|  Second Mountain Range Rises from Pluto's 'Heart' (Photo)  | Pluto has a big heart — big enough to accommodate at least two sets of mountains, a new photo from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft reveals. New Horizons has spotted a second mountain range inside Tombaugh Regio, the 1,200-mile-wide (2,000 kilometers) heart-shaped feature that mission team members named after Pluto's discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh. This newfound range rises up to 1 mile (1.6 km) above Pluto's frigid surface, making it comparable in height to the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States, NASA officials said.
| Read More » Oldest Panda in Captivity Celebrates 37th Birthday  | A female panda in Hong Kong celebrated her 37th birthday today (July 28), becoming the oldest panda in captivity, and setting two new Guinness World Records in the process. The giant panda, named Jia Jia, now holds the title for "oldest panda ever in captivity" and "oldest panda living in captivity." The panda's advanced age is equivalent to 111 human years, according to officials at the Guinness World Records organization. Jia Jia lives with the world's second-oldest panda, An An, who is approaching his 29th birthday, at Ocean Park, an animal and amusement park in Hong Kong.
| Read More » Deadly SpaceShipTwo Crash Caused by Co-Pilot Error: NTSB  | The fatal breakup and crash of Virgin Galactic's first SpaceShipTwo space plane last year was caused by a co-pilot error, as well as the failure of the spacecraft's builders to anticipate such a catastrophic mistake, federal safety investigators say. SpaceShipTwo crashed in October when co-pilot Michael Alsbury unlocked the commercial space plane's re-entry "feathering" system too early during a test flight over California's Mojave Desert, investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board said in a hearing today (July 28). The aerospace company Scaled Composites, which built the spacecraft, also "set the stage" for the accident through its "failure to consider and protect against the possibility that a single human error could result in a catastrophic hazard to the SpaceShipTwo vehicle," NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart said as he read the board's findings.
| Read More » Scientists identify men who died at Virginia's Jamestown 400 years ago U.S. scientists have used high-tech detective work to identify the remains of four leaders of Jamestown, the New World's first successful English colony, more than 400 years after they died, the Smithsonian Institution said on Tuesday. The research also provided new insight into life and death and the importance of religion in the Jamestown settlement in Virginia, about 80 miles (130 km) south of Washington, the Smithsonian said. The men were identified as the Reverend Robert Hunt, Captain Gabriel Archer, Sir Ferdinando Wainman and Captain William West. Read More » Scientists identify men who died at Virginia's Jamestown 400 years ago U.S. scientists have used high-tech detective work to identify the remains of four leaders of Jamestown, the New World's first successful English colony, more than 400 years after they died, the Smithsonian Institution said on Tuesday. The research also provided new insight into life and death and the importance of religion in the Jamestown settlement in Virginia, about 80 miles (130 km) south of Washington, the Smithsonian said. The men were identified as the Reverend Robert Hunt, Captain Gabriel Archer, Sir Ferdinando Wainman and Captain William West. Read More » U.S. investigators blame Virgin Galactic crash on lax pilot training  | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Federal investigators cited inadequate training of test pilots by a Northrup Grumman Corp subsidiary on Tuesday as a leading factor behind last year's fatal crash of an experimental Virgin Galactic passenger spaceship over the Mojave Desert. The premature unlocking of the hinged tail section on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo triggered a midair breakup of the ship during its fourth powered test flight on Oct. 31, the National Transportation Safety Board said. Blame for the accident falls to Scaled Composites, the Northrop Grumman unit that developed the craft and employed its test crew, the NTSB said.
| Read More » Smells Fishy: Putrid 'Corpse Flower' Blooms  | More than 2,300 visitors queued up on Saturday (July 25) to meet Trudy, an enormous "corpse flower" that was in bloom. Corpse flowers (Amorphophallus titanum, which means "giant, misshapen penis") burst into enormous purple-and-yellow blooms only once every few years. "It's very difficult to describe the smell," Paul Licht, UC Botanical Garden director, said in a statement.
| Read More » Ancient Huts May Reveal Clues to Earth's Magnetic Pole Reversals  | The fiery demise of ancient huts in southern Africa 1,000 years ago left clues to understanding a bizarre weak spot in the Earth's magnetic field — and the role it plays in the magnetic poles' periodic reversals. Patches of ground where huts were burned down in southern Africa contain a key mineral that recorded the magnetic field at the time of each ritual burning. "It has long been thought reversals start at random locations, but our study suggests this may not be the case," John Tarduno, a geophysicist from the University of Rochester in New York and lead author of the paper, said in a statement.
