Science

Tens of million years ago, sand tiger sharks hunted in the waters off the Antarctic Peninsula, gliding over a thriving marine ecosystem on the seafloor below. All that remains of them today is their sharp pointed teeth, but those teeth tell a story. They’re helping solve the mystery of why the Earth, some 50 million

As the world gets hotter with climate change, one of the ongoing challenges humans will face is simply surviving worsening heat, with projected temperature increases expected to bring increasingly deadly heatwaves, even rendering some parts of the world uninhabitable. Against such harsh heat, a new material developed by scientists in China could have the potential

WASHINGTON — A House appropriations subcommittee advanced a spending bill July 12 that would provide NASA with a small increase over what the administration proposed for fiscal year 2022, but does not address some key areas of concern. The commerce, justice and science (CJS) subcommittee favorably reported a spending bill that provides $25.04 billion for

Songbirds are mysteriously dying across the mid-Atlantic region of the USA.  Many have been discovered ill with eye swelling and discharge; some look like they’re having trouble lifting their heads, indicative of head swelling. They also show neurological symptoms like tremors, disorientation, erratic flight, and lack of balance.  Over 280 sick or dead birds have

Scientists have succeeded in combining two exciting material types together for the very first time: an ultrathin semiconductor just a single atom thick; and a superconductor, capable of conducting electricity with zero resistance. Both these materials have unusual and fascinating properties, and by putting them together through a delicate lab fabrication process, the team behind

In a time rife with disasters, when more people than ever can find an audience online, conspiracy theories seem to be growing more outrageous by the day. We’re also more prone to believing such things under heightened stress, which is unfortunate given how damaging many of these ideas are proving to our democracies and each

“Suborbital” is a term you’ll be hearing a lot as Sir Richard Branson flies aboard Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity winged spaceship and Jeff Bezos flies aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle to touch the boundary of space and experience a few minutes of weightlessness. But what exactly is “suborbital”? Simply put, it means that while

In order to mitigate the global impacts of climate change, we need to dramatically reduce our carbon emissions, or even better – stop emitting completely. Many countries have recognized the need to switch from fossil fuels to renewable or ‘green’ energy in order to do this. Whilst most of us are in homes that are

Scientists have figured out the best forensic technique to get the dirt on criminals. Knowing which technique to use means that a remnant of soil or dust from a suspect or their belongings could substantially narrow down the scene of a crime in a city. When researchers tested their approach in a roughly 250-square-kilometer area –

WASHINGTON — A growing number of spacecraft missions, as well as NASA’s Artemis program, are putting new pressures on the agency’s Deep Space Network of antennas that communicate with them. In a July 7 presentation to the steering committee of the planetary science decadal survey, Brad Arnold, manager of the Deep Space Network (DSN) at

Have you ever stared at a cauliflower before preparing it and got lost in its stunningly beautiful pattern? Probably not, if you are in your right mind, but I reassure you it’s worth a try. What you’ll find is that what at first sight looks like an amorphous blob has a striking regularity. If you

Water ice isn’t exactly known for its flexibility. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: rigid and brittle, easily fracturing and snapping. It’s why avalanches and sea ice fragmentation occur. It’s also why new research is so fascinating. Scientists have just grown microfibers of water ice that can bend in a loop – breaking the previous

We know that our minds can imagine faces everywhere there’s a hint of two eyes and a nose – from cloud formations to car bonnets to plug sockets – and it’s technically known as face pareidolia. A new study gives us insight into what’s actually going on in the brain when this happens. Scientists wanted

The way a planet is tilted on its rotational axis with respect to its orbital plane around a star – what we know as ‘axial tilt’ – could be key to the emergence of complex life. According to a new study, a modest axial tilt, like Earth’s, helps increase the production of oxygen, which is

A record-breaking heat wave that hit the western United States and Canada at the end of June would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change, according to an analysis by a group of leading climate scientists. The World Weather Attribution group said that global warming, caused by greenhouse gas emissions, made the heat wave

