Browsing: Science
With the approach of a special day, we often find ourselves balancing the celebration of a new year’s wisdom and the apprehension of time passing by.…
Pupil size can help diagnose conditions like concussion Irina Silnikova/Getty Images As you breathe, your pupils change size: they are smallest as you begin to inhale, gradually enlarge to their largest as you exhale, and then rapidly shrink as you finish exhaling. “I’m not going to see it with my naked eye.” Martin Schafer “I
People living in the highlands of Papua New Guinea may benefit from having Denisovan DNAMichael Runkel/Danita Delimont/Getty Images/Gallo Images Roots Highland and lowland peoples of Papua…
Astronomy Photographer of the Year An annual photo contest showcasing all things space-relatedis back for the first time in 16 yearsNumber Run. More than 3,500 photos…
Illustration showing LUCA possibly being attacked by a virusScientific Graphic Design The organisms that gave rise to all life on Earth evolved much earlier than previously…
The Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) is a hypothetical common ancestor of all modern cellular life, from single-celled organisms such as bacteria to giant sequoia trees…
Flying cars have long been part of our imagined future, and they might be here to stay. Shutterstock/Design Project A long history of the future Nicole…
Part of the urine collection systemLuka Bielski Astronauts on spacewalks may soon be able to drink their own urine, thanks to a water filtration and recycling…
Scientists from Baylor College of Medicine and other institutions have announced the discovery of ancient chromosome subfossils in a female mammoth fossil.Mammutus primigeniusThe mammoth, a species…
Tachyon They are hypothetical particles that always travel faster than light. Until recently, they were commonly thought to be entities that did not fit into the…
A recent study indicates that multiple instances of gene flow occurring between 250,000 and 200,000 years ago impacted the genomes and biology of both modern humans…
In a new study, planetary scientists have found strong similarities between the soil of Gale Crater on Mars and that of the cold, sub-Arctic climate of…
“Demographic composition has changed significantly in recent years,” Li Junhua, the U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, said in a news release. The report predicts…
Solar power plantYaor Shen/Getty Images Things are a bit shaky right now, both environmentally and politically, so I decided to call up some experts to find…
Any random series of events, like ocean waves lapping on a shore, could be a clock, and physicists have now devised a mathematical procedure for building such strange clocks and measuring their accuracy. “How can you turn anything into a watch? We decided to approach that problem by thinking about the process that is, in
Nut deficiency What happens when you remove most of the nuts from the bolts on three of the four sides of a tall electricity pylon? New…
39,000-year-old mammoth leg Love Darren/Stockholm University The woolly mammoth, which died 52,000 years ago, has been so well preserved that it’s now possible to sequence its…
Broken sea ice in Lancaster Sound, part of the Northwest PassageAllison Cook Shipping companies had hoped that melting sea ice would open up shorter shipping routes…
A special laser (red) can bend electrons (blue) into a spiral shapeDr. Yiqi Fan (University of Konstanz) With the help of a laser, the electrons were…
If you have never experienced a major loss in your life, you are one of the lucky ones. If you have experienced a major loss –…
Teenage groups can offer protection, but they can also enforce exclusion.Virginia Woods Jack/Millennium Images, UK Coming of AgeLucy Faulks (Bodley Head (UK), Vintage Digital (US)) In…
Horses are big and strong, but often quiet, which may provide comfort to Alzheimer’s patients.Halfpoint/Getty Images/iStockphoto Spending time with horses seems to make Alzheimer’s patients more…
Current sanitary napkins can cause leaksVittoria/Alamy Sanitary products that turn blood into a gel-like solid substance rather than absorbing it appear to reduce the risk of…
Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental illness characterized by an excessively high sense of personal importance, and it is relatively common. Up to 5% of the…
On a light rainy day last year, two researchers attempted the Wall of Death for the first time. This amusement park attraction near Parma, Italy, looks…
Imagine swimming at night in a river filled with crocodiles and hippos. Sounds terrifying, right? Well, two lions in Uganda did just that earlier this year,…
New genus and species of iguanodont dinosaur named Comptonatus chasei It was explained by PhD student Jeremy Lockwood and colleagues at the University of Portsmouth. Reconstructing…
Using more than 500 images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have found evidence of a 20,000-solar-mass black hole at the center of Earth. Omega…
The recently discovered structure predates the famous Inca citadel of Machu Picchu by approximately 3,500 years and was constructed long before the Inca Empire and its…
Tampons are one of the most popular period products in a growing market that also includes period underwear and menstrual cups. They’ve been around since the…
Brothers Jacob and Tiv in Queen Elizabeth National Park, UgandaAlex Blaczkowski A pair of lion brothers have completed the longest recorded swim of their kind, crossing…
The speed at which we reach decisions can reveal the strength of our biasesDavid Williams/Bloomberg via Getty Images In large groups of independent decision makers, those…
The culture that built Stonehenge suffered a mysterious population decline Wirestock/Alamy The European Neolithic culture that produced megaliths like Stonehenge experienced a major decline about 5,400…
This may solve one of the mysteries of breastfeeding. Svetlana Lepnitskaya/Getty Images A newly discovered hormone discovered in mice may solve a long-standing mystery about how…
We don’t tend to dwell on the fact that we exist in three dimensions. Front to back, left to right, up to down – these are…
Shutterstock/Marco Aliaksandr Imagine what would happen if governments around the world announced they were going to restrict the sale of 34 centimeter rulers. There would be a lot of confusion, since that length doesn’t seem to have any special meaning and there are no 34 centimeter rulers. Such laws are absurd, but several countries have
Researchers from Northwestern Medicine and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have discovered the underlying cause of lupus, shedding light on a key mystery behind one of the…
Montana Republicans have filed a lawsuit against the state Supreme Court, challenging a landmark climate change ruling that requires regulators to consider greenhouse gas emissions when…
Whale remains on the ocean floor being eaten by tiger sharks and other scavengersLaura Gurgas Computer models help predict the drift of dead whales, allowing authorities…
The Antikythera Mechanism is a multi-part device recovered from a shipwreck near the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901. It is believed to be the remains…