More from Laura Baisas (Page 11)

a snake spits venom out of its mouth

Snake venom’s deadly secrets decoded with fake blood vessels

By Laura Baisas

a close up of a cicada with blue eyes

A ‘one-in-a-million’ blue-eyed cicada spotted by 4-year-old child

By Laura Baisas

An artistic life reconstruction of Genyornis newtoni, the last of the dromornithids, at the water’s edge

Giant 500-pound geese once honked around the Australian outback

By Laura Baisas

steam rising over blue water in a pool built by ancient romans

What Britain’s famed Roman Baths could teach us about microbes

By Laura Baisas

a black and white photograph of swimmer gertrude ederle. she is standing on a beach in a one piece swimsuit holding an oar.

Fitness & Exercise

Gertrude Ederle and the grueling science of marathon swimming

By Laura Baisas

a full moon rises with blurred red flowers

June skygazing: Nevermind the viral ‘planet parade,’ check out the Strawberry/Solstice moon

By Laura Baisas

fossilized leg bones in reddish-brown sediment

New horse-sized dinosaur species discovered in Zimbabwe

By Laura Baisas

Orcas only need one breath between dives

Orcas only need one breath between dives

By Laura Baisas

a brown snail sits on a green lettuce leaf

Slimy slugs and snails surprisingly thriving in LA

By Laura Baisas

Panels A, B, and C each show stereographic image pairs of the asteroid Dinkinesh taken by the L’LORRI Instrument aboard NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft. The images were taken in the minutes around closest approach on November 1, 2023. The yellow and rose dots indicate the trough and ridge features, respectively. These images have been sharpened and processed to enhance contrast. Panel D shows a side view of Dinkinesh and its satellite Selam taken a few minutes after closest approach.

The odd moon orbiting a ‘Dinky’ asteroid is actually two moons fused together

By Laura Baisas

an otter eating while floating on its back

Female sea otters use tools more than males

By Laura Baisas

a human skull on a dark background with E270 printed on it

4,000 year-old Egyptian skulls show attempts at brain surgery to treat cancer

By Laura Baisas

coral polyps before spawning

Scientists are studying the mysterious sex lives of coral

By Laura Baisas

a woman listens to music with headphones on over hear ear

How our brains differentiate music and speech

By Laura Baisas

red lava rushes into the Pacific Ocean, with smoke and steam rising

Buildup of gas caused Kīlauea to erupt like a stomp-rocket

By Laura Baisas

Universe’s oldest known stars found in Milky Way’s ‘halo’

Universe’s oldest known stars found in Milky Way’s ‘halo’

By Laura Baisas

a green stick insect blending into a green plant

Chance or pattern? Stick insects show repeatable evolution in action

By Laura Baisas

an exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf star

Newly discovered exoplanet may be habitable (or a Venus-like hellscape)

By Laura Baisas

a pink and red galaxy (left). an illustration of the cylindrical euclid space telescope (right)

See 5 dazzling new images from Euclid, the ‘dark universe detective’

By Laura Baisas

A proboscis monkey in a mangrove conservation forest in Tarakan, North Borneo, Indonesia. It is light brown in color with a very large, round, droopy, and prominent nose.

These monkeys have giant noses for exactly the reason you think

By Laura Baisas

Fluorescent image of a human body louse with Yersinia pestis infection (seen in orange/red) in the Pawlowsky glands.

Body lice may be pretty good spreading bubonic plague

By Laura Baisas

This artist's concept illustrates a supermassive black hole with millions to billions times the mass of our sun. Supermassive black holes are enormously dense objects buried at the hearts of galaxies.

Astronomers use wobbly star stuff to measure a supermassive black hole’s spin

By Laura Baisas

A fossilized dinosaur skin specimen under natural light (upper half) and ultraviolet light (lower half) showing the orange-yellow fluorescence of the fossil skin.

Rare skin fossil sheds new light on dinosaur feathers

By Laura Baisas

An aerial view of the rust-colored Kutuk River in Gates of the Arctic National Park in Alaska. Thawing permafrost is exposing minerals to weathering, increasing the acidity of the water, which releases metals like iron, zinc, and copper.

Why are Alaska’s rivers turning orange?

By Laura Baisas

An illustration of what exoplanet WASP-39 b could look like. It is also a hot and puffy gas giant like exoplanet WASP 193b.

A massive cotton candy-like exoplanet stumps astronomers

By Laura Baisas

an orangutan sits in the forest with its mouth open wide, showing its teeth

Orangutans’ distinct yells decoded with help from AI

By Laura Baisas

two mantis shrimp punching one another

Bullet-fast mantis shrimp punches caught by super-speed cameras

By Laura Baisas

rock art depicting a human hunting various animals

How sweat and stamina helped make humans exceptional runners–and hunters

By Laura Baisas

a volcano spews firey lava over molten rock and snow

‘Buoyant’ magma offers clues about the power of volcanoes

By Laura Baisas

A dog dyed black and white to mimic a panda cub at Cute Pet Games cafe in Chengdu in China's southwestern Sichuan province on October 23, 2019.

Endangered Species

Chinese zoo dyes chow chows to look like ‘panda dogs’

By Laura Baisas

a small, blue fish called the Devils Hole pupfish swims in a hole

Endangered Species

Devils Hole pupfish are clawing their way back from the brink of extinction

By Laura Baisas

A male African elephant named Doma and a female named Kariba greet one another. Doma touches Kariba´s temporal gland while flapping his ears and Kariba holds her ears spread.

