Newsdesk Archive
After years of pressure from Congress and the scientific community, NASA has finally begun formal mission planning to send both an orbiter, possibly launching as early as 2023, and a follow-up lander mission to the Jovian moon Europa. But the US space agency may not be alone in sending probes Jupiter's moons. Russia now says it is going to Ganymede.
Thirty years ago, a star that went by the designation of SN 1987A collapsed spectacularly, creating a supernova that was visible from Earth. This was the largest supernova to be visible to the naked eye since Kepler’s Supernova in 1604. Today, this supernova remnant (which is located approximately 168,000 light-years away) is being used by astronomers in the Australian Outback to help refine our understanding of stellar explosions.
Humanity has long dreamed of establishing itself on other worlds, even before we started going into space. We’ve talked about colonizing the Moon, Mars, and even establishing ourselves on exoplanets in distant star systems. But what about the other planets in our own backyard? When it comes to the Solar System, there is a lot of potential real estate out there that we don’t really consider.
It’s practically a hive lung. When it’s hot, Asian giant honeybees may chill their colonies through synchronised movements that suck cool air into the nest, then push warm air out.
Related: Honey bee colonies fall by nearly 12% globally
Related: Researchers identify how queen bees repress workers' fertility
For people with diabetes who take insulin, the risk of losing consciousness from low blood sugar is a constant fear. Devices called continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) can alert wearers to dropping levels, but not everyone has access to them. And even among those who do, some prefer a furrier and friendlier alert option: a service dog with special training to alert owners when their blood sugar reaches dangerously low levels.
They move like ghosts along the shorelines of Canada's Vancouver Island, so elusive that people rarely see them lurking in the mossy forests.
British filmmaker Bertie Gregory was one of the lucky ones: He saw coastal wolves—also known as sea wolves—in 2011.
Despite reported differences in appearance and behavior, DNA evidence finds that Namibian desert elephants share the same DNA as African savanna elephants. However, Namibian desert-dwelling elephants should be protected so they can continue to pass on their unique knowledge and survival skills to future generations.
The photo is extraordinary. In waters near the Antarctic peninsula, an enormous humpback whale floats on its back, cradling a Weddell seal on its chest and elevating it above the ocean surface. Only moments earlier, the seal was perilously close to becoming dinner for a group of hungry killer whales.
The debate has finally been put to bed. Wearable brainwave recorders confirm that birds do indeed sleep while flying, but only for brief periods and usually with one half of their brain.
We know several bird species can travel vast distances non-stop, prompting speculation that they must nap mid-flight.
Raising a child with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) can be difficult. Some days feel long and the respite of a peaceful night, so rejuvenating for many, may not come at all. Parents often struggle to get their child to sleep, and once they do, they can’t be sure that they won’t wake up repeatedly during the night.
One way to reduce children's rates of asthma may come from dairy farms, a new study finds. And not just any dairy farms — Amish dairy farms, to be exact.
Kids who grow up in Amish communities have much lower rates of asthma than the general population, potentially thanks to their exposure to the communities' dairy farms at an early age
The brains of overweight middle-aged people resemble brains that are a decade older in healthier people.
A study of 473 adults has found that people who are overweight have less white matter, which connects different brain areas and enables signaling between them. The volume of white matter in the brains of overweight people at 50 were similar to that seen in the brains of lean people at 60.
Punishment for cheating and bribery in the Olympics of Ancient Greece could include fines, public flogging and statewide bans from competition
News broke last week that despite a state-sponsored doping scheme, the Russian delegation would not be wholly disqualified from the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Instead, individual athletes’ fates are being assessed by their respective sporting federations.
Humans are improved by technology. For instance, I’ll venture that you were vaccinated at an early age against multiple diseases, a technology that has altered the biological fabric of your body in such a way as to enhance your performance against various debilitating, even fatal, diseases.
Slow-motion video replays of crimes shown in courtrooms may be distorting the outcomes of trials, according to a US study.
Researchers found that slowing down footage of violent acts caused viewers to see greater intent to harm than when viewed at normal speed.
For nearly a century, historians have argued about whether or not the events in Exodus actually took place, A new find in Israel may hold the key to a new explanation.
When it comes to the prototypical villains of ancient literature, the Egyptians are right up there. Nobody, it seemed, really liked the ancient superpower.
