Science

The Greek historian Herodotus reported over 2,000 years ago on a misguided forbidden experiment in which two children were prevented from hearing human speech so that a king could discover the true, unlearned language of human beings. Scientists now know that human language requires social learning and interaction with other people, a property shared with

In 2022, the physics Nobel prize was awarded for experimental work showing that the quantum world must break some of our fundamental intuitions about how the Universe works. Many look at those experiments and conclude that they challenge “locality” – the intuition that distant objects need a physical mediator to interact. And indeed, a mysterious

We humans may no longer have tails, but perhaps we have more in common with our smaller primate relatives than we thought. An analysis of accidentally broken stones used by macaques to crack nuts shows that monkeys have inadvertently been fracturing chunks of rock startlingly similar to the intentionally-created tools found at the world’s earliest

A purported exoplanet orbiting a star in the constellation of Eridanus associated with Star Trek‘s fictional Vulcan homeworld may have just been a figment in the star’s spectrum – a spectral specter. Analysis of the discovery data on several exoplanets across the galaxy has revealed that several detections were actually false positives: light fluctuations emitted

Japan could soon add more than 7,000 islands to its official list of land masses, more than doubling the number found in a tally conducted in 1987. It may sound absurd to have overlooked so many hulking chunks of land in previous counts, but with 370,000 square kilometers (140,000 square miles) of territory making up

It may sound surprising, but when times are tough and there is no other food available, some soil bacteria can consume traces of hydrogen in the air as an energy source. In fact, bacteria remove a staggering 70 million tonnes of hydrogen yearly from the atmosphere, a process that literally shapes the composition of the

WASHINGTON — Relativity Space will wait at least three days before making its next attempt to launch its Terran 1 rocket after propellant temperature issues scrubbed its first launch attempt March 8. Relativity was counting down to the inaugural launch of its Terran 1 rocket from Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 16 when an automated abort

Alcohol distilled from the heart of the agave succulent is often packaged with what many people would consider an icky curiosity. Floating within some mezcal bottles is a worm-like baby insect. Since its addition to the traditional Mexican drink in around the 1940s, the taxonomic identity of the alcoholic-soaked grub we dare not consume has

Determining the passage of time in our world of ticking clocks and oscillating pendulums is a simple case of counting the seconds between ‘then’ and ‘now’. Down at the quantum scale of buzzing electrons, however, ‘then’ can’t always be anticipated. Worse still, ‘now’ often blurs into a haze of vagueness. A stopwatch simply isn’t going

Which hand you prefer to write, eat, and brush your teeth with shouldn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Yet scientists have been studying human handedness for over a century and discovered it can show a lot about how human brains can work differently. And since creativity is a measure of how we

NASA’s Curiosity rover snapped the first clear picture of Sun rays on Mars, which looks like a ghostly white-tinged sunset. The rover took the ethereal photo on February 2, as the Sun set behind a group of twilight clouds. These clouds hang at an unusually high altitude, which suggests they are probably made of carbon

Japanese authorities are preparing to release treated radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean, nearly 12 years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. This will relieve pressure on more than 1,000 storage tanks, creating much-needed space for other vital remediation works. But the plan has attracted controversy. At first glance, releasing radioactive water into the ocean does

WASHINGTON — The Ukrainian government claims that European investigators were “premature” in concluding that a component from a Ukrainian company was the blame for the failed Vega C launch last December. In a March 6 statement, the State Space Agency of Ukraine took issue with the findings of an investigation published by the European Space

Scientists have carefully simulated conditions on Earth in the earliest part of its history, some 4.6 billion years ago, hoping to unlock a greater understanding of how amino acids brought the first ingredients for life into being. Together, amino acids form proteins that play many vital roles in organisms. This new study was designed to

Is our Universe all there is, or could there be more? Is our Universe just one of a countless multitude, all together in an all-encompassing multiverse? And if there are other universes, what would they be like? Could they be habitable? This might feel like speculation heaped upon speculation, but it’s not as crazy as

