 How Scientists Know Our Human Ancestors Ate Insects
Today, insect eating is on the rise. Did our ancestors chow down on the critters, too? (Credit: CK Bangkok Photography/Shutterstock)
Anticipating food shortages in coming decades, some companies are touting insects as tomorrow's protein source. Entrepreneurs are jumping on board and chips made of crickets are hitting grocery shelves. But scientists advise caution: They say more research is needed on the environmental impact of rearing insects at an industrial scale.
As sustain...
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A Frank Look at Female Orgasms and Rabbits
A very weak paper in PNAS has attracted some attention lately: An experimental test of the ovulatory homolog model of female orgasm
The paper aims to be a test of the hypothesis that the human female orgasm is a kind of evolutionary relic from an earlier stage in evolution.
In humans, ovulation happens on a monthly cycle and is not related to sexual activity. However, in some mammal species, such as rabbits, ovulation is triggered by sex (or copulation, as biologists say)
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Rumbling 'Marsquakes' on the Red Planet are Mystifying and Exciting Scientists
NASA's InSight lander has its seismic instrument tucked under a shield to protect it from wind and extreme temperatures. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
NASA's Mars InSight spacecraft landed on the Red Planet in November 2018. Scientists equipped the mission with a seismometer so they could learn how Mars releases seismic energy — that is, to get a feel for how the Red Planet rumbles. So far, InSight has recorded more than 100 seismic signals, and researchers are confident at least 21 o...
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Astronomers Zoom in on a Galaxy 9 Billion Light-years Away Thanks to Gravitational Lensing
(Credit: MIT/Image courtesy of the researchers)
When even the most powerful telescopes can't capture the views you want, it helps to have natural magnifying glasses to rely on. In a paper published Monday in Nature Astronomy, researchers describe how they zoomed in to capture a young, star-forming galaxy roughly nine billion light-years away in X-ray light.
To study such a distant galaxy, they used the fact that massive objects can warp space-time around them and magnify ligh...
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The Cosmos' Most Powerful Magnets May Form When Stars Collide
These snapshots of two merging stars in action show the overall strength of the magnetic field in color (yellow is more magnetic), as well as the magnetic field lines (hatching). The stars on the left, which don't have very strong magnetic fields, are just about to merge into a more massive and magnetic star (right). According to new research, such mergers can dramatically bolster the strength of the final star's magnetic field. (Credit: F. Schneider et al./Nature volume 574, pages 211-214 (...
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This Interstellar Space Rock Looks a Lot Like Our Own Solar System's Comets
The Gemini Observatory in Hawaii caught this first-ever color image of the interstellar comet Borisov and its faint tail. (Credit:Composite image by Travis Rector. Credit: Gemini Observatory/NSF/AURA)
Asteroids, comets and other rocky objects litter the solar system, left over from when the planets formed. Scientists study these space rocks to learn about what the early solar system was like. Now, we're entering an era in which we can learn about alien planetary systems in the same wa...
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Fatal Familial Insomnia: The Disease That Kills By Stealing Sleep
(Credit: Rachata Teyparsit/Shutterstock)
A brief bout of insomnia can be maddening. You know what it feels like. We all do. Lying awake chasing feverish thoughts from our minds while the slow tick of passing minutes compounds sleep-stealing anxiety.
For most of us these episodes are a brief interruption to our sleep schedules. Others experience more persistent insomnia, but at a level that's often manageable. But for a very rare group of people with a frightening disease called f
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Alexei Leonov, First Person to Walk in Space, Dies at 85
Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov trains for the Apollo-Soyuz mission in April 1975 . (Credit: NASA)
Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, the first
person to walk in space, has died at the age of 85 at the Burdenko Military
Hospital in Moscow. His death was announced Friday, Oct. 11, by Roscosmos,
Russia's space agency.
Born in 1934, Leonov became the eleventh Soviet
cosmonaut and achieved major milestones of space exploration. During the
Voskhod 2 mission, on March 18, 1965, he exited h...
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Should You Eat Red Meat? Navigating a World of Contradicting Studies
The new study still finds that reducing unprocessed red meat consumption by three servings in a week is associated with an an approximately eight per cent lower lifetime risk of heart disease, cancer and early death. (Credit: Shutterstock)
Another diet study, another controversy and the public is left wondering what to make of it. This time it's a series of studies in the Annals of Internal Medicine by an international group of researchers concluding people need not r...
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Life Might Survive on a Planet Orbiting a Black Hole — If It Can Stand the Harsh Light
A more realistic simulation of the black hole featured in the movie Interstellar. (Credit: James et al./IOP Science)
In the 2014 movie Interstellar, astronauts investigate planets orbiting a supermassive black hole as potential homes for human life. A supermassive black hole warps surrounding space-time, according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, and at least one of the planets in the movie, called Miller's planet, experienced time passing at a slowed-down rate. For each ...
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Why Do We Have Eyelashes? New Study Says It's to Keep Our Eyes Moist
Do eyelashes exist, in part, to keep our eyes from drying out? (Credit: KDdesignphoto/Shutterstock)
Why do we have eyelashes? The answer might seem simple: Those thick hairs on the end of our eyelids simply exist to block intruding particles from landing on our eyeballs.
And, in fact, that's what many scientists have hypothesized. It explains why camels evolved to have long lashes for wandering the dusty desert — and why our house pets, in comparison, have stumpy ones.
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Researchers Find Dietary Changes That Help Treat Irritable Bowel Disease
(Credit: Rimma Bondarenko/Shutterstock)
In recent years, researchers have pinpointed a group of compounds called FODMAPs that are common trigger foods for people with irritable bowel syndrome.
But it wasn't immediately clear whether eliminating these foods could also help people with more serious conditions like Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis — or if it might actually hurt their already-sensitive guts. Now a new report in the journal Gastroenterology suggests a diet...
