Ring found around dwarf planet discovered in 2002 shouldn’t be there
News and notes about science
A small icy world far beyond Neptune possesses a ring like the ones around Saturn. Perplexingly, the ring is at a distance where simple gravitational calculations suggest there should be none.
“That’s very strange,” said Bruno Morgado, a professor in Brazil. Morgado is the lead author of a paper published in the journal Nature that describes the ring that encircles Quaoar, a planetary body about 700 miles in diameter that orbits the sun at a distance of about 4 billion miles and was discovered in 2002.
Quaoar (pronounced Kwa-wahr, the name of the creator god for the Indigenous Tongva people) is a little less than half the diameter of Pluto and about a third of the diameter of Earth’s moon. It is likely to be big enough to qualify as a dwarf planet, pulled by its gravity into a round shape. But no one can say that for sure, because images taken by even the most powerful telescopes have revealed Quaoar as only an indistinct blob. The blob also has a moon, Weywot (the son of Quaoar in Tongva belief).
Quaoar orbits the sun in the Kuiper belt, a region of frozen debris beyond Neptune that includes Pluto.
The ring is not visible in telescope images. Rather, astronomers found it indirectly, when distant stars happened to pass behind Quaoar, blocking the starlight. From 2018 through 2021, Quaoar passed in front of four stars, and astronomers on Earth were able to observe the shadow of the eclipses, also known as stellar occultations.
— Kenneth Chang
The biggest penguin that ever existed was a ‘monster bird’
New Zealand has been a haven for earthbound birds for eons. The absence of terrestrial predators allowed flightless parrots, kiwis and moas to thrive. Now researchers are adding two prehistoric penguins to this grounded aviary. One species is a behemoth that waddled along the New Zealand coastline nearly 60 million years ago. At almost 350 pounds, it is the heaviest penguin known to science.
Alan Tennyson, a New Zealand paleontologist, discovered the big seabird’s bones in 2017 deposited on a beach in Otago known for cannonball-shaped concretions. The tide’s churn cracked open some boulders, revealing bits of fossilized bones inside. Tennyson and his colleagues identified the fossilized remains of two large penguins. The humerus of one, nearly 10 inches long, was nearly twice the size of those found in emperor penguins, the largest living penguin. They also found evidence of a smaller penguin species somewhat larger than an emperor penguin.
The researchers named the larger penguin Kumimanu (from the Maori words for “monster” and “bird”) fordycei and the smaller penguin Petradyptes (“rock diver”) stonehousei.
By comparing the size and shape of Kumimanu’s humerus with the bones of prehistoric and modern penguins, researchers estimated the bird’s weight at 340 pounds — 15 pounds heavier than Lane Johnson, the right tackle who anchored the Philadelphia Eagles’ offensive line in the Super Bowl.
— Jack Tamisiea
Neanderthal leftovers found in a Portuguese cave
Lisbon, Portugal’s coastal capital, is famous for its salted cod, sardines and stuffed brown crab. A new study reveals that these brown crabs have been on the menu for a long time. In a cave less than 20 miles from Lisbon, researchers discovered charred remnants of shells and claws: evidence that Neanderthals were cooking and eating crab 90,000 years ago.
The cave site, Gruta da Figueira Brava, was about a mile from the coast when Neanderthals lived there. It contained multiple chambers, including an open “porch” living area, large enough for at least an extended family. Rising sea levels slowly brought the Atlantic to the cave door.
Reaching Gruta da Figueira Brava today involves a climb down a craggy cliff face overlooking the sea. “In a way, it’s good that it’s hard to get there, because that’s what allowed it to preserve such incredible, incredible finds,” said Mariana Nabais, a postdoctoral researcher at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution and an author of the study.
During excavations, she and her team brought sediments from the cave back to their field lab for examination, but Nabais and her colleagues recognized some bits of debris right away. “You can immediately identify them on site as being crab claws,” she said, adding, “It was a big surprise, especially because when we were digging there, we still didn’t have that idea of Neanderthals actively eating shellfish.”
— Kate Golembiewski
When your old fishing buddy has a snout and a blowhole
Every summer in waters off the town of Laguna in Brazil’s southeast corner, fishers wade out into estuary canals to cast their nets in hopes of catching migratory mullet fish. The water is murky, and the fish are difficult to spot. However, the fishers have help from an unexpected quarter: bottlenose dolphins that push the prey toward the nets.
The two species of predators have coordinated their fishing for generations.
“The experience of fishing with dolphins is unique,” said Wilson Dos Santos, a Laguna fisherman. He learned the practice when he was 15, taking his father coffee and food as he fished and watching the aquatic partners at work. He added that working with the dolphins “helps with our family income,” because human families eat what they catch.
In a new study, a team of Brazilian scientists reported that dolphins might benefit from the cooperation as much as their terrestrial mammal counterparts did. Those that fish with humans seem to live longer than other dolphins in the area do.
“Human-wildlife cooperation in general is a rare phenomenon at a global scale,” said Mauricio Cantor, a biologist at Oregon State University and an author of the paper. “Usually humans gain the benefit, and nature pays the cost. But this interaction has been happening for over 150 years.”
— Asher Elbein