📺 Stream Popular Science free on your smart TV »

More from Laura Baisas (Page 13)

An optical image of the galaxy in which the new event occurred, taken from archival PanSTARRS data. The X-ray object was located to somewhere inside the white circle, which is about the size a pinhead 100m away would appear. The position of a 2 year old supernova is also shown.
Black Holes

A newly spotted black hole keeps munching on a star the size of our sun

By Laura Baisas

A blue semi circle on the right with a ball of blue light on the left on a black background. The orientation of the magnetic field in the distant 9io9 galaxy, seen here when the universe was only 20 percent of its current age and the furthest ever detection of a galaxy’s magnetic field.
Deep Space

Astronomers detect a distant galaxy’s magnetic field for the first time

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s illustration of Fujianvenator prodigiosus, an avialan theropod who lived during the Late Jurassic period and had a lower leg that was twice as long as its thigh.
Biology

Leggy dinosaur species could be the latest feathery clue to bird evolution

By Laura Baisas

Vegetation makes its way through the drought-ridden earth on the shores of the Viñuela reservoir in Spain. The reservoir feeds the tropical crops of Axarquía, such as mangoes and avocados. It is in a phase of desiccation, with no water inflow, but consumption that has led the municipalities of Málaga to impose restrictions on the consumption of drinking water.
Climate Change

A ‘season of simmering’: This summer’s 3-month streak was hottest ever recorded

By Laura Baisas

Two monkeys sitting in a forest. Dartmouth researchers report that apes and early humans evolved more flexible shoulders and elbows than monkeys to safely get out of trees. For early humans, these versatile appendages would have been essential for gathering food and deploying tools for hunting and defense.
Animals

Our tree-climbing ancestors evolved our abilities to throw far and reach high

By Laura Baisas

Fiver different types of paper cups sitting are sitting on a table. Some have eco-friendly labeling and one warns of plastic chemical leaching. Paper cups are replacing plastic cups on the market, but paper cups can also be toxic to living organisms, shows a new study from the University of Gothenburg.
Biology

Paper cups still use plastic—and it’s a problem for the planet

By Laura Baisas

A couple standing on the beach in warm sunlight.
Biology

Couples often share more common traits than we might think

By Laura Baisas

Dinosaurs footprint in Serras de Aire e Candeeiros, Portugal.
Dinosaurs

These toothy vegetarian dinosaurs have eluded paleontologists in Europe for decades

By Laura Baisas

Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) captured this detailed image of SN 1987A (Supernova 1987A). At the center, material ejected from the supernova forms a keyhole shape.
Deep Space

See the stunning Supernova 1987A in a whole new light

By Laura Baisas

A kākāpō sitting in its burrow. They can live up to 90 years and forage on the ground for food since they are flightless birds.
Animals

The next frontier in saving the world’s heaviest parrots: genome sequencing

By Laura Baisas

Four skulls of human ancestors A. africanus, A. afarensis, H. erectus, H. neanderthalensis, and one modern human skull.
Archaeology

An ‘ancestral bottleneck’ took out nearly 99 percent of the human population 800,000 years ago

By Laura Baisas

Two Atlantic puffins stand on a white rock above the ocean, with another group of puffins in the background, Atlantic puffins are sometimes nicknamed “sea parrots,” and their chicks hatch in Maine in early July.
Animals

Maine’s puffins show another year of remarkable resiliency

By Laura Baisas

The Harvest Moon on October 1, 2020 over a field in Waseca, Minnesota.
Science

September’s night sky will sparkle with the Harvest Moon and a newly discovered comet

By Laura Baisas

A Late Bronze Age urn from Austria in roughly 1400-1300 BCE, containing cremated human remains. The urn is open on a table, with dusty pieces spilling out of it.
Archaeology

Cremated remains still hold clues to life and death in the Bronze Age

By Laura Baisas

A truck passes through flooded streets caused by Hurricane Idalia passing offshore on August 30, 2023 in Tarpon Springs, Florida.
Climate Change

Category 3 Hurricane Idalia makes landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast