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The Milky Way's Supermassive Black Hole Erupted With a Violent Flare a Few Million Years Ago
A flare erupted from our Milky Way's center some 3.5 million years ago. While Earth wouldn't be in any danger if it happened today, the the light would be clearly visible. (Credit: James Josephides/ASTRO 3D)
Astronomers believe supermassive black holes probably lurk in the centers of most large galaxies. These gargantuan black holes can gather swirling disks of material around them as their gravity attracts stars and gases. In some cases, these disks can emit vast amounts of light and e
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NASA is Building its First Electric Airplane
NASA's X-57 Maxwell is the agency's first all-electric airplane. It's also the first X-plane for NASA in two decades. (Credit: NASA)
NASA is getting ready to test their first all-electric
plane, the X-57 Maxwell, at the Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards,
California.
This latest version of the aircraft, called Modification II
or Mod II, just arrived at Edwards from San Luis Obispo, California, where the
plane was being developed by Empirical Systems Aerospace.
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Humans Can Regenerate Cartilage, Study Finds, Offering Hope for Arthritis Treatment
(Credit: Africa Studio/Shutterstock)
If you get a cut, it'll heal. If you lose some skin to road rash, it'll grow back. But lose a limb, and it's gone for good. Unless you're a salamander, a zebrafish or an axolotl, of course — all of which can regrow missing limbs. Now, scientists find that some of the molecules crucial to that process are at work inside of us.
Specific microRNA molecules are key to limb regeneration in salamanders. It turns out that similar molecules in our o...
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Siamraptor suwati: First Bitey Dino of Its Kind in Southeast Asia
A reconstruction of the predatory dinosaur's skull based on partial fossils of Siamraptor suwati. (Credit: Chokchaloemwong et al., 2019)
Siamraptor suwati joins the ranks of predatory dinosaurs known to science — and it's the first of its lineage from Southeast Asia, giving its discovery greater significance.
When it comes to bitey dinos, most people think of T. rex and
velociraptors (thanks, Jurassic Park...). But if toothy terrors are
your thing, you should really g...
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Chemistry Nobel Prize Honors Three Scientists Who Developed Lithium-Ion Batteries
(Credit: Abigail Malate, Staff Illustrator. Copyright American Institute of Physics)
(Inside Science) -- The 2019 Nobel Prize in chemistry has been awarded to three scientists "for the development of lithium-ion batteries."
The prize goes jointly to John B. Goodenough of the University of Texas at Austin, M. Stanley Whittingham of Binghamton University in New York, and Akira Yoshino, of Meijo University in Nagoya, Japan.
At 97, Goodenough will be the oldest Nobel l
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NASA's ICON Satellite to Launch on Wednesday
The new orbiter will orbit in the ionosphere and study the interactions of Earth and space weather. (Credit: ASA Goddard's Conceptual Image Lab/B. Monroe)
NASA will launch its Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) satellite on Wednesday, October 9, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 9:30 p.m. EDT.
The new satellite will orbit Earth, studying what happens when space weather and Earth weather interact in Earth's ionosphere, the atmosphere level populated by ...
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How the First Exoplanets Were Discovered
The first exoplanets ever discovered were found orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12. It took years for astronomers to find exoplanets around sun-like stars. (Credit:NASA/JPL-Caltech)
In 1992, astronomers discovered the first exoplanet, or planet
outside our solar system. But it didn't come in any form they'd really
anticipated.
Neutron stars are the second densest type of object in the
universe outside black holes. They form when a giant star dies and explodes
outward as a ...
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How Many People Have Died in Outer Space?
Following the only deaths to have ever occurred in space, the USSR started a policy requiring all cosmonauts to wear pressurized spacesuits during reentry. (Credit: Peakpx.com)
For many wannabe astronauts, the idea of venturing into the great unknown would be a dream come true. But over the past 50 years, there's been a slew of spaceflight-related tragedies that are more akin to an astronaut's worst nightmare.
In the last half-century, about 30 astronauts and cosmonauts have died
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Three Share Physics Nobel for Exoplanet and Cosmological Discoveries
(Credit: Abigail Malate, Staff Illustrator/Courtesy American Institute of Physics)
(Inside Science) -- The 2019 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to three scientists "for contribution to our understanding of the evolution of the universe and Earth's place in the cosmos."This year's prize was awarded to James Peebles of Princeton University "for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology, and Michel Mayor of the University of Geneva and Didier Queloz, of the University o...
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This Lake on Mars Was Drying Up 3.5 Billion Years Ago
Mars' Gale Crater once held a lake of liquid water. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/MSSS)
Mars was a very different place as a young planet. Liquid water dotted the Red Planet's landscape with lakes and rivers. But the planet's climate changed drastically in the past few billion years. Today, scientists see the remains of the planet's bodies of water in dried-up river channels and salts left in its rocks.
Now, new data from the Curiosity rover show that the plan...
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Which Galaxies are Best Suited for the Evolution of Alien Life?
The Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite of our Milky Way, may be well-suited for the evolution of life. (Credit: John A Davis/Shutterstock)
Where in the universe can life evolve? When scientists discuss this question, they're usually talking about what kinds of planets might support life. But some researchers are thinking bigger.
In recent years, astronomers have been investigating whether some types of galaxies are more hospitable to life than others. Unsurprisingly, most res...
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Scientists Used Gene Editing to Create a Bull Without Horns. It Passed the Trait to its Offspring
A horned bull from a control group is flanked by two hornless offspring of a genome-edited bull. (Credit: Alison Van Eenennaam)
In promising news for dairy farmers, researchers have bred what are likely the first offspring from a genome-edited bull. The calves were born without horns, a trait that occurs naturally in cattle but that was given to their father through previous DNA-editing research.Â
The offspring were otherwise normal and healthy, the authors reported Monday in Na...
