Scientists have identified a new DNA structure in human cells. It's in the form of a twisted knot and it exists alongside the well-known double helix. This form resembles a twisted “knot” of DNA, instead of the well-known double helix first described by James Watson and Francis Crick. Lab work has...
Researchers in Canada have discovered dozens of ancient footprints that might be the earliest known evidence of human migration in North America. The prints, uncovered on the Pacific Coast, offer a glimpse into the lives of our ancestors who lived on the continent some 13,000 years ago, and they...
Mercury underwent 13 transits during the entire century. In photos released by NASA, Mercury appears as a small black dot as it approaches the limb of the sun prior to its transit. Mercury and Earth became perfectly aligned allowing stargazers to watch the planet at the front of the solar...
The “world’s loneliest frog,” once thought to be the last of its species, now has a girlfriend after scientists in Bolivia trekked to a remote rainforest seeking a mate for the solitary amphibian, named Romeo. Naturally, his new partner has been dubbed Juliet. Romeo, a Sehuencas water frog, was captured...
Scientists just discovered a rare monster galaxy that grew rapidly in the universe's early days — and then went quiet surprisingly fast. The newfound giant, known as XMM-2599, lies about 12 billion light-years from Earth, meaning that scientists are seeing the galaxy as it existed when the universe was quite...
Huge “mega-colonies” of penguins have been discovered near the Antarctic peninsula, hosting more than 1.5 million birds. Just 100 miles (160 kilometres) away in the west Antarctic, the same species is in decline due to sea ice melt blamed on global warming, they said. The first complete census revealed that the...
A spectacular image of the Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE above Rome, Italy, at dawn with the International Space Station (ISS) crossing the field of view has been published an astronomer. Gianluca Masi, with the Virtual Telescope Project (VTP), captured the scene on July 7 over Janiculum Hill in the Eternal...
Some of the extremely low-density, "cotton candy like" exoplanets called super-puffs may actually have rings, according to new research published in The Astronomical Journal by Carnegie's Anthony Piro and Caltech's Shreyas Vissapragada Super-puffs are notable for having exceptionally large radii for their masses -- which would give them seemingly incredibly...
A 67-million-year-old fossil pair known as "Dueling Dinosaurs" consists of a remarkably preserved T. rex alongside the bones of an equally intact Triceratops. For years, the skeletons languished in labs and warehouses as ranchers and paleontologists fought a legal battle over their ownership. On Tuesday, that fight ended: The North...
Proving a long-held notion "spectacularly wrong" is a scientist's wet dream. To do it shining a torchlight in a dingy Indian cave, as whiskered fish acquaint themselves with the sole of your boot, is something else entirely. Yet that is what experts from the UK, Switzerland and India say they...