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Latest in Science

A great white pup swimming in the Pacific Ocean. In July 2023, wildlife filmmaker Carlos Gauna and University of California, Riverside biology doctoral student Phillip Sternes took footage of what could be the first newborn great white shark ever recorded.
Animals

This could be the first newborn great white shark ever captured on camera

By Laura Baisas

Road rage—and parking spot envy—can reveal a lot about how humans tick
Science

Road rage—and parking spot envy—can reveal a lot about how humans tick

By Popular Science Team

Biohybrid robot legs in underwater container
Animals

Watch this cool, useless biohybrid robot take a stroll

By Andrew Paul

The full moon rises, with clouds below and behind it.
Moons

The moon is shrinking (very slowly)

By Laura Baisas

Ingenuity rotocopter on Mars
Engineering

RIP Mars Ingenuity, the ‘little helicopter that could’

By Andrew Paul

This photograph shows a male dusky antechinus in a naturalistic enclosure located in Cape Otway, Australia.
Animals

Sex is more important than sleep for these marsupials

By Laura Baisas

Image taken of JAXA SLIM lunar lander on moon upside down
Moons

Japan’s SLIM lunar lander stuck the landing—upside down

By Andrew Paul

A bright young star within a colorful nebula. The star is identifiable as the brightest spot in the image, surrounded by six large spokes of light that cross the image. A number of other bright spots can also be seen in the clouds, which are shown in great detail as layers of colorful wisps.
Deep Space

Check out JWST’s new image of a star factory

By Laura Baisas

A colony of Emperor penguins in Antarctica. The larger black, white, and yellow adult penguins are standing behind the small and fuzzy black, white, and grey chicks.
Animals

Poop stains reveal four previously unknown Emperor penguin colonies

By Laura Baisas

A blue bottle fly.
Animals

How bug ‘wranglers’ help document the lives of flies, dung beetles, and more

By Laura Baisas

GIF of Sierra Space LIFE module exploding during pressure test
Engineering

Watch a giant, inflatable space station prototype explode during its intentional ‘ultimate burst’

By Andrew Paul

A top-down view of the OSIRIS-REx Touch-and-Go-Sample-Acquisition-Mechanism (TAGSAM) head with the lid removed, revealing the remainder of the asteroid sample inside. The picture was taken using manual high-resolution precision photography and a semi-automated focus stacking procedure. The result is an image that can be zoomed in on to show extreme detail of the sample. The remaining sample material includes dust and rocks up to about 0.4 inch in size.
NASA

This is what’s inside NASA’s previously stuck asteroid sampler

By Laura Baisas

A brownish-gray tardigrade swimming. These microscopic invertebrates have eight limbs and shriveled skin.
Animals

We may know what makes tardigrades so darn tough

By Laura Baisas

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter concept art above moon
Moons

NASA bounced a laser off a cookie-sized device on the moon

By Andrew Paul

A mako shark swimming in the ocean.
Animals

The ‘meg’ may have been longer and less chonky than previously thought

By Laura Baisas

The burgeoning science of search and rescue
Environment

The burgeoning science of search and rescue

By Sarah Scoles/Undark

JAXA lunar lander robots, LEV-1 and LEV-2
Moons

Japan makes history with its first uncrewed moon landing

By Andrew Paul

A yellow salamander with a brown stripe on its back sits on a green leaf.
Animals

Why small, scary, and ‘non-charismatic’ lost species are harder to rediscover

By Laura Baisas

The bow of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Duane, a decommissioned ship deliberately sunk off Florida to serve as an artificial reef.
Conservation

Not all underwater reefs are made of coral

By Avery Paxton and D’amy Steward / The Conversation

Dense thickets of the reef-building coral Desmophyllum pertusum make up most of the deep-sea coral reef habitat found on the Blake Plateau in the Atlantic Ocean. The white coloring is healthy–deep-sea corals don’t rely on symbiotic algae, so they can’t bleach. Images of these corals were taken during a 2019 expedition dive off the coast of Florida.
Biology

World’s largest known deep-sea coral reef is bigger than Vermont

By Laura Baisas

A new evolutionary theory could explain the mystery of shrinking animals
Animals

A new evolutionary theory could explain the mystery of shrinking animals

By Lauren Leffer

A team of astronomers identified a new radio source (white square) in the center of globular cluster 47 Tucanae (red circle).
Science

