This Week In Science: A Working Tractor Beam, Shrinking Goats, And A Game of (Bee) Drones

Seven days; lots of science in the news. Here’s our roundup of this week’s most notable and quotable items:

The previous 12 months represent the warmest such period in Earth’s recorded history. Excavations in Hawaii reveal that the islands were struck by a massive tsunami 500 years ago. Physicists made a Star Trek-style tractor beam capable of moving .2 millimeter-wide particles up to 20 centimeters. Two different species of stingless bees are fighting wars over hives in Australia.

Mountain goats in the Italian Alps have shrunk dramatically over the past 30 years, possibly in response to climate change. Scientists got a better idea of when humans and Neanderthals might’ve started mating with each other—50,000 years ago—thanks to a well-preserved thigh bone. Massive black holes may be able to block the formation of new stars.

Male great bustards gobble lots of toxic beetles to prove their mettle to potential mates—this proves how robust the birds are, and the beetle toxins kill parasites in the male great bustard’s cloaca. US researchers are worried that new temporary government restrictions on genetic experiments that add new properties to viruses will hinder studies that are important for public health. The strange-looking orbit of Saturn’s moon Mimas  may be the resultof an oval-shaped core or a subsurface ocean.

Newly described dinosaur Deinocheirus mirificus had a humped back, stumpy hooves—and, to add insult to injury, the name scientists gave it means “unusual horrible hand.” There may have been a sixth extinction in Earth’s past that we didn’t know about before, which would make Elizabeth Kolbert’s  Sixth Extinction hypothesis actually the seventh. Older people who drink alcohol (responsibly) tend to have better memories.

Image: iStock.com/ZargonDesign