(Credit: Choksawatdikorn/Shutterstock) Some of the smallest creatures in the sea are also some of the most influential. Plankton, a group of microscopic marine organisms that includes bacteria, amoebas and snail larvae, among other things, prop up the base of the oceanic food chain. Every sea creature, from clownfish to whales, ultimately depend on plankton for […]

The power and propulsion system for the Lunar Gateway will be built by Maxar. Courtesy of Business Wire) In a talk at the Florida Institute of Technology on Thursday, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine announced that Maxar Technologies will build the first stage of NASA’s planned Lunar Gateway. The Gateway, part of NASA’s larger Artemis program […]

The telescope, once complete, will be made of hundreds of spherical detectors suspended at the bottom of the sea. (Credit: KM3NeT) Deep under the Mediterranean Sea, hundreds of watchful eyes hang suspended on cables, waiting for a rare and valuable flash. Their quarry are ghostly neutrino particles, capable of tunneling through light-years of space and […]

In the final minutes of Apollo 11’s descent to the lunar surface, five 1201 and 1202 alarms blared in the lunar module. The computer was overloaded with data, and for a brief moment it looked like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin wouldn’t land on the Moon. As we know, they did; Apollo 11 got a […]

Researchers say women are worse at math and word-based tasks at cooler room temperatures. (Credit: ESB Professional/Shutterstock) “The women’s winter is here. The freeze is upon us,” warns a Game of Thrones parody about men and women’s office temperature preferences. If you have a Y chromosome, you probably haven’t experienced “women’s winter.” As the video explains, […]

(Credit: Photographee.eu/Shutterstock) Bipolar patients are seven times more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease, according to a new study. Though the news may be disheartening to those suffering from the already-trying condition, the link might also lead to clues about the causes behind the two conditions. Parkinson’s is a complex disease associated with a gradual decline […]

(Credit: Africa Studio/Shutterstock) Public interest in the science of powerful psychoactive drugs is at an-all-time, er, high. Evidence for the therapeutic benefits of marijuana, MDMA, psilocybin and more is growing, based on a resurgence of scientific interest in studying these compounds. But many of these drugs are strictly banned by the federal government, and those […]

One of the meteorites that fell at Aguas Zarcas struck a doghouse’s roof. (Photo courtesy of Michael Farmer) A rare meteorite fall in Costa Rica has astronomers racing to get their hands on samples. Meteorites are an astronomer’s dream. In a field that by definition studies objects and phenomena above and beyond Earth’s atmosphere, many […]

A billion-year-old fungi microfossil includes the earliest documented presence of chitin, a fibrous substance found today not only in fungi cell walls but also arthropod exoskeletons and fish scales. (Credit: Loron et al 2019, DOI:10.1038/s41586-019-1217-0) The fungus among us is a key player in the ecosystem — and was part of the world hundreds of […]

A tiger shark — woodpeckers beware. (Credit: Shane Gross/Shutterstock) Often called “the garbage cans of the sea,” tiger sharks are voracious eaters. The sharks will eat just about anything — fish, other sharks, seabirds, sea turtles, whale carcasses. The list goes on. That hodgepodge of prey now also includes a few creatures that don’t usually […]

The moon’s far side, as photographed by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) (Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University) The familiar lunar vista humans see when they look up at night reveals a face with dark “seas” and bright craters. The mysterious far side, which wasn’t revealed until humans started sending probes and then people in the 1960s, […]

(Credit: Gudkov Andrey/Shutterstock) Seeing anyone special? Thinking about having kids? When am I going to have some grandchildren? Many moms nag their adult children about the prospect of grandchildren. But bonobo moms take their maternal harassment to another level: They actively participate in helping their sons find mates. Even more surprisingly, the pushy tactic gets […]

Upcoming missions like NASA’s Mars 2020 might already have the technology to find tiny micro-fossils on the Red Planet. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) When most people imagine hunting for fossils, they probably think of finding dinosaur bones laid down in layers of rock. But the vast majority of life – and therefore fossils – across Earth’s history […]

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A platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) pauses for a moment after being released by scientists into the Little Yarra River, its home stream in Victoria, Australia. (Credit: Douglas Gimesy) With the bill of a duck, the body of an otter, and the tail of a beaver, the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) has a long history of confounding the […]