Strange dinosaur has scientists enthralled

About 110 million years ago along the shores of an ancient lagoon in what is now north-eastern Brazil, a two-legged, chicken-sized Cretaceous period dinosaur made a living hunting insects and perhaps small vertebrates like frogs and lizards. This dinosaur, called Ubirajara jubatus, possessed a mane of hair-like structures while also boasting two utterly unique, stiff, ribbon-like features probably made of keratin – the same substance that makes up hair and fingernails – protruding from its shoulders.

3300-year-old baboon skull may tell of mysterious ancient kingdom

Archæologists might have found the first hard evidence of a mysterious land called Punt where ancient Egyptians traded for precious metals and exotic animals. A mummified baboon (Papio hamadryas), taken from an ancient Egyptian temple and currently residing in the British Museum, seems to be the first known traveller from this antique land. The distinctive ratio of strontium isotopes in the baboon’s teeth show that it was born in an area that encompasses much of present-day Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti, and portions of Somalia and Yemen — just where most archæologists think Punt was located.

First peek inside Mars reveals a crust with cake-like layers

NASA’s InSight mission has finally peered inside Mars, marking the first time scientists have directly probed the inside of a planet other than Earth. Seismologists are using marsquakes to map the red planet’s interior, measuring differences in how seismic waves move through its structure to determine the make-up of the planet’s geological layers. The new data show that Mars’s crust is made up of either two or three layers. In the coming months, scientists will report on measurements taken even deeper, ultimately revealing information about the planet’s core and mantle.

Photon-based quantum computer does a calculation that ordinary computers might never be able to do

A team in China claims to have made the first definitive demonstration of ‘quantum advantage’ — exploiting quantum mechanics to perform computations that would be prohibitively slow on classical computers. The team achieved within a few minutes what would take half the age of Earth on the best existing supercomputers.

Reversal of biological clock restores vision in old mice

Researchers have restored vision in old mice and in mice with damaged retinal nerves by resetting some of the thousands of chemical marks that accumulate on DNA as cells age. The work suggests a new approach to reversing age-related decline: reprogramming some cells to a ‘younger’ state in which they are better able to repair or replace damaged tissue. Researchers took genes known to cause cells to revert to a stem-cell-like state and inserted them into mice using a virus. They then triggered the genes to see whether they would help injured eye cells or those degraded by age.

Study finds indications of life on Doggerland after devastating tsunamis

Around 8,200 years ago, a series of huge tsunamis, triggered by enormous underwater landslides off the coast of Norway, severed what is now Britain from continental Europe. But scraps of the inundated area — known as Doggerland — might have survived and later been settled, say archæologists. They analysed the topography of the land now beneath the North Sea and sedimentary cores that revealed evidence of the cataclysmic Storegga slides. The land that remained could have offered the first Neolithic farmers step-stones from the continent to Britain thousands of years later.

‘The Sistine Chapel of the ancients’

Archæologists have documented tens of thousands of ice-age paintings that stretch across nearly 13 kilometres of cliff face in Colombia. They depict patterns, figures, handprints and animals, including now-extinct species such as mastodons, palæolamas, giant sloths and ice-age horses. The discovery was made last year but is only now being revealed to coincide with the release of a television documentary that includes the art. The paintings are in the Serranía de la Lindosa, near the Chiribiquete national park, another site that is rich with prehistoric art.

Gigantic leap in solving protein structures

An artificial-intelligence (AI) network has made enormous progress in solving one of biology’s grandest challenges — determining a protein’s 3D shape from its amino-acid sequence. The breakthrough is likely to transform biology, say scientists, and should aid in drug design.

Precise maps of millions of bright quasars show our place in the cosmos as never before

Next week, the European Space Agency star-mapping satellite Gaia will update its map of the Universe, built from 1.6 million quasars and more than 1 billion stars. The Gaia data offer a fixed reference frame against which astronomers can fine-tune their observations to account for the position of Earth and all its celestial neighbours. The Gaia reference frame has already helped the New Horizons probe to snag images of a Kuiper Belt object, Arrokoth, while both were speeding along almost 7 billion kilometres away.

