The PUNCH mission will include four microsatellites that work together to watch the entire heliosphere. (Credit: SwRI)
The sun powers life on Earth and keeps us from freezing to death. It also occasionally sends out bursts of charged particles that can be deadly to astronauts outside Earth’s sheltering atmosphere, and also wreak havoc on electronics both on and above Earth. There's also a lot researchers still don't understand about the sun's behavior, including how its outermost layer ...read more
(Credit: Benevolente82/Shutterstock)
More than 100,000 years ago, humans lived in the caves that dot South Africa’s coastline. With the sea on their doorstep and the Cape’s rich diversity of plant life at their backs, these anatomically modern Homo sapiens flourished. Over several millennia, they collected shells that they used as beads, created toolkits to manufacture red pigment, and sculpted tools from bones.
Now some of these caves, along the country’s southern coast, ...read more
A Monarch butterfly on the flowers of a milkweed plant (Credit: Mark Rogovin/The Field Museum)
In the past two decades, the monarch butterfly population east of the Rocky Mountains has declined by 87 percent. That's due in part to the fact that the only plant that monarchs lay their eggs on - milkweed - has become scarcer thanks to farmers removing it from their fields. Scientists say that stopping the monarch's decline will require planting some 1.8 billion stems of milkweed. And, according ...read more
(Credit: BuffaloBoy/Shutterstock)
So, you just got a parking ticket. Let’s assume it wasn’t the first. And let’s take that a step further and say that you absolutely, positively, do not want to pay it, or think you should, for that matter.
Or let’s say you’re in a more serious situation – you’re planning
to file for divorce. You might not be able to afford an expensive attorney, or
maybe you just flat-out don’t know where to start with the l ...read more
Older people often take many supplements, including ones purported to help with brain health. A recent study says the supplements do not work. (Credit: Mladen Zivkovic/Shutterstock)
Americans and others around the world have turned increasingly to dietary supplements in order to maintain or preserve their brain health.
A recent study found that a quarter of adults over 50 take a supplement for brain-related health. But that same study, done by experts convened by the AARP ...read more
Processed meats remain a major part of the average American's diet. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Raysonho@ Open Grid Scheduler/Grid Engine)
Well, the results are in. After years and years of nutritionists telling Americans to eat fewer processed meats and more fish, Americans are eating (drumroll please) … exactly the same amounts as they did 18 years ago.
A research team at Tufts University in Boston crunched the numbers, and published their study today in the Journal of the Academy ...read more
Work, even in small doses, can actually be good for our mental health. (Credit: GaudiLab/Shutterstock)
For most of us, work is, well, work. It can be stressful, and suck up a lot of our time. But despite these negatives, there are work perks other than a paycheck and standard employer benefits. Employment offers structure, social contact, physical and mental activity and it’s often a crucial part of our sense of identity — all of which can be a boon to our mental health.
So in ...read more
Comet 67P was thoroughly explored over two years. Now, astronomers are hunting an even fresher catch. (Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NavCam)
The European Space Agency has selected a new mission that aims to investigate a wholly pristine comet, or one that has never visited the sun.
Because these objects are hard to spot until they’re already close to the sun, the idea is that the mission would launch without a specific target. Called Comet Interceptor, the mission would launch to a stable poi ...read more
People are more likely to track down a the owner of a wallet if it contains a large sum of money. (Credit: Shutterstock)
What would you do if you found a wallet with $100 in it? Would you return it? Keep it? Well, if you’re like the majority of people in this world, you’d probably contact its owner and return the wallet without a cent missing. But, if the wallet contained only a few bucks, you maybe would call it lunch money.
At least that’s according to a new study publi ...read more
The first "narluga" skull ever to be discovered. The hybrid mixes traits of its beluga and narwhal parents. (Credit: Mikkel Høegh Post, Natural History Museum of Denmark.)
While visiting West Greenland in the 1980s, an Inuit hunter killed an odd-looking whale. He realized there was something unique about the animal, so he kept its skull. Years later in 1990, a researcher from the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources spotted the specimen mounted on the hunter’s toolshed.
In ...read more
