Science Glance
An apelike creature with human features, whose fossil bones were discovered recently in a South African cave, is the most plausible known ancestor of archaic and modern humans, the scientists who discovered the fossils say.
The claim, if accepted, would radically redraw the present version of the human family tree, placing the new fossil species in the center. The new species, called Australopithecus sediba, would dislodge Homo habilis, the famous tool-making fossil found by Louis and Mary Leakey, as the immediate human ancestor.
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Researchers at Tufts University in Massachusetts have created the world's smallest electric motor, the size of a single molecule, recently publishing the results in the scientific journal Nature Nanotechnology. Although applications for the nanoscale device are a long way off, the achievement could one day lead to nanoscale machines capable of performing surgery on a single cell, for instance.
Scientists have found Earth's oldest fossils in Australia and say their microscopic discovery is convincing evidence that cells and bacteria were able to thrive in an oxygen-free world more than 3.4 billion years ago.
Thanks to data collected from NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and advances in modeling, scientists can for the first time watch a coronal mass ejection from its formation on the sun to its impact with the Earth's magnetosphere.
