Recent analysis of Planck data upholds mysteries that have existed since the spacecraft’s first results in 2013. (Credit: ESA/Planck Collaboration) During its time in orbit, the European Space Agency's Planck spacecraft gave humanity the most sophisticated measurements ever made of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, the first flash of light that rippled across the universe after the Big Bang. Plank told us the shape of the universe and confirmed crucial components of the B ...read more

Though researchers don't know why methane levels are currently rising, the fossil fuel industry was likely to blame in the past. (Credit: Nick Stubbs/Shutterstock) Carbon dioxide is climate change’s villainous star. But methane, an even more potent greenhouse gas, is CO2’s lesser-known evil twin. Researchers now find methane levels in the atmosphere are on an escalating upward trend. That’s a problem because emission scenarios that limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius a ...read more

Your stress may be contagious to your dog. (Credit: Klymenok Olena/Shutterstock) A knowing glance. A paw on your arm. A lick on the cheek. Most dog owners can recall a time when they were feeling down. And somehow, their dog just knew something was wrong and responded with a loving gesture. Many dog lovers have long believed that canines are able to sense human emotions. And, a growing body of evidence on the emotional connection between man and his best friend adds weight to these heart ...read more

(Credit: science photo/Shutterstock) When researchers edit genes with CRISPR today, their systems chop a strand of DNA in half before inserting a new gene and allowing a cell's natural healing mechanisms to patch the strand back up. That technique works well overall, but it can lead to errors, and the success rate varies depending on the type of cell. Scientists have been on the hunt for better versions of CRISPR for years. Now, a new protein that can insert custom genes into DNA witho ...read more

(Credit: David Mearns) In 1503, a storm sank the Portuguese ship Esmeralda off the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, taking the lives of the crew. In 2014, divers and archaeologists returned to the wreck to retrieve what remained. That included this metal disk, thought to be an astrolabe — an instrument that mariners used to navigate by measuring the height of celestial bodies above the horizon. Two features of the Portuguese flag — the coat of arms and an armillary ...read more

(Credit: DEREVYA/Shutterstock) Plastics are everywhere, from our phones to our cars to our utensils. Now researchers find they're inside our bodies as well. Americans consume more than 70,000 microplastic particles every year, a new study says. That sounds like a lot, but that number is still likely an underestimate, the researchers say. The consequences to human health are largely unknown. “The results of our study support the concept that we are living in a ‘plastic environme ...read more

Engineers hope the real InSight on Mars can use its robotic arm to help the mole start digging again, a test that has succeeded with replica instruments on Earth. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) The digging instrument on NASA’s Mars InSight lander has been stuck since February 28, and engineers have been hard at work trying to get it moving again. The problem is with its Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package, or HP3, and specifically the part known as the mole, which auto-hammers its way ...read more

(Credit: Everett Collection/Copyright 20th Century Fox) In the cutthroat Hollywood film industry, is it possible to know if an actor’s career is about to boom or bust? In many cases, yes. Researchers from Queen Mary University in London created an algorithm that can predict with 85 percent accuracy whether a star’s golden years have passed or are still yet to come. In a study published June 4 in the open-access journal Nature Communications, scientists analyzed the profil ...read more

Successive waves of migration from Siberia created the Inuit populations in North America today. (Credit: Illustration by Kerttu Majander, Design by Michelle O'Reilly) Who were the First Americans? It's a question that for decades has divided researchers, who have proposed competing theories as to how humans moved from Eurasia into North America. The question is far from settled, though it is clear that by about 14,500 years ago (and perhaps as far back as 30,000 years ago) humans had mov ...read more

The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope studied a double asteroid, shown here in an artist's illustration, during an Earth flyby in May. (Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser) A binary asteroid named 1999 KW4 passed some 32 million miles (5.2 million km) from Earth on May 25, giving astronomers a good look at a space rock that won’t come this close again for nearly two decades. The flyby brought it about 14 times farther away than our Moon, but still close enough for astronomers t ...read more