Mars' Gale Crater once held a lake of liquid water. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/MSSS) Mars was a very different place as a young planet. Liquid water dotted the Red Planet’s landscape with lakes and rivers. But the planet’s climate changed drastically in the past few billion years. Today, scientists see the remains of the planet’s bodies of water in dried-up river channels and salts left in its rocks. Now, new data from the Curiosity rover show that the pl ...read more

The Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite of our Milky Way, may be well-suited for the evolution of life. (Credit: John A Davis/Shutterstock) Where in the universe can life evolve? When scientists discuss this question, they’re usually talking about what kinds of planets might support life. But some researchers are thinking bigger. In recent years, astronomers have been investigating whether some types of galaxies are more hospitable to life than others. Unsurprisingly, most researche ...read more

A horned bull from a control group is flanked by two hornless offspring of a genome-edited bull. (Credit: Alison Van Eenennaam) In promising news for dairy farmers, researchers have bred what are likely the first offspring from a genome-edited bull. The calves were born without horns, a trait that occurs naturally in cattle but was given to their father via previous DNA-editing research. The offspring were otherwise normal and healthy, the authors report Monday in Nature Biotechnology. I ...read more

Does working out on a vibrating plate help make us stronger? (Credit: Alliance Images) Can we vibrate ourselves healthy? That's the premise behind a form of therapy called Whole Body Vibration, or WBV. Proponents argue that subjecting our bones and muscles to rapid vibrations makes them stronger, much in the same way exercise does. The idea is simple: Standing on a vibrating plate forces our muscles to do work. This low-grade stress ultimately leads to strength gains and weight loss. Some ...read more

(Credit: Abigail Malate, Staff Illustrator. Copyright American Institute of Physics) (Inside Science) -- The 2019 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded to three scientists “for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability." The 9 million Swedish krona (more than $900,000) prize is shared equally between William Kaelin from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Peter Ratcliffe from the Francis Crick Institute in London, and Gregg Semenza ...read more

(Credit: Abigail Malate/Copyright American Institute of Physics) (Inside Science) -- Every year, the Nobel Prizes in physiology or medicine, physics, and chemistry honor great advances and discoveries in science. Last year, one of our top contenders in medicine -- checkpoint inhibitors for cancer therapy -- won. We were not as successful in the other two categories. But buoyed by that modicum of success, we will again attempt to summarize nine top contenders for these famous science prizes ( ...read more

With the help of ALMA's dust-penetrating gaze, researchers got this snapshot of a young stellar pair in action. (Credit:ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Alves et al.) Astronomers recently imaged two budding stars locked in a gravitational waltz that twisted their planet-forming disks into a pretzel-shaped knot. The stars, recently imaged with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), are giving astronomers a unique look at a nascent binary system. The discovery sheds new light on ...read more

Tiny black holes are thought to speckle the universe, and new research posits the solar system may have captured one. (Credit: nagualdesign/Tom Ruen/Wikimedia Commons) Something strange may be lurking in the outer solar system. The odd orbits of distant space rocks suggest there’s a giant, elusive world dubbed Planet Nine waiting out there to be discovered. But now, in a new research paper, a team of scientists suggest something far stranger may be influencing the orbits of these distan ...read more

One of the study participants walking with a prototype of the new prosthetic leg. (Credit: Federica Barberi) A new prosthetic leg integrates with a wearer's nervous system to give real-time feedback about their environment. Users can report they can "feel" where their artificial leg is in space, giving them the ability to complete a range of tasks previously out of reach. Researchers described tests with the new prosthetic in Science Translational Medicine this week in three patients with ...read more

The space agency is dishing out almost $20 million to research creating rocket fuel from material found on the Moon and Mars. (Credit: NASA Goddard) NASA has awarded a total of $17.4 million to four private aerospace companies to study and produce technologies that could help future space missions create fuel on the Moon and Mars. The companies include Jeff Bezo’s spaceship company, Blue Origin, as well as Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The other two recipients are OxEon Energy, a Utah- ...read more