First exomoon may have been discovered

NASA’s Kepler space telescope has received signal of what could potentially be the first discovered “exomoon,” a moon orbiting a planet beyond our solar system. Astronomers believe the candidate moon, which lies some 4000 light-years from Earth, is about the size and mass of Neptune, and is orbiting a planet the size of Jupiter but with 10 times the mass. Further observations of the exomoon using the Hubble Space Telescope will take place in October.

October 2018 Update:

Hints of a potential alien moon strengthen with Hubble data

Indigenous rock shelter pushes Australia's human history back to 65,000 years

New excavations of a rock shelter near Kakadu National Park indicate humans reached Australia at least 65,000 years ago — up to 18,000 years earlier than archæologists previously thought.

Scientists create 3D-printed brain-like tissue from stem cells

Scientists have used a 3D printer to create nerve cells found in the brain using a special bio-ink made from stem cells.

New particle Xi-cc++ opens up physics mystery

A new particle detected in the atom smasher at CERN called Xi-cc++ has rekindled interest in an experiment that claimed evidence for a similar Xi particle, back in 2002.

Milky Way's fast-moving stars may have come from another galaxy

The fastest-moving stars in our galaxy may have been shot off the bow of a passing smaller galaxy. These so-called "galactic hypervelocity stars" are large and short-lived but travel up to 1,000 kilometres per second. Strangely, most of them appear to be in an unusual cluster in the northern hemisphere sky, and the origin of these huge speedsters has been a bit of a puzzle. But now, researchers from the University of Cambridge argue these stars may have been flung off the front of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy travelling at high speed past the edge of the Milky Way galaxy.

Bee brain formula for seeing colours more effectively could be used in drones, robots

Scientists investigating how bees see colours say the insect's highly efficient visual system could revolutionise the way robots and drones view the world.  The way humans see colour is heavily affected by the changing light around them, such as during a sunset or in the middle of the night, but bees see the same colour regardless.  The Melbourne-based team has studied how bees solve this problem, by using three special eyes on top of their head, in addition to two main eyes at the front. The three eyes point skyward, and they directly sample the colour of the light above us.

Deep-sea coral reef glow-in-the-dark secrets revealed in new research

Scientists have discovered the reason why some deep-sea coral reefs glow in the dark.  Researchers from the University of Southampton found corals in deep water survived by making a special type of fluorescent protein.  The research found the proteins responsible for acting as sunblock in corals in shallow waters worked differently in deep-sea reefs.  The protein absorbs blue light and converts it, to help improve the photosynthetic capacity of algae living in the coral.

Palm cockatoos drum a regular rhythm to attract a mate

Just like a human drummer, male palm cockatoos (Probosciger aterrimus) use drumsticks from branches and seed pods to beat out a steady rhythm. And it appears they use their drumming, along with a complex array of calls and wing-flapping, to attract female birds.