The Hayabusa2 spacecraft has made its second and final attempt to grab a pinch of dust from asteroid Ryugu. At about 9:06 p.m. EDT on July 10, the Japanese spacecraft briefly touched down near an artificial crater it had previously blasted into the 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid’s surface. If the dust grab went well, it’s the first […]

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, […]

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, […]

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 […]

In full swingThe swaying feeling in jazz music that compels feet to tap may arise from near-imperceptible delays in musicians’ timing, Nikk Ogasa reported in “Jazz gets its swing from small, subtle delays” (SN: 11/19/22, p. 5). Reader Oda Lisa, a self-described intermediate saxophonist, has noticed these subtle delays while playing.“I recorded my ‘jazzy’ version […]

Patricia Hidalgo-Gonzalez saw the future of energy on a broiling-hot day last September. An email alert hit her inbox from the San Diego Gas & Electric Company. “Extreme heat straining the grid,” read the message, which was also pinged as a text to 27 million people. “Save energy to help avoid power interruptions.” It worked. […]