We all know our plastic problem is out of control. So far, humans have produced more than 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic, and that number is only growing. Now, a new study in Scientific Reports claims that the problem goes deeper than we thought — literally.
The Plastic Beneath
An Australian team of researchers traveled to the Cocos (Keeling) Islands (CKI), a remote archipelago in the Indian Ocean that’s roughly 1,700 miles off the northwest coast of Australia. There, they ...read more
Don't get a big head, your mother may have told you. That's good advice, but it comes too late for most of us. Humans have had big heads, relatively speaking, for hundreds of thousands of years, much to our mothers' dismay.
Our oversize noggins are a literal pain during childbirth. Babies have to twist and turn as they exit the birth canal, sometimes leading to complications that necessitate surgery. And while big heads can be painful for the mother, they can downright transformative for ...read more
Tonight, SpaceX will launch the first flock of their Starlink satellites to space. These are the vanguard of what CEO Elon Musk hopes will eventually become a network of 12,000 orbiting devices providing cheap, global internet coverage.
The launch window opens at 10:30 p.m. E.T. The satellites, which are densely packed inside the cargo hold already, will be delivered to space on a Falcon 9 rocket. The weather forecast for Cape Canaveral, SpaceX’s standard launch site, looks promising for ...read more
On Monday night, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced the space agency has named its planned mission to put humans back on the lunar surface: Artemis. As the Greek deity most associated with the Moon, and the god Apollo’s twin sister, the namesake choice was an obvious fit.
On the logistical side, Bridenstine also announced that NASA will ask Congress for an additional $1.6 billion in funding to jumpstart the program. NASA has not put forward a full budget for the ambitious Arte ...read more
Climate change is decimating coral reefs. As humans put greenhouse gasses into Earth's atmosphere, they warm the planet before settling back down into the oceans and making the water more acidic. These combined factors have caused coral die-offs around the world. But now researchers have found a set of corals in Hawaii’s Kāne’ohe Bay that can already tolerate warmer temperatures and more acidic waters. Scientists are calling them "supercorals." These corals even bounced back aft ...read more
Since January, China's Chang’e-4 mission – an orbiter and a rover – has been exploring the far side of the moon, particularly the prized South Pole-Aitken Basin, an asteroid impact crater that stretches across nearly a quarter of the moon’s surface. It's the biggest crater on the moon, as well as the deepest and the oldest. That's long left scientists suspecting that Aitken may hold vital clues as to how the moon – and many other solar system bodies & ...read more
I am always amazed how much we are still discovering about massive volcanic eruptions that happened as little as a few thousand years ago. Geologically speaking, that is something that happened yesterday, yet even that small slice of time can obscure some giant volcanic events that could have produced a global impact.
Two recent studies have improved our understanding of two truly enormous eruptions that happened in Central and South America. One, only 1,500 years ago, may have produced o ...read more
Store-bought tomatoes taste horrifically disgusting — err, bland. Now scientists have discovered a version of a gene that helps give tomatoes their flavor is actually missing in about 93 percent of modern, domesticated varieties. The discovery may help bring flavor back to tomatoes you can pick up in the produce section.
"How many times do you hear someone say that tomatoes from the store just don't quite measure up to heirloom varieties?" Clifford Weil, program director of the National S ...read more
