Category: 7. Science

July 27 (UPI) — SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket Saturday night from Vandenberg Space Force Base near Lompoc, Calif.

The mission put 24 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. It will deploy the satellites into a polar orbit to boost internet service in polar regions.

The Starlink 17-2 mission launched from Space Launch Complex 4 East at 9:31 p.m. PDT.

The Falcon 9 ship with tail number B1075 took its 19th trip to space, including 16 Starlink missions.

About 8 1/2 minutes after liftoff, the ship landed on the droneship “Of Course I Still Love You,” in the Pacific Ocean.

It was the 142nd landing for this vessel and the 481st booster landing for SpaceX.

There are more than 8,000 Starlink satellites in orbit, according to astronomer Jonathan McDowell.

On Thursday, Starlink users reported a rare full network outage of internet service. It began at 4 p.m. About 2 1/2 hours later, SpaceX announced most service had been restored. Then, 1 1/2 hours later, full service was back, Starlink reported.

Hawaiian field crickets once relied on their mating calls to attract partners. Over recent decades, most males have lost this ability due to a mutation called “flatwing.” The mutation changed the wing shape of males, silencing their songs.

While this adaptation has helped the male crickets avoid a deadly parasitoid fly, the change has also reshaped their social interactions.

Previous research was focused on how the flatwing mutation affected male-male or male-female dynamics. But recently, attention has shifted to the less studied space of female-female interaction.

A new study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences explores what happens between females when song disappears.

Interactions of female crickets

In animal behavior studies, researchers often focus on male competition or female mate choice. In non-social insects like crickets, female-female interactions have long been overlooked.

Yet these interactions can influence mating patterns, reproductive strategies, and even evolutionary outcomes. The new research highlights how females engage in social behavior beyond direct reproduction.

Females in many species assess competitors, monitor social status, or respond to environmental cues. These patterns are complex and not limited to higher animals like primates or ants.

Crickets, although not social in the traditional sense, offer many opportunities for female interaction. Females often gather around calling males. This can lead to chance encounters, competition, or cooperation – depending on the context.

Flatwing affects female crickets too

The flatwing mutation only alters male wings but still influences females carrying it. Female carriers show changes in gene expression and physical condition. This suggests the mutation could influence social behavior indirectly.

The researchers, including study lead author Ana Drago, designed an experiment to explore this idea. They used pure-breeding lines of flatwing and normal-wing females.

Pairs were matched or mismatched by genotype and observed under two conditions: presence or absence of male song.

Among all behaviors recorded, antennal contact was the most frequent. This gentle, investigative interaction involves using antennae to explore another cricket’s body. Females did this more often and for longer when male song was playing.

This pattern held even stronger when both females shared the same genotype. Flatwing pairs, in particular, showed a sharp rise in interaction under song. This suggests that both environmental and genetic factors shape social behavior.

“Intrasexual female social behavior was common, expressed by 86.5% of individuals. Females primarily engaged in antennal contact, which is reasonable to interpret as detection and assessment behavior,” noted the study authors.

Changes in cricket behavior

Calling song is a key environmental signal. It can trigger phonotaxis (movement toward sound) and may raise general alertness. In the experiment, exposure to song led females to become more socially active.

This was not just a passive result of increased movement. Females maintained contact for longer durations, suggesting something more than mate search.

These interactions might help assess the partner’s condition or status. Chemical cues, such as cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs), could play a role here. CHCs provide information about maturity, health, and mating history in many insect species.

CHC profiles in T. oceanicus are sexually dimorphic. Females may use them to determine the sex and fitness of another individual. If song primes females to expect mates nearby, it makes sense they would increase social investigation.

Biting and mounting are rare

Biting, a form of aggression, occurred in about 13% of female crickets. Song made biting more likely but did not increase its frequency. This suggests females escalate rarely, possibly only after extended interaction.

Unlike males, females did not show pre-bite displays. They targeted legs and abdomens rather than heads.

Sexual behavior among two females was even rarer. Only two mounting attempts occurred, both under song and between same-genotype pairs. One was accepted.

The low frequency may reflect the female’s stronger sex recognition or a lack of behavioral overlap with male courtship.

Genes and song shape interaction

The researchers also investigated indirect genetic effects and genotype-by-environment interactions – situations where one individual’s genetic makeup influences the behavior of another.

In pairs with the flatwing genotype exposed to song, female behavior showed greater variability, indicating this genotype may be more socially sensitive.

This aligns with previous research showing increased plasticity in flatwing males. The song environment interacted with both the focal and partner genotype. Together, these shaped how much and how long females interacted.

