Homo floresiensis, popularly called the "hobbits," may have interacted with the ancestors of modern humans. (Credit: daderot/Wikimedia Commons)
60,000 years ago, diminutive beings dwelled on the Indonesian island of Flores, alongside komodo dragons, pygmy stegodons and real-life rodents of unusual size. The now-extinct humans — known scientifically as Homo floresiensis, and popularly as the hobbits — stood less than 4 feet tall, with brains one third the size of living people. Yet ...read more
Since 2000, I’ve been an avid scuba diver in Southern California.
When the Yukon, a 366 ft. long Canadian warship, sunk off the coast of San Diego in July of 2000, it became an artificial reef for divers to explore, piquing my interest in and igniting a lifelong passion for diving.
In late 2006, my dive buddy, Barbara Lloyd, and I found ourselves at a crossroads. Both of us had earned various diving certifications, up to and including Rescue Diver and Master Diver. We had logged over ...read more
An unexpected asteroid named 2019 OK just flew between Earth and the moon, hammering home the need for continued improvements in both finding and tracking potentially hazardous asteroids. (Credit: Illustration via Pixabay)
Earth had a close encounter Thursday morning when Asteroid 2019 OK sped by at 1:22 GMT, at a speed of nearly 55,000 miles (88,500 kilometers) per hour. The closest it came to Earth was just under 45,000 miles (72,500 km), a safe distance, but still much less than ...read more
The forecast for maximum temperatures shows brutal heat across large parts of Western Europe. (Source: Climate Reanalyzer)
Here we go again — another Western European heat wave, except this one is even more intense than the one back in June and early July.
With a "heat dome" strengthening over the continent, high temperature records have tumbled in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. In fact, Germany may have just seen the highest temperature ever recorded in the country: 104.9 d ...read more
Much of dreaming remains a mystery, but scientists have some ideas as to why some people are better than others at remembering their dreams. (Credit: Shutterstock)
Soaring with the birds. Teeth falling out. A crazy psychopath is chasing you.
For many of us, our dreams transport us to a surreal world where logic and reason have no reign. Some of us may even look forward to sleep – and the adventures we’ll go on in our dreams.
But does everyone take a nightly trip to dreaml ...read more
Not getting enough sleep is tied to a host of health issues. (Credit: JimAK_Photo/Shutterstock)
Are you one of the roughly one-third of Americans who sleep less than seven hours each night? If so, I’ve got some bad news for you: you’re probably not getting enough Zs.
While you sleep, your body and brain undergo several important changes. Gradually, you get cooler. Your breathing and heart rate slow down. Chemicals that decrease your appetite are released so you don’t wake ...read more
The two white dwarf stars orbit so close together that the whole system could fit inside the planet Saturn. (Credit: Caltech/IPAC)
Astronomers using the Zwicky Transient Facility at Kitt Peak in Arizona have discovered the second fastest orbiting pair of white dwarfs. At the end of their normal lives, our sun and other stars like it become white dwarfs. Their outer layers puff away and leave behind a hot, dense core. And if those stars started life in a binary pair, as most stars do, then th ...read more
The lava lake at the summit of Shishaldin in Alaska, seen on July 23, 2019. Image by David Fee, UAFGI/AVO.
It has been over a year since a volcano in the United States was host to a lava lake. At the beginning of 2018, Hawaii's Kīlauea was home to one at the summit and one on the East Rift Zone at Pu'u O'o. However, when the lower Puna eruption struck last May, both lava lakes drained. Well, the wait is over for a new lava lake, this time in Alaska.
The Alaska Volcano Observatory repo ...read more
(Credit: SubstanceTproductions/Shutterstock)
Some five ounces of clear fluid fills the spaces between your brain and your skull. This brain juice, or cerebrospinal fluid, cushions against injury, supplies nutrients and clears away waste. Your body can make as much as a pint of fresh stuff every day to replace the old.
But for 150 years, scientists have puzzled over how the used cerebrospinal fluid leaves the brain to make room for more. New research, published Wednesday in Nature, has fin ...read more
Skaters enjoy a frozen canal in Rotterdam during the so-called Little Ice Age in Germany. A new analysis shows the temperature swings of the past 2,000 years were all regional in nature, unlike modern climate change. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Painting by Bartholomeus Johannes van Hove, Circa 1825)
Today's climate change is unlike any seen in the last 2,000 years, scientists report Wednesday in the journal Nature. New research shows that the civilization-altering warm and cold ...read more
