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Using NSF’s Very Long Baseline Array, an international team of astronomers has made the direct geometric measurement of the distance to XTE J1810-197, a magnetar located in the constellation of Sagittarius. An artist’s impression of a magnetar emitting a burst of radiation. Image credit: Sophia Dagnello, NRAO / AUI / NSF. Magnetars are a variety of neutron stars — the superdense remains…

Extrasolar planets hosted by stars with sufficiently high carbon-to-oxygen ratios could be made of diamonds and silica, according to new research by Arizona State University and the University of Chicago. An artist’s impression of a carbide planet with diamond and silica as main minerals. Image ctredit: Shim / ASU / Vecteezy. When stars and planets are formed, they do so from the same cloud of…

Archaeologists have unearthed the well-preserved remains of a 2,700-year-old wine press at the Phoenician site of Tell el-Burak, 9 km south of Sidon in present-day Lebanon. The wine press at Tell el-Burak from the south-west. Image credit: Tell el-Burak Archaeological Project. The ruins of Tell el-Burak, a small Phoenician settlement dating from the last quarter of the 8th to the middle of the 4th…

A new genus and species of an early ornithopod dinosaur has been identified from two nearly complete skeletons found in China’s Liaoning Province. Changmiania liaoningensis, an anterior part of the holotype in caudolateral view; red arrow indicates the emplacement of the gastrolith clusters. Image credit: Yang et al, doi: 10.7717/peerj.9832. The newly-discovered dinosaur roamed Earth approximately…

A team of scientists from the University of Queensland and King’s College London has found that the venom of Australian Dendrocnide trees contains previously unidentified neurotoxic peptides and that the 3D structure of these pain-inducing peptides is reminiscent of spider and cone snail venoms targeting the same pain receptors, thus representing a remarkable case of inter-kingdom convergent evolution…

HL Tauri, a young star located 450 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus, is glowing at the center of an system of concentric protoplanetary rings and is producing planets, one for each gap in the ring. Worcester Polytechnic Institute mathematical physicist Dr. Mayer Humi believes HL Tauri provides an apt study target for theories about protoplanetary rings around stars. This image shows…

A researcher at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine has generated scanning electron microscopy images showing startlingly high SARS-CoV-2 viral loads on human bronchial epithelial cells. This SEM image shows SARS-CoV-2 virions (red) produced by human airway epithelia. Image credit: Camille Ehre, doi: 10.1056/NEJMicm2023328. Dr. Camille Ehre from the Baric and Boucher Laboratories…

An international team of scientists has successfully extracted and sequenced the mitochondrial DNA from an 80,000-year-old adult Neanderthal tooth found in a small cave in Poland. Reconstruction of a Neanderthal. Image credit: Neanderthal Museum. The Neanderthal molar tooth, dubbed S5000, was found in 2007 in Stajnia Cave in Poland’s Kraków-Częstochowa Upland. An assemblage of stone tools and…

A new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals a mechanism that may contribute to the formation of sharply pointed rock spires in striking landforms called stone forests. Stone forest in Yunnan province, China. Image credit: Zhang Yuan. Stone forests are pointed rock formations resembling trees that populate regions of China, Madagascar, and many other locations…

The Little Ice Age, a period of global cooling that lasted from the early 14th century to the mid-19th century, was triggered by an exceptionally large outflow of sea ice from the Arctic Ocean into the North Atlantic in the 1300s, according to a new paper published in the journal Science Advances. Bathymetric map of the Fram Strait gateway and downstream region; red circles indicate location of marine…