It’s a record that has been broken multiple times over the past two years alone, and one that we expect to see broken again soon. Astronomers using the newly operational James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have announced the discovery of what appears to be the most distant galaxy yet. If this sounds familiar, it’s already … Read more
Penguins are no strangers to climate change. Their life history has been shaped by rising and falling temperatures, and their bodies are highly specialized for some of Earth’s most extreme conditions. And yet, scientists are concerned with the evolutionary path of the penguin may be grinding to a halt, thanks to what appears to be … Read more
Approximately 365 million years ago, one group of fishes left the water to live on land. These animals were early tetrapods, a lineage that would radiate to include many thousands of species including amphibians, birds, lizards and mammals. Human beings are descendants of those early tetrapods, and we share the legacy of their water-to-land transition. … Read more
Just a week after its first images were shown to the world, the James Webb Space Telescope may have found a galaxy that existed 13.5 billion years ago, a scientist who analyzed the data said Wednesday. Known as GLASS-z13, the galaxy dates back to 300 million years after the Big Bang, about 100 million years … Read more
A newly-discovered plant, a recently-discovered wasp, and a developing fly larva have been found trapped in amber, in an exquisitely-preserved moment of prehistoric ecology. If the image of an insect trapped in amber seems familiar, you have George Poinar, Jr. – the entomologist who made this discovery – to thank. His early work extracting insect … Read more
Far out in the Milky Way, roughly 22,000 light years from Earth, a star unlike any other roars with a magnetic force that beats anything physicists have ever seen. At a whopping 1.6 billion Tesla, a pulsar called Swift J0243.6+6124 smashes the previous records of around 1 billion Tesla, discovered surrounding the pulsars GRO J1008-57 … Read more
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has already expanded humanity’s vision further into time and space than ever before, giving a breathtaking sneak peek of the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the early Universe to date. Now, NASA has just unveiled five more stunning full-color images captured by the most ambitious telescopes humanity has … Read more
The vast expanse of Lake Taupō’s sky blue waters, crowned by hazy, mountainous horizons, invokes an extreme sense of tranquility. And yet, deep in the ground below, geological unrest is brewing, according to a new paper in the New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics. Lake Taupō is the largest freshwater lake in Australasia, located … Read more
The Permian–Triassic extinction event, which happened roughly 252 million years ago, is colloquially known as the Great Dying because of the way it obliterated life on Earth – almost ending it completely. It’s the most severe extinction event in history. Life did recover however, and new research identifies that deposit feeders like worms and shrimps … Read more
The beloved pooch snoring on your couch or sticking a snoot under your arm at dinner time came from a much wilder origin. At some point, dogs diverged from gray wolves under the guidance of domestication, to become the diverse fuzzbutts that fill our homes and hearts with such joy today. Exactly when and how … Read more