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Infamous 'neutron lifetime puzzle' may finally have a solution — but it involves invisible atoms
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A mysterious second flavor of hydrogen atoms — one that doesn't interact with light — may exist, a new theoretical study proposes, and it could account for much of the universe's missing matter while also explaining a long-standing mystery in particle physics. The mystery, known as the neutron lifetime puzzle, revolves around two experimental methods whose results disagree on the average lifetime of free neutrons — those not bound within atomic nuclei — before they decay to produce three other particles: protons, electrons and neutrinos. "There were two kinds of experiments for measuring the neutron lifetime," Eugene Oks, a physicist at Auburn University and sole author of the new study published in the journal Nuclear Physics B, told Live Science in an email. The two methods are called beam and bottle. In beam experiments, scientists count protons left behind immediately after neutrons decay. Using the other approach, in bottle experiments, ultra-cold neutrons are trapped and left to decay, and the remaining neutrons are counted after the experimental run is over — typically lasting between 100 and 1000 seconds, with many such runs performed under varying conditions like trap material, storage time, and temperature to improve accuracy and control for systematic errors. These two methods yield results that differ by about 10 seconds: beam experiments measure a neutron lifetime of 888 seconds, whereas bottle experiments report 878 seconds — a discrepancy well beyond experimental uncertainty. "This was the puzzle," said Oks. In his study, Oks proposes that the discrepancy in lifetimes arises because a neutron sometimes decays not into three particles, but just two: a hydrogen atom and a neutrino. Since the hydrogen atom is electrically neutral, it can pass through detectors unnoticed, giving the false impression that fewer decays have occurred than expected. Although this two-body decay mode had been proposed theoretically in the past, it was believed to be extremely rare — occurring in only about 4 out of every million decays. Oks argues that this estimate is dramatically off because previous calculations didn't consider a more exotic possibility: that most of these two-body decays produce a second, unrecognized flavor of hydrogen atom. And unlike ordinary hydrogen, these atoms don't interact with light. "They do not emit or absorb electromagnetic radiation, they remain dark," Oks explained. That would make them undetectable using traditional instruments, which rely on light to find and study atoms. Related: How many atoms are in the observable universe? What distinguishes this second flavor? Most importantly, the electron in this type of hydrogen would be far more likely to be found close to the central proton than in ordinary atoms, and would be completely immune to the electromagnetic forces that make regular atoms visible. The invisible hydrogen would be hard to detect. "The probability of finding the atomic electron in the close proximity to the proton is several orders of magnitude greater than for ordinary hydrogen atoms," Oks added. This strange atomic behavior comes from a peculiar solution to the Dirac equation — the core equation in quantum physics that describes how electrons behave. Normally, these solutions are considered unphysical, but Oks argues that once the fact that protons have a finite size is taken into account, these unusual solutions start to make sense and describe well-defined particles. By considering a second flavor of hydrogen, Oks calculates that the rate of two-body decays could be enhanced by a factor of about 3,000. This would raise their frequency to around 1% of all neutron decays — enough to explain the gap between beam and bottle experiments. "The enhancement of the two-body decay by a factor of about 3000 provided the complete quantitative resolution of the neutron lifetime puzzle," he said. That's not all. Invisible hydrogen atoms might also solve another cosmic mystery: the identity of dark matter, the unseen material that's thought to make up most of the matter in the universe today. In a 2020 study, Oks showed that if these invisible atoms were abundant in the early universe, they could explain an unexpected dip in ancient hydrogen radio signals observed by astronomers. Since then, he has argued that these atoms may be the dominant form of baryonic dark matter — matter made from known particles like protons and neutrons, but in a form that's hard to detect. "The status of the second flavor of hydrogen atoms as baryonic dark matter is favored by the Occam's razor principle," said Oks, referring to the idea that the simplest explanation is often best. "The second flavor of hydrogen atoms, being based on the standard quantum mechanics, does not go beyond the Standard Model of particle physics." In other words, no exotic new particles or material are needed to explain dark matter — just a new interpretation of atoms that we already thought we understood. Oks is now collaborating with experimentalists to test his theory. At the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, a team is preparing an experiment based on two key ideas. First, both flavors of hydrogen can be excited using an electron beam. Second, once excited, ordinary hydrogen atoms can be stripped away using a laser or electric field — leaving behind only the invisible ones. A similar experiment is also being prepared in Germany at the Forschungszentrum Jülich, a national research institute near Garching. RELATED STORIES —Dark matter may have its own 'invisible' periodic table of elements —Scientists may have finally found where the 'missing half' of the universe's matter is hiding —Scientists are one step closer to knowing the mass of ghostly neutrinos — possibly paving the way to new physics The stakes for these tests are high. "If successful, the experiment could yield results this year," said Oks. "The success would be a very significant breakthrough both in particle physics and in dark matter research." In the future, Oks plans to explore whether other atomic systems might also have two flavors, potentially opening the door to even more surprising discoveries. And if confirmed, such findings could also reshape our understanding of cosmic history. "The precise value of the neutron lifetime is pivotal for calculating the amount of hydrogen, helium and other light elements that were formed in the first few minutes of the universe's life," Oks said. So his proposal doesn't just solve a long-standing puzzle — it could rewrite the earliest chapters of cosmic evolution.