Expressive elephants use gestures and vocal cues to communicate

By Laura Baisas

two adult green-rumped parrots with three nestlings behind them with their mouths open waiting for food

Why these parrots sometimes kill each other’s chicks

By Laura Baisas

In this illustration, parts of the ancient planet Theia sink and accumulate at the bottom of the Earth’s mantle. This forms two ‘blobs’ called large low-velocity provinces (LLVPs) deep underneath the Earth.

Two giant blobs lurk deep within the Earth, but why?

By Laura Baisas

three sperm whales swimming near the surface of the ocean

Sperm whales may have their own ‘alphabet’

By Laura Baisas

an adult peregrine falcon feeds four chicks

Watch four Peregrine falcon chicks in a nest on Alcatraz Island

By Laura Baisas

The planet Venus is dry thanks to water loss to space as atomic hydrogen. In the dominant loss process, an HCO+ ion recombines with an electron, producing speedy hydrogen atoms (orange) that use CO molecules (blue) as a launchpad to escape.

Why Venus is so dry

By Laura Baisas

a seagull stands on a post by a large and sparkling body of blue water

Bigger-brained gull species thrive in urban spaces

By Laura Baisas

a small asteroid orbits around a larger one

‘Lucy’s baby’ asteroid is only about 2 to 3 million years old

By Laura Baisas

a hollow 12-sided object with knobs on each face on display at a musuem.

Ancient, mysterious 12-sided object still baffles archeologists

By Laura Baisas

Intercropped tomato (left) compared to monocropped tomatoes (right). Both were planted on the same day, but here we can see that the intercropped tomato plant is larger, bears more fruit, and the tomatoes ripened earlier than its monocropped counterpart.

Ancient farm practice could help sustain future humans on Mars

By Laura Baisas

A mechanical analysis of the distinctive canines of California's saber-toothed cat (Smilodon fatalis) suggests that the baby tooth that preceded each saber stayed in place for years to stabilize the growing permanent saber tooth, perhaps allowing adolescents to learn how to hunt without breaking them.

How saber-toothed cats’ baby teeth kept their adult fangs from breaking

By Laura Baisas

a pink-hued full moon rises above the new york city skyline

Zippy meteors, a globular cluster, and more light up May’s night sky

By Laura Baisas

a ring affixed to a wall in the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza

Plants detected in ancient Mayan ‘ballcourts’ point to a sacred spot

By Laura Baisas

a scan of a t. rex skull, with is brain colored in

T. rex was probably about as intelligent as a crocodile

By Laura Baisas

white cow's milk on a grocery store shelf

Bird flu virus traces detected in 1 in 5 pasteurized cow milk samples

By Laura Baisas

a small red squirrel with perked up ears sits on a tree branch

Early trauma can shorten a red squirrel’s lifespan

By Laura Baisas

left image- This rectangular image shows part of the martian surface as if the viewer is looking down and across the landscape, with the irregular, mottled ground appearing in swirled tones of brown and tan. right image- A slice of the martian surface is shown here. A rounded segment of an eroded crater basin is visible to the right. The key features seen across the image are dark spots with tendrils that are eerily reminiscent of spiders. These are visible in large numbers to the left, and scattered irregularly across the rest of the image.

Gassy geysers create ‘spiders’ on Mars

By Laura Baisas

a spike-toothed salmon fossil with its mouth open

This 400-pound prehistoric salmon had tusks like a warthog

By Laura Baisas

a bioluminescent coral shaped like a fan with a central hub

Bioluminescence may have evolved 300 million years earlier than scientists previously thought

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s concept of NASA’s Voyager 1 traveling through interstellar space–or the space between stars.

Greetings, Earth! NASA can understand Voyager 1 again

By Laura Baisas

an orange, black, and white lemur sits in a tree

Endangered Species

Critically endangered lemur attacked by vulnerable fosa in Madagascar

By Laura Baisas

a handwritten letter to ruth mallory from george mallory before he died on mount everest

Read the last letters by George Mallory, who died exploring Mt. Everest in 1924

By Laura Baisas

a circular lamprey mouth dotted with teeth

Lampreys offer clues to the origin of our fight-or-flight instinct

By Laura Baisas

an artist's illustration of a lava lake on one of jupiter's moons. it is primarily black as the magma has cooled with orange lava encircling it

Smooth lava lake on Jupiter’s moon sizzles in NASA aerial animations

By Laura Baisas

a juvenile shark following an autonomous underwater robot

Baby sharks stick to the shallows

By Laura Baisas

a cyllinder shaped new organelle called a nitroplast under a microscope

For the first time in one billion years, two lifeforms truly merged into one organism

By Laura Baisas

a galaxy that looks like an hourglass pinched at the center with a shining protostar

Space Telescope

Plunge into an immersive IMAX movie featuring the James Webb Space Telescope

By Laura Baisas

an illustration of a large marine reptile beached on the sand, surrounded by two two-legged dinosaurs and several flying dinosaurs

New species of extinct marine reptile found with help from 11-year-old child

By Laura Baisas

an orange and black butterfly lands on a green leaf with purple flowers

This butterfly hybrid thrived against evolutionary odds

By Laura Baisas

a tardigrade floating around

How super resilient tardigrades can fix their radiation-damaged DNA

By Laura Baisas

an infected periodical cicada with a white fungal plug on its abdomen

This gnarly fungus makes cicadas hypersexual

By Laura Baisas

an illustration of a black hole with a companion star. the star is bright with a blue line indicating where the black hole is.

Humongous stellar-mass black hole is the biggest ever found in Milky Way

By Laura Baisas

a toucan with an orange beak and black and white plumage sits in a tree with its mouth open

How fruit-eating birds could help regrow tropical forests

By Laura Baisas

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