Science

Nasa’s New Horizons probe has captured some stunning images of how the day progresses on Pluto and its largest moon Charon. The imagery was captured over the course of a full Plutonian day, which is 6.4 Earth days long. New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager and the Ralph / Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera were trained on the icy worlds as …

A mountain lion who lived in chains for 20 years with a traveling circus was finally freed by wildlife officials. Mufasa the mountain lion lived for 20 years chained in the back of a pick up truck amongst rusting circus equipment. Despite Peru’s ban on wild animals in circuses, there seemed little hope for Mufasa as the circus went undetected, …

Researchers have created a kind of cyborg flower: living roses with tiny electronic circuits threaded through their vascular systems. Using semi-conductive polymers, both analog and digital electronic circuits can be created inside living flowers, bushes and trees, as researchers at Linköping University Laboratory for Organic Electronics have shown. The results are being published in Science Advances.

A re-assessment of the status of polar bears by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has warned climate change is the “most serious threat to polar bear survival”. Effects on polar bear habitat from climate change is predicted to cause a 30% drop in their population in the next 35 – 40 years, the report says. The thawing …

Global average surface temperatures in October 2015 were +1.04oC above the long-term average, according to data from US space agency NASA. Month after month this year, above-average — and sometimes record — global temperatures have piled up, raising the odds that this year will be the hottest one humanity has ever experienced. And now October has blown those records out …

Scientists from Rice University have developed single-molecule submarines that are composed of only 244 atoms, and they are propelled by light according to a research published Nano Letters, a journal of the American Chemical Society. Each of the single-molecule, 244-atom submersibles built in the Rice lab of chemist James Tour has a motor powered by ultraviolet light. With each full …

DNA extracted from a fossilized tooth, confirmed the presence of one of our elusive ancient cousins only recently discovered, the Denisovians. An obscure branch of the human tree of evolution survived for thousands of years in a remote mountain range in Siberia – and even though it eventually died out, left genetic traces within living Homo sapiens, according to a …

Hats and skirts are not advised to be worn when visiting exoplanet HD 189733B. Researchers have recorded that winds reach a speed of 5400 mph. The University of Warwick discovery is the first time that a weather system on a planet outside of Earth’s solar system has been directly measured and mapped. The wind speed recorded is 20x greater than …

One of Morden’s two publicly displayed mosasaurs has officially secured an entry in next year’s Guinness World Records Book. The 2016 print book features Bruce, the world’s longest publicly exhibited mosasaur, which is 13 metres long and is on display at the Morden centre.

Scientists have identified a mysterious object that is hurtling toward Earth, falling from space, measuring some two meters or about 6.5 feet in diameter. A Slooh spokesman said: “While there is no way to know exactly what the object is, scientists at the European Space Agency believe it is a piece of a rocket body falling back to Earth.

Scientists at Montana State University have identified a new duck-billed dinosaur species dubbed “Superduck.” Its scientific name is Probrachylophosaurus bergei, according to a paper published today in the journal PLOS ONE. The paper was written by that professor, Elizabeth Freedman Fowler, and her mentor, MSU paleontologist Jack Horner, Montana University System Regents Professor and curator of paleontology at MSU’s Museum …