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a day ago
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Why isn't an atom's nucleus round?
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Since the atomic nucleus was first proposed in 1911, physicists simply assumed it was round. But are the nuclei of atoms really round? Intuitively this shape makes sense and physicists believed it aptly explained early measurements of nuclear properties. It wasn't until years later that the first evidence of a more complex picture started to emerge. First, let's explore the atom's architecture. Formed from a cluster of protons and neutrons at the center of an atom, a nucleus is 10,000 times smaller than the atom as a whole, "like a fly in a cathedral," said David Jenkins, a nuclear physicist at the University of York in the U.K. Despite containing the overwhelming majority of an atom's mass, the nucleus itself has very little impact on the atom's properties at first glance. An atom's chemistry is determined by the electron configuration, while any physical characteristics arise from how it interacts with other atoms. Paralleling the idea of electron shells in atomic physics, in 1949 scientists proposed the nuclear shell model: protons and neutrons sit in distinct nuclear shells, and additional energy input can excite these particles to jump up and down between fixed energy levels. "But later, it became obvious that most of the behavior in nuclei was described by what you call collective behavior — it acts as one coherent object," Jenkins told Live Science. The result is that the nucleus as a whole can then manifest two types of properties: It can rotate, or it can vibrate. Related: Where do electrons get energy to spin around an atom's nucleus? Spectroscopic methods can detect this rotation in most molecules, measuring a fingerprint of different rotational energy levels. But spherical objects look the same whichever direction they are turned, so symmetrical systems — like atoms — don't generate a spectrum. "The only way that you can see evidence of rotation in nuclei is if the nucleus is deformed," Jenkins explained. "And people saw the nucleus has patterns of excitation known as rotational bands, so that pointed to the nucleus being deformed." Since this astonishing discovery in the 1950s, targeted experiments have revealed a raft of nuclear shapes, from pears to M&Ms — and round is very much the exception and not the rule. About 90% of nuclei are shaped like an American football — technically termed "prolate deformed" — in their lowest energy state, with surprisingly few taking the opposite squashed-sphere, M&M-like shape, called oblate deformed. "We don't know why this prolate shape seems more favorable than the oblate shape," Jenkins said. "Some nuclei also have multiple shapes so they can exhibit one in the ground state, and then you put some energy into them and they deform into another shape." The more exotic pear-shaped nucleus is restricted to certain areas of the nuclear chart, particularly around radium, while spherical nuclei are generally confined to atoms with "magic" numbers (or full shells) of nuclear particles. But what causes the deformation? "It feels intuitive that the basic shape of an object not being excited or wobbled or stretched should be spherical," said Paul Stevenson, a nuclear physicist at the University of Surrey in the U.K. "But actually, in the case of nuclei, it's surprising that any of them are spherical because they obey the laws of quantum mechanics." The Schrödinger equation — one of the most fundamental principles in quantum mechanics — mathematically predicts how an object's wave function will change over time, essentially providing a means to estimate the possible movement and position of that object. Solving this for an atomic nucleus therefore provides a cloud of probability for all of the possible places it could be, which, taken together, give the nuclear shape. RELATED MYSTERIES —What is the smallest particle in the universe? (What about the largest?) —How many atoms are in the observable universe? —Do atoms ever touch? "The basic solutions of Schrödinger's equation don't look spherical — you get these shapes that sort of go in a circle, but then they start waving," Stevenson explained. "So because these quantum wave-function solutions have asymmetry themselves, it makes the particles in the nucleus more likely to point in one direction." For rare spherical nuclei, this waviness just happens to cancel out. But scientists don't yet understand the reason — or if there even is one — why some of these deformed shapes are much more common than others. "This is overturning a legacy," Jenkins said. "It's a complete reversal from how people originally perceived nuclei, and there are still a lot of open questions."
