Magnetic fields around the Earth release strong bursts of energy, accelerating particles and feeding the auroras that glow in the polar skies. On July 11, 2017, four NASA spacecrafts were there to watch one of these explosions happen.
Canadian scientists have identified microscopic creatures that are so unlike anything seen before, they had to create an entirely new branch on the evolutionary tree of life to slot them in.
Dogs have been everything we’ve ever needed them to be, including volunteers for clinical trials of drugs meant for both people and pooches. Sadly, these furry test subjects are sometimes euthanized at the end of these experiments, because it’s deemed the only way to get the accurate test results scientists are…
The Earth around the Mariana Trench, which contains the deepest point on the planet, could be slurping up at least 4.3 times more water than previously estimated, according to new research.
It’s a scene parents and caregivers are all too familiar with: an infant’s pacifier falls to the floor. When this happened with my first born, I rushed to clean the soiled soother by boiling it in water or carefully washing it in the sink. But by the time my second child was born, I was considerably more relaxed, and…
Diet fads often make the lofty claim that adjusting food habits one way or another will produce the dieter’s desired results. More specifically: Eat this, not that, and watch the pounds fall off. But diets are hard to sustain, and it seems like diet debunking is constantly calling into question what and how much we…
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has authorized part of SpaceX’s application to build and launch more than 7,500 satellites, according to a press release. These would make up part of a proposed constellation of almost 12,000 satellites designed to improve internet connectivity.
The Food and Drug Administration has taken its hardest swing yet against teen vaping—though not as hard as we were expecting. On Thursday, FDA chief Scott Gottlieb unveiled a series of steps aimed at forcing the e-cigarette industry to work harder at keeping its products out of the hands of minors. Chief among them is…
After not experiencing any meaningful amounts of precipitation for at least 500 years, Chile’s Atacama Desert is finally getting some rain. Quite unexpectedly, however, these rains—instead of fostering life—are doing the exact opposite.
Scientists have learned more about ‘Oumuamua, the hunk of matter that is the first known interstellar object to ever be detected by scientists within the boundary of the solar system. Specifically, observations performed by researchers using the Spitzer Space Telescope and published in The Astronomical Journal have…
Scientists this week released a conceptual design report for a next-generation particle accelerator in China, which would serve as a “Higgs boson factory,” as its proponents have called it.
It’s nicknamed the “humongous fungus”—an unusually large fungal growth belonging to a single genetic individual. An updated analysis of this gigantic fungal beast shows it’s substantially larger and older than scientists initially thought.
Heart disease has long been the number one killer in the United States. But a new study out this week is the latest to suggest that it’s only a matter of time before the second leading cause of death—cancer—becomes more commonly fatal for the average person. On the bright side, though, that’s largely because we’ve…
An unusually large asteroid crater measuring 19 miles wide has been discovered under a continental ice sheet in Greenland. Roughly the size of Paris, it’s now among the 25 biggest asteroid craters on Earth.
Scientists have spotted strong evidence of a super-Earth orbiting the second-closest star system to the Sun, according to new research.
The stereotype of a typical Neanderthal life is that it was extraordinarily difficult, violent, and traumatic. But a comparative analysis of the remains left behind by Neanderthals and contemporaneous humans is finally overturning this unwarranted assumption.
It’s the perfect science-fiction device: a hurricane of dark matter. Recent, real-life research has demonstrated that our Sun is currently engulfed in a so-called a stellar stream. Some publications have seized on this ominous-sounding idea, reporting that Earth is about to be walloped by a dark matter storm—but in…
The vaping industry looks set to undergo a seismic shift in how it sells and markets its products, starting with its biggest U.S. player, Juul Labs.
A museum might wow you with all of its fossil specimens on display, but that’s often just a small part of what’s really there—specimens in the back might lay in drawers or plaster-wrapped in boxes, quietly holding yet-to-be-revealed secrets or further mysteries about the past. Such is the case with an incredible bird…
The U.S. government has released its latest recommendations on how physically active we should be to stay healthy, and do we detect a hint of desperation in their tone? The guidelines, as before, call for adults to aim for 150 minutes a week of moderate aerobic exercise, or 75 minutes a week of vigorous exercise, to…
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