More from Laura Baisas (Page 11)

A 2010 image captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows water from the subsurface ocean of Saturn’s moon Enceladus spraying from huge fissures out into space. The spacecraft sampled icy particles and scientists are continuing to make new discoveries from the data.
Moons

More evidence for key ingredients to life detected on Saturn’s moon Enceladus

By Laura Baisas

The Wakayama Soryu was about the size of a great white shark and lived more than 72 million years ago.
Animals

This ‘blue dragon’ sliced through the ancient Pacific with paddle-like fins

By Laura Baisas

This image from the Near-Infrared Camera instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope shows the central portion of the star cluster IC 348. The wispy curtains filling the image are interstellar material reflecting the light from the cluster’s stars. The bright star closest to the center of the frame is actually a pair of type B stars in a binary system, which are the most massive stars in the cluster. Winds from these stars may help sculpt the large loop seen on the right side of the field of view.
Deep Space

Record-breaking ‘failed star’ spotted by JWST

By Laura Baisas

A bearded seal swimming in Arctic waters in Svalbard, Norway. Their name comes from the long and sensitive facial whiskers that they use to find food.
Animals

Arctic seals have special noses

By Laura Baisas

Two people hold coffee cups while looking at a a sunrise.
Biology

Neanderthals may have been early risers

By Laura Baisas

The skull of a Swedish Viking dating back to the 10th through 12th Century CE undergoes a dental examination.
Archaeology

Vikings filed their teeth to cope with pain

By Laura Baisas

Stop using homeopathic eye drops
Health

Stop using homeopathic eye drops

By Laura Baisas

A bird called a green honeycreeper stands on a tree branch. It has blue male plumage on its left side and green female plumage on its right.
Animals

Rare bird with half male and half female plumage photographed in Colombia

By Laura Baisas

A man holes a 14-inch goldfish removed from the Niagara River.
Animals

Releasing pet goldfish into the wild has serious consequences

By Laura Baisas

A new high-definition image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam unveils intricate details of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A and shows the expanding shell of material slamming into the gas shed by the star before it exploded.
Deep Space

JWST releases new image of famous supernova remnant—with a twist

By Laura Baisas

An illustration of a tall two-legged dinosaur called Gorgosaurus libratus eating a small bird-like dinosaur called Citipes elegans. The smaller dinosaur's legs are still visible as the Gorgosaurus swallows the Citipes.
Biology

This teenage tyrannosaur had a stomach full of dino drumsticks

By Laura Baisas

Paleontologist Martin Lockley sits in front of a rock with dinosaur claw marks and shows how dinosaurs must have clawed into the rock during a mating ceremony where they made pseudo nests for potential mates.
Animals

Why dinosaur footprints inspired paleontologist Martin Lockley

By Laura Baisas

A researcher handles a petri dish while observing a CRISPR/Cas9 process through a stereomicroscope at the Max-Delbrueck-Centre for Molecular Medicine.
Diseases

FDA approves the first gene-editing treatment in the US

By Laura Baisas

Apollo 16 lunar landing mission commander John W. Young leaps from the lunar surface as he salutes the United States flag. The flag is located at the Descartes landing site during the first Apollo 16 extravehicular activity.
Moons

Why scientists think it’s time to declare a new lunar epoch

By Laura Baisas

Finely ground bits of coffee come out of a red coffee grinder.
Health

Chemists and volcanologists want you to make a better espresso

By Laura Baisas

A circular grey fossil with long linear grooves on it.
Animals

Fossil first identified as plant is actually a baby turtle

By Laura Baisas

Waves on the ocean.
Climate Change

Warming oceans could thaw trapped ‘fire-ice’

By Laura Baisas

A sample of baboon skulls dating back 2,500 to 2,800 years in southern Egypt.
Animals

Ancient Egyptians likely kept baboons in captivity—and mummified them

By Laura Baisas

A dark-furred mouse looks into a mirror.
Animals

Mice may be able to recognize their own reflections

By Laura Baisas

Glowing blue lights of the tiny ostracods move in sync with one another.
Animals

Watch the mucus-filled, synchronized mating dance of bioluminescent ‘sea fireflies’

By Laura Baisas

A dinosaur called poposaurus walks near some trees. The dinosaur comes from a group of extinct relatives of the crocodile known as Poposauroidea.
Animals

Tracing the crocodiles’ curious evolutionary family tree

By Laura Baisas

A mosquito encased in yellow-hued amber.
Animals

Millions of years ago, male mosquitoes may have been blood suckers too

By Laura Baisas

A woman in pain puts her hands up to her nosed with her eyes closed.
Health

It’s stuffy nose season. Here’s how to cope

By Laura Baisas

A white axolotl in a tank. Axolotls are sometimes called the ‘Peter Pan of amphibians’ since they do not go through a traditional metamorphosis and keep larval traits like their signature gills.
Animals