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2 days ago
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How many satellites could fit in Earth orbit? And how many do we really need?
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. In the last five years, the number of satellites orbiting Earth has more than doubled and will likely double again within a similar timespan, thanks to the efforts of private companies such as SpaceX. But while these spacecraft can provide important benefits, they are also causing multiple issues that are only just being realized by scientists. So, how many satellites can we expect to see in our skies in the coming decades? And — more importantly — how many is too many? As of May 2025, there are around 11,700 active satellites in orbit around Earth, ranging from military spy satellites and scientific probes to rapidly growing private satellite networks. But the rate at which spacecraft are being launched into space is increasing year-on-year. The biggest contributor to this trend is SpaceX's Starlink constellation, which currently has around 7,500 active satellites in orbit — more than 60% of the total number of operational orbiting spacecraft, Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who has been tracking satellites since 1989, told Live Science. All of these have been launched since May 2019. However, other organizations are also beginning to develop their own "megaconstellations," such as Amazon's Project Kuiper and China's "Thousand Sails" constellation. It is also getting easier to put new satellites into space thanks to the reusability of rockets, such as SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, which is being used to launch multiple competing satellite networks. Other companies are also exploring new ways of launching larger payloads, including shooting hundreds of satellites into space at once using a giant spinning cannon. Related: There was nearly 1 rocket launch attempt every 34 hours in 2024 — this year will be even busier All of this activity has left researchers wondering how many satellites could eventually end up orbiting our planet and what problems they might cause along the way. "Megaconstellations are planning to cover most of the Earth's surface," Fionagh Thomson, a senior research fellow at the University of Durham in the U.K. who specializes in space ethics, told Live Science. But there is still "a large amount of uncertainty" over how large they might get and how damaging they could become, she added. It is difficult to estimate how many satellites will be launched in the future because satellite companies often change their plans, Aaron Boley, an astronomer at The University of British Columbia in Canada who has extensively studied the potential effects of megaconstellations, told Live Science. "Companies update their plans as they develop their systems, and many proposed systems will never be launched. But many will," Boley said. Proposals for more than 1 million private satellites belonging to around 300 different megaconstellations have been submitted to the International Telecommunications Union, which regulates communications satellites, according to a 2023 study co-authored by Boley. However, some of these, including a proposed 337,000-satellite megaconstellation from Rwanda, are unlikely to come to fruition, the researchers noted. The proposed number seems massive, but most private satellites have short lifespans. For example, the average Starlink satellite spends around five years operational, after which it falls back to Earth and burns up upon reentry. So even if all 1 million proposed satellites are launched, they will not all be orbiting Earth at once. While it is tricky to predict how many satellites will be launched and when, researchers have estimated a maximum number of spacecraft that can coexist within low-Earth orbit (LEO) — the region of space up to 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) above Earth's surface, where a vast majority of private satellites operate. Above this upper limit, or carrying capacity, satellites would likely start constantly crashing into one another. McDowell and Boley, as well as other astronomers — including Federico Di Vruno at the transnational Square Kilometer Array (SKA) Observatory and Benjamin Winkel at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany — all believe that the carrying capacity for LEO is around 100,000 active satellites. Above this number, new satellites will likely only be launched to replace those that come to the end of their operational lives. It is unclear exactly when this carrying capacity will be reached. However, based on the current rate of increasing launches, several experts told Live Science that it could happen before 2050. Given the impending rise in satellite numbers, researchers are hard at work trying to figure out what problems they may cause. A major issue associated with megaconstellations is space junk, including rocket boosters and defunct satellites, that will litter LEO before eventually falling back to Earth. If space junk collides , it could create thousands of smaller pieces of debris that increase the risk of further collisions. If left unchecked, this domino effect could render LEO effectively unusable. Researchers call this problem the "Kessler syndrome" and are already warning that it should be tackled now, before it is too