How Pluto's moon Charon got its red cap

The north pole of Pluto's moon Charon is dark red due to the accumulation of long-chain hydrocarbons called "tholins".

Teleportation of light particles across cities achieved

Scientists have shown they can teleport photons across a city, a development that has been hailed as "a technological breakthrough".

Indigo dye discovered in 6,000-year-old textiles from Peru

Their use of the complex technique involved in creating indigo dye predates its use by ancient Egyptians by about 1,500 years.

Star cluster Terzan 5: a relic from the early universe

An unusual cluster of stars is a "living fossil" from the early Milky Way.  The cluster, known as Terzan 5, contains two distinct types of stars with an age gap of up to 7 billion years.  The discovery has important implications for our understanding of how galaxies formed in the early universe.

Greenland stromatolite fossils push evidence for life back by 220 million years

The oldest fossils known to date have been discovered in 3.7 billion-year-old rocks in Greenland.

Australopithecus afarensis may have spent some time in trees

The Australopithecus afarensis 'Lucy' died after falling from a tree, according to a new study.

Mind-controlled nanobots could release drugs inside your brain

A man has used thought alone to control nanorobots inside a living creature for the first time. The technology released a drug inside cockroaches in response to the man’s brain activity.

Scientists develop small, reprogrammable quantum computer

Quantum computing has hit another "milestone" with the development of a small quantum computer that can be reprogrammed.

Ghost particles may explain why gravity is so surprisingly weak

A new theory claims that the cosmos is full of unseen particle families that don’t interact with each other. If true, the model could explain why gravity is so puzzlingly weak.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot may explain atmospheric mystery

The howling turbulence of Jupiter's Great Red Spot may be superheating the upper atmosphere above the storm.

Mystery ancient human ancestor found in Australasian family tree

An unknown hominin species that bred with early human ancestors when they migrated from Africa to Australasia has been identified through genome mapping of living humans.

Scientists make single-atom memory from copper and chlorine

Researchers report using a scanning tunnelling microscope to store data at the atomic scale.

Kepler detects 104 new exoplanets

NASA’s exoplanet-hunting satellite, which seemed broken beyond repair 3 years ago, today shows it is still very much alive with a batch of more than 100 new worlds that it discovered in 2015.

Scientists develop way to upsize nanostructures into light, flexible 3-D printed materials

Researchers have developed hierarchical metallic metamaterial with multi-layered, fractal-like 3-D architectures to create structures at centimetre scales incorporating nanoscale features.

New Brain Map Doubles Number of Known Regions

Neurologists have found 97 new areas in the brain and expect to add even more.

Whales Mourn Their Dead

Seven species of the marine mammals have been seen clinging to the dead body of a likely friend or relative, according to a new study.

Bees spew water at their hive-mates when the temperature rises

When honeybee hives get too hot, thirsty bees beg their specialised, water-foraging sisters for more liquid, which ends up cooling the colony.  Honeybees have a few strategies for chilling out: some fan the nest, others leave the hive to increase air flow, and a few zip off looking for ponds or puddles. These “water collector” bees fill their bellies with water, fly back home, then regurgitate the liquid. Other bees slurp it up and spit it out around the hive, allowing the colony to cool as the water evaporates.

X-structure detected at centre of the Milky Way galaxy

An enormous X-shaped structure made of stars lies at the centre of the Milky Way, indicates a new study of infrared light coming from our home galaxy.

Naphthalene helps quantum computing work at room temperature

An international team has used naphthalene as the starting point to create a new carbon-based material that enables quantum computers to work at room temperature.

Polynesian maritime network revealed by tools

Early Polynesian sailors criss-crossed the Pacific for hundreds of years, travelling as far as 2,500 kilometres, according to a new chemical analysis of centuries-old stone tools. The findings suggest there was ongoing, post-colonisation contact between the communities of the eastern Pacific from about AD1300 to the 1600s.

Gravitational waves detected for a second time

The cataclysmic collision of black holes is a frequent occurrence in space, according to a team of scientists that has just detected gravitational waves for the second time in history.

