杏吧原创

Earliest spider web

Has the world鈥檚 oldest spider web been found? Strands 140 million years old were found inside a piece of amber on a UK beach and look similar to those made by modern orb spiders, says Martin Brasier of the University of Oxford. The fossil web beats the previous record-holder found in Lebanon by around 10 million years.

Squids in treacle

For jumbo squid, swimming through the warmer, more acidic oceans expected from climate change will feel like trawling through molasses. Such conditions will reduce the amount of oxygen available to the animals, slowing their metabolism and muscles. This may make them easy prey for sperm whales (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ).

Go on, shake on it

The US should consider joint human space missions with China 鈥� a 鈥渞adical revision鈥� of its current refusal to cooperate. So says a report by a panel of space experts led by David Mindell of MIT. Otherwise, the perception of a new race to the moon will only grow, the panel says, boosting China鈥檚 prestige in the process.

Early warming warning

Amplification of Arctic warming due to dwindling sea ice has already begun, according to a study presented on 16 December at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in San Francisco. This means the region is warming faster than the rest of the world at least a decade before expected.

Life鈥檚 last stand

Large ocean worlds in the outer reaches of alien solar systems will provide the last refuge for life when their stars become red giants. That鈥檚 because these planets would cling on to their carbon dioxide atmospheres for longer than Earth-like planets with closer orbits, according to calculations that will appear in Astrobiology.