Science

Scientists working in the Andes Mountains in Patagonia have been presented with a puzzle: Mice from the same species are growing to larger sizes on the western side of the mountains compared to the eastern side. Now a new study suggests a solution to the mystery. It seems that thanks to the rain shadow effect

With the right physics, it’s possible to blast a box of circuits clear across the Solar System with pinpoint accuracy to come within a whisker of distant worlds. But stir a splash of milk in your tea and the best physicists can do is hazard a guess at the kinds of patterns you’ll see swirling

We know verbal insults hurt. Words slung with spite or malice can feel like a proverbial slap in the face. Now new research goes some way to explaining why visceral shocks to spoken insults linger longer than praise or compliments often do. A team of researchers in the Netherlands explored people’s emotional reactions to hurtful

NASA on Saturday (Sept. 3) scrapped a second attempt to get its new 30-story rocket off the ground and send its uncrewed test capsule toward the Moon after engineers detected a fuel leak. With millions around the globe and hundreds of thousands on nearby beaches waiting for the historic launch of the massive Space Launch

Earth’s concentration of greenhouse gases and sea levels hit new highs in 2021, a US government report said Wednesday, showing that climate change keeps surging ahead despite efforts to curb emissions. “The data presented in this report are clear – we continue to see more compelling scientific evidence that climate change has global impacts and

You may not have given much thought to being able to text underwater, but for millions of scuba diving and snorkeling enthusiasts, communication in the ocean is pretty essential to staying safe. Right now, hand gestures are the preferred way of keeping in touch under the waves, and professional divers use a globally recognized vocabulary

Updated 12:25 p.m. Eastern with Nelson comments. KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — NASA called off a second attempt to conduct the inaugural launch of the Space Launch System Sept. 3 after failing to resolve a liquid hydrogen leak during fueling of the rocket, potentially delaying the mission until October. NASA scrubbed the launch, which had

In seahorses and pipefish, it is the male that gets pregnant and gives birth. Seahorse fathers incubate their developing embryos in a pouch located on their tail. The pouch is the equivalent of the uterus of female mammals. It contains a placenta, supporting the growth and development of baby seahorses. Seahorse dads provide nutrients and

Most of us grow up familiar with the prevailing law that limits how quickly information can travel through empty space: the speed of light, which tops out at 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) per second. While photons themselves are unlikely to ever break this speed limit, there are features of light which don’t play by the

They found his body in a hammock, adorned by feathers, the last remaining member of his tribe. For 26 years, nearly 9,500 days and nights, the man with no known name had neither spoken to nor touched a single other human. He was known to the wider world as the “Man of the Hole” for

The James Webb Space Telescope has just delivered its first direct image of a planet orbiting a distant star. The gas giant’s faint glow was captured near a young star around 350 light-years away, serving as a demonstration of the telescope’s abilities to directly observe exoplanets – a technically difficult task, but one that gives

The cost inflicted on the world by carbon pollution may be nearly four times higher than recent estimates, a study said Thursday (Sept. 1), highlighting how much climate action could save this and future generations. The “social cost of carbon” is a way of evaluating the negative economic, labor, and health consequences of CO2 emissions,

Satellite terminals in Alaska will be the main connection to the new EPS-R payloads that will launch in 2023 WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force has started building a gateway site at Clear Space Force Station, Alaska, where it will operate two new polar communications payloads scheduled to launch in 2023 on a Space Norway

The oldest definitive dinosaur species ever discovered in Africa – and one of the oldest dino species to walk Earth – has been unearthed in Zimbabwe, a new study finds. The finding sheds new light on dinosaur evolution, and on one of the most fundamental questions of Triassic paleontology: Why did dinosaurs live in only

A new method for entwining the fates of fragments of light has overcome some serious obstacles on the road to photon-based quantum computing. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany have successfully entangled 14 photons into a state considered optimal for qubits, more than doubling previous attempts – while also improving