First mirror-image molecule found in interstellar space

Scientists have detected the first chiral molecule in interstellar space, propylene oxide, within an enormous star-forming cloud of gas and dust only 390 light-years away.

Hobbit discovery: 700,000-year-old find could shed new light on evolution

A 700,000-year-old hobbit has been discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores, shedding new light on human evolution.  The dwarf-like ancient relative of modern man stood just one metre tall and has been dated at half a million years older than a hobbit found on the island a decade ago.  The researchers argue their fossil find descended from Homo erectus, which would suggest an incredible case of evolutionary reversal where human bodies — including brains — actually shrunk.

Blogger Comment:

The simplest explanation is that the "hobbits" are Australopithecines.  The material evidence is consistent with this and inconsistent with both Homo habilis and Homo erectus.  The view that they were later species that "shrunk" is not the simplest theory, and the proposition that smaller primate brains would be more adaptive than larger brains is exceedingly unlikely and needs plausible supporting argument.  There are many examples of other primates (orang utans, gibbons, japanese macaques) migrating enormous distances from their place of speciation.

New DNA technology confirms Aboriginal people as first Australians

A new look at ancient bones with the latest DNA technology has confirmed Aboriginal Australians as the continent's first people. Researchers say the findings overturn a 2001 paper that argued the oldest known Australian human remains found near Lake Mungo in New South Wales were from an extinct lineage of modern humans that occupied the continent before Aboriginal Australians.

Dark radiation may be causing universe to expand faster than expected

The universe is expanding 5 to 9 per cent faster than expected and scientists speculate the finding may be explained by a mysterious force called dark radiation.

Madagascan ancestors crossed Indian Ocean from South-East Asia

Ancient charred grains of rice and mung beans excavated from Madagascar provide the first archaeological evidence that ancestors of people living on the East African island known as Malagasy came from South-East Asia.

Asteroids delivered bulk of the Moon's water

Water-rich asteroids that bombarded the Moon between 4.5 billion and 4.3 billion years ago were the main source of water in the Moon's interior.

Mars is emerging from an ice age

Mars is at the tail-end of an ice age that would have seen large swathes of the dusty red planet covered with ice.

Neanderthals built mystery underground circles 175,000 years ago

Archæological evidence now suggests Neanderthals were capable of symbolic thought, had a basic knowledge of chemistry, medicine and cooking, and perhaps some capacity for speech. They may even have taught modern humans new artisanal skills when the two species met and interbred.

A reassessment of evidence from Bruniquel cave, near Toulouse in south-west France, suggests even more Neanderthal sophistication. In one chamber, 336 metres from the cave entrance, are enigmatic structures – including a ring 7 metres across – built from stalagmites snapped from the cave floor.

Monkey seen caring for dying mate then grieving after she dies

The alpha male of a group of snub-nosed monkeys and his dying partner spent a final, tender hour together beneath the tree from which she had fallen minutes earlier, cracking her head on a rock. Before she succumbed, he gently touched and groomed her. And after she was dead he remained by her side for 5 minutes, touching her and pulling gently at her hand, as if to try and revive her.

Trees observed resting branches while ‘asleep’

For the first time, trees have been shown to undergo physical changes at night that can be likened to sleep, or at least to day-night cycles that have been observed experimentally in smaller plants.  Branches of birch trees have now been seen drooping by as much as 10 centimetres at the tips towards the end of the night.

Fossils push back date of large multi-celled life by 1 billion years

Seaweed-like fossils found in rocks in China dated to around 1.56 billion years ago are the earliest known examples of larger organisms made up of many cells.

World's oldest fossil micrometeorites hint of oxygen in early Earth's atmosphere

The oldest fossils of cosmic dust ever discovered provide a glimpse into atmospheric conditions above the Earth more than 2.7 billion years ago and could do the same on other planets.

Do newborn babies imitate adults?

Newborn babies do not imitate us.  It is a skill they have to learn — likely by us imitating them, rather than the other way around.

