Magnetic Field Was Critical For Life On The Early Earth and other top stories.

• Magnetic Field Was Critical For Life On The Early Earth

  Nearly four billion years ago, life arose on Earth. Life appeared because our planet had a rocky surface, liquid water, and a blanketing atmosphere. But life thrived thanks to another necessary ingredient: the presence of a protective magnetic field. A new study of the young, Sun-like star Kappa Ceti shows that a magnetic field plays a key role in making a planet conducive to life. “To be habitable, a planet needs warmth, water, and it needs to be sheltered from a young, violent Sun,” says l..

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• VLA observes earliest stages of planet formation

  

  New stellar imagery showcases what scientists believe are the earliest stages of planet formation. The star HL Tau, which lies 450 million light-years from Earth, is just one million years old — an infant in cosmic time. An image collected by Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in 2014 showed orbital lanes beginning to form in HL Tau’s circumstellar disk of gas and dust. The lanes suggested the star’s circumstellar disk was also a protoplanetary disk. But ALMA was only able to..

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• Climate science still to answer the frost 'enigma'

  

  World renowned physicists, climate scientists and international researchers denounced Australia’s science policies and funding cuts during the World Science Festival (WSF) in Brisbane, according to theSBS . After a series of federal budget cuts in 2014, Australia’s federally financed science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), faces new financial hurdles when the government announced a shift from climate research to focus more on commercial enter..

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• Madagascar lemurs could help us explore farthest reaches of space – leading neuroscientists

  

  Human hibernation is one of the toughest stumbling blocks on the way to proper space exploration, which requires lengthy periods to reach distant worlds. But a team of neuroscientists believe little furry mammals could hold the key. Not only are long-haul flights incredibly mentally and physically taxing, they also require an immense load of resources on board the spacecraft – water, food and oxygen. Keeping the crew in low-metabolism sleep has been researched for a good 40 years,..

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• 'Savage predator' discovered by australian paleontologist in northwestern Alberta

  

  The fossils of a dog-sized dinosaur with lethal claws have been unearthed in Northwestern Alberta in Canada. The new species, which is a cousin of theVelociraptor, was named Boreonykus. The fossils were discovered by an Australian paleontologist at the Pipestone Creek bonebed, which is a massive grave site of the herbivore Pachyrhinosaurus lakustai dinosaur that lived about 73 million years ago. The fossilized bones of the Boreonykus were unearthed from the piles of another dinosaur’s bones...

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• Even Low neonicotinoid Exposure Makes It Harder For Bees To Learn And Remember

  

  Bumblebees exposed to low levels of neonicotinoid insecticide collected more pollen but they took significantly longer than unexposed bees to do so. Researchers said that this is because pesticides are altering the way bees learn and remember. Even low exposure to pesticides can seriously disrupt foraging behavior in bees. New research reveals that exposure to pesticides significantly alters flower choices, learning abilities and ability to extract nectar and pollen in bumblebees. While bumb..

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