By Laura Baisas

An artistic reconstruction of Kylinxia, a relative of present day insects and crustaceans. It has two extended forelimbs, a round and segmented body, and three eyes on its head.
Animals

A three-eyed organism roamed the seas half a billion years ago

By Laura Baisas

A large spiral galaxy takes up the entirety of the image. The core is mostly bright white, but there are also swirling, detailed structures that resemble water circling a drain. There is white and pale blue light that emanates from stars and dust at the core’s center, but it is tightly limited to the core. The rings feature colors of deep red and orange and highlight filaments of dust around cavernous black bubbles.
Deep Space

The Whirlpool Galaxy’s buff, spiral arms grab JWST’s attention

By Laura Baisas

Part of the exposed Roman walls with the room layout already recognizable. The remains of the floor construction are still preserved in the foreground of the picture.
Archaeology

Remnants of an ancient Roman society found buried in the Alps

By Laura Baisas

A magnetic resonance image of the patient’s brain by fluid-attenuated inversion recovery showing an enhancing right frontal lobe lesion (left). A live third-stage larval form of Ophidascaris robertsi removed from the patient’s right frontal lobe (right).
Animals

‘Alive and wriggling’ worm survived in woman’s body and brain for at least a year

By Laura Baisas

Shiny fish oil capsules laid out on a table. Fish oil contains two omega-3 fatty acids called EPA and DHA. These acids are all found in flax seeds, walnuts, and fatty fish such as salmon.
Diseases

Fish oil supplements might still not be as good as the real thing

By Laura Baisas

Lush and green mint leaves growing in a garden. To keep disruptive “jumping genes” quiet, some plant species use a process called methylation, which adds regulatory markers to the specific sites in the DNA and can be passed down through epigenetic memory.
Agriculture

We’re finally figuring out how plants pass on genetic memories

By Laura Baisas

A large group of white and gray fossils laid out on a blue tarp.
Biology

Fossils of 10 unknown species found by sewage plant

By Laura Baisas

A portion of the far side of the Moon looms large just beyond the Orion spacecraft in this image taken November 21, 2022, by a camera on the tip of one of Orion’s solar arrays. The darkest spot visible near the middle of the image is Mare Orientale.
NASA

You might be able to plant a tree from seeds NASA flew by the moon

By Laura Baisas

A woman holds a red smoothie in a glass with a handle on it and a stainless steel straw sticking out. A group of ‘forever chemicals’ commonly called PFAS were not detected on the stainless steel straws in this study, but were on 18 out of 20 brands of paper straws.
Climate Change

‘Forever chemicals’ detected in paper and plastic straws

By Laura Baisas

A sequence of Hubble Space Telescope images from 1994 to 2020 that chronicles the waxing and waning of the amount of cloud cover on Neptune. This long set of observations shows that the number of clouds grows increasingly following a peak in the solar cycle.
Science

What the heck is up with Neptune’s dark spots?

By Laura Baisas

Two Emperor penguin chicks standing on sea ice in Antarctica.
Animals

Emperor penguins suffer ‘unprecedented’ breeding failure as sea ice disappears

By Laura Baisas

An illustration showing three abelisaurs on a beach, with a dead dinosaur and another smaller dinosaur. Fossils have been found of several types of abelisaur showing the diversity of dinosaurs in Morocco at the end of the Cretaceous period.
Animals

T. rex cousins with shorter arms were thriving right up until the asteroid hit

By Laura Baisas

This Gua Sireh Cave art was drawn with charcoal on limestone save walls and is dated between 1670 to 1830 CE. Two geometric figures, with one prominently wielding a weapon are featured.
Archaeology

Newly dated cave art tells a dark story in Borneo’s history

By Laura Baisas

Plaster casts of the remains of Pompeii's victims. In the Nineteenth Century, archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli developed a technique using plaster to study the remains of the victims of Mount Vesuvius’ furious eruption.
Archaeology

Pompeii’s archaeological puzzles can be solved with a little help from chemistry

By Laura Baisas

A hogfish swims near the Florida Keys. It has spikes on top and a pointy snout.
Animals