Moths draped in stealth acoustic cloak evade bat sonar

Scales on the wings of moths form acoustic camouflage that hides the insects from the sonar of bats. Researchers examined the Chinese tusar moth (Antheraea pernyi) and Dactyloceras lucina, a large African moth. These species have no ears to hear approaching predators. Instead, they defend themselves using a dense array of tiny, thin scales that each resonate at a particular frequency. Together, the scales absorb at least three octaves of sound — the first known natural acoustic metamaterial. The intricate arrangement and structure of the scales could inspire ultrathin sound-absorbing materials.

Hints of quintessence point at dark energy

Cosmologists say that they have uncovered hints of intriguing twisting in the movement of ancient light across the Universe. The twisting was identified in the polarisation of the cosmic microwave background as observed by the Planck space telescope — but the evidence is still tentative. Some researchers have proposed that the twist is produced by a cosmic ‘quintessence’, an exotic substance that pervades the cosmos. The phenomenon could offer clues about the nature of dark energy — the mysterious force that seems to be pushing the cosmos to expand ever-faster. If dark energy is a quintessence, its push on the expansion could slowly wither or disappear, or could even reverse to become an attractive force, causing the Universe to collapse into a ‘big crunch’.

Trapped ions heat up the quantum computing race

A neglected approach to quantum computing is gaining traction in the quest to build a commercial quantum computer. The technique uses ions trapped in electric fields as the basis of its quantum bits, or ‘qubits’. Trapped-ion computing has long been sidelined by major companies such as IBM and Intel in favour of tiny superconducting loops. Tech-focused conglomerate Honeywell is leading the way, and smaller spin-out firms are making inroads, on a trapped-ion machine.

Prospects for life on Venus fade — but aren’t dead yet

Signs of the gas phosphine in Venus’s atmosphere — which offered the tantalising suggestion of life — have faded, but they’re not gone completely. A new data analysis from the team that made the original exciting announcement confirms the phosphine signal, but it’s fainter than before. Astronomer Jane Greaves said she and her team redid the work because they learnt that some of the original data contained a spurious signal that could have affected the results. A separate analysis of old data from the NASA Pioneer mission also found evidence that could point to phosphine.

2,000-Year-Old Maya Water Filtration System Uncovered

Two thousand years ago, the Maya built the oldest known zeolite water-filtration system in their city Tikal, in what is now Guatemala. Anthropologists have discovered that the Maya filtered reservoir water through a mixture of zeolite — a volcanic rock with a high silicon content used for many similar applications today — and coarse quartz sand.

Fast Radio Burst tracked to Magnetar

The evidence is building that hyper-magnetised stars called magnetars are the source of at least some fast radio bursts (FRBs) — powerful cosmic flashes that flare for just milliseconds. The origin of FRBs is one of astronomy’s biggest puzzles. Simultaneous observations from radio telescopes in Canada, the United States and China spotted an FRB coming from a magnetar called SGR 1935+2154 in our own galaxy. Other FRBs have been tracked back to their host galaxies, but the source of an FRB hasn’t been pinpointed before.

Early pterosaurs were clumsy flyers

Pterosaurs are some of the largest animals ever to have flown, and dominated the skies for more than 150 million years. But new research suggests that the earliest winged reptiles were ungainly aviators. Researchers used the fossilized pterosaur remains to estimate their wing size and body mass, and combined this with information about the metabolic rates of birds to calculate what their flight might have looked like.

Ancient dog DNA reveals 11,000 years of canine evolution

The largest-ever study of ancient dog genomes has revealed a lot about our four-legged friends. The analysis of more than two dozen Eurasian dogs suggests that the animals were domesticated and became widespread well before 11,000 years ago. With so many genomes, the researchers could follow ancient dog populations as they moved and mixed and compare these shifts with those in human populations.

