Since the dawn of the universe, the biggest stars have ended their lives with a bang, blowing out their outer layers in bright, fiery bursts that can be seen many light-years away. Astronomers use these supernova explosions like marks on an expanding balloon to measure how fast the universe is growing. Based on studies of […]

Periods are painful, messy and downright annoying. But hopefully, a new test might be a better way to estimate when you’re done menstruating for the rest of your life. Blood tests for an ovarian hormone could help predict when an individual will enter menopause, and it’s particularly effective for people in their late 40s and […]

The Field Guide to Citizen Science recently appeared on Discover’s 2020 reading list. Darlene Cavalier, Catherine Hoffman and Caren Cooper, all citizen science experts from SciStarter, walk readers through how to get started with citizen science — real scientific research anyone can do. In addition to providing an overview and brief history of the field, […]

Coastal living, once idealized in the U.S., could soon become a precarious proposition as the climate warms. Rising sea levels are threatening, and will continue to threaten, those who’ve made their residences on the imperiled boundary between land and ocean. Estimates of sea level rise put metropolises like New York City, Miami and Los Angeles […]

Friday afternoons are reserved for free-for-all experiments in Hans Clevers’ lab. He lets his students at the Hubrecht Institute in the Netherland test out their fun ideas — which is why no one told him about the poison-producing snake glands until after they were alive and well in the lab petri dishes.  Called organoids, the […]

Many stars end their lives as bright explosions called supernovas. Some of these explosions are much brighter than typical and give off up to 100 times more energy. Astronomers call these “superluminous supernovas,” and they don’t yet understand exactly what makes them super-bright.  Now, a team of researchers has proposed an origin story for one […]

Polysphincta wasps might be pretty if they weren’t so brutal. Native to the Americas, the larvae of these parasitic insects eat their host spiders while simultaneously controlling their minds, inducing the spiders to spin a cocoon the wasps will use to pupate into adults. Researchers used to think that one group of these wasps, the […]

When Mount Vesuvius blasted hot ash through Roman cities at a temperature of 950 degrees Fahrenheit, the cloud killed residents as soon as it hit them.  In one individual, the one-two punch of extreme heat and cooling ash deposits appears to have liquified and then rapidly cooled their brain tissue, leaving a thin glassy smear […]

If the Americano or latte from your favorite coffee shop tasted a bit off this morning, don’t jump to blaming it on the barista. There may be a more complex explanation for your disappointing beverage. Inconsistent espresso pulling (coffee-shop slang for making espresso) has long been a mystery in the coffee industry. Even among the […]

Snakes – the Chinese krait and the Chinese cobra – may be the original source of the newly discovered coronavirus that has triggered an outbreak of a deadly infectious respiratory illness in China this winter. The illness was first reported in late December 2019 in Wuhan, a major city in central China, and has been […]

Bzzzzzz. There’s nothing peskier than mosquitos buzzing around, especially when they decide to pepper your skin with itchy welts. Except, of course, when the winged insects happen to be carrying a potentially deadly virus like Zika or dengue fever. In recent years, mosquito-borne illnesses have been on the rise — and they pose an increasing […]

It’s a well-burnished saying: Stress makes your hair turn gray. But is there actually a correlation between stress and losing the natural color of your locks? According to a study published today in Nature, there is, in fact, a direct link between stress and graying. Over the past two decades, researchers have found preliminary evidence […]

Chemical nerve agents are some of the most horrifying tools of war today. The compounds kill by paralyzing the nervous system and have been used in devastating attacks on civilians or soldiers in war zones. And they can appear, albeit in smaller doses, in pesticides used in developing countries, endangering farm workers after prolonged exposure. […]

It’s hard to know what Earth’s atmosphere was like billions of years ago, but scientists are beginning to figure it out.  Based on the chemical properties of tiny micrometeorites that fell to Earth 2.7 billion years ago, a team of researchers says that the planet’s atmosphere was likely chock-full of carbon dioxide back then. From […]

Nearly 6,000 years ago, in what’s now Denmark, a Neolithic crafter fashioned a ring from a piece of deer antler or bone. During the process, or soon after, the piece broke in two. It was apparently dropped — perhaps discarded in frustration — near other items, including a wooden spear that was also broken. And […]