Titan's winter polar vortex imaged by the Cassini Spacecraft's ISS camera. The vortex is now in deep winter and can only be seen because the polar clouds within the vortex extend high above Titan's surface into the sunlight. The...
AWARE instruments at the WAIS Divide field camp in central West Antarctica in December 2015 under a spectacular optical display ("sun dog") due to atmospheric ice crystals. Credit: Colin Jenkinson, Australian Bureau of Meteorology An area of West Antarctica more than...
Water (stock image). Researchers have used cobalt oxide nanoparticles to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Credit: © gertrudda / Fotolia Researchers from the University of Houston have found a catalyst that can quickly generate hydrogen from water using sunlight, potentially...
Using fluorescent lights, Kerry Sieh and Charles Rubin of the Earth Observatory of Singapore look for charcoal and shells for radiocarbon dating. Credit: Earth Observatory of Singapore An international team of scientists digging in a sea cave in Indonesia has discovered...
Earth has a new lightning capital, according to a recent study using observations from the Lightning Imaging Sensor onboard NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission. Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela earned the top spot receiving an average rate of about 233 flashes...
Ginkgo fossil. Credit: Stephen McLoughlin For the first time, researchers have succeeded in establishing the relationships between 200-million-year-old plants based on chemical fingerprints. Using infrared spectroscopy and statistical analysis of organic molecules in fossil leaves, they are opening up new perspectives...
Due to its breadth, the Jena experiment proves for the first time that a loss of biodiversity has negative consequences for many individual components and processes in ecosystems. Credit: Photo: The Jena Experiment How serious is the loss of species globally?...
Female mountain gorilla. The ancestors of simian primates -- such as gorillas, gibbons and tamarins -- were among the first to give up nocturnal activity altogether. Credit: © F.C.G. / Fotolia Mammals only started being active in the daytime after non-avian...
MIT scientists have determined the structure of an enzyme that is found in ocean microbes and can produce a precursor to methane. Credit: David Born Industrial and agricultural activities produce large amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global...
One of the cichlid fish from Guatemala, Thorichthys meeki, collected by LSU Curator of Ichthyology Prosanta Chakrabarty for the study that refuted the date in which the Isthmus of Panama was formed. Credit: Courtesy of Prosanta Chakrabarty, LSU A long-standing fact...
The researchers used the supercomputer Blue Waters to determine the complete HIV capsid structure, a simulation that accounted for the interactions of 64 million atoms. Credit: Klaus Schulten/Juan Perilla A team led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of...