Scientists at Postojna Cave in Slovenia await hatching of country’s rare ‘baby dragons’

Fans of ‘Game of Thrones’ are going to have a field day this week, as scientists at the Postojna Cave in Slovenia are waiting for the hatching of the nations’ rare ‘baby dragons’.

The 55 eggs that triggered commotion this week belong to the only cave-adapted vertebrate species in Europe, known as the olm. The olm is found mainly in Eastern European countries, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia. The olm is a blind cousin of North America's well-known salamander.

The olm can lead a perfect life underground. Adult olms retain characteristics from their larval stage, including gills and absence of eyelids, and super sensitive hearing and the capability to hunt by finding out electric fields.

Millions of monarch butterflies settle in Mexico for winter this year

This year, millions of monarch butterflies migrated to Mexico for the winter season. The migration created a 10-acre carpet of black-and-orange striped winged insects in their wintering grounds, representing a notable uptick in the majestic butterflies’ numbers.

Monarch butterflies gather on trees by thousands, because of which lepidopterists count the insects on the basis of the area covered by them. The winter this year witnessed the butterflies blanket covering an area over 3.5 times greater as compared to the last season, which witnessed 2.8 acres of butterflies. The toll is also higher than 2013’s record low of 1.66 acres.

Don’t trust robots blindly in emergencies

In an experiment conducted recently by robotic engineers at Georgia Tech, they have discovered something quite surprising. They found that people blindly trusted a robot to save them and take them out of a burning building, even if the robot led them in circles or arrived only a few minutes prior to the emergency.

In an interview with The Christian Science Monitor, Paul Robinette, a Georgia Tech research engineer, who led the study, said they thought a few people might trust the robot as a guide, but they didn’t expect such an action would be followed by 100% of study participants.

SpaceX scrubs Falcon 9 rocket’s fourth launch attempt on Tuesday

SpaceX has postponed Falcon 9 rocket’s fourth launch attempt on Tuesday and the rocket is still present there on a pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

On Twitter, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said upper-level winds are the culprit for delay. He announced that Friday is the next available opportunity for launching the SES-9 communications satellite from Launch Complex 40.

While describing what a rocket would face in such conditions, Musk said that it ‘hits like a sledgehammer when going up supersonic’. No talks were held about an exact launch window for the fifth attempt.

In a release, Phillip Larson, a SpaceX spokesperson, said that upper-level winds will probably surpass suitable limits by Thursday.

Reexamination of Forgotten Dinosaur Bone Provides New Information on Abelisaur

Reexamination of a forgotten dinosaur bone in an Italian museum drawer is shedding new light on the size of an abelisaur, a carnivorous dinosaur that inhabited the planet around 95 million years ago during the late Cretaceous period. It also reveals how fearsome the creature was, stated a study published in the journal Peer J.

The study by researchers from Imperial College London, UK, suggested that the predator was more than 29 feet long and weighed more than two tons.

Alfio Chiarenza, a PhD student in paleontology at Imperial College London and an author of the study, found the femur while stumbling upon a drawer with some specimens. It had carnivorous dinosaur features, Chiarenza added.

Study proposes Novel Method to Hunt for Aliens Looking at Us

People have different opinions about existence of aliens. Some say there could be exoplanets favoring life, while others think apart from earth, the universe is lifeless. What if an alien civilization is searching for us, and we are targeting the wrong area of the universe?

An international team of researchers has a theory on this topic. It doesn’t not reveal where aliens are holed up, but it tells what to do if universe has some other planets like our earth. The study published in the journal Astrobiology stated the researchers have found a way to look for aliens in space which could offer higher chances of success.

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