Astronomers Solve Mystery Of Enormous Space Blob and other top stories.

• Astronomers Solve Mystery Of Enormous Space Blob

  

  It’s a happy day when astronomers figure out what’s up with an enormous space blob — and the answer doesn’t imply the immediate destruction of humanity. A cosmological simulation of a Lyman alpha blob that traces the evolution of gas and dark matter from a central star-forming region. Image: J.Geach/D.Narayanan/R.Crain You probably haven’t heard of SSA22-Lyman-alpha blob 1, but rest assured, telescope jockeys have been scratching their heads over it for years. Now, a team of astronomers has fi..

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• NASA: 'surprising activity' on Europa

  

  Alien Ocean: NASA?s Mission to Europa3:09Could a liquid water ocean beneath the surface of Jupiter?s moon Europa have the ingredients to support life? Here's how NASA's mission to Europa would find out. Courtesy NASA. NASA’s Hubble Telescope has detected some surprising activity on Jupiter’s moon, Europa.NASA has a big announcement to make. The US space agency issued a press release early Thursday morning telling the world it had some noteworthy news to tell us about Europa.In a sparsely worded..

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• Amazing animal photos you can't miss in the the Royal Society Publishing Photo Competition

  

  2016 Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition Picture: Jonathan Diaz-Marba. In search of food – Runner up: Behaviour. I watched feeding griffon vultures searching inside the ribcage of a large mammal. I tried my luck using the camera inside the carcass, shooting from a hide with the help of a trigger wire. Andorra, Spain.2016 Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition Picture: Imre Potyó. Dancing with stars – Overall winner and Winner: Behaviour. This photo captures the courtship d..

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• Canadian, Chinese scientists teleport quantum information

  

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• How scientists read an ancient and fragile biblical scroll without unrolling it

  

  When it was discovered in Israel in 1970, the En-Gedi scroll was clearly in no shape to be read: It had been found in the Holy Ark of a Jewish community dating to around 700 BC and had burned along with the rest of the settlement in the year 600. The scroll was little more than a tiny, charred lump of animal parchment. To unroll those lumps of ancient scroll would be unthinkable, as the gentlest touch might crumble the text to dust.Now, more than 40 years later, researchers at the University of..

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• Rare jellyfish-shaped sprite lightning flashes above storm clouds

  

  Rare jellyfish-shaped sprite lightning flashes above storm cloudsAn otherworldly flash of light appears in a thunderstorm, giving a glimpse at a strange and rare weather phenomenon.

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• UQ and NASA team up to study Great Barrier Reef

  

  University of Queensland researchers are playing a key role in a NASA airborne mission designed to transform understanding of earth's valuable and ecologically sensitive coral reefs. The mission has set up shop in Australia for a two-month investigation of the Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest reef ecosystem, using UQ’s Heron Island Research Station as one of its bases. Scientists from NASA's Coral Reef Airborne Laboratory (CORAL) mission and their Australian collaborators discussed the mi..

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• Breathtaking photos from the International Space Station remind us of our common home

  

  During the 50 years we have been able take photos of Earth from space, we have become somewhat blase about the little blue planet on which we live.However, a new series of photos released by the International Space Station and the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration remind us just how beautiful our home really is. The International Space Station camera captures a nighttime view of the Strait of Gibraltar with a Russian Soyuz spacecraft (left) and Progress spacecraft in the for..

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• World-first genome study reveals rich history of Aboriginal Australians

  

  World-first genome study reveals rich history of Aboriginal Australians By Dani Cooper, additional reporting by Tom Forbes Updated September 22, 2016 07:40:00 The most comprehensive genomic study of Indigenous Australians to date has revealed modern humans are all descendants of a single wave of migrants who left Africa about 72,000 years ago. Key pointsAboriginal and Papuan ancestors left Africa around 72,000 years agoArrived on supercontinent 'Sahul' around 50..

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