Free Republic

Just when you think orcas couldn't possible be any more awesome, they get even better. A study in 2019 showed these whales are really good at scaring off the most feared beast in the sea. Yep. Orcas have toppled the great white shark off their 'apex predator' throne. A team of marine scientists found that great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) will make themselves extremely scarce whenever they detect the presence of orcas (Orcinus orca). "When confronted by orcas, white sharks will immediately vacate their preferred hunting ground and will not return for up to a year, even though the orcas...

Saturn's rings, Titan and the much smaller moon Enceladus. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) ===================================================================== On human timescales, things in the Solar System seem to be pretty set in place. Over cosmic timescales, it's all gradually falling apart. The planets are very, very slowly moving away from the Sun; and most of the moons are slowly moving away from their planets in a process called tidal acceleration. The fact that Titan is slowly moving away from its planet - Saturn - is therefore not at all unusual. But astronomers have found something really surprising: Titan's outward migration is faster than expected -...

When scientists at the Dalian Natural History Museum in China copped a load of a fossil unearthed in the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation, they couldn't believe their eyes. The eight-legged beastie looked like nothing anyone had seen before. Exceptionally preserved. They described it as a new spider, publishing their analysis in the journal Acta Geologica Sinica, and named the species Mongolarachne chaoyangensis. There was just one problem: the fossil was a big old fake. The cunning ruse was discovered by invertebrate paleontologist Paul Selden of the University of Kansas, whose spidey senses started tingling when he got his hands on...