ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Giant, fruit-gulping pigeon eaten into extinction on Pacific islands
• First ever image of a multi-planet system around a sun-like star captured by ESO telescope
• New cosmic magnetic field structures discovered in galaxy NGC 4217
• Ultra-small, parasitic bacteria found in groundwater, moose -- and you
• Recycling Japanese liquor leftovers as animal feed produces happier pigs and tastier pork
• Through the nanoscale looking glass -- determining boson peak frequency in ultra-thin alumina

Giant, fruit-gulping pigeon eaten into extinction on Pacific islands Posted: 22 Jul 2020 01:32 PM PDT A large fruit-eating bird from Tonga joins the dodo in the lineup of giant island pigeons hunted to extinction.

First ever image of a multi-planet system around a sun-like star captured by ESO telescope Posted: 22 Jul 2020 06:35 AM PDT The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope has taken the first ever image of a young, Sun-like star accompanied by two giant exoplanets. Images of systems with multiple exoplanets are extremely rare, and -- until now -- astronomers had never directly observed more than one planet orbiting a star similar to the Sun. The observations can help astronomers understand how planets formed and evolved around our own Sun.

New cosmic magnetic field structures discovered in galaxy NGC 4217 Posted: 21 Jul 2020 10:28 AM PDT Spiral galaxies such as our Milky Way can have sprawling magnetic fields. There are various theories about their formation, but so far the process is not well understood. An international research team has now analysed the magnetic field of the Milky Way-like galaxy NGC 4217 in detail on the basis of radio astronomical observations and has discovered as yet unknown magnetic field structures. The data suggest that star formation and star explosions, so-called supernovae, are responsible for the visible structures.

Ultra-small, parasitic bacteria found in groundwater, moose -- and you Posted: 21 Jul 2020 10:27 AM PDT Saccharibacteria within a mammalian host are more diverse than ever anticipated, according to recent research. The researchers also discovered that certain members of the bacteria are found in the oral cavity of humans, the guts of other mammals, and in groundwater.

Recycling Japanese liquor leftovers as animal feed produces happier pigs and tastier pork Posted: 21 Jul 2020 07:22 AM PDT Tastier pork comes from pigs that eat the barley left over after making the Japanese liquor shochu. A team of professional brewers and academic farmers state that nutrients in the leftover fermented barley may reduce the animals' stress, resulting in better tasting sirloin and fillets. Feeding distillation leftovers to farm animals can improve the animals' quality of life, lower farmers' and brewers' costs, appeal to discerning foodies, and benefit the environment by reducing food waste.

Through the nanoscale looking glass -- determining boson peak frequency in ultra-thin alumina Posted: 21 Jul 2020 07:21 AM PDT There's more to glass than meets the eye. Glasses, which are disordered materials with no long-range chemical order, have some mysterious properties that have remained enigmatic for several decades. Amongst these are the anomalous vibrational states that contribute to the heat capacity at low temperature. Early researchers established that these states obey Bose-Einstein statistics, and the name stuck, so today this feature is known as the boson peak. It is generally accepted that these vibrational states arise from the decay of bosonic phonon-like quasiparticles in the strong disordered glass environment.

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