A 5000-year-old rock carving in Norway which depicts a figure on skis has been "damaged forever" by youths who claim they were trying to improve it.
Related: Medieval kids probably made these doodles
Thousands of years ago, a small village in a bog near what is now Cambridge, England was razed by a fire. The flame torched the village's buildings and sending their contents into the muck below.
Did the universe start with a bang or a bounce—or something else entirely? The question of our origins is one of the thorniest in physics, with few answers and lots of speculation and strong feelings. The most popular theory by far is inflation, the notion that the cosmos blew up in size in the first few fractions of a second after it was born in a bang.
Over the past few years, there have been numerous advances, real and controversial, in the field of astrobiology. The recent discovery of thousands of possibly habitable exoplanets has really set the science in motion, but it has also raised some alarms. Are there really so many habitable exoplanets out there, or are we studying them wrong?
Unusual X-ray emissions coming from four old red dwarf stars suggest these old fogeys have something in common with our sun: their magnetic fields are weakening over time, new research shows.
With masses less than half that of the sun, red dwarfs are the smallest of stars (the most massive stars are 100 or more times larger than the sun, according to NASA).
Because of their immense gravity, massive objects bend the spacetime around them, which causes the path of light to be deflected.
When galaxies are aligned this effect can change the way objects look from Earth, for example one galaxy in front of another can make the furthest away appear as a ring instead of a dot.
Related: Einstein’s clock: The doomed black hole to set your watch by
China is planning to build an enormous particle accelerator twice the size and seven times as powerful as CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, according to state media reports. According to China Daily, the new facility will be capable of producing millions of Higgs boson particles - a great deal more than the Large Hadron Collider which originally discovered the ‘God particle’ back in 2012.
The moon just got a little more lonesome. China’s State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND) announced today that its moon rover Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, has finally stopped operating after 31 months on the surface.
Delicate space nets. Probes landing with the force of a bomb. Ice-burrowing tunnellers. These are a few of the robots poised to grab the baton from NASA’s Cassini orbiter in the search for alien life on Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus.
As Cassini prepares for a death dive into Saturn next year, planetary scientists met in Boulder, Colorado, last week to discuss its possible successors.
It can build an entire house in just two days - and never takes tea breaks.
An Australian firm has revealed the Hadrian X, a giant truck mounted building robot that can lay 1,000 bricks an hour, glueing them into place.
Our tech lives are full of pain points, but at least the world's tech geniuses seem committed to solving them. Today who complains about the things that bugged us a decade ago, such as heavy laptops, slow cellular Internet, the inability to do e-mail in planes?
To make it in America, drone delivery will have to master a niche demand. Most of America that has customers is already well-served by logistics. The Postal Service can carry most things at low cost, and for faster shipping, retailers like Amazon will use shipping companies like FedEx or UPS. To make it in America, drones need to deliver a cargo within the same day, and because drones can only carry so much, they need to make sure they’re carrying a cargo that is both tiny and important. So what is it, exactly, that drones could deliver better, faster than anything else?
Blood. Human blood.
None of their colleagues may have noticed, but a computer has. By churning through the police’s own staff records, it has caught signs that an officer is at high risk of initiating an “adverse event” – racial profiling or, worse, an unwarranted shooting.
Related: New database aims to track the global surveillance industry
After reflexively reaching out to grab a hot pan falling from the stove, you may be able to withdraw your hand at the very last moment to avoid getting burned. That is because the brain's executive control can step in to break a chain of automatic commands. Several new lines of evidence suggest that the same may be true when it comes to the reflex of recollection—and that the brain can halt the spontaneous retrieval of potentially painful memories.
For persons suffering from treatment-resistant depression, help may be on the way from an unlikely source — magic mushrooms. Magic mushrooms contain a hallucinogenic drug called psilocybin and are classified as a class A illegal drug in the U.K. along with heroin and cocaine.
Joan of Arc's claim to fame — the mysterious voices she heard and visions she saw during the Hundred Years' War — may actually have been due to a form of epilepsy, Italian researchers suggest.
1.7 million-year-old fossil is one of the oldest known cases of cancer in a human ancestor
Finally, something to say back to that smug party guest who can't stop talking about the paleo diet.
