(Credit: William Perugin/shutterstock) One of the best parts of traveling is getting to see how, despite differences in culture and geography, we’re all fundamentally alike. “People are the same everywhere,” Morrissey tells us — we laugh, we cry, we find cute things cute. And, it now seems, we also juggle the apps on our smartphones […]

A fully-grown female sun bear. (Credit: Daniela Hartmann) “A smile is infectious,” so goes the cheesy saying. But there’s actually some validity there. It’s long been known that people, often unintentionally, mimic the facial expressions of those around them. This communication technique was thought to only exist in humans and gorillas, but new research is […]

Before and after satellite images reveal the extent of flooding on the Platte, Missouri and Elkhorn rivers near Omaha, Nebraska. (Images: NASA Earth Observatory. Animation: Tom Yulsman) Flooding characterized by the National Weather Service as “major to historic and catastrophic” is continuing across parts of the central plains and Upper Midwest. The flooding has come in […]

One of asteroid Bennu’s biggest surprises comes from the bursts of particles it sometimes sends flying into space, where OSIRIS-REx captures sight of them. (Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Lockheed Martin) Right now, there are two missions exploring asteroids in our solar system. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is revealing surprises at its asteroid home called Bennu. It arrived there not […]

The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 is hard at work collecting data on asteroid Ryugu. (Credit: JAXA) The Japanese Space Agency’s (JAXA) Hayabusa2 spacecraft swooped down and collected a first sample from the asteroid Ryugu on February 22. And now JAXA is ready to make an even more dramatic sample collection in April when it uses explosives to shoot an impactor at […]

Australopithecus africanus skull as displayed at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. (Credit:Ryan Somma via Flickr) (Inside Science) — In the late 1970s, anthropologists popularized the now familiar scenario that our very early ancestors were scavengers rather than hunters. These ancestors, the australopithecines, lived on the African savanna between 2 million and 4 million years ago. […]

This composite image shows J1430+1339, known as the Teacup galaxy. Optical light (red and green) was taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and X-ray data (blue) was collected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. (Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Cambridge/G. Lansbury et al; Optical: NASA/STScI/W. Keel et al.) Your nighttime cup of chamomile might help you go […]

via NASA. Digging into NASA’s Apollo-era history of nuclear propulsion for manned deep space missions, I found another gem in the history of the government not really knowing how to address women’s clothing. This time, we’re talking beauty and badges. For the back story on this image, we need to the Plum Brook Station before […]

The Pathfinder mission landed in Mars’ Ares Vallis, where the Sojourner rover catalogued rocks that may have been eroded by floodwaters. (Credit: NASA/JPL) Mars may be a dry, cold planet today, but it was once a warmer, wetter one. NASA’s Opportunity rover was the first rover to find solid evidence of water on Mars — […]

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(Credit: IAET SB RAS/Sergei Zelensky) A chunk of a Denisovan skull has been identified for the first time — a dramatic contribution to the handful of known samples from one of the most obscure branches of the hominin family tree. Paleoanthropologist Bence Viola from the University of Toronto will discuss the as-yet-unpublished discovery at the […]

The long ash plume from Bezymianny seen stretching across the Pacific Ocean on March 17, 2019 by Terra’s MODIS imager. The smaller plume from Sheveluch can be seen just above the darker Bezymianny plume. NASA. The Kamchatka Peninsula in far eastern Russia is one of the most active volcanic areas on Earth. It isn’t surprising […]

Scientists uncovered the remains of a 15,000 year old Anatolian hunter-gatherer. (Credit: Douglas Baird) Some 12,000 years ago, the land was exceptionally fertile curving up from the Nile River basin across Jordan, Syria, and Iraq, down into the Tigris River Valley. The area’s earliest settlers grew wheat, barely and lentils. Some kept pigs and sheep. […]

PSR J0002 is clearly visible with its bright radio tail pointing back toward the explosion that created it, the supernova remnant CTB 1. (Credit: Composite by Jayanne English, University of Manitoba, using data from NRAO/F. Schinzel et al., DRAO/Canadian Galactic Plane Survey and NASA/IRAS) Astronomers discovered a pulsar, a kind of zombie star, racing across the […]

(Credit: PopTika/shutterstock) Some memories can leave us scarred for life. For example, the memory of a dog attack may leave even the most canine-loving person terrified of every pooch they come across. Fortunately, traumatic memories may not be permanent. In a new study, researchers have discovered that a general anesthetic can weaken emotionally disturbing memories. The find means […]