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Whole Body Vibration: Does Shaking Up Our Workouts Lead to Better Health?
Does working out on a vibrating plate help make us stronger? (Credit: Alliance Images)
Can we vibrate ourselves healthy? That's the premise behind a form of therapy called whole body vibration, or WBV. Proponents argue that subjecting our bones and muscles to rapid vibrations makes them stronger — much the same way exercise does.
The idea is simple: Standing on a vibrating plate forces our muscles to do work. This low-grade stress ultimately leads to strength gains and weight l...
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Three Share Nobel Prize in Medicine for How Cells Sense Oxygen
(Credit: Abigail Malate, Staff Illustrator. Copyright American Institute of Physics)
(Inside Science) -- The 2019 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded to three scientists "for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability."
The 9 million Swedish krona (more than $900,000) prize is shared equally between William Kaelin from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Peter Ratcliffe from the Francis Crick Institute in London, and Gregg S...
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Nine Nobel Prize Predictions for 2019
(Credit: Abigail Malate/Copyright American Institute of Physics)
(Inside Science) -- Every year, the Nobel Prizes in physiology or medicine, physics, and chemistry honor great advances and discoveries in science. Last year, one of our top contenders in medicine -- checkpoint inhibitors for cancer therapy -- won. We were not as successful in the other two categories. But buoyed by that modicum of success, we will again attempt to summarize nine top contenders for these famous science pri
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Baby Binary Star Gives Astronomers a Glimpse at How Planets Like Tatooine Form
With the help of ALMA's dust-penetrating gaze, researchers got this snapshot of a young stellar pair in action. (Credit:ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Alves et al.)
Astronomers recently imaged two budding stars locked in a gravitational waltz that twisted their planet-forming disks into a pretzel-shaped knot.
The stars, recently imaged with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), are giving astronomers a unique look at a nascent binary system. The discovery sheds new lig...
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Planet Nine Might Be a Black Hole the Size of a Baseball
Tiny black holes are thought to speckle the universe, and new research posits the solar system may have captured one. (Credit: nagualdesign/Tom Ruen/Wikimedia Commons)
Something strange may be lurking in the outer solar system. The odd orbits of distant space rocks suggest there's a giant, elusive world dubbed Planet Nine waiting out there to be discovered. But now, in a new research paper, a team of scientists suggest something far stranger may be influencing the orbits of these dist...
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This New Prosthetic Leg Hooks Into Users' Nervous Systems
One of the study participants walking with a prototype of the new prosthetic leg. (Credit: Federica Barberi)
A new prosthetic leg integrates with a wearer's nervous system to give real-time feedback about their environment. Users can report they can "feel" where their artificial leg is in space, giving them the ability to complete a range of tasks previously out of reach.
Researchers described tests with the new prosthetic in Science Translational Medicine this week in three pati
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NASA paying Four Companies to Learn How to Make Fuel on the Moon
The space agency is dishing out almost $20 million to research creating rocket fuel from material found on the Moon and Mars. (Credit: NASA Goddard)
NASA has awarded a total of $17.4 million to
four private aerospace companies to study and produce technologies that could help
future space missions create fuel on the Moon and Mars.
The companies include Jeff Bezo's spaceship company, Blue Origin, as well as Elon Musk's SpaceX. The other two recipients are OxEon Energy, a ...
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Dads Who Drink Right Before A Pregnancy Might Harm Their Baby's Health, Too
Potential dads should lay off the alcohol before conceiving a child, new research says. (Credit: G-Stock Studio/Shutterstock)
We've known for decades that pregnant women who drink alcohol put their baby at risk of developmental problems. New research out today in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology examined a connection that gets less attention — dad's drinking habits.
Paternal drinking in the three months before conception was associated with a 44 percent increas...
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Young People on Cell Phones Are Catching Up to Their Parents' Keyboard Typing Speeds
Younger cellphone users are closing the gap between how fast they type on a mobile device and how fast the average keyboard user can type. (Credit: Jacob Lund/Shutterstock)
Texting on a flip phone keyboard in the early 2000s wasn't a speedy affair. But fast-forward almost two decades later, and we can type out everything from texts to emails on our smartphones. And as time goes on, scientists say our typing speeds are increasing — possibly more than previous studies predicted.
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The Andromeda Galaxy Has Swallowed Up Multiple Dwarf Galaxies, Study Finds
The Andromeda Galaxy, located some 2.5 million light-years from Earth, burns brightly in ultraviolet light in this image taken by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are the big fish in our corner of the universe, surrounded by dozens of smaller dwarf galaxies. Together, this cosmic community makes up what scientists call the "Local Group."
Astronomers believe that the largest galaxies grow by attracting and consumi...
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Nuclear War Between India and Pakistan Could Devastate the Entire Planet
A test of the first hydrogen bomb by the U.S. in 1952 as part of Operation Ivy. (Photo courtesy of National Nuclear Security Administration/Nevada Site Office)
Skies darkened by smoke worldwide. Cities in ruins, leaving millions dead. Droughts and crop failures spreading famine for years. The realities of nuclear war are difficult to imagine. But, says a team of researchers, they deserve our attention.
New research in Science Advances spells out the potential ramifications of nuc
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NASA Poised for Record-Breaking Number of Spacewalks
The first in a planned series of 10 spacewalks will kick off on October 6. (Credit: NASA)
NASA announced a series of 10 spacewalks happening over the next three months. The complex spacewalks are part of a marathon effort which NASA scheduled to complete repairs and upgrades to the International Space Station. The events could ultimately set a new record for the most spacewalks in a time since 2011, when the ISS was completed.
The first spacewalk is scheduled for Sunday, Octobe
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Hundreds of Rogue Planets Could be Discovered with Upcoming Space Telescopes
Rogue planets, like the one shown in this artist's concept, drift through interstellar space alone and are thought to be prevalent throughout the Milky Way. Two upcoming space telescopes could help find many more of these faint objects. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Our Milky Way galaxy is home to billions of planets orbiting billions of stars in billions of planetary systems. But lurking in the spaces between, not bound to any star, are free-floating worlds. Astronomers refer to these a...
