First Data on Ball Lightning

While recording a thunderstorm in China, a team of researchers captured a ball lightning event on their instruments for the first time with spectrographic readings indicating the composition of the lightning the same as that of the soil, speculating the origin of ball lightning to be a combination of vaporization of silicon oxide and the resulting shockwave of the strike.

New Antarctic Sea Anemone

A research team has discovered a species of tiny sea anemone previously unknown to science living in the Ross Ice Shelf off Antarctica, the first such species living in pure ice instead of soil and the first to live upside down, hanging from the underside of the ice shelf.

Redefining the Ampere

In an effort to revise the current 1948 definition of the SI unit of electrical current (ampere) that relates current to a given force through a thought experiment, researchers have succeeded in tracking single electron charges (e) as they travel across barriers driven by voltage pulses.

Bird-Eating Fish

Long suspected but never proven until now, evidence has been captured on video of the freshwater African tigerfish (Hydrocynus vittatus) hunting, catching and eating low-flying barn swallows in a South African lake in Mapungubwe National Park.

Accuracy of Measured Universe

Using baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) as a standard unit of measure, astronomers with the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey have measured the distances between galaxies in the universe to within 1% accuracy covering 10,000 square degrees of sky.

Earthquake Lights Explained

New research finds that mysterious lights reported for centuries before or during seismic activity are associated with areas of geological rift zones, and are theorized to be electrical charges generated from stresses between rocks that travel vertically along fault lines.

Unique Supervolcano Eruptions

Using models and simulations, volcanologists have determined that supervolcanoes erupt by very different mechanisms than smaller volcanoes, with the buoyancy of the molten rock creating stress that cracks open the top of the chamber instead of underground pressure building until it breaches the surface.

Primate Duplicate Genes

Small fragments of DNA called core duplicons replicated and spread across the chromosomes of select primates between 8 million and 12 million years ago, a genetic characteristic not found in other animals and an evolutionary trait that may have "seeded" chromosomal development and fundamentally influenced human evolution and brain size.

Gaseous Earth-Mass Exoplanet

The recent discovery of an exoplanet (KOI-314c) with a mass comparable to Earth yet covered with a thick atmosphere of hydrogen and helium like a gas giant challenges theories on planetary formation and the assumption that Earth-mass planets necessarily be of a rocky composition.

New Mutagenic Compounds Found

Researchers have discovered a new class of compounds called nitrogenated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (NPAH) found naturally in combustion products such as vehicle exhaust and charred meat that can be up to hundreds of times more mutagenic than known carcinogens.

"Ardi" Links to Human Lineage

New research comparing the well-preserved cranial base of the contested 4.4 million-year-old African primate species Ardipithecus ramidus ("Ardi") found in Ethiopia reveals a closer evolutionary relationship to Australopithecus and modern humans rather than to apes, placing the species in the human evolutionary lineage.

Water Found on Exoplanets

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has detected traces of the chemical signature of water in the atmospheres of five different exoplanets (WASP-17b, HD209458b, WASP-12b, WASP-19b and XO-1b) orbiting nearby stars.

Snakes Fastest to Evolve

With the first two full snake genomes (Burmese python, king cobra) fully sequenced, scientists have found snakes have the fastest rate of genetic evolution among vertebrates with the strongest changed genes involving body shape, metabolism and venom production.

Mice Inherit Learned Behavior

Conditioning mice to associate a certain odor with danger, researchers have found the first evidence of learned behavior being passed on trans-generationally to a degree in the mice's pups, who express a sensitivity to the same stimulus although never before having encountered the odor.