One of the last known populations of woolly mammoths was wiped out 5,600 years ago by a lack of freshwater, research suggests.
Woolly mammoths became extinct in North America and mainland Asia around 10,000 years ago, but a small number of survived on islands lying between Siberia and Alaska which, before sea-level rises, were part of the Bering Land Bridge.
Earlier this year, scientists used zebra finches to pinpoint the gene that enables birds to produce and display the colour red.
Now, a new study shows the same 'red gene' is also found in turtles, which share an ancient common ancestor with birds. Both share a common ancestor with dinosaurs.
A dinosaur has been diagnosed with severe arthritis 70 million years after its death.
Scientists believe the hadrosaur, a plant-eating duck-billed dinosaur, must have endured considerable suffering before reaching the end of its life.
Archaeologists have found the remains of an ancient woman with an elongated skull sparking fresh claims that mankind was once visited by aliens
Experts were left wondering what the cause was for the bizarre shaped-skull, was it a new type of human?
When something as massive as a star vanishes from the depths of space, it is something to note. But it is another thing to suggest the vanishing might have been the work of aliens. Swedish scientists, though, have done just that, finding that a star has pulled a vanishing act in the past five decades, and since they have no idea why, they admit they cannot rule out the possibility that aliens with advanced and sophisticated technology could have been a causative agent.
The universe is 13.8 billion years old, while our planet formed just 4.5 billion years ago. Some scientists think this time gap means that life on other planets could be billions of years older than ours. However, new theoretical work suggests that present-day life is actually premature from a cosmic perspective.
Reason number 9,000 not to colonize Jupiter’s moon Io: not only is it a frigid hellscape covered in eruptive ice volcanoes and lashed by the gas giant’s powerful radiation belts, but the atmosphere just collapsed.
In fact, it collapses all the time, according to observations by astronomers at the Southwest Research Institute
An asteroid set to narrowly miss Earth could cause 'immense suffering and death' years later if its orbit is changed when it passes dangerously near to our planet.
The space rock, called Bennu, crosses Earth's orbit once every six years and is set to pass between the moon and our planet in 2135.
Alt: No, Asteroid Bennu Won't Destroy Earth
Comets are pristine remnants left over from the solar system's formation 4.6 billion years ago, rather than younger fragments created by collisions between larger bodies, a new study suggests.
The finding could lead to a better understanding of how the solar system took shape and evolved, researchers said.
A major revision is required in our understanding of our Milky Way Galaxy according to an international team led by Prof Noriyuki Matsunaga of the University of Tokyo. The Japanese, South African and Italian astronomers find that there is a huge region around the centre of our own Galaxy, which is devoid of young stars.
It's one of the most universal recommendations in all of public health: Floss daily to prevent gum disease and cavities.
Except there's little proof that flossing works.
Alt: Dentists forgot to study flossing for a century, recommended it anyway
There is new evidence that the "mother's curse" - the possibility that moms may transmit genes to their children that harm their sons but not their daughters - holds true in animals.
Such a possibility arises because there are two independent parts of the genome in the eukaryote cells, which are found in plants and animals, and the two are locked in a "conflict-driven molecular arms race" that impacts human health and wellness.
Female orgasm seems to be a happy afterthought of our evolutionary past when it helped stimulate ovulation, a new study of mammals shows.
The role of female orgasm, which plays no obvious role in human reproduction, has intrigued scholars as far back as Aristotle.
The modern human brain evolved in social and environmental settings very unlike today’s. Despite our cultural and technological progress, tribal instincts remain.
We live in a much different world from that in which we evolved. Until very recently, survival for all humans was difficult.
Where there’s fire there’s often smoke – which might have been bad news for Neanderthals and other ancient hominins. Modern humans carry a genetic mutation that reduces our sensitivity to cancer-causing chemicals found in wood smoke. But Neanderthals and Denisovans apparently lacked the mutation.
Our evolutionary cousin is no longer a blundering caveman. Recent research has painted a picture of a human ancestor with culture, art, and advanced cognitive skills.
On August 3, 1908, the first near-complete Neanderthal skeleton was discovered in a cave near the village of La Chapelle-aux-Saints in south central France, during a survey of the region’s Paleolithic archaeological sites.