The enigmatic species of the Ediacaran

Animal, vegetable or something else entirely? For decades, researchers were baffled by fossils of bizarre living things that dated back to the Ediacaran period — around half a billion years ago. But recent evidence suggests that some of these alien-like species were in fact animals — including ones that had guts, segmented bodies and other sophisticated features. Researchers are using these finds to re-examine a pivotal event in evolutionary history: the Cambrian explosion.

Tyrannosaur hatchlings were chihuahua-sized

Scans of the first known fossils of embryonic tyrannosaurs reveal that they were about the size of a small dog when born. A lower jaw bone and a foot claw, which were found at different sites in western North America, are thought to be from two babies that were 70 and 90 centimetres long. The embryos were not from Tyrannosaurus rex, but an earlier species of related tyrannosaur that has not been identified.

Subsurface lakes discovered on Mars

Planetary scientists have confirmed the presence of a large saltwater lake under the ice at Mars’s south pole — and have found three more. The discovery was made using radar data from the European Space Agency’s Mars-orbiting spacecraft, called Mars Express. It builds on evidence, gathered two years ago, of the first body of liquid water ever detected on the red planet. The largest, central lake measures 30 kilometres across, and is surrounded by 3 smaller lakes, each a few kilometres wide. Life is able to survive in subglacial lakes in places such as Antarctica, but the lakes on Mars might be too salty. Or they might not be liquid water at all; it’s so cold, they could be slush.

How Neanderthals lost their Y chromosome

Neanderthals’ Y chromosome looks a lot like ours, despite much of their nuclear genome more closely matching a different human lineage, the Denisovans. The mystery persisted because very few complete male Neanderthal genomes have been recovered. Now researchers have used an innovative technique to probe some partial male Neanderthal genomes. The scientists found evidence that early modern human men mated with Neanderthal women more than 100,000 but less than 370,000 years ago, and their sons passed the modern Y through their offspring, replacing the Neanderthal Y.

Blogger Comments:

This suggests that the Sapiens tribes murdered Neanderthal men and abducted Neanderthal women.

Planet discovered transiting a dead star

Evidence has been found of a planet circling the smouldering remains of a dead star in a tight orbit. The discovery raises the question of how the planet survived the star’s death throes — and whether other planets also orbit the remains.

‘Unexplained’ molecule on Venus hints at life

Phosphine has been detected in Venus’s atmosphere, raising the thrilling question of whether the molecule might be a sign of life on the planet. On rocky planets, life is the only known source of the compound — although it forms without a helping hand near the energetic cores of the gas giants. Life seems impossible on the surface of the Solar System’s hottest world, but the middle of its cloud layer offers a more promising environment in terms of temperature, pressure and presence of water and organic molecules. Even if it’s not a sign of life on Venus, the unexpected observation is exciting.

Star system shreds its planet-forming disc

Astronomers have observed, for the first time, a multi-star system ripping apart the disk of material that could form planets. The three stars of GW Orionis have pulled some of their surrounding gas and dust into a warped disc with tilted rings. The rings could someday form planets with wildly oblique and distant orbits.

Solar cell floats on a soap bubble

Materials scientists have made printed solar cells that are so thin, light and flexible that they can rest on the surface of a soap bubble. Researchers formulated ‘inks’ for each layer of the solar-cell architecture so that they could print the cells on a substrate using an inkjet printer. The technology could one day help us ditch heavy batteries and generate power straight from the Sun for lightweight, flexible devices such as medical patches.

Astronomers detect most powerful black-hole collision yet

Astronomers have detected the most-powerful, most-distant and most-perplexing collision of black holes yet, using gravitational waves. Of the two behemoths that fused when the Universe was half its current age, at least one — weighing 85 times as much as the Sun — has a mass that was thought to be too large to be involved in such an event. And the merger produced a black hole of nearly 150 solar masses, the researchers have estimated, putting it in a range in which no black holes had ever been conclusively seen before.