Female crickets affect male success

Flatwing males avoid parasitism by staying silent. But their success depends on female choice. If female behavior changes based on genotype and social context, it may affect male survival indirectly.

“The reproductive success of flatwing males is inherently tied to female mate choice, which has been suggested to potentially be a stronger factor than flatwing satellite behavior in reducing parasitism risk,” explained the researchers.

“It is therefore possible that female-female social behaviors indirectly influence parasitism risk, though this requires further study.”

In dense populations, where female encounters are more frequent, these patterns could have a major impact.

The silence that protects males may also reduce the social complexity among females, reshaping communication and competition across generations.

Even silent crickets stay social

Crickets may be quieter today, but their social worlds are not silent. Female-female cricket interactions, once ignored, now offer clues to how evolution plays out in subtle, indirect ways.

By exploring these relationships, researchers uncover how behavior, genetics, and environment blend to shape even the smallest creatures’ lives.

“The results of this study urge that future research pays due attention to any sex that may be understudied in a given system. This is crucial to uncover intrasexual social, sexual and aggressive behaviors that may subsequently affect intersexual dynamics,” concluded the researchers.

—–

Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates. 

Check us out on EarthSnap, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

—–

The newly-discovered intermediate-mass black hole, named NGC 6099 HLX-1, resides in a compact star cluster on the outskirts of the elliptical galaxy NGC 6099, about 40,000 light-years from the galaxy’s center.

NGC 6099 is located about 450 million light-years away in the constellation of Hercules.

Astronomers first saw an unusual source of X-rays in an image of this galaxy taken by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory in 2009.

They then followed its evolution with ESA’s XMM-Newton space observatory.

“X-ray sources with such extreme luminosity are rare outside galaxy nuclei and can serve as a key probe for identifying elusive intermediate-mass black holes,” said Dr. Yi-Chi Chang, an astronomer at the National Tsing Hua University.

“These objects represent a crucial missing link in black hole evolution between stellar mass and supermassive black holes.”

X-ray emission coming from NGC 6099 HLX-1 has a temperature of 3 million degrees consistent with a tidal disruption event.

Using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the astronomers found evidence for a small cluster of stars around the black hole.

This cluster would give the black hole a lot to feast on, because the stars are so closely crammed together that they are just a few light-months apart (about 500 billion miles).

The suspected intermediate-mass black hole reached maximum brightness in 2012 and then continued declining to 2023.

The optical and X-ray observations over the period do not overlap, so this complicates the interpretation.

The black hole may have ripped apart a captured star, creating a plasma disk that displays variability, or it may have formed a disk that flickers as gas plummets toward the black hole.

“If the intermediate-mass black hole is eating a star, how long does it take to swallow its gas?” said Dr. Roberto Soria, an astronomer at the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics.

“In 2009, HLX-1 was fairly bright. Then in 2012, it was about 100 times brighter. And then it went down again.”

. “So now we need to wait and see if it’s flaring multiple times, or there was a beginning, there was peak, and now it’s just going to go down all the way until it disappears.”

The authors emphasize that doing a survey of intermediate-mass black holes can reveal how the larger supermassive black holes form in the first place.

There are two alternative theories. One is that intermediate-mass black holes are the seeds for building up even larger black holes by coalescing together, since big galaxies grow by taking in smaller galaxies. The black hole in the middle of a galaxy grows as well during these mergers.

Hubble observations uncovered a proportional relation: the more massive the galaxy, the bigger the black hole. The emerging picture with this new discovery is that galaxies could have satellite intermediate-mass black holes that orbit in a galaxy’s halo but don’t always fall to the center.

Another theory is that the gas clouds in the middle of dark matter halos in the early Universe don’t make stars first, but just collapse directly into a supermassive black hole.

Webb’s discovery of very distant black holes being disproportionally more massive relative to their host galaxy tends to support this idea.

However, there could be an observational bias toward the detection of extremely massive black holes in the distant Universe, because those of smaller size are too faint to be seen.

In reality, there could be more variety out there in how our dynamic Universe constructs black holes.

Supermassive black holes collapsing inside dark matter halos might simply grow in a different way from those living in dwarf galaxies where black-hole accretion might be the favored growth mechanism.

“So if we are lucky, we’re going to find more free-floating black holes suddenly becoming X-ray bright because of a tidal disruption event,” Dr. Soria said.

“If we can do a statistical study, this will tell us how many of these intermediate-mass black holes there are, how often they disrupt a star, how bigger galaxies have grown by assembling smaller galaxies.”

The findings were published in the Astrophysical Journal.

