When it comes to figuring out which individual among a group of primates is the most dominant, some scientists simply look for the one that’s being the most assertive or aggressive. New research suggests this approach grossly underestimates the social complexity of nonhuman primates, and that there’s more to social…
Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have glimpsed a neutron star unlike any seen before.
One of the things you can count on in the wake of a hurricane making landfall is people clamoring for a new classification system. Like clockwork, that’s what’s happening with Florence. And frankly, the discussion has never been more urgent thanks to climate change.
A family of Eastern grey squirrels in Wisconsin got a little too close-knit this weekend after five juveniles got their tails tangled together. The squirrels are fine, we PROMISE, so don’t feel too bad for gawking at them.
A daily low dose of aspirin won’t help healthy older people stay alive any longer, suggests new research published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. It might even raise their risk of dying early of certain things, like cancer.
The advancement of robotics and artificial intelligence will make 75 million jobs obsolete by the year 2022, according to a new report. Sounds dreadful, but the same report goes on to predict the creation of 133 million new jobs over the same period.
The idea that air pollution can hurt developing fetuses in the womb is not controversial. But new preliminary research presented this week seems to provide direct evidence of how this damage can happen, via the placenta.
How do you know where anything is in space? Sure, you can say, “Oh, that star, it’s the one in the middle of the Big Dipper,” but that’s not very useful in an era of incredible telescopes peeping at galaxies billions of light-years away. On January 1, 2019, scientists will adopt the newest, internationally…
During its 15th flyby of Jupiter, NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured a rare image of a Jovian “brown barge.” It’s not nearly as impressive or picturesque as the Great Red Spot, but this big brown splotch is yet another reminder of many complex atmospheric processes happening on our Solar System’s largest planet.
We usually associate volcanoes with extreme heat. But new results demonstrate that the Solar System’s largest asteroid, Ceres, is covered in volcanoes that have spewed ice throughout their history.
Wrangle up the right studies and you can make anything look deadly. Breakfast cereal—at least, the kind without cartoon mascots—might seem innocuous, and might be marketed as healthy, but that’s no reason to think that every naturally-flavored bite isn’t speeding you towards the grave. Nothing, in this world, is above…
The European Union passed its disastrous Copyright Directive this week, including amended versions of its onerous Articles 11 and 13 (the so-called “link tax” and “upload filter,” respectively). There’s still time to make sure it never passes into law by defeating a final ratification vote in January, though given the …
The obesity epidemic in America is only getting worse in some states, according to a new report out this week. No single state had its overall obesity rate decline in 2017, it found, while six states saw a increase. But there have seemingly been minor victories in lowering childhood obesity in some groups.
From workplace voodoo dolls and self-inflicted colonoscopies to cannibalistic diets and using roller coasters to pass kidney stones, here are the winners of this year’s Ig Nobel Prizes.
The House of Representatives passed the National Quantum Initiative Act yesterday. When signed into law, the bill will outline a 10-year plan to push forward applications using the counterintuitive science of subatomic particles.
In a tweet posted late yesterday, SpaceX said it has signed a passenger to fly around the Moon aboard its next-generation launch system. Details are scarce, but the announcement suggests the Elon Musk-led rocket company is still intent on delivering private individuals, rather than just cargo and professional…
As the planet-wide Martian dust storm clears, NASA scientists have increased their efforts to contact the nearly 15-year-old Opportunity rover, which has been silent since June 10.
We tend to think of plants as helpless, passive green blobs, but a fascinating new study, in which scientists used fluorescent light to visualize alarm signals within plants, shows how our photosynthesizing friends are able to mobilize their defenses.
Plastic products that boast of being “BPA-free” aren’t necessarily any safer for us, suggests a new mouse study published Thursday in Current Biology. The chemicals used to replace BPA in these plastics can still leak out and affect the sperm and eggs of both male and female mice, it found. And these same effects…
An ambitious use of the Hubble Space Telescope hopes to map some of the biggest, brightest, and furthest galaxies to understand the structure of our universe. Above is a picture from that survey, featuring a strange, warped feature called the Dragon.
