John Chater tastes a pomegranate at a research field site in California. (Courtesy UC-Riverside)
There’s a lot more to pomegranates than their reputation in the U.S. would suggest. The fruits are known for their bittersweet juice, hard seeds, and their exploding-puzzle-box configuration that can leave kitchens looking like crime scenes.
Around the world, pomegranates take on many different forms. They can be sweeter, softer, or come in different flavors and colors: pink, yellow, or even ...read more
Copernicus Sentinel-2B image of Öræfajökull in Iceland, seen in 2017. ESA-Antti Lipponen.
Over the past few days, news out of Iceland is that Öræfajökull, one of Iceland’s largest and most powerful volcanoes, is getting restless. The volcano is “accumulating magma” and an eruption was coming! It sounds bleak, doesn’t it? The volcano that produced the island’s largest known explosive eruption is showing signs that 291 years of relativ ...read more
(Credit: lkin Zeferli/shutterstock)
John Carpenter’s iconic horror film “Halloween” celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. Few horror movies have achieved similar notoriety, and it’s credited with kicking off the steady stream of slasher flicks that followed.
Audiences flocked to theaters to witness the seemingly random murder and mayhem a masked man brought to a small suburban town, reminding them that picket fences and manicured lawns cannot protect us from the un ...read more
This New Years, the New Horizons spacecraft will make a historic flyby of Ultima Thule, a Kuiper belt object. Leading up to the flyby, scientists are collecting incredible data from the craft. (Credit: NASA)
This New Year’s, the New Horizons spacecraft will make a historic flyby of Ultima Thule — an ancient Kuiper belt object (KBO) located on the far edge of our solar system.
In the summer of 2015, New Horizons completed a flyby of Pluto and its moons, stretching the human reach fa ...read more
After the two successful touchdown rehearsals and data collected with landers and rovers, scientists know just how difficult it will be to touchdown successfully on Ryugu’s surface. (Image Credit: JAXA)
Hayabusa2’s close encounter with the asteroid Ryugu continues to amaze and surprise. Its two successful touchdown rehearsals have given scientists remarkable up-close looks at the asteroid’s surface, giving the spacecraft its best shot at a successful touchdown in 2019.At a pr ...read more
(Credit: Andrey_Popov/shutterstock)
Trillions of bacteria call the human gut home. The bugs affect not only our digestion but our hormones and immune systems, too. Now researchers show most of the microbes that colonize mammals’ guts pass down from generation to generation. The few that don’t tend to be the kind that makes us sick. The discovery suggests pathogens evolved to spread between individuals instead of through inheritance.
Generation to Generation
Andrew Moeller, an ...read more
This image, taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, shows galaxy cluster SDSS J0333+0651. (Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA)
Galaxy clusters house thousands of galaxies and endless streams of stars.
Such a dense urban environment may sound like an ideal home for a galaxy, right? Not exactly. Astronomers know that once a galaxy is absorbed by a massive cluster, its star formation soon comes to a halt. And for years, researchers have tried to figure out why this phenomenon, known as &ldq ...read more
A Plan for the Inevitable
Though this is a serious problem, there is an alternative. The car companies could accept that humans will be humans, acknowledge that our minds will wander. After all, being able to read a book while driving is part of the appeal of self-driving cars.
Some manufacturers have already started to build their cars to accommodate our inattention. Audi’s Traffic Jam Pilot is one example. It can completely take over when you’re in slow-moving highway traffic, leav ...read more
Scientists used the gene editing technology CRISPR to stop these pigs from getting a deadly flu. (Credit: Kristin Whitworth/University of Missouri)
As flu season rears its ugly head, humans aren’t the only ones on virus’ warpath. Pigs are also vulnerable to deadly infections. Porcine illness can mean huge losses for farmers and price hikes for pork. Now, new research shows gene editing could be a solution.
“One of the greatest concerns for U.S. producers is outbreaks of new [ ...read more
3200 Phaethon, a blue rocky object, continues to puzzle scientists, but a close flyby last year answered a few lingering questions as researchers continue to study this weird rock. (Credit: Heather Roper/University of Arizona)
A weird, blue rock known as 3200 Phaethon, or more commonly Phaethon, got pretty close to Earth last year. That gave scientists a unique opportunity to study it up close — and they found that this blue asteroid (that acts like a comet) is even stranger than th ...read more