_____

Yi-Chi Chang et al. 2025. Multiwavelength Study of a Hyperluminous X-Ray Source near NGC 6099: A Strong IMBH Candidate. ApJ 983, 109; doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/adbbee

Generally speaking, there are three groups of raptors. One is “accipitriformes.” These are diurnal (daytime) raptors and include hawks, eagles, kites, vultures and harriers. There are also “strigiformes.” These are nocturnal (nighttime) raptors and include all species of owls. Then there are “falconiformes.” This class comprises all falcon species – which, although also diurnal, are genetically distinct from eagles, hawks and the other accipitriformes.

Some ornithologists might get fancier with their raptor classifications – possibly further subdividing these to highlight the evolutionary uniqueness of new world vultures, the secretarybird and the osprey – but the delineation above works as a general rule of thumb.

Remember, what separates raptors from all other bird species is their carnivorous diet and hunting ability, including sharp talons, hooked beaks, keen eyesight and powerful flight muscles. However, these traits don’t necessarily reflect shared ancestry. For example, falcons are more closely related to songbirds than to other raptor lineages.

Of all of these raptor species, the most abundant is the black kite. Here’s the story of the world’s most common bird of prey.

(Sidebar: Fascinated by remarkable birds? See here to meet the world’s rarest eagle, and here to learn about the oldest known bird still alive today.)

The Black Kite – The Most Common In A Class Of Rarities

Abundant, adaptable, and widespread, the black kite (Milvus migrans) is a unique raptor. While many birds of prey are elusive, rare, or highly specialized, black kites thrive across a variety of environments, with an estimated population of more than 5 million individuals worldwide. That makes them the most numerous raptor on the planet.

You won’t find black kites in the Americas, however. Their range covers much of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia.

Black kites belong to the family Accipitridae, which also includes hawks, eagles, harriers and other kites.

They inhabit a variety of environments, from open countryside and wetlands to urban areas. In cities, they are often seen soaring above garbage dumps, marketplaces and riverbanks, scavenging for scraps and small prey. This opportunistic feeding strategy sets black kites apart from more specialized raptors that rely primarily on hunting live prey.

Their diet is famously varied: carrion, small mammals, insects, fish, reptiles and even stolen food from other birds. They are known for their intelligence and nimbleness, often stealing food mid-air from other birds, a behavior called kleptoparasitism.

According to a 2008 study published in the Journal of Raptor Research, black kites at a landfill in Rome relied heavily on kleptoparasitism to get their meals – stealing food in more than 75% of observed feeding attempts. Most thefts targeted gulls, which were abundant and easy to rob, though kites also stole from each other. Researchers found that this strategy became more common and effective as kite numbers grew, especially later in the breeding season.

Unlike many raptors that are solitary or live in pairs, black kites are often highly social. They congregate in large groups, especially at roosting sites where thousands may gather to rest overnight. These communal roosts provide safety in numbers and opportunities for social learning.

During migration, black kites form large flocks, sometimes numbering in the thousands. These spectacles are a favorite among birdwatchers worldwide.

Black kites share the hallmark raptor features that make birds of prey such efficient hunters. They have sharp, curved talons and hooked beaks designed for tearing flesh. Their eyesight is exceptionally keen, capable of spotting small prey or carrion from high in the air.

Their long wings and forked tail give black kites exceptional maneuverability, allowing them to ride thermal currents for hours and conserve energy during long-distance travel. Thanks to their global abundance and wide distribution, they provide a valuable model for studying population structure and variation in migratory behavior across a broad geographic range.

According to research published in Ethology Ecology & Evolution and the Journal of Avian Biology, their movement patterns vary across regions, with some Palearctic populations migrating long distances while others, particularly in India and Australia, remain year-round residents. GPS tracking has confirmed that individuals from northern Asia overwinter in South and Southeast Asia, while tropical populations tend to stay put.

These regional differences are reflected in their genetics. DNA analyses show that populations from Europe, northern Asia, India, and Australia carry distinct haplogroups, suggesting historical separation and limited gene flow. A 2024 Zootaxa study found that Indian and Australian kites likely diverged at the end of the last Ice Age and no longer share haplotypes. Meanwhile, African populations, especially the yellow-billed kite, are genetically distinct enough that many researchers now consider them a separate species.

Altogether, these findings point to a complex evolutionary history shaped by geography, climate shifts, and variable migration strategies.

While many raptors face threats from habitat loss, pollution and persecution, the black kite has so far maintained stable populations across much of its range. Its ability to exploit human-altered landscapes has certainly helped.

