An international team of astronomers has found a brown dwarf that is more than 99% hydrogen and helium. Described as ultra-cool, it has a temperature of just 400 degrees Celsius and its discovery could be a key step forward in helping astronomers distinguish between brown dwarfs and giant planets. The researchers publish their work in…
“Shocking” find may redraw picture of solar system’s cosmic shield.
Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society’s intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at…
One of Europe’s main contributions to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is built and ready to ship to the US. The Mid-Infrared Instrument (Miri) will gather key data as the $9 billion observatory seeks to identify the first starlight in the Universe. James Webb – regarded as the successor to Hubble – is due…
Not long ago, the story was simple. A vanguard of modern humans left their African birthplace 50,000–60,000 years ago and quickly conquered Asia. They turned left into Europe some 40,000 years ago, later crossing the Bering Strait and marching southward into the Americas. With their advance, Neanderthals and other earlier peoples dwindled and vanished. But…
U.S. eighth graders did slightly better last year on a national science test than did their counterparts in 2009. But what that result says about the state of science in U.S. schools is open to debate. A 2-point rise to 152 (on a scale from 0 to 300) is part of what Jack Buckley, head…
In his latest book The Moral Molecule, neuroeconomist Paul Zak describes oxytocin’s role in trust, bonding and even virtuous behavior. New Scientist caught up with him about avoiding the term “the cuddle chemical” and trying not to make a bride faint on her wedding day.
As many working people and students can attest, the sound of the alarm clock in the morning can mean an unpleasant jolt out of a nice deep sleep. And disrupting the body’s internal clock in this way can lead to a higher risk of becoming overweight or obese, according to a new European study published…
The intense energy and winds from gigantic black holes can block the birth of stars as scientists have long suspected, a new analysis of distant galaxies reveals. Most galaxies, including our own Milky Way, are thought to have supermassive black holes at their hearts. Some of these monster black holes are relatively calm, but others,…
A team of American, Canadian and Chilean astronomers have stumbled onto a remarkably faint cluster of stars orbiting the Milky Way that puts out as much light as only 120 modest Sun-like stars. The tiny cluster, called Munoz 1, was discovered near a dwarf galaxy in a survey of satellites around the Milky Way using…