ScienceDaily: Most Popular News

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• Touchdown! Rosetta’s Philae probe lands on comet
• Why 'I'm so happy I could cry' makes sense
• Playing action video games can boost learning, study finds
• Baby photos of a scaled-up solar system
• Odor that smells like blood: Single component powerful trigger for large carnivores
• Lighter, cheaper radio wave device could transform telecommunications
• Astronomers discover first 'lightning' from a black hole
• True story behind galactic crash revealed
• Plants return to Earth after growing in space
• Koala study reveals clues about origins of the human genome
• Blue-eyed humans have a single, common ancestor

Touchdown! Rosetta’s Philae probe lands on comet Posted: 12 Nov 2014 09:48 AM PST The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission has soft-landed its Philae probe on a comet, the first time in history that such an extraordinary feat has been achieved. After a tense wait during the seven-hour descent to the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the signal confirming the successful touchdown arrived on Earth at 16:03 GMT (17:03 CET).

Why 'I'm so happy I could cry' makes sense Posted: 11 Nov 2014 09:40 AM PST The phrase 'tears of joy' never made much sense to one American psychologist. But after conducting a series of studies of such seemingly incongruous expressions, she now understands better why people cry when they are happy.

Playing action video games can boost learning, study finds Posted: 10 Nov 2014 01:10 PM PST A new study shows for the first time that playing action video games improves not just the skills taught in the game, but learning capabilities more generally.

Baby photos of a scaled-up solar system Posted: 10 Nov 2014 12:09 PM PST Astronomers have discovered two dust belts surrounded by a large dust halo around young star HD 95086. The findings provide a look back at what our solar system may have resembled in its infancy.

Odor that smells like blood: Single component powerful trigger for large carnivores Posted: 10 Nov 2014 12:09 PM PST People find the smell of blood unpleasant, but for predatory animals it means food. When behavioral researchers wanted to find out which substances of blood trigger behavioral reactions, they got some unexpected results.

Lighter, cheaper radio wave device could transform telecommunications Posted: 10 Nov 2014 09:41 AM PST Researchers have achieved a milestone in modern wireless and cellular telecommunications, creating a radically smaller, more efficient radio wave circulator that could be used in cellphones and other wireless devices. The new circulator has the potential to double the useful bandwidth in wireless communications and transform the telecommunications industry, making communications faster and less expensive in a wide array of products.

Astronomers discover first 'lightning' from a black hole Posted: 10 Nov 2014 06:07 AM PST An international group of researchers has discovered the first 'lighting' from a black hole, with variations in brilliance more powerful than ever observed in an extragalactic object. The emission, the researchers suggest in their study, "is associated with pulsar-like particle acceleration by the electric field across a magnetospheric gap at the base of the radio jet."

True story behind galactic crash revealed Posted: 10 Nov 2014 05:36 AM PST The new MUSE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope has provided researchers with the best view yet of a spectacular cosmic crash. The new observations reveal for the first time the motion of gas as it is ripped out of the galaxy ESO 137-001 as it ploughs at high speed into a vast galaxy cluster. The results are the key to the solution of a long-standing mystery — why star formation switches off in galaxy clusters.

Plants return to Earth after growing in space Posted: 06 Nov 2014 01:51 PM PST Researchers have just welcomed a truck carrying small containers holding more than 1,000 frozen plants that germinated and grew aboard the International Space Station.

Koala study reveals clues about origins of the human genome Posted: 06 Nov 2014 10:23 AM PST Eight percent of your genome derives from retroviruses that inserted themselves into human sex cells millions of years ago. In a recent study, scientists discovered that 39 different koala retroviruses in a koala's genome were all endogenous, which means passed down to the koala from one parent or the other; one of the koala retroviruses was found in both parents.

Blue-eyed humans have a single, common ancestor Posted: 30 Jan 2008 02:03 PM PST New research shows that people with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor. Scientists have tracked down a genetic mutation which took place 6,000-10,000 years ago and is the cause of the eye color of all blue-eyed humans alive on the planet today.

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