NASA has released a stunning image captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of Saturn and its ring system. Hubble captured this image of Saturn and its rings on July 4, 2020. Two of Saturn’s icy moons are clearly visible in this image: Mimas (right) and Enceladus (bottom). Image credit: NASA / ESA / A. Simon, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / M.H. Wong, University of California, Berkeley…

The Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument onboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft has captured the first infrared images of the north pole of Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System and one of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter. The north pole of Ganymede can be seen in center of this image taken by the JIRAM infrared imager aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft on December 26, 2019. The thick…

Smallpox, caused by the variola virus, is one of the most devastating human diseases. Smallpox killed millions of people but drove Edward Jenner’s invention of vaccination, which eventually led to the annihilation of the virus, declared in 1980. To investigate the history of smallpox, an international team of researchers led by University of Cambridge and University of Copenhagen scientists sequenced…

A team of scientists from the University of Tübingen has studied the diet of Arctic foxes (Vulpes lagopus) and red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) that lived during the Paleolithic period in southwestern Germany. The red fox (Vulpes vulpes). Image credit: Shorty Ox. Foxes love leftovers. In the wild, they regularly feed on scraps left behind by larger predators like bears and wolves, but the closer foxes…

A team of marine ecologists from Oregon State University has described the formation and development of a new methane seep — a location where methane escapes from an underground reservoir and into the ocean — in the Ross Sea, the High Antarctic. The Cinder Cones seep, the Ross Sea, Antarctica: the white microbial mats are telltale signs of areas where methane may be released from underground…

Physicists from CERN’s LHCb Collaboration have discovered a new tetraquark particle, named X(6900), composed of two charm quarks and two charm antiquarks. X(6900), a tetraquark particle composed of two charm quarks and two charm antiquarks. Image credit: CERN. Quarks are point-like elementary particles that typically come in packages of two (mesons) or three (baryons), the most familiar of which…

Scientists from the University of Missouri, the University of Illinois and Yale University have demonstrated that a combination of pencils and paper could be used to create on-skin bioelectronic devices that might be used to monitor personal health. They’ve fabricated and evaluated a rich variety of pencil-paper-based bioelectronic devices, ranging from biophysical sensors and sweat biochemical…

Smallpox, caused by the variola virus, is one of the most devastating human diseases. Smallpox killed millions of people but drove Edward Jenner’s invention of vaccination, which eventually led to the annihilation of the virus, declared in 1980. To investigate the history of smallpox, an international team of researchers led by University of Cambridge and University of Copenhagen scientists sequenced…

An international team of geologists has found the first direct evidence that volcanic eruptions in the southern part of the Siberian Traps region 252 million years ago burned large volumes of coal and vegetation. Elkins-Tanton et al demonstrate that the volume and composition of organic matter interacting with magmas in the Siberian Traps region may explain the global carbon isotope signal and may…

Scientists from the University of Missouri, the University of Illinois and Yale University have demonstrated that a combination of pencils and paper could be used to create on-skin bioelectronic devices that might be used to monitor personal health. They’ve fabricated and evaluated a rich variety of pencil-paper-based bioelectronic devices, ranging from biophysical sensors and sweat biochemical…