ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

Researchers have developed a deployable system that is light, compact, inexpensive, easy to manufacture, and, most importantly, easy to deploy. By harnessing the mechanical instabilities in curved beams, the system can transform objects into elaborate and customizable 3D configurations on a range of scales, from large-scale furniture to small medical devices.

An incredibly rare hybrid warbler with mismatched color patterns has allowed researchers to disentangle the genetic drivers of two traits that usually come as a package deal -- the black face mask and the black throat patch in blue-winged and golden-winged warblers.

Some exoplanet searches could be missing nearly half of the Earth-sized planets around other stars. New findings suggest that Earth-sized worlds could be lurking undiscovered in binary star systems, hidden in the glare of their parent stars. As roughly half of all stars are in binary systems, this means that astronomers could be missing many Earth-sized worlds.

While studying two exoplanets in a bright nearby star system, the CHEOPS satellite has unexpectedly spotted the system's third known planet crossing the face of the star. This transit reveals exciting details about a rare planet 'with no known equivalent', as the scientific team points out.

Using Kirigami, the Japanese art of paper cutting, a mechanical engineer has developed a camera with a curvy, adaptable imaging sensor that could improve image quality in endoscopes, night-vision goggles, artificial compound eyes and fish-eye cameras.

An exoplanet-hunting satellite has unexpectedly detected a third planet passing in front of its star while it was exploring two previously known planets around the same star. This transit, according to researchers, will reveal exciting details about a strange planet without a known equivalent.

There are spiders that eat snakes. Observations of snake-eating spiders have been reported around the world. Researchers consolidated and analyzed over 300 reports of this unusual predation strategy.

In new research, water from African and Mongolian waterholes as well as bloodmeals from Southeast Asian leeches were assessed for the ability to retrieve mammalian viruses without the need to find and catch the mammals. The scientists analyzed the samples using high-throughput sequencing to identify known viruses as well as viruses new to science.

Scientists have discovered the first convincing evidence for a new type of stellar explosion -- an electron-capture supernova. While they have been theorized for 40 years, real-world examples have been elusive. They are thought to arise from the explosions of massive super-asymptotic giant branch (SAGB) stars, for which there has also been scant evidence.

A new study of postmenopausal women has found that eating a concentrated amount of chocolate during a narrow window of time in the morning may help the body burn fat and decrease blood sugar levels.