Humans have known since the time of the Roman Empire that we’re more readily truthful while under the influence. That’s where the idea behind the term “truth serum” comes from. Truth serum refers to a number of mind-altering drugs that are supposed to make you incapable of lying, but the reality is no drug is

On 1 March 2023, NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew by Jupiter‘s moon Io, coming within 51,500 km (32,030 miles) of the innermost and third-largest of the four Galilean moons. The stunning new images provide the best and closest view of the most volcanic moon in our Solar System since the New Horizons mission flew past Io

Nearly 40 years ago, the world’s worst nuclear disaster turned the Ukrainian city of Pripyat and its nearby power plant, Chernobyl, into a radioactive hot zone – and surprisingly, decades later, a haven for wildlife. Wolves, wild horses, birds, bison, elk, frogs, and dogs roam among the decaying concrete buildings and surrounding forests of what

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Defense Department on March 3 released updated guidelines for safe and responsible space operations. These guidelines were issued Feb. 9 by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in a memo that lays out five “tenets of responsible behavior in space.” Austin first released the tenets in July 2021. The update reflects recommendations from

Take a look at Earth from far off in space, you’d notice it looks uniformly bright. Considering the Southern Hemisphere’s disproportionate expanse of dark ocean waters should reflect back less sunlight, this isn’t what we might expect down here on the surface. It’s a mystery that’s been of interest to scientists since the early 1970s,

Chemistry takes effort. Whether it’s by raising the temperature, increasing the odds that compatible atoms will collide in a heated smash-up, or increasing the pressure and squeezing them together, building molecules usually demands a certain cost in energy. Quantum theory does provide a workaround if you’re patient. And a team of researchers from the University

Hunter-gatherers took shelter from the ice age in Southwestern Europe, but were replaced on the Italian Peninsula according to two new studies, published in Nature and Nature Ecology & Evolution today. Modern humans first began to spread across Eurasia approximately 45,000 years ago, arriving from the near east. Previous research claimed these people disappeared when

Mystery silica ejected in huge quantities from Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus is powerful new evidence pointing to heat vents on the floor of a global ocean. According to a new analytical model, internal heating from the moon‘s core creates ocean currents that transport the silica particles, which are ejected from deep-sea hydrothermal vents that also

Our addiction to online shopping is contributing to the recent spike in whale deaths, The New York Times reports. Since early December, 23 whales have washed up dead along the East Coast, according to data the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration provided to The Times. Their deaths are due to a confluence of factors, both

SAN FRANCISCO — CesiumAstro won a $5 million contract from the Pentagon’s Space Development Agency to develop active electronically scanned array antennas compatible with the Link 16 tactical data network. The Austin-based startup specializing in phased array technology announced the award March 2. “Once completed, this antenna will be the only multi-beam, active phased array

In a prehistoric forest, some 80 million years ago, a stocky, 5-meter-long armored dinosaur with a spiky back ambles about on four short legs, slowly chewing on a snack of plant material. After it swallows, the flap of skin in its throat that blocks its voice box flips back open, allowing the dinosaur to take

The Standard Model of particle physics is our current best-guess on what the blue-prints for matter looks like. Of all of its predictions, none are as precise as the magnetic moment of the electron. Not only is it precisely predicted, it’s among the most accurately measured of any particle’s properties. And while these two values

Prehistoric stone tools found in a cave in Poland 50 years ago were recentlyidentified as some of the oldest ever discovered in the region. The tools from the Tunel Wielki cave in Małopolska are between 450,000 and 550,000 years old. This dating may allow scientists to learn more about the humans who made them, and

An analysis of the most energetic light in the galaxy has revealed we may be mistaken about star formation rates in the Milky Way. Gamma rays produced by the radioactive decay of isotopes produced during star formation reveal that stars are forming at a rate of four to eight times the mass of the Sun