An illness transferred from animals to humans is called a zoonotic disease. COVID-19 is a zoonotic disease that may have passed from live animals in Wuhan, China, to humans in the Huanan Market — though the data on this is still new. Examples of Zoonotic DiseasesHowever the virus was transmitted, this is hardly the first time humans have had to worry about a zoonotic disease. Here are four other diseases that were passed from animals to humans. 1. Rabies(Credit:nikitich viktoriya/Shutter ...read more

Our universe is about 13.8 billion years old, and the observable bubble of that cosmos has a diameter of about 93 billion light-years across. And we all know the famous maxim from Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity: nothing can travel faster than light.Taken together, this presents us with a perplexing riddle about the nature of the cosmos itself: How can the universe get so mind-bogglingly big in such a short amount of time?What Does "Faster Than Light" Mean?There are two ways to ...read more

A mat composed of microbes may have preserved a series of 255-million-year-old indentations made in a sandy South African tidal bottom by a hulking amphibian, a new study says.The remarkable shapes reveal that the nearly 2-meter-long rhinesuchid temnospondyl lurked for its prey and swam after it in the fashion of a crocodile. Like a prehistoric choreographer’s diagram, the impressions are a unique window into life on ancient earth shortly before the Permian Mass Extinction Event destroyed 90 p ...read more

Some creatures in the animal kingdom show off spectacular colors when exposed to light, such as certain snakes, insects and peacocks. They are known as iridescent animals.While snakes have iridescent scales and peacocks have iridescent feathers, a recent study published in PNAS indicates that in the case of the transparent ghost catfish, the iridescent shine it gives off isn’t from the fish’s scales. Read More: Inside the Secret World of Iridescent AnimalsThe Rainbow FishThe ghost catfis ...read more

Most people perceive paleontology as a frivolous sort of science. To them, the study of fossils is nothing more than the investigation of the planet’s trivial, far-flung past, making it impossible to appreciate the practical applications of the field.That said, the findings of paleontology apply to the present and the future of the planet much more than most people probably imagine. So, what, specifically, do paleontologists do, and why is their work so important?What Is Paleontology?In the si ...read more

Dinosaurs lived relatively long lives. The oldest Tyrannosaurus rex specimens that we’ve found were alive for about 30 years. It’s likely that many dinosaurs, especially sauropods, lived much longer than that. And with long lives and aging comes diseases. But what do we know, and what can we know about the diseases that impacted our favorite dinosaur species?According to Penélope Cruzado-Caballero, an assistant professor of paleontology at the University of La Laguna in Spain, dinosaurs ...read more

There’s no way to sugarcoat it: Animal and plant life is declining across the globe at rates never seen before in human history. And alongside this decline, extinction rates are speeding up — as many as one million plant and animal species are at risk of being lost forever, according to a landmark United Nations report in 2019.What’s more, humans may be uniquely responsible for fueling these losses. Activities like agriculture and aquaculture are changing the habitats of animals at an “u ...read more

The weekends just don’t feel long enough. On Fridays, you’re exhausted from a long work week. Saturdays are for running around doing errands that you weren’t able to get done on the weekdays. And then, come Sunday, you’re left dreading the work week ahead. But while the Sunday Scaries aren’t a new phenomenon, in recent years, they seem to have gotten worse, which may have a lot to do with how we view work/life balance in this country. Here’s why you’re getting the Sunday Scaries an ...read more

The realization that our universe is expanding is one of the most transformative discoveries in cosmology. While once hotly debated, this observational reality now forms the bedrock for our modern conceptions of the cosmos.The first evidence for an expanding universe came through Albert Einstein’s discovery of the general theory of relativity in 1917. Other scientists have since gathered more evidence, and expanded his ideas into more tangible models.Einstein's Expanding UniverseEinstein’s t ...read more

These days, we're accustomed to seeing very high resolution satellite images revealing the horrifying impact of extreme weather. Below, I offer a particularly dramatic example: before and after images of the destruction wrought by a tornado — one of at least 20 in an outbreak across the South — that ravaged Rolling Fork, Mississippi on March 24, 2023.But I was struck even more by the broader perspective seen in the image above, published by NASA. Instead of a relatively close up view of home ...read more