The red supergiant Betelgeuse is one of the brightest stars in the night sky and appears even more luminous because it is so close to Earth, only 650 light-years away. But the star also periodically changes in brightness, which was first noted in the 1830s by the British astronomer John Herschel. Betelgeuse experienced an unexpected dimming during December 2019 and the first quarter of 2020, reaching…

High-resolution observations from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft of mysterious bright spots (faculae) in Occator crater on the dwarf planet Ceres suggest the existence of a brine reservoir — which is about 40 km (25 miles) deep and hundreds of km wide — that emerged to the surface through long-lived cryovolcanic activity as a consequence of the impact that created the crater. This false-color…

A team of archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) has uncovered the ruins of an important administrative storage center from the 8th-7th centuries BCE. ‘To the King’ two-winged seal impression. Image credit: Yaniv Berman, Israel Antiquities Authority. The team, headed by IAA archaeologists Neria Sapir and Nathan Ben-Ari, unearthed an unusually large structure built of concentric…

A new genus and species of theropod dinosaur from the Cretaceous period has been identified from bones found on the Isle of Wight, the United Kingdom. An artist’s impression of Vectaerovenator inopinatus’ final moments. Image credit: Trudie Wilson. The newly-discovered dinosaur roamed the Earth approximately 115 million years ago (Cretaceous period). It belongs to Tetanurae, a group that includes…

Scientists have discovered a new population of taste cells that can detect multiple types of stimuli, including chemicals from different taste qualities. Most taste cells selectively respond to a specific stimulus type while broadly responsive cells respond to multiple taste qualities. Image credit: Jhanna Flora / Kathryn Medler. Taste buds in the mouth are critical to our survival and help us to…

Physicists from the ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider have observed production of W bosons, elementary particles that carry the weak force, from photons colliding with photons. This new result confirms one of the main predictions of electroweak theory — that force carriers can interact with themselves — and provides new ways to probe it. A…

A new systematic review and meta-analysis of previous studies suggests that the consumption of chocolates at least once a week is associated with a reduction in the risk of coronary artery disease. Krittanawong et al found that chocolate consumption (>1 time per week or >3.5 times per month) is associated with a reduced risk of coronary artery disease. Image credit: Sci-News.com. Clinical trials…

In a new study published in the journal PLoS Genetics, researchers analyzed the genomes of two Neanderthals, a Denisovan, and two African humans; and found that 1% of the Denisovan genome was introgressed from an unknown archaic hominin ancestor; about 15% of these archaic regions were, in turn, introgressed into modern humans and continue to exist in the genomes of people alive today. Hubisz et…

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…

Earthquakes occur when rocks suddenly break on a fault — a boundary between two blocks or plates. During large earthquakes, the breaking of rock can spread down the fault line. Now, geoscientists have recorded a ‘boomerang’ earthquake in the equatorial Atlantic, where the rupture initially spreads away from initial break but then turns and runs back the other way at higher speeds. The 2016…