In the June 23 SN: Emmy Noether gets her due, the 411 on ancestry testing, bonobo birthing buddies, a mysterious neutrino surplus, the oldest known lizard fossil, genetic genealogy in police work, Pluto’s dunes and more.
STAR CATCHER To prepare for an eventual energy shortage caused by the accelerating expansion of the universe, an ultrapowerful alien civilization could gather stars and capture their energy using hypothetical structures known as Dyson spheres, illustrated above.
Marc Ward/Shutterstock
GOING THE DISTANCE Painted ladies travel 12,000 km each year, farther than any known butterfly migration.
Gerard Talavera
R.I.P. Koko, seen here showing Francine Patterson a flower, gained fame for learning sign language. The western lowland gorilla died June 19 at age 46.
The Gorilla Foundation/Koko.org
A VIRAL LINK? A brain showing cerebral atrophy, a loss of nerve cells, one of the main signs of Alzheimer’s disease.
Atthapon Raksthaput/Shutterstock
