New digital techniques have allowed researchers to predict structural evolution of the skull in the lineage of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, in an effort to fill in blanks in the fossil record, and provide the first 3D rendering of their last common ancestor. The study suggests populations that led to the lineage split were older […]

Many genetic mutations in visual pigments, spread over millions of years, were required for humans to evolve from a primitive mammal with a dim, shadowy view of the world into a greater ape able to see all the colors in a rainbow. Now, after more than two decades of painstaking research, scientists have finished a […]

Islamabad: Humans have taken spiders into space more than once to study the importance of gravity to their web-building. What originally began as a somewhat unsuccessful PR experiment for high school students has yielded the surprising insight that light plays a larger role in arachnid orientation than previously thought. The spider experiment by the US […]

Islamabad: Our solar system hosts a cornucopia of worlds, from the hellfire of Venus to the frozen plains of Mars to the mighty winds of Uranus. In that range, the Earth stands alone, with no planet coming close to its life-friendly position near the Sun. Outside our solar system, however, it’s a different story. Observations […]

Islamabad: Astronomers are still searching for a hypothetical “Planet Nine” in the distant reaches of our solar system, but an exoplanet 336 light years from Earth is looking more and more like the Planet Nine of its star system.Planet Nine, potentially 10 times the size of Earth and orbiting far beyond Neptune in a highly […]

Islamabad: Since astronomers confirmed the presence of planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanets, humanity has wondered how many could harbor life. Now, we’re one step closer to finding an answer. According to new research using data from NASA’s retired planet-hunting mission, the Kepler space telescope, about half the stars similar in temperature to our […]

Islamabad: New work led by Carnegie’s Matt Clement reveals the likely original locations of Saturn and Jupiter. These findings refine our understanding of the forces that determined our Solar System’s unusual architecture, including the ejection of an additional planet between Saturn and Uranus, ensuring that only small, rocky planets, like Earth, formed inward of Jupiter. […]

Islamabad: What do mercury levels in dolphins say about mercury levels in humans? Quite a bit, according to a new study by scientists at FAU Harbor Branch, which sheds light on the potential dangers of consuming locally caught seafood. This is the first time that researchers have closed the loop between marine mammal and human […]

Islamabad: The MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile has captured a richly colourful view of the bright star cluster NGC 3532. Some of the stars still shine with a hot bluish colour, but many of the more massive ones have become red giants and glow with a rich orange hue. NGC […]

Islamabad: The emergence of life is a mystery. Nevertheless, researchers agree that water is a precondition for life. The first cell emerged in water and then evolved to form multicellular organism. The oldest known single-cell organism on Earth is about 3.5 billion years old. So far, so good. But if life emerged in water, where […]

Islamabad: In a genome comparison conducted by a working group led by molecular biologist Leopold Eckhart of the University Department of Dermatology at MedUni Vienna, it was discovered that genes for important skin proteins arose in a common ancestor shared by humans and turtles 310 million years ago. The study has now been published in […]

Islamabad: Is Earth more likely or less likely to be hit by an asteroid or comet now as compared to, say, 20 million years ago?Several studies have claimed to have found periodic variations, with the probability of giant impacts increasing and decreasing in a regular pattern. Now a new analysis by Coryn Bailer-Jones from the […]

A team of scientists, including researchers from the California Academy of Sciences, has reconstructed a detailed “tree of life” for turtles. The specifics of how turtles are related — to one another, to other reptiles, and even to dinosaurs — have been hotly debated for decades. Next generation sequencing technologies in Academy labs have generated […]

Islamabad: The surface of the sun has been surprisingly calm of late — with fewer sunspots than anytime in in the last century — prompting curious scientists to wonder just what it might mean here on Earth. Sunspots have been observed for millennia — first by Chinese astronomers and then, for the first time with […]

Islamabad: What might look like a colossal jet shooting away from a galaxy turns out to be an illusion. New data from the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) reveal that two galaxies, one lying behind the other, have been masquerading as one. In a new image highlighting the chance alignment, […]

Islamabad: How hot is the Universe today? How hot was it before? A new study by an international team of researchers, including members of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU), suggests that the mean temperature of gas in large structures of the Universe has increased about 3 times […]

Islamabad: Mars once had oceans but is now bone-dry, leaving many to wonder how the water was lost. University of Arizona researchers have discovered a surprisingly large amount of water in the upper atmosphere of Mars, where it is rapidly destroyed, explaining part of this Martian mystery. Shane Stone, a graduate student in the UArizona […]

Beijing: China’s manned space program has entered the mission preparation stage with the selection of a new group of 18 reserve astronauts. According to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), the reserve astronauts, including one female, have been selected recently from 2,500 candidates. Among them are seven spacecraft pilots, seven space flight engineers and four […]

Islamabad: An expedition to probe the deep recesses of a cave that may contain fossilized specimens of early humans is currently underway in South Africa. An international team of paleoanthropologists is exploring the Rising Star Cave at a site in South Africa dubbed the Cradle of Humankind, which is located roughly 25 miles (40 kilometers) […]

Islamabad: Water has not flowed across Antarctica’s Friis Hills for 14 million years, researchers reported at the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting in Denver. The Friis Hills rise 2,000 feet (600 meters) above Antarctica’s Taylor Valley, one of the “Dry Valleys” west of McMurdo Sound. Fossils show tundra mosses and a lake once covered […]

Islamabad: Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope, an international team of astronomers have found the hottest and most massive double star with components so close that they touch each other.The two stars in the extreme system VFTS 352 could be heading for a dramatic end, during which the two stars either coalesce to create a single […]

Islamabad: Griffith University academics are challenging the foundations of quantum science with a radical new theory based on the existence of, and interactions between, parallel universes. In a paper published in the journal Physical Review X, Professor Howard Wiseman and Dr Michael Hall from Griffith’s Centre for Quantum Dynamics, and Dr Dirk-Andre Deckert from the […]

Islamabad: Earth came early to the party in the evolving universe. According to a new theoretical study, when our solar system was born 4.6 billion years ago only eight percent of the potentially habitable planets that will ever form in the universe existed. And, the party won’t be over when the sun burns out in […]

Islamabad: A team of scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has made the most detailed global map yet of the glow from a planet orbiting another star, revealing secrets of air temperatures and water.The map provides information about temperatures at different layers of the world’s atmosphere and traces the amount and distribution of water vapor […]

Islamabad: Scientists using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have produced new maps of Jupiter that show the continuing changes in its famous Great Red Spot. The images also reveal a rare wave structure in the planet’s atmosphere that has not been seen for decades.The new image is the first in a series of annual portraits […]

Covert Report The latest global health challenge has revealed what many in the tech industry have long known — digital transformation is changing the landscape of business. Once a mere line item on business plans, the coronavirus pandemic has moved digitization from consideration to requirement.While many executives have digitized parts of their business, we’re entering […]

Newswire Islamabad: Earth-like planets orbiting close to small stars probably have magnetic fields that protect them from stellar radiation and help maintain surface conditions that could be conducive to life, according to research from astronomers at the University of Washington.A planet’s magnetic field emanates from its core and is thought to deflect the charged particles […]

Islamabad: Certain primordial stars – those between 55,000 and 56,000 times the mass of our Sun, or solar masses — may have died unusually. In death, these objects – among the Universe’s first-generation of stars — would have exploded as supernovae and burned completely, leaving no remnant black hole behind. Astrophysicists at the University of […]