With a growing number of Earth-like exoplanets discovered in recent years, it is becoming increasingly frustrating that we can’t visit them. After all, our knowledge of the planets in our own solar system would be pretty limited if it weren’t for the space probes we’d sent to explore them.
With an estimated lifespan of 400 years, the Greenland shark has just been reported to be the longest-lived vertebrate on the planet. This is only the latest of a series of recent findings that push the boundaries of animal longevity, and it raises the perennial question of what factors enable some animals to achieve what we might call extreme longevity – lifespans that can be measured in centuries.
Scientists have long tried to explain the origin of a mysterious, large and anomalously cold region of the sky. In 2015, they came close to figuring it out as a study showed it to be a “supervoid” in which the density of galaxies is much lower than it is in the rest of the universe. However, other studies haven’t managed to replicate the result.
Bees are pretty good at maths – as far as insects go, at least. We already know, for example, that they can count up to four and even understand the concept of zero. But in a new study, published today in the Journal of Experimental Biology, we show honeybees can also understand numbers higher than four – as long as we provide feedback for both correct and incorrect responses as they learn.
An international team of astronomers filmed a small, flashing black hole in our Milky Way using unique, specialized high-speed cameras. The stellar black hole feeds on material from a nearby star and flashes hundreds of times per second. The researchers publish their findings in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters.
