Science

Details of a 120-million-year-old tectonic plate once a quarter the size of the Pacific have been revealed long after the section of crust was largely subsumed into Earth’s innards. Suzanna van de Lagemaat, a graduate geologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and her supervisor, Douwe van Hinsbergen, deduced the plate’s existence by piecing together

My friend recently changed their favourite celebrity crush from Anna Kendrick toLily James. While some people could see the attraction, others mightnot. So, what is it that attracts us to potential mates? A new study suggests that female animals learn from other females to prefer distinctive males as mates. Sexual selection involves the evolution of

Thanks in part to the atom’s size, a charged variation of gold called Au2+ isn’t commonly found in nature. Scientists from Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and McGill University in Canada have now managed to create and stabilize the rare ion, allowing for a host of new uses for this fascinating elemental metal.

There are a significant number of Anglo-Saxon burials where the estimated anatomical sex of the skeleton does not align with the gender implied by the items they were buried with. Some bodies identified as male have been buried with feminine clothing, and some bodies identified as female have been found in the sorts of “warrior

On July 4, 2023, the Perseverance Rover celebrated its 842nd Martian day on Mars. As the red sky above began to grow dark, the adventurous robot turned its left navigation camera to the hazy horizon. With one snap, it captured a spectacularly alien sunset, around which the red planet’s sky glowed a brilliantly strange cool

Last month was the hottest September on record by an “extraordinary” margin as the world flirts dangerously with breaching a key warming limit, the EU climate monitor said on Thursday. Much of the world sweltered through unseasonably warm weather in September, in a year expected to be the hottest in human history and after the

TAMPA, Fla. — United Launch Alliance launched two prototypes Oct. 6 for the more than 3,200 Project Kuiper broadband satellites Amazon plans to build and deploy over the next six years. An Atlas 5 rocket carrying the satellites lifted off 2:06 p.m. Eastern from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, and

With their bladed paws, wielded by a rippling mass of pure muscle, sharp eyes, agile reflexes, and crushing fanged jaws, lions are certainly not a predator most animals have any interest in messing with. Especially seeing as they also have the smarts to hunt in packs. “Lions are the biggest group-hunting land predator on the

Physics is a marvelous framework for understanding how the Universe works, but there are a few gaps in its coverage. One of those is evolution. Although biology should fall in line with physical theory, as most things do, that theory so far has not been able to predict evolution, and the emergence of traits and

MIT professor Moungi Bawendi is a co-winner of this year’s Nobel chemistry prize for helping develop “quantum dots” – nanoparticles that are now found in next generation TV screens and help illuminate tumors within the body. But as an undergraduate, he flunked his very first chemistry exam, recalling that the experience nearly “destroyed” him. The

In 2009 a giant star 25 times more massive than the Sun simply…vanished. Okay, it wasn’t quite that simple. It underwent a period of brightening, increasing in luminosity to a million Suns, just as if it was ready to explode into a supernova. But then it faded rather than exploding. And when astronomers tried to

The Earth is heating up, and not just its atmosphere and oceans. The soil itself is getting warmer, too, leading to more extreme soil heat around the planet – along with unclear but ominous consequences for surface dwellers like us. We have been underestimating this problem, according to a new study, focusing on rising air

BAKU, Azerbaijan — China will send new modules to its Tiangong space station in coming years to expand the outpost’s volume and capabilities. Future plans for Tiangong were presented at the 47th International Astronautical Congress in Baku Oct. 4. Zhang Qiao of the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) presented plans to expand Tiangong from

It turns out your cat’s purr is set on autopilot. Researchers have finally discovered the key to these fluff-ball’s signature sound, which involves squishy pads in a cat’s vocal cords. Scientists have puzzled over how cats manage to make their distinctive low-pitched purr, as low frequency sounds are usually made by larger animals with longer

As far as gravity is concerned, both matter and its charge-flipped ‘mirror’ twin, antimatter, deserve a big, warm hug. A recent experiment by international Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus (ALPHA) collaboration achieved the first direct measurement of free-falling antimatter. Had the results been any different, we might have at last had our first solid clue on

