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Category: evolution – Page 4

Isolated by mountains along the East African Rift is Lake Tanganyika. More than 400 miles long, it is the continent’s deepest lake and accounts for 16% of the world’s available freshwater. Between 2 and 3 million years ago, the number of virus species infecting fish in that immense lake exploded, and in a new study, UC Santa Cruz researchers propose that this explosion was perhaps triggered by the explosion of a distant star.

The new paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, led by recent undergraduate student Caitlyn Nojiri and co-authored by astronomy and astrophysics professor Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz and postdoctoral fellow Noémie Globus, examined iron isotopes to identify a 2.5 million-year-old supernova.

The researchers connected this stellar explosion to a surge of radiation that pummeled Earth around the same time, and they assert that the blast was powerful enough to break the DNA of living creatures—possibly driving those viruses in Lake Tanganyika to mutate into new species.

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For the study, the researchers used NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope to observe Sagittarius A* to better understand its activity. After conducting several observations between 2023 and 2024, the researchers found that Sagittarius A* exhibited near-endless flare activity, ranging from faint flashes lasting a few seconds to massive eruptions occurring every day. Since Sagittarius A* interacts with the massive disk of gas and dust that comprises our galaxy, these results could help researchers better understand the formation and evolution of supermassive black holes throughout the universe.

“Flares are expected to happen in essentially all supermassive black holes, but our black hole is unique,” said Dr. Farhad Yusef-Zadeh, who is a professor at northwestern University and lead author of the study. “It is always bubbling with activity and never seems to reach a steady state. We observed the black hole multiple times throughout 2023 and 2024, and we noticed changes in every observation. We saw something different each time, which is really remarkable. Nothing ever stayed the same.”

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A new study examines how complex chemical mixtures evolve under changing environmental conditions, offering insights into the prebiotic processes that may have led to life. Researchers exposed organic molecules to repeated wet-dry cycles and observed continuous transformations, selective organization, and synchronized population dynamics.

The findings indicate that environmental conditions played a crucial role in fostering the molecular complexity necessary for life’s emergence. By simulating early Earth’s conditions, the team found that instead of reacting randomly, molecules self-organized, evolved over time, and followed predictable patterns.

This challenges the notion that early chemical evolution was purely chaotic. Instead, the study suggests that natural environmental fluctuations guided the formation of increasingly complex molecules, ultimately contributing to the development of life’s fundamental building blocks.

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“What we found was surprising: a jet stream rotates material around the planet’s equator, while a separate flow at lower levels of the atmosphere moves gas from the hot side to the cooler side,” said Dr. Julia Victoria Seidel.

What can a 3D map of an exoplanet’s atmosphere teach scientists about its weather patterns? This is what a recent study published in Nature hopes to address as an international team of researchers successfully produced the first 3D map of an exoplanet’s atmosphere, which is a groundbreaking achievement and will help scientists gain new insights into the formation and evolution of exoplanet atmospheres throughout the cosmos.

For the study, the researchers used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) to observe WASP-121b, nicknamed Tylos, which is designated as an ultra-hot Jupiter that orbits its parent star in only 1.3 days (30 hours) and is located approximately 880 light-years from Earth. Due to its extremely close orbit, Tylos is tidally locked to its parent star, meaning one side is always facing it, resulting in searing temperatures on the sunlit side and incredibly cold temperatures on the far side.

In the end, the researchers successfully produced a 3D map of Tylos’ atmosphere, revealing weather patterns that include high-velocity winds carrying titanium and iron around the exoplanet, which becomes even more turbulent as the winds cross from the far side to the day side of Tylos. Additionally, this also marks the first time astronomers have produced a 3D map of an exoplanet’s atmosphere.

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Two studies published in the latest issue of Science have revealed that birds, reptiles, and mammals have developed complex brain circuits independently, despite sharing a common ancestor. These findings challenge the traditional view of brain evolution and demonstrate that, while comparable brain functions exist among these groups, embryonic formation mechanisms and cell types have followed divergent evolutionary trajectories.

The pallium is the region where the neocortex forms in mammals, the part responsible for cognitive and complex functions that most distinguishes humans from other species. The pallium has traditionally been considered a comparable structure among mammals, birds, and reptiles, varying only in complexity levels. It was assumed that this region housed similar neuronal types, with equivalent circuits for sensory and cognitive processing.

Previous studies had identified the presence of shared excitatory and , as well as general connectivity patterns suggesting a similar evolutionary path in these vertebrate species.

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While most animals reproduce sexually, some species rely solely on females for parthenogenetic reproduction. Even in these species, rare males occasionally appear. Whether these males retain reproductive functions is a key question in understanding the evolution of reproductive strategies.

A new study published in Ecology by a research team led by Assistant Professor Tomonari Nozaki from the National Institute for Basic Biology, Professor Kenji Suetsugu from Kobe University, and Associate Professor Shingo Kaneko from Fukushima University provides insight into this question. The researchers focused on the rare males of Ramulus mikado, a stick insect species in Japan, where parthenogenesis is predominant. Their analysis of male reproductive behavior reveals new findings.

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An international team of researchers, including those from the University of Michigan, have used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to witness the birth of planets around the young star system PDS 70.

PDS 70, located 370 light years away, is about 5 million years old and is one of the most extensively studied young stellar systems. It is the only known protoplanetary disk system where multiple planets have been detected within the disk from which they are forming.

This system allows scientists to observe planet formation and evolution in their early stages. In PDS 70, a disk of gas and dust surrounds the star with a big gap in the middle where two planets, PDS 70 b and PDS 70 c, form. This gap acts as a planetary construction zone, where the new worlds gather material to grow.

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Microbial life in Yellowstone’s Lower Geyser Basin may hold clues to the evolution of life’s exploitation of oxygen, according to a recent analysis by researchers from Montana State University.

T he inhabitants of the basin’s Octopus and Conch Springs live in kelp-like, gelatinous ‘streamer’ structures that wiggle furiously in superheated currents, which hover around 88 degrees Celsius (190 degrees Farenheit). Genetically similar to ancient bacteria and archaea, t heir existence is a window into the primordial soup from which life emerged.

While these microbial communities share many traits, the springs’ environments are different in a few fundamental ways.

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How fast can solar systems orbit our Milky Way Galaxy? This is what a recent study published in The Astronomical Journal hopes to address as an international team of researchers confirmed the existence of a star and exoplanet companion orbiting within the Milky Way’s galactic bulge that could be the fastest orbiting exoplanet system ever found. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the formation and evolution of exoplanetary systems throughout the Milky Way and potentially beyond.

For the study, the researchers analyzed data from a 2011 study published in The Astrophysical Journal comprised of some of the same team that used the microlensing method to identify the existence of two objects orbiting near the Milky Way’s galactic bulge, which is a region containing a high-density number of stars. At the time, those researchers hypothesized the objects were either a gas giant with an exomoon or a fast-moving exoplanetary system. The researchers on this recent study deduced that the objects consisted of a star approximately 20 percent the size of our Sun and an exoplanet approximately 30 times the size of Earth.

But the surprise was finding out the pair’s speed by comparing their 2011 location to its 2021 location, which the team estimated is traveling at approximately 600 kilometers per second (372 miles per second), or approximately 2.1 kilometers per hour (1.3 million miles per hour). At this speed, the objects will leave the Milky Way millions of years from now since it surpasses our galaxy’s escape velocity. For context, our solar system is orbiting our Milky Way at approximately 828,000 kilometers per hour (515,000 miles per hour).

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