A type of tumor that can pass between dogs is showing researchers how cancer cells evolve. (Credit: Jess Wealleans/Shutterstock) Thousands of years ago in Asia, a dog got cancer. A single cell underwent a mutation that turned it into the beginnings of a tumor. The dog eventually died, but not before passing on a unique legacy: its cancer cells. Today, those cells are still growing in dogs across the globe. That’s because this particular kind of cancer cell turned out to possess an in ...read more

WASP-121b is so hot that the planet has puffed up beyond its ability to hold onto its own atmosphere, and is instead streaming it away as it flies around its star every 30 hours. (Credit: NASA/ESA/J. Olmsted/STScI) Astronomers just used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to take the temperature of an exoplanet called WASP-121b and discovered that the world is so hot that heavy metals actually leak behind it as it whips about its central star. It's the first time scientists have seen such a phenom ...read more

Turtles, tortoises (shown here) and other reptiles change sex inside their eggs depending on the outside temperature. That trait has scientists worried that climate change may skew their populations toward one gender. (Credit: Seasoning17/Shutterstock) Freshwater turtle nests dot the sandy shores of ponds throughout Asia. And like many reptiles, the embryos become males or females depending on how warm or cool their nests are. Females like it hot, scientists have noticed. That is, when it&rsq ...read more