Strike the invisibility cloak off your wish list. They are impossible to build for human-sized objects, says a new study.
Invisibility cloaks have been a goal for about 10 years, since John Pendry and colleagues at Imperial College London proposed a way to guide light over or around an object using substances with exotic optical properties, called metamaterials.
Auto electronics supplier Delphi Corp. will start testing self-driving vehicles in Singapore next year with a goal of putting them into public use sometime in 2022.
Last May, pictures of a weird, elevated bus that glides above traffic began circulating on the internet. Predictably, everyone freaked out. The so-called “straddling bus” was held up as a solution to China’s notorious traffic problems, but all anyone wanted to talk about was how it looked like the bus was eating cars, or how insane anyone would have to be to actually drive underneath.
What do you so with land that’s been rendered inhabitable by humans? The Ukrainian government has decided the best use of the 1,600 square mile “exclusion zone” surrounding the former Chernobyl nuclear power station is to build one the world’s largest solar power plants, according to Electrek.
Tilted pillars, cracked steps, and sliding stone canopies in a number of 7th-century A.D. temples in northwest India are among the telltale signs that seismologists are using to reconstruct the extent of some of the region's larger historic earthquakes.
Papyrus molders, stone etchings erode, memories wither and histories are rewritten. Teeth remain. Several thousand years from now, our teeth may document our lives more faithfully than any recording technology.
Teeth tell the story of Burial 97-Individual 107, as he's known academically, who lived some 1,400 years ago (600-800 AD) at the Río Viejo archaeological site in the Lower Rií Verde Valley, approximately 10 kilometers from the Pacific Ocean in the modern state of Oaxaca, Mexico.
At least 80 skeletons lie in a mass grave in an ancient Greek cemetery, their wrists clamped by iron shackles.
They are the victims, say archaeologists, of a mass execution. But who they were, how they got there and why they appear to have been buried with a measure of respect - that all remains a mystery.
University of Utah anthropologists counted the number of carbon-dated artifacts at archaeological sites and concluded that a population boom and scarce food explain why people in eastern North America domesticated plants for the first time on the continent about 5,000 years ago.
The health risks associated with sitting for eight or more hours a day -- whether at work, home or commuting -- can be eliminated with an hour or more of physical activity a day, according to a new study.
Are you ready to take it easy with the burgers? A new protein-focused paper confirms that eating red meat may be linked to a higher risk of death. However, replacing animal protein in your diet with plant protein is associated with a decreased risk of death, according to the research, which was published in JAMA Internal Medicine on Monday.
Alt: Eating more plant protein associated with lower risk of death
People with non-celiac wheat sensitivity have a weakened intestinal barrier, which leads to a systemic immune response after ingesting wheat and related cereals, new research confirms.
A new study could explain why DNA and not RNA, its older chemical cousin, is the repository of genetic information. The DNA double helix is a more forgiving molecule that can contort itself into different shapes to absorb chemical damage to the basic building blocks -- A, G, C and T -- of genetic code. In contrast, when RNA is in the form of a double helix, it is so rigid that rather than accommodating damaged bases, it falls apart.
The odd Australian mammal has an intriguing family tree.
If there was a poster animal for diversification, it would have to be the platypus. It looks like an otter that’s gone trick-or-treating as a duck.
Large carnivores around the world are increasingly at risk of going hungry as the prey species they depend on for survival decline, research has shown.
The tiger is one of five land predators with the greatest proportions of threatened prey whose plight was highlighted by researchers.
The mystery of how early humans survived the Ice Age while Neanderthals disappeared into evolutionary oblivion may lie in their choice of outerwear.
A new study suggests that our ancestors had invented cosy fur-lined coats, similar to modern Parkas, while Neanderthals were left shivering in draughty capes.
Alt: Human ancestors outlived their Neanderthal rivals during the Ice Age because they stitched together fur-lined coats similar to Parkas
A new study, which followed 180 pre-term infants from birth to age seven, found that babies who were fed more breast milk within the first 28 days of life had had larger volumes of certain regions of the brain at term equivalent and had better IQs, academic achievement, working memory, and motor function.
Harnessing the immune system to fight cancer, long a medical dream, is becoming a reality. Remarkable stories of tumors melting away and terminal illnesses going into remissions that last years — backed by solid data — have led to an explosion of interest and billions of dollars of investments in the rapidly growing field of immunotherapy.