WASHINGTON — Planet announced July 7 it will go public in a $2.8 billion deal with a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC), the second SPAC deal in the Earth observation sector in as many days. Planet said it will merge with dMY Technology Group, Inc. IV, a SPAC that raised $345 million in a public offering

Around 269 million people worldwide use drugs each year. Often forgotten in this story is a problem of basic biology. What goes in must come out. Sewers are inundated with drugs that are excreted from the body, along with the broken down chemical components that have similar effects to the drugs themselves. Sewage treatment plants

For four years between 2015 and 2019, roughly 2,500 Icelanders were involved in two major experiments to see how a shorter working week would affect productivity. Now the results are in – and the experiments seem to have been a resounding success. Some key points: reducing a 40-hour working week to 35 or 36 hours

The Sun appears to be waking up from the quiet period of its 11-year cycle. On 3 July 2021, at 14:29 UTC (10:29 EDT), our wild star spat out its first X-class flare of Solar Cycle 25; it was the most powerful flare we’ve seen since September 2017. X-class flares are among the most powerful

In October 2019, I set sail with a team of scientists aboard the Canadian Coast Guard Vessel John P. Tully in the northeast Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Vancouver Island. Battling rough seas and lack of sleep, we spent the better part of a week working shoulder-to-shoulder in a small stand-up refrigerator, analyzing seafloor

Some of the best robots are inspired by nature. Now, engineers have developed a small, scurrying bot based on the humble cockroach – with almost as much speed and squashability as its biological equivalent. About the size of a postage stamp, the as-yet-unnamed soft robot is able to move at a speed of 20 body lengths

NASA’s Human Landing System (HLS) program is the biggest bet the agency has made on the commercial space industry since the commercial crew program a decade ago. NASA decided to procure landing services rather than the landers themselves, awarding a $2.9 billion contract to SpaceX April 16 to fund development of a lunar lander based

Deep in the tissues of sea anemones, corals, and jellyfish are strange yellow cells which are genetically distinct from the marine animals. More than a century after these cells were first assigned a now forgotten genus, a new paper has resurrected the name and described six new species from around the world. “Because our team

Researchers have demonstrated how to keep a network of nanowires in a state that’s right on what’s known as the edge of chaos – an achievement that could be used to produce artificial intelligence (AI) that acts much like the human brain does. The team used varying levels of electricity on a nanowire simulation, finding

Scientists are continually discovering more about how we pick up language from the earliest ages, and a new study looks specifically at how very young children integrate different sources of information to learn new words. Those sources can be everything from whether or not they’ve seen an object before (which points to whether or not

Comets are boozy beasts. They come in here to the inner Solar System from goodness-knows-where (the outer Solar System), get a little warmth, and start spewing alcoholic compounds into space, willy-nilly. Comet 46P/Wirtanen, which visited the inner Solar System in 2018, takes the martini. According to an analysis of its atmosphere, or coma, it was

Deadly climate conditions could soon become the norm in most parts of the world, according to a systematic review. If we do nothing to curb our greenhouse gas emissions, the authors who conducted the review predict between 44 and 75 percent of the human population will be chronically stressed by heat by the end of

WASHINGTON — NASA is seeking proposals to begin the next phase of Artemis lunar lander services, moving quickly despite unresolved protests about its selection of SpaceX to develop a lunar lander. NASA issued a request for proposals July 1 for what it calls “Sustainable Human Landing System Studies and Risk Reduction.” The solicitation, Appendix N

Microbes fished from the stomachs of cows can gobble up certain kinds of plastic, including the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) used in soda bottles, food packaging, and synthetic fabrics. Scientists uncovered these microbes in liquid that was drawn from the rumen, the largest compartment of a ruminant’s stomach; ruminants include hooved animals like cattle and sheep,

It’s easy to get distracted – whether you’re daydreaming about a special someone while you should be working, or completely going blank and just taking a brain break. Now, scientists have gained a better idea of what actually happens in our brains when we ‘zone out’, and it looks a lot like a part of