Go (virtually) adopt an axolotl, the ‘Peter Pan’ of amphibians

By Laura Baisas

The last full moon of 2022 rises through a clear sky, past a string of festive lights. The moon is positioned at the center of a star made up of white Christmas lights.
Science

Two meteor showers and a bright Mercury to light up December’s sky

By Laura Baisas

A woman laying down in an fMRI machine. Patients in the study were examined using an fMRI machine such as this one. fMRI is a noninvasive way to measure and map activity in the brain.
Health

PTSD patients’ brains work differently when recalling traumatic experiences

By Laura Baisas

A cicada sitting on a green leaf. The insect has bright orange eyes and large wings. Cicadas live underground for 13 or 17 years, before emerging to mate.
Animals

Fiber optic cables can pick up cicadas’ droning din

By Laura Baisas

A French bulldog standing in a pile of leaves.
Animals

An unknown respiratory illness is sickening dogs in the US, but ‘don’t panic’

By Laura Baisas

A large rat stands on a tree trunk at night. The Vangunu giant rat is the first new species of rodent described from Solomon Islands in over 80 years.
Animals

A legendary Vangunu giant rat was finally caught on camera

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s impression showing the HH 1177 system. The young and massive stellar object glowing in the center is collecting matter from a dusty disc while also expelling matter in powerful jets. This is the first time a disc around a young star has been discovered in another galaxy.
Science

Astronomers spot an extragalactic star with a disc around it for the first time

By Laura Baisas

A photomicrograph of Chlamydia trachomatis taken from a urethral scrape. If left untreated, chlamydia can cause severe and costly reproductive and other health problems.
Diseases

FDA authorizes at-home chlamydia and gonorrhea test for the first time

By Laura Baisas

An orange California newt sits on a rock. The amphibians are endemic to California.
Animals

Female Taricha newts are more poisonous than males

By Laura Baisas

A newborn rhino calf stands under his mother. He is black and does not have his signature horns in yet.
Animals

A critically endangered Sumatran rhino named Delilah welcomes first calf

By Laura Baisas

Six African penguins standing on a rock. They have white plumage with black dots arranged in individual patterns on their chests.
Animals

African penguins may tell each other apart by the spots in their plumage

By Laura Baisas

A woman scratches her forearm.
Health

How an unbalanced skin microbiome can make you itch

By Laura Baisas

An artist's rendering of a trilobite based on preserved soft body parts. The animal has two antennae protruding from its head and is oval-shaped.
Animals

10 new species of trilobite fossil rise from volcanic ash

By Laura Baisas

A man with his head in his hands.
Health

Why does red wine cause headaches? It may be flavanol’s fault

By Laura Baisas

The bones of sacrificed horses found in the courtyard of Casas del Turuñuelo site in Badajoz, Spain.
Archaeology

Over 6,000 sacrificed animal bones tell a story of Iron Age Spain

By Laura Baisas

A mature Megasyllis nipponica with a developing female stolon.
Animals

Why these sea worms detach their butts to reproduce

By Laura Baisas

An aquatic nematode living in pond water among cyanobacteria. The small worms are sometimes trapped and eaten by carnivorous fungi.
Biology

These tiny worms are no match for carnivorous fungi

By Laura Baisas

The full view of the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument reveals a 50 light-years-wide portion of the Milky Way’s dense center. An estimated 500,000 stars shine in this image of the Sagittarius C region, along with some as-yet unidentified features. A vast region of ionized hydrogen, shown in cyan, wraps around an infrared-dark cloud, which is so dense that it blocks the light from distant stars behind it. Intriguing needle-like structures in the ionized hydrogen emission lack any uniform orientation. Researchers note the surprising extent of the ionized region, covering about 25 light-years.
Deep Space

Chaotic region shines bright with 500,000 stars in new JWST image

By Laura Baisas

Colorful eyes of different animals; illustration
Animals

How do animals see the world?

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s concept of the Milky Way, which is a spiral galaxy that has a defined center. The spiral arms are made up of stars that can be wound tightly or loosely.
Science

Elliptical galaxies may just be spiral galaxies with their arms lobbed off

By Laura Baisas

A serotine bat with its mouth open, showing teeth. Serotine bats are widely spread throughout Europe and Asia and have a 15 inch wingspan.
Animals

Scientists are confounded by the sex lives of serontine bats

By Laura Baisas

A woman in a puffy coat points in a direction. Her small dog looks excitedly in that direction. They are sitting in a park with oranges leaves on green grass.
Animals

Why dogs usually can’t tell what you’re pointing at

By Laura Baisas

An extreme close up of a mosquito biting human skin.
Animals

How ingredients in everyday soap could help fight malaria

By Laura Baisas

A researcher handles a petri dish while observing a CRISPR/Cas9 process through a stereomicroscope at the Max-Delbrueck-Centre for Molecular Medicine.
Diseases