Betelgeuse dimming explained by dust

Astronomers say they have solved the mystery of why Betelgeuse, one of the sky’s brightest stars, started getting dimmer in 2019. By mid-February this year, Betelgeuse had lost more than two-thirds of its brilliance — a difference noticeable to the naked eye. Some people speculated that this was a sign that the star was approaching the end of its life, but researchers working with the Hubble telescope now say it was probably caused by hot material that the star ejected into space, which then cooled and turned into dust.

The asteroid Ceres seems to have liquid water

The dwarf planet Ceres seemingly has a salty ocean of water beneath its surface. The ocean is the source of mysterious bright areas spotted on the distant world’s surface. Images from NASA's Dawn spacecraft, which dipped to less than 35 kilometres above Ceres’s surface on its 2018 mission, reveal the areas are deposits of mostly sodium carbonate. These were formed as briny water percolated up to the surface and then evaporated.

Scientists crack mystery of the origin of Stonehenge's giant stones

Scientists have solved an enduring mystery about Stonehenge, determining the place of origin of many of the megaliths that make up the famed monument in Wiltshire, England, thanks to a core sample that had been kept in the United States for decades.

Geochemical testing indicates that 50 of Stonehenge's 52 pale-grey sandstone megaliths, known as sarsens, share a common origin about 25 kilometres away at a site called West Woods on the edge of Wiltshire's Marlborough Downs.

Microbes revived after 100 million years

Scientists have managed to wake up microbes that have been buried deep beneath the sea floor — apparently in a dormant state — since dinosaurs walked on Earth. The bacteria were discovered in 100-million-year-old clay samples drilled from beneath the South Pacific. When incubated and given nutrients, the microbes began to feed and multiply.

Neanderthal gene linked to increased pain sensitivity

Neanderthals had a biological predisposition to a heightened sense of pain. A first-of-its kind genome study found that the ancient human relatives carried three mutations in a gene encoding the protein NaV1.7, which conveys painful sensations to the spinal cord and brain. They also showed that in a sample of British people, those who had inherited the Neanderthal version of NaV1.7 tend to experience more pain than others.

Astronomers capture first images of multi-planet system around sunlike star

This is the first star like our Sun to be directly imaged with multiple planets orbiting it. Astronomers have directly observed two systems with multiple planets before, but both have stars that are very different from our Sun. This star, TYC 8998-760-1, is just 17 million years old — much earlier in its life cycle than the Sun. The exoplanets are huge: the inner planet is 14 times as massive as Jupiter and the outer one is 6 times as massive. And both planets orbit many times farther away from their star than Pluto does from the Sun.

Controversial cave discoveries suggest humans reached Americas much earlier than thought

A massive haul of stone tools discovered in a cave in Mexico is evidence that people occupied the area more than 30,000 years ago. The finding suggests that humans arrived in North America at least 15,000 years earlier than had been thought. The discovery is backed up by a separate statistical analysis incorporating data from sites in North America and Siberia. But some researchers are unconvinced. They question the age of the tools, and whether the artefacts are tools at all, rather than objects created by natural processes.

Scientists identify 37 recently active volcanic structures on Venus from radar images

Compelling evidence contradicts what scientists had long thought about Venus — that it was geologically dormant for the past half billion years because it lacked plate tectonics similar to Earth.

Cosmic map only deepens expansion mystery

A map of the early Universe has reinforced a long-running conundrum in astronomy over how fast the cosmos is expanding. The data support previous estimates of the Universe’s age, geometry and evolution. But the findings clash with measurements of how fast galaxies are flying apart from each other. They predict that the Universe should be expanding at a significantly slower pace than is currently observed.

