Using X-ray data from NASA’s HaloSat minisatellite, astronomers have found that our Milky Way Galaxy is surrounded by a clumpy halo of hot gases that is continually being supplied with material ejected by birthing or dying stars, and that this halo, also known as the circumgalactic medium, has a disk-like geometry. Our Milky Way Galaxy is surrounded by an enormous halo of plasma (seen in blue in…

BepiColombo, a joint endeavor between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), successfully completed its first flyby of Venus on October 15, 2020. The closest approach took place at 03:58 GMT at a distance of about 10,720 km from the planet’s surface. An artist’s impression of the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft in cruise configuration, with Mercury…

An international team of researchers has discovered a long prehistoric human trackway at White Sands National Park in New Mexico, the United States. The 12,000-year-old human footprints found at White Sands National Park in New Mexico. Image credit: Cornell University. The human tracks at White Sands National Park record more than 1.5 km (0.93 miles) of an out- and-return journey. They show the footprints…

A new genus and species of mammaliaform that lived during the Triassic period has been identified from a partial jaw with teeth found on the eastern coast of Greenland. It represents the earliest known example of a dentary bone with double molariform roots and a crown with two rows of cusps, and offers insight into mammal tooth evolution, particularly the development of double-rooted teeth. An artist’s…

A team of ornithologists from the United States, Colombia and Denmark has described six new cryptic species in the rufous antpitta (Grallaria rufula) complex from montane forests of South America. The Muisca antpitta (Grallaria rufula). Image credit: Nigel Voaden / CC BY-SA 2.0. The rufous antpitta complex is a group of passerine birds that includes three species — the Muisca antpitta (Grallaria…

Controlled manipulation, storage, and retrieval of quantum information are essential for quantum communication and computing. Quantum memories for light, realized with cold atomic samples as the storage medium, are prominent for their high storage efficiencies and lifetime. A team of experimental physicists from the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and Beihang University has successfully demonstrated…

While the cause of Alzheimer’s disease remains a mystery, amyloid plaques that are toxic to brain cells are known indicators of the disease. A team of researchers from Australia and Iceland has found that these plaques start in the same place and spread in the same way in the brains of people with obstructive sleep apnea, as in those with Alzheimer’s. Owen et al. confirm links between obstructive…

An international team of scientists has sequenced and analyzed the entire nuclear genome of the scimitar-toothed cat Homotherium latidens. Their results demonstrate that this extinct species was highly divergent from all living cat species and did not undergo any detectable gene flow with living cat species after their initial diversification 14 million years ago. A pair of Homotherium latidens chasing…

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…

At least six different species of the genus Homo — H. habilis, H. ergaster, H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis, H. neanderthalensis, and H. sapiens — populated the world during the latest Pliocene to the Pleistocene. The extinction of all but one of them is currently shrouded in mystery. According to a new modeling study, climate change was the primary factor in the extinction of past Homo…