late. Megaconstellations also threaten to severely limit ground-based astronomy in two main ways: First, light reflecting off satellites can interfere with optical astronomy by photobombing telescopes as they pass overhead; Second, electromagnetic radiation that unintentionally leaks from communications satellites can interfere with radio astronomy by obscuring signals from distant objects, such as faraway galaxies. If the carrying capacity is reached, some experts fear that the level of radio interference could render some types of radio astronomy completely impossible. Related: Controversial paper claims satellite 'megaconstellations' like SpaceX's could weaken Earth's magnetic field and cause 'atmospheric stripping.' Should we be worried? Satellites can also impact the environment via greenhouse gases that are emitted during rocket launches, as well as through metal pollution that is accumulating in the upper atmosphere as defunct satellites and other space junk burn up upon reentry. Given all these potential impacts, most researchers are calling for companies to reduce the rate at which they launch satellites. "I don't think a full stop on satellite launches would work," Boley said. "However, slowing things down and delaying the placement of 100,000 satellites until we have better international rules would be prudent." While private satellites help monitor Earth and connect rural and disadvantaged communities to high-speed internet, many experts argue that these benefits do not outweigh the potential risks. Others are more skeptical and question whether the payloads being put into orbit will really do any good or if they are just a way for companies to make more money. "Do we really need another CubeSat in space that allows us to take selfies?" Thomson asked. "And in reality, does connecting remote communities [to the internet] help solve systemic issues of inequality, poverty and injustice?" RELATED STORIES —Chinese scientists call for plan to destroy Elon Musk's Starlink satellites —World's 1st wooden satellite arrives at ISS for key orbital test —Geomagnetic storm sends 40 SpaceX satellites plummeting to Earth Many benefits could also be achieved with fewer satellites. The proposed numbers are so high, mainly because there are so many different companies competing to provide the same services. "It would be better to cooperate more, in order to need fewer satellites," Winkel told Live Science. "But I find that highly unlikely given the current situation in the world."
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2 days ago
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NASA plans to build a giant radio telescope on the 'dark side' of the moon. Here's why.
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. NASA scientists are currently working on plans to build a giant radio telescope in a nearly mile-wide crater on the "dark side" of the moon. If approved, it could be constructed as early as the 2030s and cost more than $2 billion, project scientists told Live Science. Astronomers want to build the first-of-its-kind dish, known as the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT), to help unravel some of the universe's biggest mysteries — but also because they are concerned about growing levels of invisible radiation leaking from private satellite "megaconstellations," which could soon disrupt Earth-based radio astronomy. The proposed telescope will be built entirely by robots and consist of a giant wire mesh suspended via cables within a crater on the moon's far side, similar to the collapsed alien-hunting Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico or China's giant Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), which were both built within natural depressions on Earth. This will shelter the dish from satellite signals, as well as prevent interference from solar radiation and Earth's atmosphere. The LCRT project is currently being investigated by a team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology. It was first proposed in 2020 and was awarded $125,000 in "phase I" funding from NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC). In 2021, the project reached "phase II" and was awarded an additional $500,000 of NIAC funding. The team is preparing to apply for "phase III" funding, which could be granted as early as next year, and they are currently building a 200:1 scale prototype that will be tested at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory in California later this year, Gaurangi Gupta, a research scientist at JPL who is part of the LCRT project, told Live Science. If the funding is approved — and the project passes this final phase — it will become a fully-fledged mission and the telescope could potentially be built at some point in the 2030s, Gupta said. Related: Scientists may finally be close to explaining strange radio signals from beyond the Milky Way The most up-to-date plans for the telescope include a 1,150-foot-wide (350 meter) meshed reflector, which is larger than Arecibo's collapsed dish but smaller than FAST. This is around three times smaller than the 3,300-foot (1,000 m) reflector initially proposed in 2020, which would have been the largest single telescope ever built. The researchers have already selected their preferred crater — a 0.8-mile-wide (1.3 km) depression in the moon's Northern Hemisphere — but are keeping its exact location under wraps. This is