| Read More » Identities of Mysterious Jamestown Settlers Revealed  | Four lost leaders of the first permanent English settlement in the Americas have been identified, thanks to chemical analysis of their skeletons, as well as historical documents. The settlement leaders were mostly high-status men who were buried at the 1608 Jamestown church in Virginia. "They're very much at the heart of the foundation of the America that we know today," said Douglas Owsley, a forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., who helped identify the bodies.
| Read More » Scientists worry about arms race in artificial intelligence  | LONDON (AP) — Scientists and tech experts — including professor Stephen Hawking and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak — warned Tuesday of a global arms race with weapons using artificial intelligence.
| Read More » One Tough Bite: T. Rex's Teeth Had Secret Weapon  | Secret structures hidden within the serrated teeth of Tyrannosaurus rex and other theropods helped the fearsome dinosaurs tear apart their prey without chipping their pearly whites, a new study finds. Researchers looked at the teeth of theropods — a group of bipedal, largely carnivorous dinosaurs that includes T. rex and Velociraptor — to study the mysterious structures that looked like cracks within each tooth. The investigation showed that these structures weren't cracks at all, but deep folds within the tooth that strengthened each individual serration and helped prevent breakage when the dinosaur pierced through its prey, said study lead researcher Kirstin Brink, a postdoctoral researcher of biology at the University of Toronto Mississauga.
| Read More » Toothy terror: dinosaurs like T. rex had unique serrated teeth  | By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If you want to know the secret behind the success of Tyrannosaurus rex and its meat-eating dinosaur cousins, look no further than their teeth. Scientists on Tuesday unveiled a comprehensive analysis of the teeth of the group of carnivorous dinosaurs called theropods, detailing a unique serrated structure that let them chomp efficiently through the flesh and bones of large prey. Theropods included the largest land predators in Earth's history.
| Read More » Scientist: Whale deaths off Alaska island remains mystery  | ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Researchers may never solve the recent deaths of 18 endangered whales whose carcasses were found floating near Alaska's Kodiak Island, a scientist working on the case said Monday.
| Read More » In Africa's 'cradle,' an old fossil site yields new finds  | By Ed Stoddard KROMDRAAI, South Africa (Reuters) - Crouched in a shallow square grid dug into the red African earth, American graduate student Sarah Edlund uses a hand brush to scrape soil into a dustpan. "We have found a lot of quartz and this is important because it is not natural to this area ... It must have been brought here," Edlund said as she topped up her bucket with soil before taking it to a sifting device, where the dirt is separated from the quartz and other potential scientific treasures. "In this area we have what are mostly called scrapers, a certain form of stone tool," said Travis Pickering, a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin.
| Read More » Dark Pion Particles May Explain Universe's Invisible Matter Dark matter is the mysterious stuff that cosmologists think makes up some 85 percent of all the matter in the universe. A new theory says dark matter might resemble a known particle. If true, that would open up a window onto an invisible, dark matter version of physics. Read More » NASA spacecraft shows Pluto wrapped in haze, ice flows  | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A stunning silhouette of Pluto taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft after it shot past the icy orb last week show an extensive layer of atmospheric haze, while close-up pictures of the ground reveal flows of nitrogen ice, scientists said on Friday. New Horizons became the first spacecraft to visit Pluto and its entourage of moons and so far has returned about 5 percent of the pictures and science data collected in the days leading up to, during and immediately following the July 14 flyby. The latest batch of images includes a backlit view of Pluto with sun, located more than 3 billion miles away, shining around and through the planet's atmosphere.
| Read More » Scientists control mouse brain by remote control The tiny implant, smaller than the width of a human hair, let the scientists determine the path a mouse walks using a remote control to inject drugs and shine lights on neurons inside the brain. Neuroscientists have until now been limited to injecting drugs through larger tubes and delivering photostimulation through fiber-optic cables, both of which require surgery that can damage the brain and restrict an animal's natural movements. The optofluidic implant developed by the team from Washington University School of Medicine and the University of Illinois was found to damage and displace much less brain tissue than the metal tubes, or cannulas, scientists typically use to inject drugs. Read More » Rotting Fungus Creates Beautiful, Glistening 'Hair Ice'  | Alfred Wegener, famous for his continental drift theory, first identified and studied hair ice in 1918. "The same amount of ice is produced on wood with or without fungal activity, but without this activity, the ice forms a crustlike structure," Christian Mätzler, a co-author of the study and professor emeritus at the Institute of Applied Physics at the University of Bern in Switzerland, said in a statement. Researchers blamed the century-long delayed explanation for how hair ice grows on its ephemeral nature and northern range — the glimmering threads grow predominately at latitudes between 45 and 55 degrees north through countries including Canada, France, Germany, India, Ireland, the Netherlands, Russia, Scotland, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States and Wales.