Their success story offers a striking contrast to the fate of many other raptors, which often decline in the face of urbanization. The black kite stands out as a reminder that adaptability is a powerful survival strategy. They may not be the rarest or most iconic raptor, but in terms of resilience, global reach, and sheer numbers, no other bird of prey comes close.

Are you an animal lover who owns a pet, perhaps even a pet bird? Take the science-backed Pet Personality Test to know how well you know your little friend.

Scientists have discovered that a fossil site in Colorado was once the equivalent of a popular nightclub back in the long-ago Cretaceous era.

In those times, male dinosaurs, some similar to the Tyrannosaurus rex, traveled to this once long-ago plain of tidal mud to preen and bust dance moves — even doing what the researchers described as a prehistoric moonwalk a la Michael Jackson— in hopes of catching the eyes of obliging females at the scene, according to a new study in the journal Cretaceous Research.

The researchers discovered these courtship dances by closely examining 35 dino tracks preserved into stone at Colorado’s Dinosaur Ridge, an outdoor paleontology museum where the first Stegosaurus skeleton was found.

Scrapes, gouges and other marks from stomping feet and claws on the preserved rock reveal that dinosaurs would move in particular ways: zipping backwards or side-to-side, with dug-in marks suggesting the creatures would dig their claws into the ground and then kick dirt behind them.

“We can tell they had two moves so far, one walking backwards and one moving side to side,” Caldwell Buntin, a paleontologist at Old Dominion University in Virginia and the paper’s first author, told Live Science. “If they were really excited they would step a few feet backwards and repeat the motion, which usually erases the back half of each earlier set of scrapes. When this happened three or more times a few of these show a counter-clockwise turn, kind of like the moonwalk with a little spin.”

Scientists have two candidates on who made those track marks: ornithomimids, which were biped dinosaurs that resemble an ostrich or emu when befeathered, and the acrocanthosaurus, which looks like a T. Rex but smaller.

Another intriguing feature of the site is that evidence there strongly points towards the theory that dinosaurs visited this site over and over again at different times, suggesting that this once long-ago stretch of tidal mud was a major place for courtship and mating.

In animal behavior parlance, a place for mating is called a lek, which can also refer to how groups of horny male animals strut and display in front of eligible females. (You’ve probably seen videos of birds, which are the modern-day descendants of dinosaurs, engaging in similar theatrics.)

The researchers of the dinosaur study also call the Colorado location a lek. There are three known dinosaur lek sites in the world, according to Science, in addition to Dinosaur Ridge, which makes the ancient sites staggeringly rare.

What’s apt is that a lek is commonly used in the context of our avian friends, and modern birds are essentially living dinosaurs.

So next time you see a peacock or a rooster unfurling and waving its tail feathers and how they scratch at the ground with their claws, you may be getting a glimpse on how dinosaurs loved and courted a long time ago. Good thing they’re so small.

More on dinosaurs: A Dinosaur Appears to Have Died on the Exact Spot They Later Built a Dinosaur Museum, Burying Its Fossil Underneath It

Space operations are extremely sophisticated and expensive undertakings. There are so many things that can go wrong, especially when it comes to on-ground missions on extra-terrestrial bodies such as the Moon and nearby planets, conducted through remotely-operated robots and vehicles. An event as minor as a rover getting stuck can dramatically impact the mission objective or even abandonment.

In 2005, the wheels of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity were stuck in sand, and it took six weeks of inch-by-inch maneuvering by experts at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to free it. Just a few weeks ago, the Perseverance rover also struggled with a stuck drill bit, but the situation was fortunately resolved.

But not every story has a happy ending. In 2009, the Spirit rover found itself on a slope in a rather peculiar situation, and could never be recovered. With the Martian winter further complicating the rescue efforts, the Spirit mission was officially abandoned two years later. Such accidents could soon become a thing of the past. 

A major breakthrough

Engineers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have spotted a flaw in the testing protocols of these rovers on Earth, which often gives an overly optimistic view of their exploration capabilities. Rovers are often tested in desert-like areas, which simulate the dry conditions on the Moon and Mars, accounting for the reduced gravity on these bodies.

But as per the research team at UW-Madison, the tests often ignore the impact of gravity exerted on the sand particles, which means the simulation tests are not nearly as accurate (read: realistic) as they should be. “An important element in preparing for these missions is an accurate understanding of how a rover will traverse extraterrestrial surfaces in low gravity to prevent it from getting stuck in soft terrain or rocky areas,” the team explains.  

Notably, it’s the same team that is working on simulation modeling for NASA’s VIPER rover. The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, mission was supposed to look for water and other useful resources on the harsher side of the Moon, but the project was terminated in 2024.