The ALS Assn. is crediting money raised through the Ice Bucket Challenge for the discovery of a gene's connection to the progressive disease.
Those who accepted the challenge allowed buckets of ice water to be dumped on their heads to raise awareness and money for ALS.
Imagine a world where bots are ubiquitous… a world where nearly every online interaction takes place with a Siri, Alexa, Cortana or some soon-to-be-named artificial being. Here, banking is a breeze, as a customer service bot can quickly extrapolate your banking preferences from your online search history. In this world, your cupboards and refrigerator are always full, because your groceries are reordered every week automatically, based on consumption data.
Over the past few years, multiple neutrino experiments have detected hints for leptonic charge parity (CP) violation—a finding that could help explain why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter. So far, matter-antimatter asymmetry cannot be explained by any physics theory and is one of the biggest unsolved problems in cosmology.
Somewhere, in the deepest reaches of the cosmos, far from the safe confines of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, lies a monster. Slowly, inevitably, it is pulling. Over the course of billions of years, it draws us and everything near us closer to it. The only force that acts over such immense distance scales and through cosmic periods of time is gravity, so whatever it is, it's massive and unrelenting.
Nasa is planning to launch a probe to collect rock samples from an asteroid it fears could one day hit the Earth.
The asteroid, named Bennu, can be seen from Earth as it crosses our orbit every six years.
Newly discovered fossil evidence from Namibia strengthens the proposition that the world's first mass extinction was caused by 'ecosystem engineers' -- newly evolved biological organisms that altered the environment so radically it drove older species to extinction.
The creation of the World Mammoth Center in North-Eastern Federal University (NEFU) will help Korean scientists achieve the cloning of mammoths, according to theUniversity's press service.
Scientists are at the initial stage of mammoth recovery. All data is rigorously tested, after which results are published in science magazines. The second step and the future research already are planned by NEFU academics.
How can we ever know what ancient animals ate? For the first time, the changing diets of elephants in the last two million years in China have been reconstructed, using a technique based on analysis of the surface textures of their teeth.
These ancient kangaroos were not vampires but were a far cry from the modern pocketed hip-hop creatures in Australia.
Two fossils of two new species of ancient kangaroo were discovered in the Riversleigh World Heritage Area of northern Queensland.
Statue dates to before Hazor was built, leading researchers to believe it was a gift or a temple dedication
A team of Archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have discovered a large fragment that once was part of a life-sized ancient Egyptian statue.
Few things about the Icelandic nation are as misrepresented as its ancient belief in the hidden people. Somehow this idea that modern Icelanders believe firmly in the existence of elves gained a bit of traction in the international media a few years back, and the idea snowballed until it seemed that every other media outlet had a “those kooky Icelanders and their elves” story. Yet the elf belief has much deeper and more significant roots that those sensationalized media stories illustrate.
The greatest technological revolution in human history arguably happened about 12,000 years ago, when humans first stopped living as hunter gatherers and became farmers. This so-called Neolithic Revolution transformed human culture, our genomes, and our ecosystems. But the origins of farming have remained a mystery.
A facial reconstruction has been made of a young woman who died more than 3,700 years ago.
The woman's bones, including a skull and teeth, were discovered at Achavanich in Caithness in 1987.
A Neolithic monument and a Bronze Age cemetery are some of the remains spotted from the skies by archaeologists.
Historic England also discovered the remnants of a Roman military camp and medieval settlements.
A team of researchers from several institutions in Hungary has conducted experiments meant to test the possibility that the Vikings actually did use sunstones to navigate. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, the team describes the experiments they carried out, their results and why they now believe it is possible to use a sunstone as a navigational aid during times when the skies are covered with clouds.
Related: 23 shipwrecks discovered off Greece dating from around 1,000 BC to the 19th century AD.
For more than a thousand years the ships of death moldered unseen on the shore of the Baltic Sea, sheltering the bones of dozens of Viking-era young men and a trove of rich possessions.
Now, after analyzing the ships and skeletons, researchers have a chilling new idea to explain how so many men died at the peak of their strength: they were diplomats from central Sweden, killed while on a mission to talk rather than fight.
