The discovery of a new dinosaur, Tharosaurus indicus, in India is shaking up the study of a branch of sauropods, the long-necked, plant-eating group best known for brontosaurus. The find has also highlighted India’s growing status within paleontology, although the field continues to face many challenges in the country.Fossils have been found around the world, with new species identified in Argentina, East Africa, China and the U.S. The discovery of a major one in India, now, greatly changes pa ...read more

Coming to terms with death isn’t easy — even if you’re an insect that’s little more than an eighth of an inch in size. For fruit flies, or Drosophila melanogaster, the mere sight of their companion’s corpses can trigger certain cues known to alter their brain chemistry, deplete fat stores and even cause other flies to avoid them, as if the traumatized insects still carried the stench of death. What’s more, scientists from the University of Michigan have found that fruit flies who wit ...read more

One of the great puzzles of modern astronomy is whether the Solar System hides a distant undiscovered planet. If this planet were relatively near — orbiting close to or within the orbit of Neptune — it ought to have been discovered by now. But if it were much more distant — orbiting in the Kuiper Belt far beyond the orbit of Neptune, for example — astronomers would find it extremely hard to track down. There is indeed evidence to support the existence of such a planet. This comes from th ...read more

Skin is an awesome and weird organ. As the body’s biggest organ, it does a lot to look after you, protecting you from the outside world of sunlight, harsh chemicals, nasty germs and severe cold. And it does all this while keeping water inside your body and enabling the sense of touch.I’m a biomedical engineer. My research team and I try to better understand the mechanics and function of soft biological tissues.We know skin wrinkles as you get older or when you pinch it between two fingers. ...read more

This article was originally published September 8, 2020. It has been updated with current information. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), the Atlantic hurricane season spans from June 1 to November 30, with storms usually ramping up in late summer. NOAA, in the last few years, has issued above-normal hurricane predictions, and climate change is likely the reason. There are all kinds of ways to measure how bad a hurricane is or the kind of damage it might inflic ...read more

A University of South Florida geoscientist says the key to finding missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 could rest with analyzing barnacles. Attached to its debris, some barnacles have already been recovered from locations around the Indian Ocean.His work so far with barnacles recovered from a flaperon (a type of aileron) has produced a partial map showing how the debris likely moved across the ocean. A future map leading to the crash site could help to renew the official search effort, which en ...read more

The Science Near Me blog is a partnership between Discover magazine and ScienceNearMe.org.Science is happening all around you – but sometimes it’s tricky to figure out how to get involved. That’s why resources like the North Carolina STEM Center exist.Founded in 2012, the NC STEM Center was created as a digital hub to showcase science-related opportunities all around North Carolina. That includes citizen science projects, museum demonstrations, conferences, field trips, coding classes and ...read more

Few corners of the internet are more frustrating to Earth Scientists than those folks who think they can "predict" earthquakes. You'll see YouTube videos, TikToks, Facebook posts and more where self-proclaimed experts warn people that a large earthquake will happen somewhere on the planet during a very specific window of time. It is all garbage, every last moment of it. Earthquake prediction is not possible, especially with the accuracy that these snake oil sellers claim. Yet, a hint of a scient ...read more

On Aug. 23, 2023, India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander touched down close to the moon’s south pole, setting in motion an initial 14-day research mission during which a rover named Pragyan will explore our largest satellite.Slipping between the boulders of the rocky south pole was no small task, though most of the world’s major space agencies are trying to do it. Just a few days before India’s touchdown, a Russian probe crashed into the moon, not far from Chandrayaan-3’s landing spot.Meanwhile, ...read more

Lucid dreams — where people become aware that they're in a dream, and can actively alter or adapt it — are weird and wild, especially for the dreamer. Want to talk to animals? Go right ahead. Turn that recurring nightmare of falling in an endless void into a power fantasy of soaring through the air like Superman? No problem. In a lucid dream, in theory, if you can imagine it, you can do it. What's more, the phenomenon has recently become fertile ground for psychological research.Is Lucid Dre ...read more