News(Page 47)

Latest in News

A black and white image shows a silvery sheet of material toward the bottom

NASA releases first photo of 860-square-foot solar sail in orbit

Turns out, micro and nano plastics degrade differently.

Scientists finally get a 3D view of degrading microplastics

By Mack DeGeurin

a sedan sitting in front of concrete structures

Electric Vehicles

Lucid reinvents the electric motor by thinking small. Really small.

By Kristin Shaw

Human ear closeup

Ask Us Anything

Why do we have earlobes? They make no evolutionary sense.

By Lauren Leffer

How do you keep pilots and passengers of sea planes safe?

By Barbara Peterson / Hakai Magazine

a pterosaur speices flaps its wings to fly, while another uses them to soar

‘Remarkable’ fossils offer clues to perplexing pterosaur question

By Laura Baisas

Man with AI song catalog ‘defrauds’ streaming services of $10 million

This squishy robot uses electrical signals processed from King Oyster mushroom mycelia to scoot back and forth.

This robot is being controlled by a King oyster mushroom

By Mack DeGeurin

A container of Yellow #5 dye.

The dye in Doritos can make mice transparent

By Lauren Leffer

Meteorite impacts and volcanic eruption producing glass beads on the Moon.

Volcanoes may have existed on the moon far more recently than we thought

A powerful laser shines into a jet of gas, creating a bright plasma and generating ultraviolet light. The light leaves a visible white line as it interacts with leftover gas in the vacuum chamber. This process helps scientists precisely measure the energy needed to excite the thorium-229 nucleus, which is the core of a future nuclear clock.

Move over, atomic clocks: Nuclear clocks are on the way

Sunset behind the IceCube Lab

Astronomers really like the South Pole, but why?

By Briley Lewis

several loaves of golden rustic looking bread on a table

How farming helped humans evolve to get more energy from carbs

By Laura Baisas

horses in a field

Where and when were horses domesticated?

By William Taylor / The Conversation

Steaming pipes at Svartsengi Geothermal Power Plant. This image is shot using a drone.

‘The world is not prepared:’ How AI energy thirst might tap into geothermal power

By Mack DeGeurin

Illustration of Sasayamagnomus saegusai

Tiny triceratops ancestor named after gnomes

a northern elephant seal with wide eyes looks into a camera next to an underwater acoustic monitoring device

Northern elephant seals know a ‘dinner bell’ when they hear one

By Laura Baisas

a woman scratches several red mosquito bites on her shoulder

‘Ancient, funny’ cells are to blame for itchy mosquito bites

By Laura Baisas

Peach blossom jellyfish

Invasive jellyfish ‘clones’ are spreading into Canada

The Accelerationists’ app: How Telegram became the ‘center of gravity’ for a new breed of domestic terrorists

By James Bandler/ProPublica, A.C. Thompson/ProPublica and FRONTLINE, Karina Meier/FRONTLINE

Starliner docked with ISS with Earth in background

International Space Station

NASA can explain Starliner’s spooky, pulsing sounds

Titanic bow wreckage underwater

The famous railing from ‘Titanic’ has broken off from Titanic

remnants of a sunken village in a very dry reservoir

Drought reveals a sunken village in Greece

By Laura Baisas

The communities of soil microbes known as biocrusts are common in arid ecosystems.

The dirt on biocrusts: Why scientists are working to save Earth’s living skin

By Jude Coleman / Knowable Magazine

a pregnant porbeagle shark swims under water with two tags. one is on her dorsal fin and the other is on her back

Who ate the pregnant porbeagle shark?

By Laura Baisas

Ask Us Anything

Do aphrodisiacs work? What the science says.

By RJ Mackenzie

Osprey backpacks in a line for Labor Day sale

Our editors love these Osprey hiking backpacks, and they’re up to 40% off during Amazon’s Labor Day sale

By Stan Horaczek

food made out of garbage using fungus

Chefs are using fungus to transform food garbage into fancy, fully edible dishes

By Mack DeGeurin

concept of busy airport

Old-school strategies for flying in the age of new technology

By Christopher Schaberg / The Conversation

six bouquets of different herbs hanging upside down on a wood backdrop

How to dry herbs at home (and why you should)

By Debbie Wolfe

screenshot of freetube

Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube

Microsoft MS-DOS user's guide in front of old computer

How to get MS-DOS up and running on Windows or macOS

Histones, best known for acting as scaffolding support for DNA and for regulating gene activity, turn out to also play critical metabolic roles in the cell.

