Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have observed spectacular large-scale dark and light rays beaming out of the bright center of IC 5063, an active galaxy located 156 million light-years away in the southern constellation of Indus. The researchers think that an inner-tube-shaped ring, or torus, of dusty material surrounding IC 5063’s central black hole is casting its shadow into…

Mars was once a wet planet, but it has lost most of its water through reactions that produce hydrogen. In standard models, molecular hydrogen produced from water in the lower atmosphere diffuses into the upper atmosphere where it is dissociated, producing atomic hydrogen, which is lost. Using NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) spacecraft, a team of researchers has now found that…

Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority have found a small jar containing four 1,000-year-old gold coins in Jerusalem, Israel. The 1,000-year-old juglet with found gold coins. Image credit: Dafna Gazit, Israel Antiquities Authority. “The coins were in excellent preservation and were immediately identifiable even without cleaning,” said Dr. Robert Kool, a coin expert with the Israel…

Paleontologists in Morocco have found fossil fragments from a previously undescribed genus and species of symmoriiform shark that lived during the Late Devonian epoch. Ferromirum oukherbouchi reconstructed in association with invertebrates (orthocerid cephalopods and thylacocephalans) from the Devonian of Maider region, Morocco. Image credit: Frey et al., doi: 10.1038/s42003-020-01394-2. The newly-identified…

Using a uniquely comprehensive checklist of bee distributions and over 5,800,000 public bee occurrence records, a team of researchers from China, the United States and Singapore has described global patterns of bee biodiversity. Their results show that there are more bee species in the northern hemisphere than the southern hemisphere and more in arid and temperate environments than in the tropics. High-resolution…

A team of scientists from Australia and the United States has created two types of diamond — regular diamond and a diamond-like phase called lonsdaleite, which is found in nature at the sites of meteorite impacts — in minutes in a laboratory at room temperature, a process that normally takes billions of years, huge amounts of pressure and super-hot temperatures. McCulloch et al. created…

Regular consumption of chili pepper is associated with a significant reduction in all-cause, cardiovascular, and cancer-related mortalities, according to a systematic review of previous studies. Chili peppers contain a phenolic compound called capsaicin. Image credit: Hans Braxmeier. “Chili pepper is well known for its anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, anticancer, and blood glucose regulation effects…

A team of scientists at Harvard University has developed a new imaging technology for visualizing organization of chromatin, a substance within a chromosome consisting of DNA and protein, across multiple scales in single cells with high genomic throughput. Su et al. report a multiplexed error-robust fluorescence in situ hybridization (MERFISH)-based method for genome-scale chromatin tracing and demonstrate…

A team of researchers in Europe has identified a new high-pressure mineral in a lunar meteorite called Oued Awlitis 001. Fragments of Oued Awlitis 001. Image credit: Ludovic Ferrière, NHM Vienna. Oued Awlitis 001 is a feldspatic lunar meteorite that was found in 2014 in Western Sahara, Africa. The main fragment of the space rock, originally 382 g, was found on January 15, 2014 by a group of eight…

The usual liquid state of water that we are all familiar with corresponds to liquid water at normal temperatures. However, a new study published in the journal Science shows that water at low temperatures exists in two different liquid states, a low-density liquid at low pressures and a high-density liquid at high pressures; these two liquids have noticeably different properties and differ by 20%…