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How the U.S. Could Have an All-Renewable Energy Grid
An all-renewable grid will mean more electricity and more transmission lines. (Credit: Russ Allison Loar/flickr, CC BY-NC-ND)
The main solution to climate change is well known - stop burning fossil fuels. How to do this is more complicated, but as a scholar who does energy modeling, I and others see the outlines of a post-fossil-fuel future: We make electricity with renewable sources and electrify almost everything.
That means running vehicles and trains on electricity, heating...
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Five Takeaways Frfom Elon Musk's SpaceX Starship Update
The private rocket company laid out a handful of groundbreaking plans over the weekend. (Credit: SpaceX)
Elon Musk gave a barrage of updates on the
future of SpaceX as he stood in front of the company's new Starship and original
Falcon rockets on Saturday in Boca Chica, Texas. During the presentation, Musk
touched on the details in Starship's design, the possibilities for the craft,
and the timeline of what's to come in the near future.
SpaceX thinks Starship could br...
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Biologists Do Crazy Things to Track Animals
Trevor McIntyre faces off against a male southern elephant seal. His job was to distract aggressive males with a broomstick while his colleagues checked on other seals or glued tracking devices to their heads. (Credit: Phathutshedzo M. Radzilani)
(Inside Science) -- The first time Paul Krausman jumped out of a helicopter and wrestled a deer to the ground was in 1978. Another researcher had shot a net over the deer moments before, but the animal was not sedated, and it fought hard until
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How Much Longer Will the Hubble Space Telescope Last?
The Hubble Space Telescope appears to float above Earth in this image taken by an Atlantis crewmember in 2009. (Credit: NASA)
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was launched into orbit on the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990. Thanks to its perch above most of Earth's turbulent atmosphere, the telescope's relatively modest 2.4-meter mirror has given us an unprecedented window on the universe for nearly 30 years. But just how much longer will Hubble last?
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Why Do So Many Plastic Bottles Wash Up On Inaccessible Island? It's Ships, Scientists Say
Shipping traffic accounts for a larger percentage of plastic trash in some parts of the oceans than scientists realized. (Credit: Stephane Bidouze)
Rafts of garbage, assembled by currents that swirl trash together, clog our oceans. But how did that material wind up adrift in the first place? A new study takes a look at the refuse that washes up on a remote island in the South Atlantic and arrives at a perhaps-unexpected answer: The trash is being dumped from ships.
The findings,
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Evolution Could Explain Why Having a Girlfriend Makes Men More Attractive
Being in a relationship might make a man more attractive to women. (Credit: Roman Seliutin/Shutterstock)
Here's an option for men struggling to find female partners: Hire a professional wing woman for a night on the town. A beautiful, charismatic companion will help ease you into conversations with prospective dates. At least, that's the claim companies touting the service make.
But there may be another hidden advantage to your female companion, one rooted deep in our minds. W...
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Astronomers Expect to Start Finding Many More Interstellar Space Rocks
'Oumuamua, the first-known interstellar interloper, is seen venting gas and dust in this artist's concept. (Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, ESO, M. Kornmesser)
Back in 2017, astronomers discovered the first interstellar object, 'Oumuamua, as it swung through our solar system. And, just a few weeks ago, scientists spotted a second one paying us a visit, called C/2019 Q4 (Borisov).
Now astronomers are saying they could soon be discovering many new interstellar comets. A new telescop...
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Arctic sea ice plunges to second lowest extent on record
Thanks to human-caused warming, an area of ice three times the size of Texas went missing this year
Arctic sea ice shriveled so much during this summer's now-finished melt season that it has reached the second lowest extent on record.
A sensitive indicator of human-caused warming, the low extent of the region's floating lid of ice effectively tied with 2007 and 2016 for second place in satellite records extending back 40 years, according to
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A possibly historic snow storm in the West plus a heat wave in the East — what's going on?
The National Weather Service is warning that "a significant, very early-season winter storm will enter the Northern Rockies Saturday. A host of potentially dangerous impacts will result from this type of early winter storm."
Historic snow and a heat wave? That's what a downright loopy jet stream pattern is bringing to large parts of the United States.
Parts of the Northern Rockies are bracing for what the National Weather Service in Missoula, MT is describing as an "historic wint
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Hurricane Lorezno defies forecasts, strengthening into a monster and setting an all-time record
Hurricane Lorenzo, howling in the North Atlantic on the evening of Saturday September 28, 2019 and into Sunday the 29th, as seen by the GOES-16 weather satellite. (Note: The video cycles through several times. Source: CIRA/RAMMB)
On Thursday, Sept. 26, the National Hurricane Center described Hurricane Lorenzo as "one of the largest and most powerful hurricanes of record for the central tropical Atlantic, with the only comparable hurricane [near there] in
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Why Your Dog Likes Sticking Its Head Out the Car Window
What's so great about hanging your head out of a car window? (Credit: Shutterstock)
If happiness were a picture, there's a pretty good chance it would be a dog with its head sticking out of a car window.
It seems few pups can resist a breeze running through their fur and their ears flapping in the wind as their owner cruises into the sunset. And based on those wind-whipped grins, dogs seem to wholeheartedly enjoy this simple pleasure.Â
But you have to admit, seeing a d...
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A Weirdly Giant Planet Around a Tiny Star is Defying Astronomer's Expectations
The newly discovered planet, named GJ 3512 b, is half the mass of Jupiter. Researchers think its tiny red dwarf host not only likely harbors an additional massive planet, but also ejected another in the past. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Astronomers have discovered a gigantic planet orbiting a puny star some 30 light-years away. And according to current theories, the planet shouldn't exist. Dubbed GJ 3512 b, the gas giant is at least half the mass of Jupiter. But it orbits a red dwarf s...