Music can influence how much you like the taste of beer, according to a study published in Frontiers in Psychology.
Their findings suggest that a range of multisensory information, such as sound, sensation, shape and color, can influence the way we perceive taste.
Related: How a little mathematics can help create some beautiful music
Hypnosis has become a common medical tool, used to reduce pain, help people stop smoking and cure them of phobias.
But scientists have long argued about whether the hypnotic “trance” is a separate neurophysiological state or simply a product of a hypnotized person’s expectations.
Scientists in Singapore have made a big leap on research on the 'mini-brain'. These advanced mini versions of the human midbrain will help researchers develop treatments and conduct other studies into Parkinson's Disease (PD) and aging-related brain diseases.
Researchers have found a way to convert carbon dioxide into a usable energy source. Produced by the burning of fossil fuels in power plants and car engines, carbon dioxide continues to accumulate in the atmosphere, warming the planet. But trees and other plants do slowly capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, converting it to sugars that store energy.
The world’s first electric highway was opened in Gävle, central Sweden, and it was an electrically-powered G 360 4 x 2 truck from Scania which made the inaugural journey.
Norway has hatched ambitious plans to install the world’s first floating underwater tunnels to help travelers easily cross the nation’s many fjords. At present, the only way to travel across the bodies of water involves taking a series of ferries – an inconvenient and time-consuming process. The “submerged floating bridges” would consist of large tubes suspended under 100 feet of water, and each one will be wide enough for two lanes of traffic.
Plastic bag use has plummeted in England since the introduction of a 5p charge last year, the government has said.
In the six months after the levy was brought in last October, 640 million plastic bags were used in seven major supermarkets in England, it says.
We are standing above the new Sorek desalination plant, the largest reverse-osmosis desal facility in the world, and we are staring at Israel’s salvation. Just a few years ago, in the depths of its worst drought in at least 900 years, Israel was running out of water. Now it has a surplus.
Australia will adjust its latitude and longitude, a government science body says, to put the vast country into alignment with global navigation satellite systems.
First a heatwave hit Siberia. Then came the anthrax.
Temperatures have soared in western Russia’s Yamal tundra this summer. Across Siberia, some provinces warmed an additional 10 degrees Fahrenheit beyond normal. In the fields, large bubbles of vegetation appeared above the melting permafrost — strange pockets of methane or, more likely, water.
Related: Green monkeys acquired Staphylococcus aureus from humans
Deep underground, on the north-east coast of England, a team of scientists is monitoring cosmic rays to measure the carbon dioxide stored in the rocks above
Gullies that lace the surface of Mars appear similar to those carved out on Earth by flowing water — but a new a deep look at the Red Planet turned up no evidence that the life-giving liquid is the cause of the Martian features.
Related: Have sea creatures been spotted on MARS? Alien hunters claim 'seashells' are evidence ancient ocean once had life
Traces of manganese found in rocks on Mars could be indicators that there was once oxygen on the Red Planet
There are a lot of rocks on Mars, and most of them wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. But one in particular has revealed new insights about the ancient Martian atmosphere.
Long-term human colonization of Mars is feasible, as long as Red Planet pioneers "live off the land," a recent NASA report concludes.
"There are massive resources on Mars obtainable from the atmosphere and extracted from the regolith which are capable of supporting human colonization,"
Bad news would-be astronauts: Traveling into deep space could be bad for your heart.
In a study published Thursday in Scientific Reports, researchers found that astronauts who went to the moon were almost five times more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than astronauts who remained in low-Earth orbit on the International Space Station.
It is hard to know whether it’s a success or a failure but modern astronomy tells us that almost three quarters of the universe is in the form of an unknown substance called “dark energy”.
Astronomers have puzzled over the lack of large craters on our nearest dwarf planet. Has a computer simulation helped reveal their fate?
When Nasa’s Dawn spacecraft arrived at Ceres last year the images it beamed back were puzzling. The nearest dwarf planet to Earth was missing the massive craters that astronomers thought would heavily scar the surface.
A team of astronomers from the University of Manchester, the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and the University of Bonn have uncovered a hidden stellar birthplace in a nearby spiral galaxy, using a telescope in Chile. The results show that the speed of star formation in the centre of the galaxy - and other galaxies like it - may be much higher than previously thought.