Polynesians and South Americans made contact around AD 1200

Traces of Native American ancestry have been found in the genomes of modern inhabitants of some Polynesian islands, suggesting that ancient islanders met and mixed with people from South America hundreds of years ago. Researchers analysed the genomes of more than 800 people from 17 Pacific islands and 15 Native American groups on the Pacific coast. The team looked at the length of shared DNA segments — which shorten in successive generations — to determine that people from Polynesia and South America mingled around 800 years ago. Whether Polynesians voyaged to the coast of the Americas, or people from South America made the trip to the islands, is still up for debate.

‘Quasiparticles’ show up in the lab

Physicists have reported what could be the first incontrovertible evidence of the existence of particle-like objects called anyons, first proposed more than 40 years ago. Anyons are the latest addition to a growing family of phenomena called quasiparticles, which are not elementary particles but collective excitations of many electrons in solid devices. Their discovery — made using a 2D electronic device — could represent the first steps towards making anyons the basis of future quantum computers.

The heaviest known neutron star — or the lightest known black hole

Gravitational-wave observatories have witnessed a black hole, 23 times as massive as the Sun, gobbling up an enigmatic object. At 2.6 solar masses, it is thought to be too large to be a neutron star, the only other type of orb that current detectors are sensitive to. But if it is a black hole, it would be the lightest ever observed. The massive stars that collapse to form black holes should leave behind remnants at least twice that size, standard astrophysical models suggest. Astronomers tried to find clues by looking for light from the merger, but to no avail.

Neutrinos reveal final secret of Sun’s nuclear fusion

The theories for why the Sun shines date back to the 1930s, but one crucial bit of evidence was missing. Now, physicists have found direct evidence for a type of reaction, involving carbon and nitrogen nuclei, in which four protons fuse into a helium nucleus. The smoking gun? Neutrinos, elementary particles the reaction releases. These zip straight out from the Sun’s core, reaching Earth just 8 minutes later. The carbon–nitrogen pathway is not the only type of fusion in the Sun, and it’s not even the main one — neutrinos from all the other reactions had been detected before — but it is thought to be the dominant energy source for larger stars.

Vast neolithic circle of deep shafts found near Stonehenge

Archæologists have discovered a 2-kilometre ring of prehistoric shafts about 3 kilometres from Stonehenge. There are at least 20 of the 4,500-year-old shafts, each more than 5 metres deep and 10 metres in diameter. The startling discovery, in one of the world’s most studied archæological landscapes, comes thanks to modern techniques including ground-penetrating radar.

Dark Matter Experiment Finds Unexplained Signal

The world’s most sensitive dark-matter experiment might have found a hint of the stuff — although the data it has collected so far could be a statistical fluctuation or a spurious signal. The data collected in 2017-18 by the underground XENON1T experiment have revealed an excess in the number of particles hitting its liquid xenon, with a relatively low energy. The finding suggests the possible existence of a hypothetical particle called the axion. But another possible explanation is the presence of radioactive impurities. An upgraded version of the detector called XENONnT could solve the riddle next year.

Bizarre nearby star offers clues to origins of mysterious fast radio bursts

For a fraction of a second in late April, a hyper-magnetised star in the Milky Way suddenly blasted out radio energy. Now scientists say that this sudden, strange blip could help to explain one of astronomy’s biggest puzzles: what powers the hundreds of other mysterious fast radio bursts (FRBs) that have been spotted much farther away in the Universe. Many astronomers think that fast radio bursts — brief but powerful cosmic flashes that flare for just milliseconds — come from magnetars, but haven’t found the link.

Archæologists discover 'amazing' details of Roman city

Archaeologists have mapped a full ancient city with ground-penetrating radar. Falerii Novi, a 30-hectare settlement near Rome that was occupied between 241 BC and AD 700, is now almost entirely buried under agricultural land. The team towed their radar antennas with a quad bike. Their finds include a mysterious public monument — possibly linked to pre-Roman religions — and an extensive network of water pipes that was evidently planned and laid before the city was built.

