Published on May 18, 2014
An incredibly bright supernova spotted in 2010 has been the subject of a stellar mystery until now. A new study shows that the superluminous supernova, called PS1-10afx, was not a new kind of super-radiant stellar explosion, as some scientists thought. Rather, it was the light from a well-studied type of star explosion that just happened to be [...] Read more
Published on May 18, 2014
It was a bizarre phenomenon that troubled researchers for decades – a mysterious under sea ‘quacking’ heard every winter and spring in the depths of the Southern Ocean. But now experts believe they have finally established the origin of the noise. They say that the distinctive duck-like sound is produced by the undersea chatter of Antarctic minke [...] Read more
Published on May 18, 2014
A pair of supermassive black holes in orbit around one another have been spotted by XMM-Newton. This is the first time such a pair have been seen in an ordinary galaxy. They were discovered because they ripped apart a star when the space observatory happened to be looking in their direction. Most massive galaxies in the Universe are thought to [...] Read more
Published on May 18, 2014
Eighteen years ago, scientists in Scotland took the nuclear DNA from the cell of an adult sheep and put it into another sheep's egg cell that had been emptied of its own nucleus. The resulting egg was implanted in the womb of a third sheep, and the result was Dolly, the first clone of a mammal. Dolly's birth set off a huge outpouring of ethical [...] Read more