, Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) learned to ignore an enticing but ineffective route to food and quickly adapted when a familiar solution stopped working. Experiment setup: (A) an elephant enters the ‘over’ opening to gain access to food in a familiarization trial; (B) an elephant enters the ‘under’ opening to gain access to food (apple) in a test trial. Image...

When two black holes merge, the resulting object rings like a struck bell, radiating gravitational waves that fade in a distinctive pattern called ringdown. According to general relativity, this pattern should depend only on the merged black hole’s mass and spin. But if a black hole carries extra structure — often called ‘hair’ — from surrounding dark matter, exotic fields, or modified...

In a study of 2,266 workers in Finland, evening-type people, or night owls, were up to three times more likely to be treated for depression or anxiety than morning types, with poor work-life balance identified as a key contributing factor. Merikanto et al. showed that evening-types had more issues regarding work spillover to personal life and poor recovery from work and that these factors moderated...

For several decades, paleontologists have described Miracinonyx trumani — an extinct species of cheetah-like felid that roamed the North American prairies and steppe terrains more than 13,000 years ago — as North America’s answer to the African cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus). New research led by the University of California, Santa Cruz suggests the picture was largely wrong. Miracinonyx...

Zircon crystals and impact-altered minerals show that a massive asteroid slammed into what is now the Pilbara region of Western Australia about 3 billion years ago. The North Pole Dome crater: (A) simplified map of the East Pilbara Terrane (EPT, Western Australia), showing Paleoarchean granite domes (pink) and greenstone belts (greens and blues); the North Pole Dome (NPD) lies near the terrane center;...

After nearly two decades of work, scientists have completed a wiring diagram of the central nervous system of an adult male fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster). The wiring diagram of the central nervous system of an adult male fruit fly will help researchers better understand how the brain enables complex action, from sensory perception to behavior. Image credit: FlyEM Project Team, HHMI’s Janelia...