| Read More » Scientists find closest thing yet to Earth-sun twin system  | CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Scientists have identified a "close cousin" to Earth that's orbiting a sun-like star and might harbor life.
| Read More » Fat sense: Scientists show we have a distinct taste for fat  | WASHINGTON (AP) — Move over sweet and salty: Researchers say we have a distinct and basic taste for fat, too.
| Read More » Scientists pursue specific cause of mystery beach blast PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Scientists trying to figure out the reason why a mysterious beach blast that sent a woman flying into a jetty are now pursuing a specific cause, Rhode Island's top environmental official says, but she isn't disclosing their theory until testing is finished. Read More » Myth Debunked: Boa Constrictors Don't Suffocate Prey to Death  | Boa constrictors are notorious for their deadly grip, squeezing their next meal until it expires. Instead, the boa's tight coils block the rat's blood flow, leading to circulatory arrest. "This is such an efficient behavior, and it allows us to realize that this behavior was really important in snake evolution," said lead researcher Scott Boback, an associate professor of biology at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.
| Read More » Kiwi DNA study reveals bird lost color vision  | BERLIN (AP) — Scientists say they have sequenced the genome of the brown kiwi for the first time, revealing that the shy, flightless bird likely lost its ability to see colors after it became nocturnal tens of millions of years ago.
| Read More » Claudia Alexander, Beloved NASA Project Scientist, Dies at 56  | Claudia Alexander, a beloved NASA project scientist who spearheaded NASA's side of the European Rosetta comet mission and the Galileo mission to Jupiter, has died at age 56. Alexander died after a 10-year battle with breast cancer, according to a NASA statement. Alexander was a well-loved and prolific planetary scientist, science communicator, and even science fiction writer and children's author.
| Read More » Scientists worry about arms race in artificial intelligence  | Scientists and tech experts — including professor Stephen Hawking and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak — warned Tuesday of a global arms race with weapons using artificial intelligence. In an open letter ...
| Read More » Astronomers discover most Earth-like planet yet  | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A planet believed to be remarkably similar to Earth has been discovered orbiting a distant sun-like star, bolstering hopes of finding life elsewhere in the universe, U.S. scientists said on Thursday. The planet, which is about 60 percent bigger than Earth, is located 1,400 light years away in the constellation Cygnus. It was discovered by astronomers using NASA's Kepler space telescope and circles a star that is similar in size and temperature to the sun, but older.
| Read More » Lithium find in exploding star could help solve astronomy puzzle Using two telescopes in Chile, astronomers detected tiny amounts of the chemical element lithium in Nova Centauri, which exploded in 2013 - the brightest nova so far this century, the European Southern Observatory said this week. The mismatch between the observed amount of lithium in older stars and the abundance estimated from the Big Bang, however, still remains an open problem, said Della Valle and team leader Luca Izzo. Read More » No new contact with comet lander, scientists say European scientists said on Wednesday that they had once again failed to make contact with the Philae comet lander, which has struggled to maintain a reliable communication link since coming back to life last month. The fridge-sized robotic lab, which landed on a comet called 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in November in an historic first, last made contact via the Rosetta orbiter on July 9. The lander initially bounced away from its intended landing place upon reaching the comet and settled in the shadows where there was not enough sunlight to power its solar panels. Read More » Million-Dollar Find: Shipwreck's Golden Treasure Includes Very Rare Coin  | The treasures were hidden on the seafloor for 300 years before the crew of a salvage vessel brought them to the surface last month, on June 17. The riches were found just 1,000 feet (305 meters) offshore of Fort Pierce, Florida, according to Eric Schmitt, captain of the aptly named salvage vessel, Aarrr Booty, which was used to locate the treasure. The ships' mission was to transport the riches below deck to Spain, which at the time was waging a war against France and was desperately in need of money to fund battles.
