Black holes exist in our universe. That’s widely accepted today. Physicists have detected the X-rays emitted when black holes feed, analyzed the gravitational waves from black hole collisions and even imaged two of these behemoths. But mathematician Elena Giorgi of Columbia University studies black holes in a different way. “Black holes are mathematical solutions to […]

For the first time, scientists have recorded brain waves from freely moving octopuses. The data reveal some unexpected patterns, though it’s too early to know how octopus brains control the animals’ behavior, researchers report February 23 in Current Biology. “Historically, it’s been so hard to do any recordings from octopuses, even if they’re sedated,” says […]

Within minutes of biting into peanut-tainted food, people with a peanut allergy may find their pulse quickening, blood pressure plummeting and throat closing up. They’re experiencing a rapid and sometimes fatal allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. New research in mice explains how even a small amount of an allergen can quickly trigger such a strong, full-body […]

Batteries that use aluminum and oxygen normally live fast and die young. But a new design could help these high-energy devices endure. Aluminum-air batteries are promising candidates for a new generation of non-rechargeable batteries, because they’re super lightweight and compact. The batteries, however, aren’t widely used because their internal components quickly degrade each other. In […]

To spread misinformation like wildfire, bots will strike a match on social media but then urge people to fan the flames. Automated Twitter accounts, called bots, helped spread bogus articles during and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election by making the content appear popular enough that human users would trust it and share it more […]

Sometime around 9 p.m., before the second leg of a cross-country flight, my just-turned-4-year-old decided she had had enough. She let out a scream and went full noodle right at the end of a moving walkway in Chicago Midway. I had the baby in a carrier and a death grip on my older daughter’s hand, […]

A Chinese scientist surprised the world in late November by claiming he had created the first gene-edited babies, who at the time of the announcement were a few weeks old. Scientists and ethicists quickly responded with outrage. In an interview with the Associated Press and in a video posted November 25, Jiankui He announced that […]

The grim reality of climate change grabbed center stage in 2018. This is the year we learned that the 2015 Paris Agreement on global warming won’t be enough to forestall significant impacts of climate change. And a new field of research explicitly attributed some extreme weather events to human-caused climate change. This one-two punch made […]

Recognize these rows and columns? You may remember a detail or two about this mighty table’s organization from a long-ago chemistry class. Elements are ordered according to their number of protons, or atomic number. Metals are mostly to the left and nonmetals to the right. The column at the far right holds the noble gases, […]

Mosquito researchers may have hatched a new plan to control the bloodsuckers: Break their eggshells. A protein called eggshell organizing factor 1, or EOF1, is necessary for some mosquito species’ eggs and embryos to develop properly, a new study finds. Genetically disrupting production of that protein in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes caused about 60 percent of […]