The team relied on an open-source simulation software called Chrono to discover the discrepancy in the Earth-based rover testing protocols. It’s the same software that is also used for estimating the off-roading capabilities of US Army vehicles. The team has detailed its findings in a paper published in the Journal of Field Robotics.

The road to safer rover missions

The team at UW-Madison, however, continued its work on rover tech for space missions. Elaborating on the phenomenon, the team notes that Earth’s gravity creates a stronger pull on the sand particles than what the same particles would feel on the Moon, or Mars.

Additionally, the sand on Earth is said to be more rigid, while the top surface on the Moon is softer, which means it will shift more dramatically under the rover’s wheels, and as a result, reduces the traction. 

Interestingly, the software that enabled the aforementioned discovery, is used across diverse industries. Aside from educational institutions, some of its more notable users include the U.S. Army Ground Vehicle Systems Center, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, and the National Renewable Energy Lab.

It was also used by the experts at the Politecnico di Milano in Italy for the Mascot lander for its asteroid Ryugu mission. In addition to vehicle simulations and advanced robots, Project Chrono has even been deployed for “miniaturized mechanisms for watches.”

Scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science studied the blackbelly rosefish (Helicolenus dactylopterus), a deep-sea species living at depths of 350-430 meters (1,148-1,410 feet), to determine whether it forms and excretes intestinal carbonate — known as ichthyocarbonate. This physiological process, common among marine fish, helps maintain internal salt and water balance in saline environments and plays a critical role in marine carbon cycling.

“Mesopelagic fish live in deep, cold, high-pressure environments, and until now, it was unclear if they produced carbonate like shallow water fish do — or at what rate,” Martin Grosell, the lead author of the study and chair of the Department of Marine Biology and Ecology at the Rosenstiel School, said. “This study is the first to confirm that they do and that the mechanisms and characteristics of ichthyocarbonate formation are remarkably consistent across depths.”

The blackbelly rosefish was an ideal model. Unlike many mesopelagic species, it lacks a swim bladder and can survive both capture and lab acclimation. Researchers maintained specimens at 6 degrees Celsius, replicating their natural habitat, and found they excreted approximately 5 milligrams of ichthyocarbonate per kilogram per hour, aligning with predictions from thermal and metabolic scaling models.

“This research fills a major gap in our understanding of ocean chemistry and carbon cycling,” Amanda Oehlert, co-author and assistant professor in the Department of Marine Geosciences, said. “With mesopelagic fish playing such a significant role, their contribution to carbonate flux — and how it might change with warming oceans — deserves greater attention.”

Key findings include:

• Deep-sea blackbelly rosefish produce carbonate at rates and compositions comparable to shallower fish, confirming that depth and pressure do not inhibit ichthyocarbonate formation.
• These results strengthen global estimates of fish-derived carbonate production, confirming that mesopelagic fish are substantial contributors to the ocean’s carbonate budget.
• Ichthyocarbonate composition is similar regardless of the depth at which it forms, which influences how and where it is stored or dissolved in the ocean.

“These results offer strong support for global models of fish-derived carbonate production, which had assumed — but not verified — that mesopelagic species contribute at similar rates,” Grosell said. “Mesopelagic fish aren’t just prey; they’re chemical engineers of the ocean.”

The study underscores the importance of ichthyocarbonate in the ocean carbon cycle, especially given the vast, underexplored biomass of the mesopelagic zone.

The authors say the findings open new avenues for studying deep-sea carbon dynamics and may improve Earth system models, which are sophisticated computer models that incorporate interactions between physical, chemical, and biological processes, such as biological carbon production and export.

The study, titled “Osmoregulation by the gastro-intestinal tract of marine fish at depth — implications for the global carbon cycle,” was published on July 15, 2025 in the Journal of Experimental Biology. The authors are Martin Grosell, Bret Marek, Sarah Wells, Carolyn Pope, Cameron Sam, Rachael M. Heuer, and Amanda M. Oehlert, all from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science.

Funding for the study was provided by the National Science Foundation Chemical Oceanography Program and Earth Sciences Instrumentation and Facilities, and the University of Miami Rosenstiel School’s Departments of Marine Biology and Ecology and Marine Geosciences.

Present-day speakers of Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian have substantial Siberian ancestry, a new study of ancient genomes finds. These roots likely spread westward from a group of people living in the forest steppes of the Altai Mountains of Central and East Asia 4,500 years ago.

Ancient DNA revealed that this group was patrilineal, or organized based on descent from fathers.