What do catapults, black holes and panda poop have in common? ...read more

Those polar plunge nuts—you know, the people who strip to their skivvies in February and jump into freezing water—might be on to something. According to doctors from the United Kingdom, a 28-year-old man who had been complaining of persistent, post-operative pain was cured after jumping into incredibly cold water for a vigorous 60-second, intense swim. Roughly two months prior to his swim, the man had undergone an endoscopic thoracic sympathectomy procedure to treat his severe facia ...read more

Before the RoboCop future arrives, a robot police car that pulls over speeding vehicles and issues tickets or warnings on its own could someday help ease a shortage of human officers at police departments across the United States. But the vision of a self-driving police vehicle described in a Ford patent also raises many questions about whether such technology is the right tool for law enforcement. The basic Ford patent description makes clear that this self-d ...read more

Scientists have found a silver lining to Huntington’s disease. The malady causes nerve cells in the brain to break down; there is no cure. But if there’s one redeeming quality to this fatal genetic illness it’s this: Medical data has shown that people with Huntington’s are 80 percent less likely to develop cancer than the general population. But why? Building off of previous experiments and related studies conducted over several years, Marcus Peter and his colleagues at ...read more

La Niña is still with us and influencing drought and other weather patterns in the United States and elsewhere. But check out the animation above. That large mass of warm water coursing through the depths of the Pacific Ocean may signal that by this spring, La Nada will be with us. The warm blob and other signs have prompted the Climate Prediction Center to peg the odds of La Niña fading to neutral conditions at 55 percent during the March through May season. La ...read more

Apollo astronauts did a lot when they made it to the moon in the 1960s and 70s. They drove cars, they hit golf balls, they planted flags, they ran experiments and they launched mortars ... wait, what? Yes, those NASA astronaut not only brought mortars and explosives to the Moon, they used them on during Apollo 16 and 17's stays on the lunar surface. However, before you think we were testing military defenses in case of alien (or Russian) incursion, these explosions were all in the name ...read more

When the Soyuz spacecraft returns from the ISS, a parachute slows it's fall, but not enough for a safe landing. That's why there are retrorockets on board that fire just moments before touchdown; they slow the spacecraft that extra little bit so the landing is slow and survivable for the crew. It works, but it seems a little counter-intuitive if you think about it. When NASA had capsule-type vehicles in the 1960s -- the same kind its revisiting now with Orion and SpaceX is using with t ...read more

Nectar-drinking bats possess hairy tongues, and now scientists reveal these hairs are designed to maximize how much sweet nectar the bats can guzzle. The South American Pallas' long-tongued bat, Glossophaga soricina, dips its long tongue in and out of flowers while hovering in mid-air, and the hairs on its tongue apparently helping it collect nectar that pools at the bottom of the blossoms. Other animals, such as honeybees and mouse-like marsupials, known as honey possums, native to Austr ...read more

Earth’s worst day happened 66.043 million years ago — give or take 32,000 years. Let’s say it was a Monday. And if it was, then around Friday afternoon a strange new star would’ve begun growing brighter and brighter in the sky. Tragically, it wasn’t a cool new star at all. It was a Mount Everest-sized space rock traveling 45,000 mph. Surprise! The asteroid was so gargantuan, that as its leading edge plunged into the Gulf of Mexico, you would have seen the other sid ...read more

It's a lizard! It is my distinct pleasure to welcome Sitana attenboroughii, Attenborough's fan-throated lizard to the world. Measuring somewhere under three inches from snout to vent, the lizard is a welcome addition to the Agamidae family, and bears the "Attenborough" distinction proudly. In lieu of gifts, we are instead asking that you simply be nice to the environment. These little guys live in a fragile habitat. S. attenboroughii was just described in the January issue of Zo ...read more