When you stroll along a beach, you may look down and spot colorful bits of worn glass mixed in with the sand. But the little treasures you’ve found actually began as discarded trash. As an environmental science professor, I find these gifts from the sea particularly interesting. I have analyzed sand from across the world

Planetary scientists have long known that Mercury has been shrinking for billions of years. Despite being the closest planet to the Sun, its interior has been cooling down as internal heat leaks away. This means that the rock (and, within that, the metal) of which it is composed must have contracted slightly in volume. It

Most gardeners know that earthworms help keep soils healthy, now scientists have assessed just how important their underground activities are to global food production – and how to protect them. In research published Tuesday scientists found that earthworms may be to thank for more than six percent of global grain yields every year, because of

WASHINGTON — A short-term funding bill passed at the last minute includes a three-month extension of the “learning period” limiting regulations on commercial spaceflight participant safety. The House of Representatives and the Senate passed Sept. 30 a continuing resolution (CR) funding the federal government through Nov. 17. The bill passed by wide margins in both

Within the deepest, darkest, and most mysterious place on Earth lie miniscule parasitic monsters. Monstrous to microbes, at least. Researchers have isolated a new type of virus that infects deep-sea Halomonas bacteria. This is the same group of microorganisms that are eating away at the wreck of the Titanic, but the host species in question

Back in 2018, a tank of the purest water, buried under kilometers of rock in Ontario, Canada, flashed as barely detectable particle slammed through its molecules. It was the first time that water has been used to detect a particle known as an antineutrino, which originated from a nuclear reactor more than 240 kilometers (150

Science is hard. The science of consciousness is particularly hard, beset with philosophical difficulties and a scarcity of experimental data. So in June, when the results of a head-to-head experimental contest between two rival theories were announced at the 26th annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness in New York City,

To capture the first image of a black hole, researchers had to build a telescope as big as Earth by stitching together data from observatories around the globe. When the fuzzy, glowing image was finally released in 2019, every major newspaper ran it. Now, that same supermassive monster – which sits at the center of

Our planet has changed a lot over billions of years, from the location of the continents to the makeup of the atmosphere, and a new study looks in detail at the history of the Sahara desert – which wasn’t always an arid wilderness. Researchers from Finland and the UK reconstructed the periodic transformations of the

WASHINGTON — NASA has agreed to extend operations of its New Horizons spacecraft through late this decade to support “multidisciplinary” science that could include another Kuiper Belt object flyby. NASA announced Sept. 29 that it would extend New Horizons, currently approved for operations through the end of fiscal year 2024, until the spacecraft exits the

Orcas have been killing great white sharks off South African shores. But lately, there’s been a mysterious disappearance of great white sharks in these waters. Scientists suggest that the remaining great whites who survived moved east to avoid trouble. For years, great white sharks were turning up dead on South Africa’s False Bay and Gansbaai

A strange pair of galaxies several billion light-years away could be evidence of a hypothetical ‘crease’ in the Universe’s fabric known as a cosmic string. According to an analysis of the properties of the pair, the two galaxies may not be distinct objects, but a duplicate image caused by a trick of the light. And

Oxford today is known as a place of learning and elite scholarship. Several hundred years ago, the university town had something of a darker reputation. A deep dive into historical documents reveals that during the late medieval period in the 14th century CE, Oxford had a per capita murder rate four to five times higher

Earlier this year, the James Webb Space Telescope dashed hopes for life on one of the most Earth-like exoplanets discovered in the Milky Way. TRAPPIST-1b, a world 1.4 times the mass and 1.1 times the radius of Earth, just 40 light-years away, has no detectable atmosphere to protect it from the scorching radiation of its

Antarctica is looking less and less recognizable with each passing year. On land, scientists have found flowering plants, moss, and algae spreading like never before, and at sea, the extent of floating sea ice has hit record lows. These dramatic changes have coincided with rising summer temperatures. In 2022, researchers at the University of Washington