World's oldest known ground-edge stone axe fragments found in Western Australia

A fragment of the world's oldest known ground-edge axe has been found in the remote Kimberley region of northern Australia. The discovery pushes back the technological advance to between 45,000 to 49,000 years ago, and coincides with the arrival of people in Australia. The fragment is 10,000 years older than the previous oldest known fragments found in northern Australia in 2010.

Ancient bubbles in Pilbara rock show Earth had thin atmosphere 2.7b years ago

Air bubbles trapped in 2.7 billion-year-old lava flows in the Pilbara suggest the Earth's atmosphere weighed less than half that of today and was far thinner than previously thought. The discovery has forced a rethink of how the Earth managed to stay relatively ice-free during that period, despite the Sun being much cooler than it is today.

Evidence that early humans in North Africa were eaten by other animals

A large carnivore — most likely a hyena — ate an ancient human 500,000 years ago, according to the discovery of teeth marks on a thighbone found in a Moroccan cave. The fossilised femur provides the first definitive evidence that carnivores ate early humans in North Africa during the Middle Pleistocene era.

Three planets discovered orbiting nearby cool small star TRAPPIST-1

Astronomers have discovered three planets orbiting the habitable zone of an ultra-cool dwarf star just 40 light-years from Earth. The discovery is the first evidence supporting the hypothesis that these very low-mass and low-temperature stars should have Earth-sized or smaller planets orbiting them.

Adult-like proportions may have given baby titanosaurs an advantage when they hatched

Unlike some types of dinosaurs that were reliant on their parents after they hatched, the offspring of the world's largest vertebrates to have ever walked the Earth were probably independent soon after birth.

Monster black hole 3 billion times the mass of the sun formed by trio of colliding galaxies

Three colliding spiral galaxies 1.8 billion light years from Earth have produced a monster black hole weighing in at 3 billion times the mass of the Sun.

Oldest ever human genome sequence may rewrite human history

The oldest ever human nuclear DNA to be reconstructed and sequenced reveals Neanderthals in the making – and the need for a possible rewrite of our own origins.  The 430,000-year-old DNA comes from mysterious early human fossils found in Spain’s Sima de los Huesos, or “pit of bones”.

Insects may have had basic 'consciousness' more than 500 million years ago

Recent neuro-imaging suggests insects are fully hardwired for both consciousness and egocentric behaviour, providing strong evidence that organisms from flies to fleas exhibit both. Consciousness comes in many levels, and insects have the capacity for at least one basic form: subjective experience.

Saharan silver ant's hairs reflect light to beat the desert heat

Saharan silver ants (Cataglyphis bombycina) grow flashy body hairs that cause total internal reflection of light like a prism, a technique also used in manmade fibre optics.

Did the Sun eat a primordial super-Earth?

At least one super-Earth — a planet that is larger than Earth, but smaller than Neptune — could have formed close to the Sun, suggests a new study.

Giant prehistoric bears evolved to fill scavenger gap

Ancient bears evolved to become giants so they could scavenge prey killed by others, a new study suggests.

Blogger Comments:

Note that this reporting misconstrues evolution in terms of purpose instead of cause and result.

Dolphins have a language that helps them solve problems together

Bottlenose dolphins have been observed chattering while cooperating to solve a tricky puzzle – a feat that suggests they have a type of vocalisation dedicated to cooperating on problem solving.

South America's prehistoric people spread in two waves

When the first prehistoric people trekked into South America toward the end of the Ice Age, they found a wondrous, lush continent inhabited by all manner of strange creatures like giant ground sloths and car-sized armadillos.

Supernovae may have played a role in Earth's evolution

The Earth was bombarded by debris from a series of stellar explosions with the closest supernova occurring about 2.3 million years ago.

Monster black hole discovered in an unlikely galaxy

Astronomers have found a monster black hole, some 17 billion times more massive than the sun, in a modestly sized galaxy, raising suspicions supermassive black holes may be more common than originally thought.