With the zap of a laser, trash can literally become treasure. In a new experiment, physicists shined a laser at bits of PET. That’s the kind of plastic used in soda bottles. The laser blast squeezed the plastic to about a million times Earth’s atmospheric pressure. It also superheated the material....
Not long ago, researchers in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest saw something strange. They had been following a group of black lion tamarins every day for weeks. Small and agile, these endangered New World monkeys sport a long black mane and golden rump. And one day, recalls researcher Olivier Kaisin, “We witnessed...
You might want to bring plenty of exercise gear for your legs on that next trip to space. During space missions, astronauts can experience a loss of some of the inner structural support in their bones. This leaves those bones less dense than before liftoff. For trips in space lasting...
A new supercomputer just passed a major milestone. It is the first to officially reach the “exascale.” That means it can perform at least 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 calculations per second. You can simply refer to that as a quintillion calculations per second! The new computer is called Frontier. Its exascale status was announced on May 30...
New data show that a comet discovered in 2014 is one for the record books. This frigid object, dubbed Bernardinelli-Bernstein, is the largest comet ever spotted. Comets are chunks of rock and ice that orbit the sun. Such “dirty snowballs” in space are often surrounded by clouds of gas and...
Plants can’t get COVID-19, but they can get infected by a range of other viruses. Some of those viruses can cause huge problems for crops. A ringspot virus, for instance, threatens papaya fruit trees in Taiwan. Options exist to fight plant viruses, such as proteins to treat leaves. But two...
Bzzz. Oh no — a mosquito. Have you ever wondered how these small insects are so good at finding you? A new study has just identified one way they home in on us. It’s visual. Mosquitoes just like the look of our skin. Claire Rusch studies these bloodsuckers at the...
Avalanches of ash, gas and rock can cascade downhill during volcanic eruptions. Known as pyroclastic flows, they may be even more dangerous than scientists had suspected. Those pulses are the result of turbulence, lab and field measurements now show. Within these slides, pulses of high pressure form. Those pressures can be far...
The millipedes we’ve known have been a lie. The Latin name for these arthropods implies an impressive set of 1,000 feet. Yet no millipede had ever been found with more than 750. Until now. This first millipede to live up to its name tunnels through deep soil using 1,306 little legs. In...
Brains are like sponges, slurping up new information. But sponges may also be a little bit like brains. Sponges, which are humans’ very distant evolutionary relatives, don’t have nervous systems. But a detailed analysis of sponge cells turns up what might just be an echo of our own brains: cells called...
The cosmos keeps outdoing itself. Extremely energetic light from space is an unexplained wonder. Scientists don’t know where that light comes from, exactly. And now astronomers have spotted this light, called gamma rays, at higher energies than ever before. You can’t see gamma rays with your eyes. They are much...
Earth’s geographic poles aren’t fixed. Instead, they wander in seasonal and near-annual cycles. The weather and ocean currents drive most of this slow drift. But a sudden zag in the direction of that drift started in the 1990s. That sharp change in direction appears due in large part to the melting...
Physicists have measured the shortest span of time ever. It’s 0.000000000000000000247 second, also known as 247 zeptoseconds. And this period is how it takes a single particle of light to pass through a molecule of hydrogen. Not familiar with zeptoseconds? Take all the seconds that have passed since the beginning...
Past observations had suggested there’s water on the moon. New telescope observations now find those findings hold water. Spacecraft had seen evidence of water ice in permanently shadowed craters. This was at the moon’s poles. There also had been hints of water molecules on the sunlit surface. But water sightings...
Most foods we eat are an explosion of flavor. But the tongue itself only detects a few major tastes — sweet, salt, sour, bitter and umami (that’s savory). Notice anything missing? Where is the taste for fat? It’s much of what makes butter and cream so delicious. A new study now confirms...
Predators that tread on a colony of parchment tube worms may find themselves slimed. The worms get their name from the papery tubes in which they live. When threatened, these ocean creatures ooze a sticky mucus that can glow blue for days. Such light produced by animals, bacteria or algae...
Winds are picking up worldwide, and that is making the surface waters of the oceans swirl a bit faster, researchers report. A new analysis of the ocean’s kinetic energy, measured by thousands of floats around the world, suggests that surface ocean circulation has been accelerating since the early 1990s. Some...
Weighing a whale is a beast of a challenge. Scientists who study these majestic mammals can’t just hoist them out of the water and plop them onto some scale. But researchers now have a method to estimate a whale’s weight without disturbing it. The approach uses drone imagery of the animals at...
During sleep, waves of fresh fluid wash over the brain every 20 seconds, a new study finds. These slow, rhythmic blasts may help explain why sleep is so important for brain health. Studies in mice have shown that the waves can wash away proteins that build up between brain cells....
A new device works like a solar panel, except it doesn’t harvest energy from the sun. It captures energy from the cold night sky. A prototype of the device produced enough electricity at night to power a small light bulb. A bigger version might one day light rooms or charge phones. It...
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