Astronomers produce most sensitive radio image of a globular cluster ever taken

By Laura Baisas

Lava closeup volcanic
Science

Why volcanic lava is so hard to stop

By Loÿc Vanderkluysen / The Conversation

A colorized view of the DOLCE structure finalizing its uncoiling process, as seen from the boom camera, over Antarctica, on August 22, 2023.
Energy

The first-ever space solar power tests are finished after a year in orbit

By Andrew Paul

An octopus hatchling emerges from a group of eggs at a new octopus nursery. This nursery was first discovered in June 2023 at Tengosed Seamount off Costa Rica.
Animals

Four new octopus species discovered in the deep-sea vents off Costa Rica

By Laura Baisas

John Deere 8R Autonomous Tractor in field
Agriculture

John Deere and Starlink partner to provide satellite internet for rural farmers

By Andrew Paul

An aerial view taken on January 15, 2024 shows volcanic activity near Grindavík after an eruption. According to authorities, volcanic activity in southwest Iceland appears to have eased, one day after lava from an eruption flowed into the fishing town, engulfing several homes.
Science

Volcanic activity easing in Iceland following eruption

By Laura Baisas

An Eastern dwarf tree frog covered in seeds.
Animals

These Australian frogs get absolutely covered in seeds

By Ethan Freedman

Check out some of the past year’s best close-up photography
Animals

Check out some of the past year’s best close-up photography

By Andrew Paul

Jupiter’s iconic Great Red Spot and the surrounding turbulent zones, shown in shades of white and brown.
Deep Space

Earth isn’t the only planet with seasons, but they can look wildly different on other worlds

By Gongjie Li / The Conversation

GIF of Ouroboros-3 test rocket igniting
Engineering

Watch this rocket ‘eat’ its own body for fuel

By Andrew Paul

Green rhodopsin proteins inside the blue cell walls help these yeast grow faster when exposed to light.
Biology

This yeast loves light

By Laura Baisas

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx curation engineer, Neftali Hernandez, attaches one of the tools developed to help remove two final fasteners that prohibited complete disassembly of the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism head that holds the remainder of material collected from asteroid Bennu. Engineers on the team, based at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, developed new tools that freed the fasteners on January 10.
NASA

NASA finally pries open stuck Bennu asteroid sampler

By Laura Baisas

A pink hummingbird sits on a perch inside of a tunnel. Green and black stripes are projected on the walls of the tunnel.
Animals

How hummingbirds switch gears at breakneck speeds

By Laura Baisas

An image taken by a camera aboard the Peregrine spacecraft, with Earth in the top right.
Private Space Flight

Peregrine sent back this image from its now abandoned lunar mission

By Laura Baisas

A visual collage of skin fossils described in the new study. The mummified skin specimen is shown sliced into two pieces in the center-left of the image. The surrounding specimen scans are of fossilized skin impressions.
Archaeology

Oldest known fossilized reptile skin was dug up in an Oklahoma quarry

By Lauren Leffer

Four of the best telescopes for deep space side by side on a plain background.
Deep Space

The best telescopes for deep space in 2024

By Abby Ferguson

NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion spacecraft atop launches the agency’s Artemis I flight test on November 16, 2022. The Artemis I mission was the first integrated test of the agency’s deep space exploration systems.
NASA

NASA delays two crewed Artemis moon missions

By Laura Baisas

NASA plans to unveil experimental X-59 supersonic jet on January 12
Aviation

NASA plans to unveil experimental X-59 supersonic jet on January 12

By Andrew Paul

An artist’s impression of a group of G. blacki within a forest in southern China. Four of these giant apes sit on the grass near a stream, while an orangutan hangs from a tree branch. They are brown with yellow-ish manes around their faces.
Animals

These extinct, nearly 10-foot-tall apes could not adapt to shifting seasons

By Laura Baisas

How video game tech, AI, and computer vision help decode animal pain and behavior
AI

How video game tech, AI, and computer vision help decode animal pain and behavior

By Peter Hess

Fruit bats hanging on tree branches in daylight in Bangladesh on November 6, 2023.
Animals