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The Oldest Discovered Cluster of Galaxies is Revealing the Early Universe
A rendering of data from the study. The blue shading shows the estimated protocluster extent and the smaller boxes show images of the galaxies they observed in the protocluster. (Credit: NAOJ/Harikane et. al.)
Galaxies and dark matter stretch throughout our universe as a vast cosmic web. They cluster together in some areas and leave empty voids in others.
But how early in the universe's history the clusters began to form is still unknown. Now, researchers have found the most dis
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Plastic Tea Bags Release Billions of Microplastics Into Every Cup
Tea bags made of plastic can release billions of microplastics into our bodies. (Credit: AnikonaAnn/Shutterstock)
There's a new trend in tea — out with the old, flat paper tea bags and in with the pyramid-shaped mesh bags that allow bigger leaves extra breathing room. The bags, which have been around since at least 2006, are sometimes called "silken" sachets. They can be made from hemp, corn-based plastics, nylon or PET (polyethylene terephthalate). But most often it's one of ...
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Intense Stress Might Hurt Our Cells' Ability to Make Energy, Study Finds
(Credit: Alliance Images/Shutterstock)
For many, stress is an all-too familiar emotion. It can come from daily challenges, like juggling work and child care, or major life events, like getting divorced or losing a loved one. We all experience this stress differently — some people can't sleep, others stress eat, and still others develop debilitating anxiety.
But our bodies may be responding to stress on a deeper level. Chronic stress and anxiety could disrupt how our cells pro...
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Astronomers Just Watched a Black Hole Shred a Star
This artist's illustration shows a black hole ripping a star into a thin stream of gas that then slams back into itself, causing a bright shock that astronomers detected earlier this year. (Credit: Illustration by Robin Dienel/Courtesy Carnegie Institution for Science)
A
NASA spacecraft built to find alien planets just spotted a star getting
shredded by a black hole.
Scientists used NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to capture the unfortunate sun getting to...
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Too Much Exercise Can Tire Our Brains Out, Too
Working out too intensely for too long can cause our brains to become fatigued. (Credit: Flamingo Images/Shutterstock)
For years, the National Institute of Sports, Exercise and Performance (INSEP) in France had been studying an unusual phenomenon. If an athlete's workout regiments were ramped up, it didn't always lead to a better performance — even if that athlete felt like they were working harder than before.Â
The organization called this phenomenon overreaching, and kne...
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Fungus-Farming Ants Might Hold the Secret to Fighting Drug-Resistant Microbes
Leafcutter ants carry vegetation to their nests. The species farm fungi for sustenance. (Credit: Ivan Kuzmin/Shuttestock
In 2017, a woman in Nevada died from a fairly common bacterial infection, Klebsiella pneumoniae. Her death wasn't the product of medical oversight or inattention; rather, it came despite it. Her infection proved resistant to every antibiotic drug doctors threw against it, NPR reports. They ultimately exhausted 26 different drugs — the bacteria was resistant to every...
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Thousands-of-Years-Old Baby Bottles Reveal How Ancient Infants Were Fed
Two Late Bronze Age feeding vessels dated to around 1200- 800 BC. (Credit: Katharina Rebay-Salisbury)
Ancient pottery is helping scientists learn how prehistoric parents fed their infants.
A study of tiny clay pots with small spouts discovered at archaeological digs reveals that the vessels were likely used as milk bottles to feed babies. The specialized pots have long been found at sites around the world, and scientists have speculated that they may have been used to feed chi...
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With Bugs and Algae, One Million People Could Live in Mars Colonies
(Credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems)
In the science fiction novel and movie The Martian, a stranded astronaut survives more than 500 days on Mars by growing potatoes. A permanent human settlement on Mars would need to do much better. And according to a computer model created by planetary scientists, that's actually an attainable goal. With the right food sources, we could grow a million-person population on Mars that doesn't depend on food shipped from Earth in about a hun...
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Genetic Deep Dive Helps Explain How Whales Evolved to Become Aquatic
Whales, dolphins and other cetaceans underwent numerous physiological changes as they transitioned from the land to the sea. (Credit: Carl Buell, John Gatesy)
Life began in the oceans, and for hundreds of millions of years, that's where it stayed. It took our deep ancestors eons to crawl, flop and gasp their way onto land. It turned out to be a pretty good decision, all told, as those creatures found a brand new world to inhabit. The ancient pioneers eventually led to mammals, including
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Saving Earth's Oceans Could Offer One-Fifth of Needed Emissions Reductions
Earth's oceans are a powerful tool when it comes to mitigating climate change. a new report argues. (Credit: NASA)
A future where climate change is taken seriously everywhere — where batteries trump fuel tanks and forests stay intact — is easy to picture. But for too long, ideas of a sustainable planet have focused on what we can do on land, and not planned for what the ocean could help accomplish.
That's the argument put forth by the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Oce...
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The Way We Walk May Help Doctors Diagnose Dementia and Alzheimer's
A person's gait may help doctor's diagnose memory disorders like dementia and Alzheimer's. (Credit: Ljupco Smokovski/Shutterstock)
Dementia takes many forms. Hallmark symptoms, like memory
loss and disorientation can help doctors detect if a patient has some form of the
disease. But to the naked eye, it can be difficult to distinguish between conditions
like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Lewy body dementia (LBD).
That is, unless you look at the way someone walks. New resea...