not the first time that scientists have proposed putting a radio telescope on the moon. The idea dates back to at least 1984, Gupta said. However, due to the technical challenges of building such a structure, it has never been seriously considered until now. "But with state-of-the-art technology, LCRT can potentially solve all these issues and make this concept a reality," Gupta said. However, the latest "rough estimate" suggests the construction of the LCRT could cost around $2.6 billion, Gupta said. This might prove to be the final stumbling block, especially as NASA's budget is being severely slashed by the Trump administration. The number of satellites orbiting Earth is rising fast, thanks to the emergence of private satellites, particularly SpaceX's rapidly growing Starlink constellation. This can create several problems, including an increase in space junk, rising light pollution in the night sky and a build-up of metal pollution in the upper atmosphere from satellite reentries. A lesser-known issue is that private satellites are prone to accidentally leaking radiation into space, which can interfere with radio telescopes trying to study distant objects such as ancient galaxies, nearby exoplanets and supermassive black holes. Several radio astronomers recently told Live Science that, if the number of satellites around our planet reaches maximum capacity, we could reach an "inflection point" beyond which radio astronomy would be extremely limited, and even impossible in some wavelengths. If this were to happen, "it would mean that we are artificially closing 'windows' to observe our universe," Federico Di Vruno, an astronomer at the Square Kilometer Array Observatory and co-director of the International Astronomical Union's Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky, told Live Science. Having a shielded telescope on the moon could allow radio astronomy to persist even if this worst-case scenario comes to pass. However, this one telescope would only allow us to do a fraction of the science currently being achieved by radio observatories across the globe, meaning our ability to study the cosmos would still be drastically limited. Other researchers are also exploring the possibility of using a constellation of moon-orbiting satellites, as an accompaniment or alternative to the LCRT, Gupta said. However, these will likely have a much reduced window for observations than the larger telescope. In addition to preserving radio astronomy, LCRT could also allow us to scan wavelengths that Earth-based telescopes cannot. Radio signals with wavelengths greater than 33 feet (10 m), known as ultra-long wavelengths, do not easily pass through Earth's atmosphere, making them almost impossible to study from the ground. But these wavelengths are also vital in studying the very beginning of the universe, known as the cosmic dark ages, because signals from this epoch have been extremely red-shifted, or stretched out, before they reach us. "During this phase, the universe primarily consisted of neutral hydrogen, photons and dark matter, thus it serves as an excellent laboratory for testing our understanding of cosmology," Gupta said. "Observations of the dark ages have the potential to revolutionize physics and cosmology by improving our understanding of fundamental particle physics, dark matter, dark energy and cosmic inflation." The LCRT would also be shielded from solar radiation, which can also interfere with some other radio signals, allowing those wavelengths to be more easily studied on the moon. If LCRT is approved it will be a major coup for science. But it will not actually be the first lunar radio telescope. In February 2024, Intuitive Machine's Odysseus lander — the first private spacecraft to land on the moon and the first American lunar lander for more than 50 years — carried NASA's first Radiowave Observations on the Lunar Surface of the photo-Electron Sheath (ROLSES-1) instrument to the moon's near side. Despite the fact that the lander face-planted and ended up tilted on its side, the 30-pound (14 kilogram) telescope was still able to briefly collect the first lunar radio data. However, because ROLSES-1 was facing Earth, almost all the signals it collected came from our own planet, offering little astronomical value, according to a study uploaded March 12 to the pre-print journal arXiv. "This is a good demonstration of why we need to be on the far side for reliable measurements of the dark ages signal in a radio-quiet environment," Gupta said RELATED STORIES —Radio signal from 8 billion light-years away could reveal the secrets of the universe's 'dark age' —Astronomers discover new 'odd radio circle' near the center of our galaxy —Strange radio signals detected from Earth-like planet could be a magnetic field necessary for life Later this year, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost II lander will also attempt to land on the moon's far side. Among its scheduled payloads is the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment-Night (LuSEE Night) — a mini radio telescope from the U.S. Department of Energy that will scan the sky for ultra-long-wavelength signals, Live Science's sister site previously reported. "The observations from these telescopes would be valuable for understanding the lunar environment, and the challenges and potential mitigation strategies to detect ultra-long wavelength signals," Gupta said.