The UK becomes the first country to approve CRISPR treatment

By Laura Baisas

Two wild bonobos sit in a tree. Researchers examined pro-social behaviors of the smaller species of great ape in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Animals

Wild bonobos show surprising signs of cooperation between groups

By Laura Baisas

A black and white photograph of the The HMAS Culgoa. The vessel was a Modified River Class Frigate, sometimes known as the Bay Class. The Australian naval vessel was launched in September 1945 and was decommissioned in April 1954.
Cancer

Lung cancer in naval personnel linked to asbestos exposure

By Laura Baisas

A bioluminescent sea cucumber called Scotoplanes or the “sea pig.”
Animals

Surprise! These sea cucumbers glow

By Laura Baisas

A piping plover walks along L Street Beach in South Boston. The bird is small, with white and grey plummage.
Animals

Piping plovers are in trouble, but there’s some good news

By Laura Baisas

UNCOVER z-13 and UNCOVER z-12 are the second and fourth most distant galaxy ever observed. The James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) helped confirm their existence within Pandora’s Cluster (Abell 2744). They are shown here as near-infrared wavelengths of light that have been translated to visible-light colors.
Deep Space

JWST spots two of the most distant galaxies astronomers have ever seen

By Laura Baisas

Attenborough's long-beaked echidna, photographed by a camera trap.
Animals

Elusive egg-laying mammal caught on camera for the first time

By Laura Baisas

Space Telescope with visible-light data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The resulting wavelength coverage, from 0.4 to 5 microns, reveals a vivid landscape of galaxies whose colors give clues to galaxy distances: The bluest galaxies are relatively nearby and often show intense star formation, as best detected by Hubble, while the redder galaxies tend to be more distant, or else contain copious amount of dust, as detected by JWST.
Deep Space

‘Christmas tree’ galaxy shines in new image from Hubble and JWST

By Laura Baisas

A lateral view of Loncovilius carlsbergi. It is a six-limbed beetle less than an inch long, with two antennae protruding from its head.
Animals

These newfound beetles have male genitals shaped like a bottle opener

By Laura Baisas

An Anna’s hummingbird with bright pink plumage flies near some leafy green trees.
Animals

Hummingbirds have two creative strategies for flying through tight spaces

By Laura Baisas

A horizonal view of an injectable medication called Zepbound from pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly.
Diabetes

What is Zepbound? Here’s how the newly FDA-approved weight loss drug works.

By Laura Baisas

A colorized image of the newly discovered satellite virus latched onto its helper virus. The helper virus is larger and shown in a dark blue, while the satellite virus is smaller and purple. It is attached at the "neck" of the helper virus.
Biology

Virus observed sucking on another virus’ ‘neck’ for the first time

By Laura Baisas

A side view of a great white shark. Regional endothermy in fish has been seen in apex predators like the great white sharks or giant tuna.
Animals

Megalodon’s warm-blooded relatives are still circling the oceans today

By Laura Baisas

A louse on human hair under a microscope. Humans and lice have coevolved for thousands of years. The oldest human louse known to scientists is a 10,000 year-old specimen from Brazil.
Animals

What head lice can tell us about human migration

By Laura Baisas

This square astronomical image is divided horizontally by a waving line between a white-orange cloudscape forming a nebula along the bottom portion and a comparatively blue-purple-pink upper portion. From the nebula in the bottom half of the image, an orange cloud shaped like a horsehead sticks out. In the bottom left of the image, a white round glow is visible. The clouds from the bottom half of the image shine purple/blue light into the upper half. The top of the image shows the black expanse of space. Speckled across both portions is a starfield, showing stars of varying sizes and colors. Blue stars are younger and red stars are older.
Deep Space

Euclid telescope spies shimmering stars and galaxies in its first look at the ‘dark’ universe

By Laura Baisas

Astronomers found the most distant black hole ever detected in X-rays (in a galaxy dubbed UHZ1) using the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the James Webb Space Telescope. X-ray emission is a telltale signature of a growing supermassive black hole. This result may explain how some of the first supermassive black holes in the universe formed. These images show the galaxy cluster Abell 2744 that UHZ1 is located behind, in X-rays from Chandra and infrared data from JWST, as well as close-ups of the black hole host galaxy UHZ1.
Black Holes

Farthest black hole ever recorded by astronomers is nearly as old as our universe

By Laura Baisas

A sample of Asteroid Bennu is put on public display for the first time at the Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, on November 3, 2023. A sample collected from the 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid Bennu contains abundant water and carbon, NASA revealed, offering more evidence for the theory that life on Earth was seeded from outer space. The small black rock is located in a glass viewing pain.
NASA

Smithsonian unveils a very small sample of the 4.5-billion-year-old Bennu asteroid

By Laura Baisas

A baby loggerhead turtle pokes out of a shell on the sand. Its head and front flippers are out of the shell, with the lower half remaining inside.
Animals

Endangered sea turtles build hundreds of nests on the Outer Banks

By Laura Baisas