With the blessings of all 14 families of lost astronauts, a new memorial to the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters opened in June at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The permanent exhibit includes the first pieces of shuttle wreckage ever on public display, but fittingly focuses more on the lives lost. “Forever Remembered” […]
Boa constrictors don’t so much suffocate prey as break their hearts. It turns out that the snakes kill like demon blood pressure cuffs, squeezing down circulation to its final stop. The notion that constrictors slay by preventing breathing turns out to be wrong. The snakes don’t need limbs, or even venom, to bring down an […]
Icicles made from pure water give scientists brain freeze. In nature, most icicles are made from water with a hint of salt. But lab-made icicles free from salt disobey a prominent theory of how icicles form, and it wasn’t clear why. Now, a study is helping to melt away the confusion. Natural icicles tend to […]
A female giraffe has a great Valentine’s Day gift for potential mates: urine. Distinctive anatomy helps male giraffes get a taste for whether a female is ready to mate, animal behaviorists Lynette and Benjamin Hart report January 19 in Animals. A pheromone-detecting organ in giraffes has a stronger connection to the mouth than the nose, […]
The James Webb Space Telescope has spotted the earliest known galaxy to abruptly stop forming stars. The galaxy, called GS-9209, quenched its star formation more than 12.5 billion years ago, researchers report January 26 at arXiv.org. That’s only a little more than a billion years after the Big Bang. Its existence reveals new details about […]
MIT chemist Admir Masic really hoped his experiment wouldn’t explode. Masic and his colleagues were trying to re-create an ancient Roman technique for making concrete, a mix of cement, gravel, sand and water. The researchers suspected that the key was a process called “hot mixing,” in which dry granules of calcium oxide, also called quicklime, […]
Animals cover themselves in all kinds of unsavory fluids to keep cool. Humans sweat, kangaroos spit and some birds will urinate on themselves to survive hot days. It turns out that echidnas do something much cuter — though perhaps just as sticky (and slightly icky) — to beat the heat. The spiny insectivores stay cool […]
Tiny, pond-dwelling Halteria ciliates are virovores, able to survive on a virus-only diet, researchers report December 27 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The single-celled creatures are the first known to thrive when viruses alone are on the menu. Scientists already knew that some microscopic organisms snack on aquatic viruses such as chloroviruses, […]
In Appalachia’s coal country, researchers envision turning toxic waste into treasure. The pollution left behind by abandoned mines is an untapped source of rare earth elements. Rare earths are a valuable set of 17 elements needed to make everything from smartphones and electric vehicles to fluorescent bulbs and lasers. With global demand skyrocketing and China […]
More than a century ago, scientists proved that carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere could act like a thermostat — adding more CO2 would turn up the heat, removing it would chill the planet. But back then, most scientists thought that Earth’s climate system was far too large and stable to change quickly, that any fluctuations […]