This Week in Science:11/12 – 11/18

Canyon of fire appears on Sun’s surface, according to NASA

A filament of charged particles blasted away from the sun at more than 3 million kilometers per hour, leaving behind a scar in the plasma that NASA has dubbed the “Canyon of Fire.”

Interesting mating habits discovered in Australian sea slugs

It has been discovered that Australian sea slugs, a hermaphroditic mollusk, have sex by reciprocally stabbing one another in the forehead with their penises, according to Rolanda Lange from the University of Tuebingen in Germany.

Fossils suggest Asia, not Africa, as ancestral home of big cats

The oldest known fossils from a big cat were found recently in Tibet, and suggest that Asia, not Africa, is the origin of big cat ancestry. Dr. Jack Iseng authored the study along with a team of U.S. and Chinese paleontologists, and their research is published in the Royal Society Journal.

Breakthrough in invisibility cloak

Dr. George Eleftheriades from the University of Toronto has developed an invisibility cloak capable of completely concealing objects from surveillance radar.

Rare species sighted for first time in 15 years

For the first time in 15 years, a saola has been photographed in the wild, according to the World Wildlife Foundation. The saola, an extremely rare species of long-horned ox, was first discovered in Laos in 1992, and to this day, little is known about the animal and its populations.

World’s oldest animal killed while trying to determine its age

Ming the clam, the world’s oldest known animal, was killed by scientists who were attempting to determine its age. It is now known that Ming was 507 years old, thanks to a team of researchers from Bangor University.

Pregnant mice transfer stress to offspring

Expecting mice who experienced stress passed altered microbes to their offspring, affecting the babies’ brain development. Bacteria may transfer the mother’s stress to the fetus, reports Christopher Howerton and his colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania.