A LOT LIKE HOME An Earth-sized planet capable of hosting liquid water and four other worlds orbit the cool red star Kepler-186, as seen in an artist’s illustration. The planet, found in data from the Kepler space telescope, is the smallest planet found in a star’s habitable zone.
NASA Ames, SETI Institute, JPL-Caltech
HERS, NOT HIS A small female Neotrogla bark louse extends an inflatable, penislike organ (less than a millimeter long, shown in orange), which fits into a vaginalike pocket inside the male of her species and collects his sperm.
Courtesy of K. Yoshizawa
MMM…GUT SMELL Adult fruit flies as well as larvae may use the whiff of excreted gut bacteria from youngsters of their kind to choose food sites where other fruit flies have flourished.
Sylvie Bouchard/Shutterstock.com
ALL SPUN UP Molecules hit with a laser have reached record spin speeds of 600 trillion revolutions per minute.
Creativity103/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
ODD ALLIES Domesticated grapevines play host to the bacterium P. acnes, which relies on the plant for essential DNA repairs.
Anders Ljungberg/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
Note: To comment, Science News subscribing members must now establish a separate login relationship with Disqus. Click the Disqus icon below, enter your e-mail and click “forgot password” to reset your password. You may also log into Disqus using Facebook, Twitter or Google.