A crime scene can present itself in any form and size. In recent weeks, an Aotearoa New Zealand family who’d purchased abandoned goods from a storage locker made the harrowing discovery of two sets of human remains hidden inside two suitcases. Sadly, this is not a unique case – bodies of murder victims are found

Well, it had to happen eventually, and now it has. Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have this week released images of the same object. The result is a set of images that reveal the magnificently complementary abilities of the two telescopes, and some fascinating insights into one of the most spectacular galaxies

Second only to Antarctica’s frozen cap in size, Greenland’s ice sheet is several million cubic kilometers of fresh water held in check by a combination of rock and sub-zero temperatures. Until the late 20th century, odds were the amount of ice lost to the sea would be replaced by a dusting of precipitation. Today there’s

TAMPA, Fla. — Startups developing constellations for providing connectivity directly to standard cellphones say they stand to benefit from SpaceX entering their market. The business opportunity SpaceX’s Elon Musk sees validates an emerging market that would be big enough for multiple players, according to U.S.-based startups AST SpaceMobile and Lynk Global. While these ventures have

Paleontologists in Portugal have unearthed the fossilized skeleton of what could be the largest dinosaur ever found in Europe. The remains are thought to be those of a sauropod, a herbivorous dinosaur 12 meters (39 feet) tall and 25 meters long that roamed the Earth around 150 million years ago. “It’s one of the biggest

Climate change is a real problem. Human-caused outputs of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane are the main driver of an unprecedented rise in global average temperatures at a speed never before seen in the Earth’s geologic record. The problem is so bad that any attempts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions may be too

Archaeologists in Romania have discovered an extraordinary cache of ancient gold rings that a 6,500-year-old woman wore in her hair. The trove in a Copper Age grave includes 169 gold rings, 800 bone beads, and an ornate spiraled copper bracelet discovered by a team from the Ţării Crişurilor museum in Oradea, Romania. The jewelry was

NASA’s Artemis 1 mission is poised to take a key step toward returning humans to the Moon after a half-century hiatus. The mission, scheduled to launch on Monday 29 August 2022 [8:33 am Eastern Time], is a shakedown cruise – sans crew – for NASA’s Space Launch System and Orion Crew Capsule. The spacecraft is

Massive swathes of wilderness and the lives of billions of animals were extinguished into ash and smoke during Australia’s Black Summer bushfires. The resulting haze suffocated major cities, triggered fatal health emergencies, and turned distant glaciers brown. Now researchers have directly traced how some of this burnt biomass contributed to the largest stratospheric warming in

Scientists have developed an ‘atomic television’ that uses lasers and atom clouds to carry a video signal that meets the traditional 480i resolution (480 horizontal lines) standard. Just don’t expect it to be installed as part of your home entertainment setup any time soon. Key to the technology is a glass container of gaseous super-sized

SAN FRANCISCO – With recent grants from government agencies, Dawn Aerospace is refining its nitrous-based satellite propulsion technology. Dawn, based in New Zealand and the Netherlands, announced in May the first in-orbit demonstration of its B20 thrusters on a D-Orbit ION Satellite Carrier. Since reaching that milestone, the company has been signing up new propulsion

Changing the number of chromosomes an animal has can take millions of generations to happen in nature through the course of evolution – and now, scientists have been able to make these same changes in lab mice in a relative blink of an eye. The new technique using stem cells and gene editing is a

Getting atoms to do what you want isn’t easy – but it’s at the heart of a lot of groundbreaking research in physics. Creating and controlling the behavior of new forms of matter is of particular interest and an active area of research. Our new study, published in Physical Review Letters, has uncovered a brand

Three skeletons uncovered in a rock shelter adorned with red pigment rock art reveal burial rituals of early humans who followed well-trodden paths through Indonesia’s Lesser Sunda Islands, albeit thousands of years apart. Aside from deepening our understanding of the evolution and diversification of burial practices, the finds – from Alor Island in southeast Indonesia