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The largest reptile alive on Earth today is the saltwater crocodile, Crocodylus porosus. Despite their enormous size, they’re not the best swimmers, which got scientists wondering how it was possible that they had been able to spread to so many islands in the South Pacific. Turns out, they love to surf. The rest of this […]

The Green Bank Observatory, the oldest federal radio astronomy facility in the United States, was established in West Virginia in 1956 to scan the skies for objects in space. In order to prevent its readings from being impacted by local signals, it established a 33,670 square-kilometer (13,000 square-mile) National Radio Quiet Zone in 1958. This […]

Comet 3I/ATLAS has been observed by the Hubble Space Telescope, which delivered new insights into this third interstellar visitor. The orbital observatory has refined the estimates about the size of the cometary nucleus and confirmed that the comet is the fastest ever to come from beyond the Solar System. The comet was discovered on July […]

High above the oceans and landmasses, an unseen migration is constantly unfolding. These travelers are aerosols: millions upon millions of microscopic particles so small they can drift for days or even weeks, riding the planet’s invisible superhighways. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full […]

New research has made waves by drawing a link between eating potatoes and an increased risk of type 2 diabetes. There’s a lot to unpack here, and experts have been weighing in on the data – here’s what to know.  What the study concluded The research included 205,107 adults enrolled in three large-scale studies of […]

Several meteorites collected from Henry County, Georgia, have been tentatively identified as being from a major asteroid belt collision. If correct, this would make them among the oldest Solar System fragments, quite likely dating from before the Earth formed. On June 26, a fireball was spotted over Atlanta, Georgia, despite competing with the light of […]

Modern-day Chicago is known for its gusty winds and unapologetically chunky pizza, but 300 million years ago, the region was a lush land of tropical swamps, river deltas, and shallow seas. This abundance of extinct plant life and animal life is incredibly well-preserved at the Mazon Creek fossil site – a treasure trove that’s proving […]

What is it about our screens that keeps us coming back to them? Why do we continue to scroll past the point of finding what we went on our phones for in the first place? Those are questions that researchers are still trying to answer – and marmosets armed with iPads might just help them […]

Bioluminescence is the word we use to describe animals that are capable of creating their own light. It involves a chemical reaction that releases energy as light, and it’s a big hit down in the twilight zone where light from the Sun can’t reach. We’ve found bioluminescent jellyfish, squid, and fish, but the largest luminous […]

President Trump has issued an executive order that allows commercial flights across America to fly faster than the speed of sound. The order overturns what it refers to as “outdated and overly restrictive regulations”. It comes as companies are working on quieter supersonic aircraft, and instructs the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to create standards to […]

Across September 1 and 2, 1859, the Earth experienced the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history. It is known as the Carrington Event and caused aurorae visible almost to the equator and damage to electrical systems, which at the time mostly consisted of telegraphs. None comparable have hit Earth since, but we came really […]

On July 26, 1959, British scientist Dennis Bell was conducting a geological survey with surveyor Jeff Stokes, meteorologist Ken Gibson, and geologist Colin Barton with the aid of two dog sleds. When the sled dogs began to struggle, Bell went ahead to encourage them forward, but fell through a hole in a crevasse bridge. Efforts […]

The world’s rhino populations face a myriad of threats, from habitat loss, poaching for the medicine trade, and even botanical threats that can limit their food supply. A new report highlights which species are slowly increasing their numbers and which, sadly, are not. Of the two broader rhino species that are found only in Africa, […]

If it weren’t necessary for living in polite society, nobody would do laundry. It’s insanely labor-intensive without modern technology, the instructions are basically written in code, and worst of all, if you do it wrong, you can end up shrinking your favorite shirt or pants into a child’s size version of their original design. But […]

Ever wanted to find a dinosaur? After all, as your favorite conspiracy theorists have asked, if they existed, then surely their bones would be everywhere – so how much work would it take to dig one up? Well, it depends where you are. In England, where the first dinosaur fossils were found and categorized, there […]

You ever noticed how a “great white” shark isn’t? White, that is – it’s grey, right? Except for its belly, of course. Why is that? It turns out that whoever named the great white shark must have been underneath one, looking up, when they did so: “The name ‘white shark’ refers to the color of […]

A study analyzing data from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has uncovered evidence of a “helicity barrier” in the Sun’s atmosphere. In 2018, NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe on a trajectory that would eventually have it dive into the Sun’s atmosphere (corona), getting seven times closer to our host star than any other spacecraft so […]

Have you ever held a conversation while you slept? It’s more likely than you think. Whether it’s a stray chuckle, a word or two, or a full monologue a la Hamlet Act 3 Scene 1, somniloquy – aka talking in your sleep – is extremely common. But why does it happen? And is it dangerous? […]

The debate about whether (and, if so, how) animals think is an ancient one. Aristotle considered it important enough to write on the question extensively, and it’s a safe bet people were debating it long before we have written records. Unsurprisingly, it’s a major topic of research today, but one that tends to defy easy […]

Giraffes are one of those iconic species of the African savannah: tall-necked, with their trademark mottled coats decked out in all the colors of a slightly over-ripe banana.  In Kenya, though, there’s one giraffe who doesn’t fit in with the others. Dazzlingly white and mysteriously unnamed, he’s the only known such creature in the world: […]