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An 'Orbital Gateway' Can Guide Comets to the Inner Solar System
Centaur Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 has a chance to get funneled into the inner solar system in the not-so-distant future. This artist's concept shows what the comet would look like if it were 0.2 AU (19 million miles, 30 million kilometers) from Earth. Note the Moon at upper right for scale. (Credit:
University of Arizona/Heather Roper)
Astronomers have discovered an orbital region just beyond Jupiter that appears to act as a kind of gateway for some objects entering the inner solar system
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These Bacteria-Powered Robots May One Day Swim Through Your Bloodstream
The bacterium Escherichia coli, illustrated here, moves itself with propeller-like structures called flagella; it is one of the mobile microbes scientists have linked to cargo-carrying structures to form biohybrid microrobots. (Credit: supergalactic/Shutterstock)
In the universe of TV's Doctor Who, the scariest adversaries of all are the hybrid robot-organic life-forms known as the Daleks.
Each Dalek is a living being encased in a robotic shell equipped with lethal weaponry, freq
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Expedition 61 Set For Launch to International Space Station
The three crew members in front of the Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft before the launch. (Credit: NASA)
Expedition 61, the next mission to the International Space Station, will launch three crew members in a Soyuz MS-15 rocket on September 25 at 9:57 a.m. EDT from Kazakhstan.
Heading up to the ISS, the crew includes Jessica Meir, a NASA astronaut, Oleg Skripochka, a Russian cosmonaut, and Hazzaa Al Mansoori from the United Arab Emirates.
The flight will take about six hours as the
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What's Hotter Than the Surface of the Sun? The Solar Corona
There are two ways to see the sun's corona: Send up a spacecraft or wait for a total solar eclipse. On the left, the sun's wispy atmosphere glows with ultraviolet light, captured by the European Space Agency's PROBA2 satellite. Loops and arcs of plasma follow magnetic field lines coming from the sun. On the right, light scattering off particles in the corona becomes visible during the 2017 total solar eclipse that traversed the United States. (CREDIT: S.R. CRANMER AND A.R. WINEBARGER / A...
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Electrostimulation Study Gets Alzheimer's Patients to Recall Vivid Memories
Participants in a recent trial experienced old memories, vividly.
Halfpoint/Shutterstock.com
Alzheimer's disease is one of the most dreaded diagnoses, and the fear is particularly acute among older people. This complex brain disorder, which usually affects older individuals, can cause many cognitive disabilities, most notably memory impairment.
About 5.7 million Americans are living with Alzheimer's disease. In addition, millions of loved ones and c...
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Archaeologists Find Evidence for a Biblical Siege of Jerusalem
A model of ancient Jerusalem. (Credit: Dennis Jarvis/Flickr)
(Inside Science) -- In the 6th century B.C., the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II, fearful that the Egyptians would cut off the Babylonian trade routes to the eastern Mediterranean region known as the Levant, invaded and laid siege to Jerusalem to block them. His army destroyed the temple the Hebrew king Solomon built there, and forced the city's elite to exile in Babylonia.
So began the Babylonian Exile or Captivity...
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Why Do Women Get Alzheimer's More Than Men?
MRI scans of patients show patients with Alzheimer's disease. (Credit: Atthapon Raksthaput/Shutterstock)
Scientists are still unraveling why Alzheimer's disease affects men and women disproportionately. Out of the 5 million Americans who have it, about 64 percent are women.
Once in their 60s, women are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's than breast cancer, and more than twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's as their male counterparts. And when women develop the diseas...
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Libet and Free Will Revisited
One of the best known of all neuroscience studies is the 'free will experiment' conducted by Benjamin Libet and colleagues in 1983.
Libet et al. asked volunteers to tap their fingers at will, freely choosing the time of each action. EEG revealed an electrical potential occuring "several hundred milliseconds" before people reported a conscious decision to perform each tap.
This "Readiness Potential" or Bereitschaftspotential threatened to debunk the very existence of human volitio
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How Old Are Saturn's Rings?
A recently captured view of Saturn's rings shows them glowing brightly on June 20, 2019. Hubble took this stunning shot as part of the Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) project.
(Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (GSFC), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) and the OPAL Team)
Saturn's rings are one of the most striking celestial features in our solar system. The Pioneer and Voyager probes gave us our first close-up look. More recently, NASA's Cassini mission spent more ...
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Short Sleeper Syndrome: When You Can Get By on Just a Few Hours of Sleep
A small segment of the population are born with superhuman sleep needs. They're called natural short sleepers, and they wake up refreshed and wide awake on very little sleep. And these individuals share a few other quirks, too. (Credit: Shutterstock)
What do Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Martha Stewart have in common? They're part of the 1 percent.
No, not that one percent. Instead, we're referring to the one percent of people who thrive on far less sleep than what is recomm...
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Low on Juice: How Phone Batteries Shape the Rhythms of Our Daily Lives
Feeling stressed yet? (Credit: boyhey/Shutterstock)
It's happened to all of us. You're out and about when you notice that your phone is running low on battery. For many, the realization sparks a sense of urgency, and lends new meaning to plans we may have already laid. Edging that battery icon back up becomes a goal of singular urgency, a task that lends a frisson of unease to our everyday lives.
At least, that's what two researchers in Europe found when they surveyed a small gro
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Giant Volcano on Jupiter's Moon Could Erupt Any Second
A true color approximation of Jupiter's moon Io taken by the Galileo spacecraft in 1999. (credit: PIRL/University of Arizona)
A volcano spread across an area greater than Lake Michigan could erupt any day. Located on Jupiter's moon Io scientists predict that Loki, named after the Norse trickster god, is due to explode sometime in mid-September. The volcano last erupted in May 2018, an event also predicted by scientists.Â
"Loki volcano is huge — 200 kilometers across. Itâ€...
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This is What Denisovans May Have Looked Like
This is an estimate of what Denisovan's may have looked like, based on a new DNAS analysis technique. (Credit: Maayan Harel)
Every time archaeologists pry the remains of a newly-identified human ancestor from the earth, there's one question we care about most: What did they look like? For the first time, researchers have tried to answer that burning query about Denisovans, one of the most intriguing ancient relatives on our family tree.