Why fruit bats can eat tons of sugar without getting diabetes

By Laura Baisas

Microscopic view of Oikopleura dioica
Animals

This tiny sea creature builds a ‘snot palace’ to capture food

By Andrew Paul

A white toilet bowl in a bathroom with yellow brick walls is surrounded by multiple shelves holding plants and towels.
Biology

Scientists finally discover the enzyme that makes pee yellow

By Laura Baisas

Smoke billows out of two engines as United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur, lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41d at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on January 8, 2024. The new rocket is carrying Astrobotic's Peregrine Lunar Lander.
Moons

Peregrine lunar lander experiences ‘critical loss of propellant’ following successful launch

By Laura Baisas

Illustration of what the Europa Clipper spacecraft will look like flying by Europa, a moon of Jupiter.
Science

These are the exciting space missions slated for launch in 2024

By Ali M. Bramson / The Conversation

The 3,763-meter-high Fuego volcano is located 35 kilometers southwest of Guatemala City. On June 3, 2018, a major eruption triggered an avalanche that swept through the community of San Miguel Los Lotes and part of a highway in the neighboring town of Alotenango, leaving many dead and missing.
Science

Central American volcanoes offer clues to Earth’s geological evolution

By Pablo Fonseca Q. / Knowable Magazine

Voyager 2/ISS images of Uranus and Neptune released shortly after the Voyager 2 flybys in 1986 and 1989, respectively, compared with a reprocessing of the individual filter images in this study to determine the best estimate of the true colors of these planets.
Science

This is what Uranus and Neptune may really look like

By Laura Baisas

Robert Lodder sends Lexington tourism data ad into space at evening launch event with horses in background
Deep Space

Lexington, Kentucky sent a tourism ad to ‘extraterrestrials’ with a DIY laser rig

By Andrew Paul

The best binoculars for astronomy
DIY

The best binoculars for astronomy in 2024

By Abby Ferguson

Rendering of Astrobotic Peregrin lunar lander on moon's surface
Cryptocurrency

NASA is headed for the moon next week, and it’s bringing lots of weird stuff

By Andrew Paul

Mendenhall Glacier
Environment

In Juneau, Alaska, a carbon offset project that’s actually working

By Taylor Kate Brown / Grist

An illustration of the pelagic ecosystem and the organisms fossilized in Sirius Passet, revealing how Timorebestia was one of the largest predators in the water column more than 518 million years ago.
Animals

Extinct ‘terror beasts’ were some pretty formidable worms

By Laura Baisas

A Matabele ant tends to the wound of a fellow ant whose legs were bitten off in a fight with termites.
Animals

Matabele ants might be able to diagnose and treat infected wounds

By Laura Baisas

Halley’s comet is on its way back towards Earth
Science

Halley’s comet is on its way back towards Earth

By Briley Lewis

A reddish moon on a black background, dotted with several gray marks that are volcanoes. Jupiter's moon Io is one of Jupiter’s several moons. This image was taken on December 30, 2023 during the Juno spacecraft’s flyby of this volcanic Jupiterian moon.
Moons

See the most volcanic world in our solar system in new NASA images

By Laura Baisas

A full moon rises n a purple sky over snowy mountain peaks.
Science

The Full Wolf Moon and Quadrantids meteor shower ring in 2024

By Laura Baisas

Check out some of National Geographic’s 2023 Pictures of the Year
Science

Check out some of National Geographic’s 2023 Pictures of the Year

By Laura Baisas

A hand reaches for a present wrapped in red and gold wrapping paper underneath a Christmas tree.
Health

Shaking presents for science

By Laura Baisas

A jellyfish Cladonema pacificum with multiple branched tentacles.
Animals

These fingernail-sized jellyfish can regenerate tentacles—but how?

By Laura Baisas

Black and white aerial shot of Mars Ingenuity helicopter in flight
Aviation

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter set a new flight distance record on Mars

By Andrew Paul

The best budget telescopes arranged in a row on a white background
Gear

The best budget telescopes for 2024

By Abby Ferguson

The Running Chicken Nebula comprises several clouds, all of which we can see in this vast image from the VLT Survey Telescope. The clouds shown in wispy pink plumes are full of gas and dust, illuminated by the young and hot stars within them.
Science

The Running Chicken Nebula shimmers in new ESO image

By Laura Baisas

Five new species of soft-furred hedgehogs have been identified
Animals

Five new species of soft-furred hedgehogs have been identified

By Laura Baisas

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