The Tasmanian tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus), also known as the thylacine, was a carnivorous marsupial found throughout most of Tasmania before European settlement in 1803. The animal had tiger-like stripes running down its lower back and an abdominal pouch, but was perhaps best known for its wolf-like body. Despite sharing a last common ancestor 160 million […]

Researchers have found exceptionally preserved organic matter inside samples of rock from the 3.5-billion-year-old Dresser Formation in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The Dresser Formation stromatolites have been thought to be of biogenic origin ever since they were discovered in the 1980s. However, despite strong textural evidence, that theory was unproven for nearly four […]

IceCube 170922A, a high-energy neutrino detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in 2017, was generated by a jet-jet collision within TXS 0506+056, an active galaxy some 3.8 billion light-years away, according to new research. The home galaxy of the IceCube 170922A event is a so-called BL Lacertae (Lac) object, a type of active galactic nucleus. […]

Astronomers have discovered a hot-Jupiter exoplanet so close to its host star, called NGTS-10, that a year on that planet lasts only 18.4 hours, making it the shortest-period hot Jupiter ever found. NGTS-10 is a K5-type main-sequence star located approximately 1,060 light-years from Earth. The star is about 10 billion years old, moderately active, and […]

Saturn’s moon Enceladus is erupting a plume of gas and ice grains from its south pole. According to new research using data from NASA’s Cassini mission, the Enceladean ice grains contain low-mass nitrogen-, oxygen-bearing, and aromatic compounds. Dr. Nozair Khawaja from the Free University of Berlin and colleagues used data from the Cosmic Dust Analyzer […]