Discovered in 2010 in a Siberian cave, th...
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Hubble Spots a Dim, Dark Matter-Rich Galaxy
(Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Calzetti)
Some 30 million light-years from Earth, a faint monster lurks in the constellation Cetus the Whale. Astronomers dub the object UGC 695, and astronomers recently caught this image of it using the Hubble Space Telescope.
It's a galaxy fainter than even the background brightness of our planet's atmosphere, which makes it tough to see with Earth-bound telescopes.
These so-called "low-surface-brightness galaxies" get their ...
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Human Hearts Evolved for Endurance — and They Need It to Stay Healthy
(Credit: lzf/Shutterstock)
(Inside Science) -- Millions of years ago, after the ancestors of humans diverged from the last link they shared with chimpanzees, they began developing the numerous adaptations that made endurance one of the defining traits of our species. By about 2 million years ago, the genus Homo had emerged and the process really took off. Today, humans can run for miles or walk all day thanks to those changes. In new research, scientists have shown just how substantia...
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When Did Humans Reach North America? The Question Keeps Growing More Complex
Native Americans have been visiting Calvert Island off the Canadian coast for more than 10,000 years. (Credit: Pacific Northwest Sailing/Shutterstock)
Humans have long found comfort on Calvert Island, just off the coast of mainland British Columbia. For millennia, they have climbed the island's rocky outcrops, walked through its rainy conifer forests, and waded through its chilly intertidal pools to collect crabs, mussels, and other marine life.
There, in 2014, a group of Canad...
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This Gut Bacteria Makes People Drunk Without Drinking — And Causes Liver Disease
Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria grown in culture. (Credit: Sirirat/Shutterstock)
Three years ago, a woman in upstate New York was charged with drunk driving and then exonerated when she proved her high blood alcohol level was the result of a rare condition in which her body brews its own alcohol. At the time, the bizarre story made national headlines. Now, auto-brewery syndrome, as the condition is called, may have helped researchers unlock some of the secrets of a common but little-und
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One Protein Makes Ebola Deadly. Scientists Can Turn it Off
A sign in the Democratic Republic of the Congo warns people that Ebola is in the area. (Credit: Sergey Uryadnikov/Shutterstock)
The Ebola virus continues to ravage populations across Africa. But earlier this week, researchers reported that they've figured out what makes Ebola just so virulent. One particular protein is giving Ebola its punch, and researchers know how to switch it off. The find could lead to new vaccines and may give a huge boost to Ebola research safety.
Ebola's
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Misophonia, Or Why I Hate the Sound of Chewing Salad
Misophonia is an aversive reaction to specific sounds that emerges in childhood, most often with annoyance that quickly turns to anger. (Credit: mamaza/Shutterstock)
It was the salads that got me. On nights when my parents started off dinner with some leafy greens, I left the room. The habit quickly became a ritual, and to my family's credit - or not -Â no one ever remarked on it. It was just another quirk, like biting fingernails, or sticking your tongue out when you concentrate...
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Evaporating Exomoon Could Explain Weird Light Patterns of Tabby's Star
An artist's concept of a ring of dust orbiting Tabby's Star. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
About
four years ago, one star gained notoriety when some astronomers suggested its
weird light pattern could be signs of artificial "alien megastructures" blocking the
star's light. Though scientists generally say that clouds of gas and dust are most
likely the culprit, the source of that gas and dust remains a mystery.
One possibility is that the star, formally called KIC 8462...
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Two Asteroids Collided in Deep Space, Sparking an Ancient Ice Age
This artist's concept captures the catastrophic collision that destroyed the parent body, which was bigger than any known asteroid break-up in the past 3 billion years.
(Credit: Don Davis/Southwest Research Institute.)
A giant collision between two asteroids may have triggered a global ice age that hit Earth some 466 million years ago. The cosmic crash — which took place between Mars and Jupiter and destroyed an asteroid some 93 miles (150 km) wide — created a thick plume of dust ...
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Scientists Experiment With Growing Human Tissues on Tofu, Paper, Ice and More
(Credit: ValentinaKru/Shutterstock)
It's been more than a decade since the first lab-grown organ (a more-or-less functional replacement bladder) was successfully implanted into a human body. But in the time since tens of thousands of people have been added to the organ donor waiting list in America alone.
Scientists are still figuring out how to grow organs at a scale — and price — that can meet the needs of thousands of patients a year. One of the big challenges to creati...
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Homo heidelbergensis: The Answer to a Mysterious Period in Human History?
Cranium 5, a skull found at Sima de los Huesos and thought to be either a late Homo heidelbergensis or an early Neanderthal. (Credit: Rept0n1x/Wikimedia Commons)
There's a murky chapter in human evolution, one that occurs right before our species entered the scene.
Over 1 million years ago our ancestors belonged to the primitive-looking species Homo erectus. Jump to 300,000 years ago and Earth is home to at least three lineages of big-brained humans: Homo sapiens, Neanderthals...
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NASA CubeSat will Test Lunar Space Station Orbit
The space agency hopes Lunar Gateway can serve as a jumping off point for exploring the Moon. First, NASA plans to test out the space station's intended orbit. (Credit: NASA)
NASA hopes to put humans back on the moon by 2024, starting with an orbiting space station dubbed Lunar Gateway. And the space agency is already showing signs of prepping for the upcoming missions. Recently, the organization announced it will partner with Advance Space, an aerospace company from Colorad...
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This Device Can Recommend the Best Cancer Treatment — Using Just a Patient's Breath
A patient breathes into the eNose, a tool designed to determine effective cancer treatments for lung cancer patients. (Credit: Amsterdam University Medical Centers)
The newest cancer sniffer might not be as cute as a sharp-nosed canine, but it could give doctors a new way to determine the best treatment for patients using just the melange of compounds in their breath.
