Let's think about what a fossil really is. A creature turned to rock, right? For the lucky few that get immortalized (or nearly) by geology and chemistry, hard tissues slip away as minerals take their place, molecule by molecule. The ancient dinosaur, or crustacean or plant is wiped entirely from the face of the Earth, and in its place is a kind of negative image. Negative, I suppose, in the sense that rock has replaced what once was living, breathing tissue, but also because the soft ...read more

A seemingly cheap and ordinary technology may have paved the way for a cultural exchange breakthrough that saw South Korean K-pop idols receive an unprecedented welcome from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. It was not the first time that democratic South Korea has sent music acts to North Korea as part of diplomatic overtures to the authoritarian regime. In 1999, two pioneering K-pop groups, including the girl group Fin.K.L. and the boy band Sechskies, performed in the North Kore ...read more

When NASA launched John Glenn on its first ever orbital mission in 1962, there was a pretty realistic chance that he was going to die. Not because the agency was taking an unnecessary risk. It wasn't; every element of the flight was tested and proven to a point where everyone, Glenn included, was confident. But still, it was the early 1960s and rockets had a nasty habit of blowing up. With that in mind, a memo reached Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson on January 16, 1962. It was from O. B ...read more

By: Julia Travers Scientists need your help to find out what ants in your neighborhood like to eat. Would you ask an ant to join you for lunch? A team of researchers at North Carolina State University in Raleigh calls on citizen scientists around the world to flip the picnic concept – they want *us* to feed the ants. By counting ants, recording their meal preferences, and sending in data, you can help Dr. Magdalena Sorger and her colleagues better understand what foods ants have access t ...read more

If you had to guess, you'd probably say that people who watch a lot of pornography are less likely to be religious. And you'd be right -- to a point. But according to this study, which looked at the connection between porn viewing and later religiosity, there actually appeared to be a more complicated relationship between porn and religious sentiments. More specifically, people who watched no porn were likely to be religious, and religious levels declined with more frequent porn use up to "o ...read more

CO₂ averaged about 410 parts per million in the atmosphere during the last week of March. Ten years ago, it averaged ~387 ppm in that week. I spotted the animation above on Twitter the other day. It illustrates the growth of planet-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in a novel and particularly compelling way, so I thought I'd share it here. The animation shows how the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has changed week-by-week and year-by-year starting at t ...read more

Members of the “Science Cheerleaders” team perform at USA Science & Engineering Festival and help families contribute to citizen science research. 2, 4, 6, 8, equals…20!  Learn science and math when the Science Cheerleaders perform at the USA Science & Engineering Festival this weekend. Science Cheerleaders aren’t just cheering for and about STEM,  they’re real-life scientists and engineers. The Science Cheerleaders are also current ...read more

Some cephalopod researchers have another job title: Octopus anesthesiologist. It sounds far-fetched, but it's an important task. Octopuses, and cephalopods in general, are the smartest invertebrates, and their complex, unique central nervous systems are studied by researchers interested in everything from motor control to visual processing to cognition itself. But that kind of research often involves invasive techniques that could cause the creatures significant pain. Can You Feel It? A ...read more

Science isn’t all about curing cancer and traveling to black holes. The big questions are important, but the scientific method is also useful for figuring out the best way to approach, and even solve, specific problems. Sometimes those specific issues involve engineering the perfect material for the job, or finding out which paint absorbs radar waves the best. Sometimes it’s a bout making better ads. As you can imagine, a lot of money rides on knowing the answers, so it’s a v ...read more