Hogfish ‘see’ using their skin

By Laura Baisas

An illustration of a sabertooth tiger in a grassland. Sabertooth tigers went extinct between about 8,000 and 10,000 years ago.
Biology

Mighty sabertooth tigers may have purred like kittens

By Laura Baisas

A woman in a hospital, with a doctor touching her shoulder. Some of the health problems associated with long COVID include blood clots, diabetes, heart issues, blood clots, diabetes, neurologic complications, gastrointestinal disorders, fatigue, and difficulties with mental health.
COVID-19

The effects of Long COVID might rival heart disease and cancer

By Laura Baisas

A coral reef just off of an island in Palau. Coral reefs in Palau provide critical habitats for a number of species and provide a storm barrier.
Animals

Some Pacific coral reefs can keep pace with a warming ocean

By Laura Baisas

Multiple tubes of virus samples in green, green, and pink labels on a shelf. On August 17, the World Health Organization designated BA.2.86, or Pirola, a “variant under monitoring.”
COVID-19

New COVID variant under monitoring carries slew of novel mutations

By Laura Baisas

Colorful t-shirts hang on a clothing rack. According to Northwestern University’s Body and Media Lab, women’s clothing tends to be more painful, restrictive, and distracting, which can interrupt focus and make it more difficult to move around in the workplace.
Health

The unexpected benefits of making your clothes a source of joy

By Laura Baisas

A vehicle drives through a flooded street as Tropical Storm Hilary moves through the area on August 20, 2023 in Cathedral City, California. A wave of water pushes onto the street and palm trees shake in the wind.
Environment

Tropical Storm Hilary soaks the Southwest

By Laura Baisas

The remains of a Bronze Age cauldron and an artistic reconstruction of what it may have looked like thousands of years ago.
Archaeology

Bronze Age cauldrons show we’ve always loved meat, dairy, and fancy cookware

By Laura Baisas

Artist's interpretation of Venetoraptor gassenae in a Triassic landscape.
Biology

This flightless pterosaur ancestor had enviable claws and a raptor-like beak

By Laura Baisas

Members of the Dutch Tall Ship Oosterschelde wave goodbye from the quay in Rotterdam on August 4, 2023. The Rotterdam ship departs for a two-year world tour that scientist Charles Darwin made two centuries ago.
Animals

Mission to recreate Darwin’s scientific Beagle voyage sets sail

By Laura Baisas

Artist impression of the stem pinniped Potamotherium valletoni swimming in his natural, freshwater environment. Grasses and plants grow below the animal, that has whiskers, legs, and flippers.
Animals

Hungry seals may have begun following their whiskers 23 million years ago

By Laura Baisas

Wildfire smoke drifts over western Canada, as seen from a satellite. On August 8, 2023, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of dense plumes of smoke streaming from dozens of large fires in the Northwest Territories. Several of these fires raged around Yellowknife, the province’s capital and largest city. These fires follow major outbreaks of fire in Alberta, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and Quebec, in May, June, and July.
Climate Change

Canadian territory capital ordered to evacuate due to approaching wildfire

By Laura Baisas

A new snake species named Tachymenoides harrisonfordi was discovered during an expedition in Peru in May 2022. The copper scaled snake is seen here coiled on some brown grass.
Animals

Harrison Ford’s latest namesake is an Andean snake species

By Laura Baisas

Three human skulls sitting on a shelf. Cranial modification has been used for millennia to reshape the human skull.
Archaeology

Japan’s Hirota people intentionally reshaped their skulls more than 1,000 years ago

By Laura Baisas

Men pose outside of Michigan State University’s first observatory, circa 1888. The observatory is located behind where Willis House now stands on MSU’s campus, just south of Grand River and north of West Circle Drive in North Neighborhood.
Archaeology

Michigan State students help unearth a 19th-century space observatory on campus

By Laura Baisas

Four bivalve species found along the Maine coast, including the Northern Quahog, Eastern Oyster, a steamer clam, and a blue mussel presented together in a bed of seaweed at low tide.
Animals

Popular shellfish resist extinction in surprising ways

By Laura Baisas

Lead claimant Rikki Held, 22, confers with members of Our Children's Trust legal team before the start of the nation's first youth climate change trial at Montana's First Judicial District Court on June 12, 2023 in Helena, Montana.
Climate Change

