The beautiful sea stars (“starfish”), classified as echinoderms, are one of the most easily identifiable marine invertebrates, with their characteristic radiating arms and stony skin of calcium carbonate. The sea star’s water vascular system is one of the more amazing and complex arrangements in the animal world. The brittle stars and basket stars comprise the largest class of living echinoderms.
Recently, scien... More...
Jupiter’s moon Io is the most volcanically active body in our solar system, and NASA’s Juno spacecraft recently detected the largest volcanic event ever observed on that body.1 During a flyby on December 27, 2024, Juno detected the infrared radiation from a gargantuan volcanic hot spot larger than Lake Superior near Io’s south pole (see figure). The volcanism caused a subtle but noticeable change in the appearan... More...