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2 days ago
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Birds have been nesting in the Arctic Circle for almost 73 million years, newly discovered fossils reveal
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Birds have been nesting in rugged Arctic environments for almost 73 million years, new research finds — more than 25 million years longer than was previously thought. A collection of more than 50 fossils found in northern Alaska, which include embryos and hatchlings, suggest some of the early ancestors of modern birds either migrated or adapted to the harsh polar environment in the Mesozoic era, the age of dinosaurs. "The common conception is they're too primitive to be exhibiting this advanced behavior," Lauren Wilson, lead author of the study and a doctoral student of paleontology at Princeton University, told Live Science. "So you're either dealing with [Arctic winters] as an itty-bitty, freshly hatched bird, or you're 3 months old, and having to fly about 2,000 kilometers [1,240 miles] to get to a point where it makes sense to even migrate," Wilson explained. "I don't think we would expect either of those things from these birds that don't belong to that modern lineage of birds." Whether the birds migrated south or hunkered down for the winter, the research provides the earliest known evidence of either behavior in birds. And while some modern birds, like the ivory gull (Pagophila eburnea) and snowy owl (Bubo scandiacus) are known to nest in the frigid Arctic, there is now evidence that this behavior started millions of years before the meteor that wiped out non-avian dinosaurs crashed into Earth, if not earlier. "Many birds nest in the Arctic today, and they are key parts of Arctic communities and ecosystems and food webs," Steve Brusatte, a professor of paleontology and evolution at the University of Edinburgh who peer-reviewed the study but was not involved in it, told Live Science in an email. "These fossils show that birds were already integral parts of these high latitude communities many tens of millions of years ago, and thus that these communities are a long-term norm of Earth history, not a recent ecological innovation of modern times." The fossils in the collection come from at least three different families of bird: the extinct, loon-like hesperornithes; ichthyornithes, an extinct bird that resembled seagulls; and several species resembling ducks that are within or very similar to neornithes, the group containing all modern birds. Related: Hoatzin: The strange 'stinkbird' born with clawed wings that appears to be an evolutionary 'orphan' Notably, the researchers did not find any fossils of the dominant bird group of the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago) — enantiornithes, now-extinct birds that typically had teeth in their beaks and claws on their wings. But a few factors reveal why they likely didn't live in the Arctic. They likely took longer than other birds to incubate their eggs, they took several years to reach full adult size (where most modern birds grow to adult size within weeks) and they "may have had a period where they're almost naked because they molted their feathers simultaneously," which is not helpful during an Arctic winter, said study co-author Daniel Ksepka, a paleontologist and curator of the Bruce Museum in Connecticut. The world was warmer in the Late Cretaceous than it is today, but the region the birds were found in likely experienced freezing temperatures, snow and roughly four straight months of winter darkness. Growing to adulthood so quickly allowed modern birds to practice long-range migration and prosper during those ancient Arctic summers, which boasted around six months of 24-hour daylight and a burst in insect populations. But the weather wasn't the only challenge. They lived alongside "probably about 12 or 13 different kinds of typical dinosaurs," like the Pachyrhinosaurus, a relative of Triceratops that was about 16 feet (5 meters) long and weighed 2 tons (1,800 kilograms). Other dinosaurs like Troodon, an 11-foot tall meat-eater with short, serrated teeth, "would have happily taken advantage of a bunch of these little cute little chicks for dinner," said Patrick Druckenmiller, director of the University of Alaska Museum of the North and advising author of the study. RELATED STORIES —Chickens sprouted dino-like feathers when scientists messed with the Sonic Hedgehog gene —Why don't all birds fly? —Ancient duck-like creature discovered in Antarctica may be the oldest modern bird ever discovered To get to the fossil sites in the Prince Creek Formation in Northern Alaska, the researchers drove 500 miles (800 km) from Fairbanks, chartered a small aircraft to fly to the Colville River, then took inflatable motorboats up the river before setting up camp, Druckenmiller said. There they would look for an "orangey, pebbly, sandy" layer of sediment that contains small bones and teeth, and often lay on the permafrost to "excavate with little dental picks and small tools" from the layer itself. Now that the Prince Creek Formation is "one of the major North American Cretaceous bird sites," according to the researchers, Wilson says the next step is simply to find more fossils. "The more bones we find, the more confident we can be in exactly what types of birds we have," she said. "We might even still find a random bone that's from a bird we didn't know was there."