The eNose can detect with 85 percent accuracy if a person will respond to immunotherapy say researchers in a pap
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New Interstellar Comet is 'Very Red', Initial Results Show
The Gemini Observatory in Hawaii caught this first-ever color image of the interstellar comet and its faint tail. (Credit: Composite image by Travis Rector. Gemini Observatory/NSF/AURA)
Astronomers are in a frenzy to learn more about the newest
visitor to our solar system, comet C/2019 Q4. While it hasn't yet been
officially confirmed, they're largely convinced the object originated outside
our solar system.
"I will say there is no debate at this point," said Quanzhi
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Cows Burp Out Tons of Methane. Feeding Them Seaweed Could Help
Adding seaweed to cows' diet would help tamp down their methane emissions. (Credit: Jan K/ Shutterstock)
Every morning, Breanna Roque goes out to the barn to feed the cows. But this isn't your typical farm - in fact, it's a laboratory. The University of California, Davis graduate researcher spends her time among bovines, tweaking their diets so that they burp less. Why? Less burps means less methane. And less methane, on a global scale, could mean slowing down climate change. Â
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At 100, James Lovelock Has New Ideas About Gaia and Earth's Future
Our blue-marble planet, imaged by the DSCOVR spacecraft. Life maintains a stubborn balance here--but for how long? (Credit: NOAA/EPIC)
James Lovelock has a lot to
celebrate. The renowned British futurist and environmentalist just enjoyed a
100th birthday party with his wife and friends. Over his long career
he has seen his once-controversial Gaia hypothesis steadily gain significant acceptance
among his colleagues. And capping all that, he has just published Novacene, a book that pr
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9 Ways to Instantly Cut Your Environmental Impact
Buying clothes and other items second hand is a great way to cut your environmental impact. (Credit: Cabeca de Marmore/Shutterstock)
Helping the environment might seem like an impossible task, especially when there are a couple billion other people out there, still doing their thing. But even just cutting your current environmental impact a little is better than doing nothing at all. So, here are a few ideas to get you started.
Buy Stuff Second Hand
What has less of an im
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Hubble Sheds New Light on Lives of Star Clusters
A new look at the Large Magellanic Cloud is helping astronomers better understand how groups of stars evolve. (Credit: ESA/NASA)
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken new observations of
the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small, neighboring galaxy to our Milky Way and
found new insights into the star clusters that live there.
Star clusters are quite common in the universe. If a galaxy
is a cosmic metropolis, star clusters would be like a small town. They form as huge
clouds ...
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Insecticides May Be Giving Songbirds Anorexia and Delaying Their Migrations
An experiment with white-crowned sparrows shows that insecticides may be impacting songbirds. (Credit: Phil Lowe/Shutterstock)
Some migrating songbirds may be starving thanks to agricultural pesticides. Neonicotinoids are popular insecticides used in industrial agriculture across the U.S. But the chemicals' are controversial because of their detrimental impact on bees and other pollinators.
Now, a group of researchers has added heat to the debate, showing that even small amounts
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Astronomers May Have Just Discovered an Interstellar Comet Visiting Our Solar System
Astronomers first found Comet C/2019 Q4 on August 30. The past week of observations, including this image taken by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Hawaii's Big Island, have increased astronomers confidence that the comet started life in another solar system. (Credit: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope)
A newly discovered comet has astronomers excited. Formally
named C/2019 Q4 (Borisov), the object appears to have come from outside our
solar system. If confirmed, that would make it t
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The dreaded "blob" may be back in the Pacific Ocean
A gigantic area of super-warm water has formed again off the U.S. West Coast, threatening impacts on weather and wildlife
A map of sea surface temperature anomalies shows a blob of very warm water off the West Coast of the North America. (Source: Climate Reanalyzer, University of Maine)
Five years ago, a gigantic cauldron of abnormally warm water in the Pacific Ocean wreaked havoc on marine ecosystems and contributed to drought along the western coast of North America.
Dub
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Adrenaline Doesn't Actually Cause the Fight-or-Flight Response, New Study Says
When you're overcome with fear, it's not adrenaline making you want to fight or flee. (Credit: Master1305/Shutterstock)
A thrilling high when you're faced with danger, a boost of energy when you're going for an intense run - we tend to associate these rushes with adrenaline, a hormone synonymous with our fight-or-flight response. But it turns out adrenaline might not be what activates our brains' stress reaction after all.
In fact, our bones might be doing more work than w...
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Many Cancer Drugs Don't Work Like Scientists Say They Do, New Study Suggests
(Credit: Shidlovski/Shutterstock)
Cancer therapies often fail to work when tested in clinical trials. As a result, a startling 97 percent of drugs designed for specific cancer treatments do not receive approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Now researchers say they may have figured out part of the reason why.Â
In a new study out Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine, scientists report many cancer drugs don't work the way their designers assumed they ...
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Giant Bubbles Spotted Rushing Out from Milky Way's Center
The MeerKAT telescope is superimposed on a radio image of the Milky Way's center. Radio bubbles extend from between the two nearest antennas to the upper right corner, with filaments running parallel to the bubbles. (Credit: SARAO/MeerKAT)
The Milky Way is blowing bubbles. Two giant radio bubbles,
extending out from the galaxy for over 1,400 light years, were just discovered
in X-ray data. Astronomers think the bubbles started forming a few million
years ago due to some type of cata
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Astronomers Find Water Vapor in Atmosphere of a Habitable-Zone Exoplanet for the First Time
The watery exoplanet K2-18 b is surrounded by water vapor in this artist's illustration. (Credit: Alex Boersma)
Astronomers have finally uncovered water vapor in the atmosphere
of a super-Earth exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of its star. The
find means that liquid water could also exist on the rocky world's surface,
potentially even forming a global
ocean.
The discovery, made with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, serves as the
first detection of water vapor in t
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