For the first time ever, astronomers have directly imaged multiple planets orbiting a sunlike star. The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile photographed two giant planets circling TYC 8998-760-1, a very young analogue of our own sun…
In this episode of Life’s Little Mysteries, we’ll take a closer look at a mysterious process that has shaped life on Earth over hundreds of millions of years: evolution. What is evolution, how exactly does it work, and is it…
Researchers initially thought this skull belonged to a bird-like dinosaur. Now, evidence suggests that it’s the head of a lizard. A fossil attributed to a teensy, feathered dinosaur may not be a dinosaur at all, but rather a … lizard,…
The Australian bees of genus Tetragonula produce strange, spiral nests. Scientists think they know why. In a world of bland hexagonal honeycombs, a small group of rebellious Australian bees has chosen to build spiral staircases. Meet the bees of the…
The sturddlefish has a mix of genes from the Russian sturgeon and the American paddlefish. It shouldn’t have been possible, but it was: The birth of long-nosed, spiky-finned hybrids of Russian sturgeons and American paddlefish. Hungarian scientists announced in May…
An amazing comet that thrilled early-morning stargazers earlier this month is now visible in the evening sky, and it’s a sight you won’t want to miss. After all, this comet won’t be back for 6,800 years, NASA says. Comet NEOWISE…
It took just one round of photographs from a new solar science spacecraft for scientists to learn something new about the sun. Solar Orbiter, a joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in February to give…
This visualization shows the moon being formed from a collision, which, according to a new study, happened more recently than scientists previously thought. It turns out the moon is a little younger than scientists previously thought — about 85 million…
Recorded specimen of Algyroides nigropunctatus with trifurcated tail. Lizards that lose and regrow their tails can go overboard and grow back more than one tail — and sometimes they sprout as many as six. Those haywire multiple tails appear a…
Adéle Grosse and her husband found a dead giant squid (Architeuthis dux) while walking on Golden Mile Beach in Britannia Bay, South Africa. When a giant squid washed ashore on a South African beach, one woman’s first instinct was to…
This illustration shows the newly described Cambrian arthropod Xiaocaris luoi, swimming along the ocean floor as they look for their next meal. About 518 million years ago, a fierce shrimp-like creature didn’t brandish just one “knife,” it flashed more than…
The two-legged crocodile relative, which left the fossil footprints in what is now South Korea, may have looked like this. A hefty, 10-foot-long (3 meters) crocodile relative had an odd way of getting around 120 million years ago in what…