Judge sides with youth activists in groundbreaking climate change lawsuit

By Laura Baisas

A gray wolf howling in the woods. The wolves come in many colors including white, tan, black, and brown.
Animals

A new pack of endangered gray wolves is roaming Northern California

By Laura Baisas

Closeup photo of water pipe segments fitted together in situ at Pingliangtai.
Archaeology

Ceramic pipes kept this town from flooding during monsoons 4,000 years ago

By Laura Baisas

Talpa hakkariensis, found in the Hakkari region of southeastern Turkey, was identified as a new species of mole, highly distinctive in terms of both its morphology and DNA. The mole is peeking out of an underground burrow.
Animals

These moles may have been hiding for 3 million years

By Laura Baisas

Archaeologists dig in the dirt with a brush and scraper.
Archaeology

Mysterious skull points to a possible new branch on human family tree

By Laura Baisas

The Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone National Park, with steam rising and mountains in the distance. Temperatures at Yellowstone’s famous hot springs can reach 198 degrees Fahrenheit.
Animals

Don’t lick the toads and other things to avoid at national parks

By Laura Baisas

A male peacock displaying his signature blue and green plumage.
Animals

Miami suburb turns to vasectomies to solve its peacock problem

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s impression of the planet Beta Pictoris b orbiting its star.
Deep Space

Watch 17 years of an exoplanet’s journey in only 10 seconds

By Laura Baisas

Maxar satellite imagery on August 9, 2023 showing total destruction of the Lahaina square and outlets after the Lahaina Wildfire, with one building still actively burning.
Climate Change

Hurricane-powered wildfires sweep across Maui

By Laura Baisas

A man is looking in a glass case of coprolites collected in Nong Yakong village, Chaiyaphum Province, Thailand.
Animals

Rare parasites found in 200 million-year-old reptile poop

By Laura Baisas

Maya Tilousi, member of the Hopi Tribe, Havasupai Tribe of Grand Canyon, and the Cheyanne and Arapaho Tribes, shakes hands with President Joe Biden at Red Butte Airfield, 25 miles south of Tusayan, Arizona, on August 8, 2023. Biden announced he is putting the brakes on uranium mining around the Grand Canyon and willl give an area of nearly one million acres national monument status.
Conservation

Nearly 1 million acres of land near the Grand Canyon is now a national monument

By Laura Baisas

A hair whorl is a patch of hair growing in a circular pattern around a single point that is determined by the orientation of hair follicles.
Biology

The swirls and whorls of your hairline come from multiple genes

By Laura Baisas

Two penguins and a seal on the Antarctic Peninsula.
Climate Change

Antarctica is in the climate change crosshairs

By Laura Baisas

Reconstruction of Hupehsuchus about to engulf a shoal of shrimp. The ancient lizard widely opens its skinny snout and large mouth to swallow a large ball of shrimp.
Animals

The planet’s first filter feeder could be this extinct marine reptile

By Laura Baisas

A Heliconius butterfly with black, orange, and white on its wings.
Animals

Butterflies can remember specific flower foraging routes

By Laura Baisas

A long and skinny silver trumpetfish uses a colorful parrotfish as camouflage.
Animals

Trumpetfish use other fish as camouflage

By Laura Baisas

A mother holds a hand of a tiny newborn baby. Postpartum depression is a leading cause of maternal mortality.
Health

FDA approves first postpartum depression pill

By Laura Baisas

JWST/NIRcam composite image of the Ring Nebula. The image clearly shows the main ring, surrounded by a faint halo and with many delicate structures. The interior of the ring is filled with hot gas. The star which ejected all this material is visible at the very center.
Deep Space

The Ring Nebula is a glowing gas-filled donut in the latest JWST snap

By Laura Baisas

A newborn baby's hand with a hospital bracelet around his or her wrist. RSV sends about 58,000 children under five to the hospital, and kills 100 to 300 infants every year in the United States.
Diseases

RSV antibody shot will be available for babies in the US this fall

By Laura Baisas