Oldest Mayan monument ever found

A huge artificial plateau that is 1.4 kilometres long and 10–15 metres high has been discovered in Mexico. Archaeologists spotted the monumental construction from the air using lidar, a remote-sensing method that maps the ground using lasers. Dubbed Aguada Fénix, the extensive structure was built between 1000 and 800 BC, and precedes the peak of the Maya empire by more than a millennium.

Revolutionary microscopy sees individual atoms for first time

A game-changing technique for imaging molecules has produced its sharpest pictures yet — and, for the first time, has discerned individual atoms in a protein. The cryo-electron microscopy breakthrough, reported by two laboratories late last month, will ultimately help researchers to understand how proteins work in health and disease, and will lead to better drugs with fewer side effects.

Ancient DNA offers clues to physical origins of Dead Sea Scrolls

DNA fingerprinting is helping researchers to understand the patchwork of archæological fragments known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Through genetic analysis, researchers have been able to reconstruct the origin of some of the ancient parchments. In particular, they realised that two pieces once considered part of the same manuscript were in fact made from different animal hides — one from sheep and the other from cow.

Topological insulators enter the fourth dimension

Physicists have created a virtual crystal with four spatial dimensions that acts as a topological insulator — a material that conducts electricity on only its outer boundary. To do so, the team wired up connections among electrical circuits to simulate those in a four-dimensional (4D) crystal. (Just as cubes have six square faces, hypercubes have eight cubic ‘faces’ — so when hypercubes are stacked in 4D, each one is in contact with eight neighbours.) A similar scheme could extend to even more dimensions of space, leading to the observation of new phenomena. Exotic topological insulators could find applications in future quantum computers.

The most ancient land animal ever found

An inch-long creature similar to a millipede looks to be the oldest animal known to have lived on land. Fossil imprints of Kampecaris obanensis from the island of Kerrera in Scotland have been radiometrically dated to around 425 million years ago, in the Silurian period. The arthropod probably fed on decomposing plants on a lakeside. Even earlier land animals, from the Cambrian era, are known to have existed, but only indirectly, from their tracks.

Black Hole Paradoxes Reveal a Fundamental Link Between Energy and Order

The physics of black holes has led to the discovery of a basic link between entropy and energy. The idea began when theoreticians spotted a paradox about Hawking radiation, Stephen Hawking’s calculation that black holes must lose mass over an extremely long time. But if a black hole is even slightly electrically charged, after shrinking for eons it will get to a point at which its electric charge is extremely concentrated — which should prevent it from shrinking further, and perhaps even lead it to split into two smaller black holes. While studying this problem, theoretical physicists stumbled on a formula linking any object’s energy to its entropy — a measure of the number of ways an object’s parts can be rearranged without changing its state.

Astronomers find 'missing' baryonic matter

Astronomers have detected much of the Universe’s ordinary matter, which had long been missing from accounts of its total mass. Not ‘dark matter’ — the mysterious, invisible stuff that makes up the majority of the Universe’s contents. This is normal matter, but it’s spread so sparsely across intergalactic space that more than three-quarters of it is almost undetectable. Using an array of 36 radio telescopes in remote Western Australia, researchers analysed the light from 6 fast radio bursts (FRBs), unusually energetic events that last just milliseconds and originate in other galaxies. The spectrum was sensitive enough to reveal the exceedingly thin matter that the FRBs met in their travels.

Balls of moss move like a flock

Squishy pillows of moss appear to slowly move across glaciers in a coordinated fashion, researchers have found. In a long-term study in Alaska, researchers tagged the rolling ‘glacier mice’ to monitor their motion. The herd seems to move in unison, at a speed of about 2.5 centimetres per day. Their motion didn’t align with the prevailing winds, and they weren’t rolling down a slope — so what propels them is still a mystery.