ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Surfer-shaped waves found in near-Earth space
• Male koalas raise their voices to avoid conflict
• New horned dinosaur reveals evolution of nose horn in Triceratops family
• Biggest explosions in the universe powered by strongest magnets
• Why do puddles stop spreading?
• Bricks to build 'an Earth' found in every planetary system
• A black hole under the gravitational lens
• Magnetic storms and green skies on St Patrick’s Day: No problems for power grid

Surfer-shaped waves found in near-Earth space Posted: 08 Jul 2015 03:17 PM PDT The universe overflows with repeating patterns. From the smallest cells to the largest galaxies, scientists are often rewarded by observing similar patterns in vastly different places. One such pattern is the iconic surfer's waves seen on the ocean - a series of curled hills moving steadily in one direction. The shape has a simple cause. A fast fluid, say wind, moving past a slower one, say water, naturally creates this classic shape. Named Kelvin-Helmholtz waves in the late 1800s after their discoverers, these waves have since been discovered all over the universe: in clouds, in the atmospheres of other planets, and on the sun. Now two recently published articles highlight these shapely waves at the boundaries of near-Earth space.

Male koalas raise their voices to avoid conflict Posted: 08 Jul 2015 12:12 PM PDT A team of international scientists has tracked the love lives of koalas, uncovering some curious behaviors and finding that male koalas make their distinct bellows to avoid confrontation with competitors.The researchers have mapped what they believe to be the first-look inside the social system of a large group of wild koalas at St. Bees Island near Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia.

New horned dinosaur reveals evolution of nose horn in Triceratops family Posted: 08 Jul 2015 12:10 PM PDT Scientists have discovered a striking new species of horned dinosaur based on fossils collected from a bone bed in southern Alberta, Canada. Wendiceratops pinhornensis was approximately 6 meters long and weighed more than a ton. It lived about 79 million years ago, making it one of the oldest known members of the family of large-bodied horned dinosaurs that includes the famous Triceratops, the Ceratopsidae.

Biggest explosions in the universe powered by strongest magnets Posted: 08 Jul 2015 10:39 AM PDT Observations have for the first time demonstrated a link between a very long-lasting burst of gamma rays and an unusually bright supernova explosion. The results show that the supernova was not driven by radioactive decay, as expected, but was instead powered by the decaying super-strong magnetic fields around an exotic object called a magnetar.

Why do puddles stop spreading? Posted: 08 Jul 2015 09:33 AM PDT When you spill a bit of water onto a tabletop, the puddle spreads -- and then stops, leaving a well-defined area of water with a sharp boundary. There's just one problem: The formulas scientists use to describe such a fluid flow say that the water should just keep spreading endlessly. Everyone knows that's not the case -- but why? This mystery has now been solved -- and while this phenomenon might seem trivial, the finding's ramifications could be significant.

Bricks to build 'an Earth' found in every planetary system Posted: 08 Jul 2015 08:14 AM PDT Earth-like planets orbiting other stars in the Milky Way are three times more likely to have the same type of minerals as Earth than astronomers had previously thought. In fact, conditions for making the building blocks of Earth-like rocks are ubiquitous throughout the Milky Way.

A black hole under the gravitational lens Posted: 08 Jul 2015 08:12 AM PDT Turbulent processes take place close to supermassive black holes, which lurk in the centers of nearly all galaxies. They swallow up matter flowing in from the outside while at the same time producing so-called gas jets which shoot out into space in two opposite directions. Researchers have now succeeded in localizing the origin of the high-energy gamma radiation in such a jet: it apparently originates very close to the black hole. This discovery was made possible by a micro-gravitational lens effect that occurs by chance and selectively amplifies the light from different regions close to the black hole like a magnifying glass. An unusual observation method uncovers processes near the event horizon of a distant, massive monster.

Magnetic storms and green skies on St Patrick’s Day: No problems for power grid Posted: 07 Jul 2015 06:24 AM PDT On Saint Patrick's Day (17 March) the northern lights danced a lively green jig across the skies of Ireland and Britain. The source of these magnetic storms was not just one but two huge eruptions of electrically charged material from the Sun, which traveled through space at millions of kilometers an hour, colliding with the Earth's magnetic field.

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