| Read More » Northern White Rhino Dies, Leaving Only 4 Left on Earth  | One of the last five northern white rhinoceroses in the world has died. Nabiré, a 31-year-old female northern white rhino, died of a ruptured cyst, authorities at the Dv?r Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic announced today (July 28). One male, Sudan, survives on a reserve in Kenya.
| Read More » NASA's Curiosity Rover Eyes Weird Rock On Mars  | NASA's Mars rover Curiosity went out of its way to investigate a rock the likes of which it has never seen before on the Red Planet. Measurements by Curiosity's rock-zapping ChemCam laser and another instrument revealed that the target, a chunk of bedrock dubbed Elk, contains high levels of silica and hydrogen, NASA officials said. "One never knows what to expect on Mars, but the Elk target was interesting enough to go back and investigate," ChemCam principal investigator Roger Wiens, of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said in a statement.
| Read More » 'Trillion-Dollar Asteroid' Zooms by Earth as Scientists Watch (Video)  | The near-Earth asteroid is an intriguing candidate for mining, said representatives of the company Planetary Resources, which is hoping to begin these activities in the coming decades. Previous studies by Planetary Resources estimated that 2011 UW158 contains about $5.4 trillion worth of platinum, an element that is rare on Earth. "The problem is, sending [Earth's] water into space is extraordinarily expensive, and even if the launch was free, it takes an incredible amount of energy to shift that stuff around," Planetary Resources president and chief engineer Chris Lewicki said during a Sunday webcast about the "trillion-dollar asteroid" hosted by the Slooh Community Observatory, which provides live broadcasts of celestial events.2011 UW158 is about 2,000 feet long and 1,000 feet wide (600 meters by 300 meters), according to observations made by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.
| Read More » NASA tests new camera at a space station NASA astronaut, Terry Virts, recently tested a new camera that seems to provide more detailed material from space. Virts was exploring water tension in microgravity as he dissolved an effervescent tablet in a floating ball of water, which is captured in great detailed and high-resolution in the video. The station received high-definition cameras, 3-D cameras, but also a Red Epic Dragon camera that is capable of recording images with six times more detail than either of the previous cameras, NASA reported. ... Read More » Full Moon on Friday Is a Blue Moon: Here's Why  | On Friday, much of the world will have the opportunity to observe a Blue Moon: A somewhat rare occurrence that doesn't have anything to do with the moon's color. The lunar or synodic month (full moon to full moon) averages 29.530589 days, which is shorter than every calendar month in the year except for February. To see what I mean, here is a list of full-moon dates in 2015: Jan. 5, Feb. 3, March 5, April 4, May 4, June 2, July 2, July 31, Aug. 29, Sept. 28, Oct. 27, Nov. 25 and Dec. 25.
| Read More » First Alien Auroras Found, Are 1 Million Times Brighter Than Any On Earth  | Astronomers have discovered the first auroras ever seen outside the solar system — alien light shows more powerful than any other auroras ever witnessed, perhaps 1 million times brighter than any on Earth, researchers say. Auroras could soon be detected from distant exoplanets as well, investigators added. Auroras, the radiant displays of colors in the sky known on Earth as the northern or southern lights, are also seen on all of the other planets with magnetic fields in the solar system.
| Read More » Lost In Space Without a Spacesuit? Here's What Would Happen (Podcast)  | Paul Sutter is a research fellow at the Astronomical Observatory of Trieste and visiting scholar at the Ohio State University's Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics. Sutter is also host of the podcasts Ask a Spaceman and RealSpace, and the YouTube series Space In Your Face.
| Read More » Beautiful Butterfly on Brink of Revival, Despite Century of Threats  | Michael Sainato is a freelancer with credits including the Miami Herald, The Huffington Post and The Hill. Formed nearly 12,000 years ago by a receding glacial lake, the Albany Pine Bush Preserve in New York hosts a rare ecosystem, one of only 20 inland pine barrens in the world. This unusual landscape, surrounded by development, also holds within it an equally rare species: the endangered Karner blue butterfly, named by lepidopterist (and "Lolita" author) Vladimir Nabokov in 1944. And yet this U.S. National Natural Landmark seems always on the brink of destruction.
| Read More » Is Life Possible Around Binary Stars? (Podcast)  | Paul Sutter is a research fellow at the Astronomical Observatory of Trieste and visiting scholar at the Ohio State University's Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics. Sutter is also host of the podcasts Ask a Spaceman and Realspace, and the YouTube series Space In Your Face. He contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
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