Nearly every Sci-Fi film about deep space has warned about the perils of coming up against a black hole. And if there’s anything we’ve learned, or that astronomy has taught us, it’s that these supermassive vortex’s have quite a strong pull—something most planets and stars cannot bare to go through. But as it so happens, it turns out that cosmic coupling may be one solution for solar systems looking to avoid certain death.
Looking for a way to observe king penguin colonies in the ice fields of Antarctica, researchers led by Yvon Le Maho from the University of Strasbourg, France developed a fluffy little rover shaped in the image of a penguin chick so that they could get an up-close view of the male penguins’ nesting behaviors.
It’s a story, much like the ones you’ve heard before. An orphaned bird must stand alone within its flock, to find its own place amongst its peers. But this isn’t the story of an ugly little duckling that turns into a swan, or one of a tap-dancing emperor penguin with a knack for hip hop. This is a tale of a remote-operated rover that brought researchers into the fold of a penguin colony, for a view unlike anything we’ve seen before.
It’s a fanged creature unlike any other, and it clearly won’t need a costume this Halloween. The unusual herbivore, the Kashmir Musk Deer is a species that was once native to the northern ranges of Afghanistan. Though, in spite of the fact that the species has not been seen for more than 60 years, a team of researchers headed by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) recently revealed that more than a handful of the rare species have been identified in alpine meadows of northeast Afghanistan, just in time to come out for Halloween.
Since her disappearance on July 2, 1937, many have questioned the final hours of pilot Amelia Earhart’s life. Was she lost at sea when her plane disappeared over the South Pacific? Or did she go down with her plane? While many feared the worst, urban legends abounded creating alternate endings for Earhart’s expedition around the world—and it appears that one of those endings may be more frightening that the plane crash itself.
It’s been an urban legend almost 80 years in the making, that famous female aviator Amelia Earhart was marooned on an island in the South Pacific. And new evidence, including a fragment of her aircraft found and a sonar anomaly 600-feet underwater, may just hold the clues to unlock this decades old mystery.
For a field-based ecologist, the continental United States is pretty much a textbook of well-known organisms. The thrilling new species often making front-page news are more likely to found in the tropics or open-oceans, than in the plains of the Midwest or the large metropolis cities of the East and West coasts. With such well-defined niche habitats, the species in the United States aren’t too surprising to the experienced biologist, however, sometimes new life can be found where you’d least expect it. No, we’re not talking about the mutant turtles in the sewers of New York City, but it does appear the jam-packed hub may be home to another unique amphibian, colloquially known as the “Atlantic Coast Leopard Frog”.
Harvard study reveals that one of the most common treatments for prostate cancer can increase the risk of heart death for patients with a history of cardiac problems
Researchers from Idaho State University pray that a new discovery uncovered near American Falls Reservoir in their home state of Idaho may only be part of a whole, yet to be seen. Earlier this month, in the course of surveying an excavation site while working for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the university alongside avid fossil hunters uncovered a portion of a Columbian era mammoth skull complete with tusks. And the team believes the entire rare skeleton may also be buried in the reservoir.
It’s been an encroaching threat months in the making, and as of Monday, local authorities on Hawaii’s Big Island report that the destructive lava flow they’ve been tracking in recent days is only 70 meters from the nearest residential property… and it’s likely to take its first home in a matter of hours.
In Antarctica, much of life and history is swept away or covered completely by ice and snow. Even in the face of unending change, the surface appears timeless and constant, even though it sets the stage for some of the most tragic stories south of the equator.