These proteins have been secretly managing your cells

By Viviane Callier / Knowable Magazine

September stargazing: A second supermoon and partial lunar eclipse

By Laura Baisas

blue sportscar on a track

Electric Vehicles

Driving the $2 Million, 2,000-horsepower Rimac Nevera EV

Timelapse image of springtail jumping backwards

Watch the world’s fastest backflipping bug

a huge swarm of thousands of mosquitoes

Mosquitoes can barely see–but a male’s vision perks up when they hear a female

By Laura Baisas

Various artifacts recovered from Temple of Buto

Egyptologists uncover 2,500 year-old observatory full of precise tools

hypercar in a dark room

The coolest technology in the Bugatti Tourbillon hypercar is… analog?

By Kristin Shaw

hands reaching out to tickle you

Ask Us Anything

Why are we ticklish? The science of the silly response.

By Lauren Leffer

birds have culture

Birds have ‘culture.’ Just look at these nests.

By Lauren Leffer

an orange starfish with four arms of similar size and one shorter arm sits on some rocks

How starfish lose limbs (on purpose) and survive

By Laura Baisas

zeppelin first flight airship

1929: The Graf Zeppelin becomes the first ship to sail around the world—by air

By Bill Gourgey

Elephants in Okambara, Namibia that have been tagged with transmitters to track their movements.

The ‘internet of animals’ could transform what we know about wildlife

By Hillary Rosner / Yale Environment 360

an illustration of a crocodile biting an ancient seacow with a shark lurking behind it

Crocodile attacks sea cow. Tiger Shark picks apart sea cow.

By Laura Baisas

The Green Bank Observatory contains eight dishes that detect radiation from objects in space in the form of radio waves.

Why the ‘Wow!’ signal is probably not from aliens after all

By Briley Lewis

a mosquito biting human skin

After EEE death in New Hampshire, here’s what to know about the mosquito-borne virus

By Laura Baisas

Skyline Robotics robot window washing skyscrapers

The skyscraper window-washing robots are here

By Mack DeGeurin

lego figures on a hard drive

How to spot when your hard drive will fail before it does

Legend of the linguistic experiment by Psamtik I.

The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week

The ‘forbidden experiment’ is an infamously evil chapter in scientific history

By Popular Science Team

a small white and red squid

New images of deep sea wonders are surprisingly adorable

By Laura Baisas

a moth with a yellow body, pink legs, and pink and yellow wings sits on a green leaf

The ‘disco’ gene could help moths tell time

By Laura Baisas

Valley carpenter bee.

Our pest control is killing the bees

By Harriet Weber

X-ray of skull pointing to region with evidence of cocaine use

Mummified brains show cocaine arrived in Europe far earlier than we thought

This composite simulated image shows how M87* is seen by the Event Horizon Telescope at 86 GHz (red), 230 GHz (green), and 345 GHz (blue). The higher the frequency, the sharper the image becomes, revealing structure, size, and shape that was previously less discernible.

Better images of black holes are coming—maybe even movies

Man's hand reaching for printer paper

The paper most likely to give you a paper cut, according to science

water flowing from pipes

How heavy rain can make you sick

By Lauren Leffer

cigarette smoking warning label

The contentious history of cigarette warning labels—and the hazy future of vaping

By Clare Watson / Knowable Magazine

a space telescope image of multiple shining stars in reddish clouds

JWST spots six new ‘rogue worlds,’ neither planet nor star

By Laura Baisas

Cop using Axon's Draft One AI tech

Cops are using AI software to write police reports

the footprint of a three-toed dinosaur embedded in stone in brazil

Dinosaur footprints from Africa and South America are a match

By Laura Baisas

glacier ice core

Over 1,700 frozen viruses found in a Tibetan glacier

By Lauren Leffer

Mastodon skull in Iowa creek bed

Huge mastodon skull found in a rural Iowa creek

pile of baked goods

How food affects our mental health

By Mary Scourboutakos / The Conversation