Smartphones are in pockets, purses and, for some people, under their pillows at night. Most Americans have a smartphone. About 95 percent of teenagers and people under 50 say they have one. For many people, smartphones are a convenience. But for phone addicts, they can feel like an obsession. There are apps to look at, games to play and websites to browse. One in five U.S. teens, for example, say they use YouTube “almost constantly,” and more than half say it would be difficult to stop ...read more

As life was first struggling to set foot on land in the Late Devonian Period, there was a predator waiting to snatch it back to the depths: the recently discovered Hyneria udlezinye, a toothy prehistoric fish estimated to have reached up to 9 feet long. It represents the largest monster fish yet uncovered from this period and appears to have lurked in the brackish waters of the modern-day Waterloo Farm site in South Africa, in wait for its prey. An excavation exposed a wall of fossils there in 2 ...read more

Atoms touch all the time! But to understand why we first have to decide what we mean by the word “touch.” Our normal conception of touching is grounded in the macroscopic world. I put a cup on the table – the cup is touching the table. You dip your toes in the water – you are touching the water, and so on. In all these cases, one solid boundary or surface (the bottom of the cup, the edge of your toe) touches another solid boundary or surface (the top of the table, the surface of the ocea ...read more

Stars are among the most identifiable objects in the sky. They light up the darkness and dot the galaxy. Stars are born within a dusty cloud and eventually form a mass of gas and chemicals that burns brightly in the sky. But ultimately, all stars, no matter how big and bright, must also die.  How Long Do Stars Live? The sun, for example, is a 4.5 billion-year-old star that will continue its lifespan for another 10 billion years. The sun lights up through a combination of hydrogen and helium in ...read more

Animals use camouflage to avoid detection. Some do it to avoid predators, while it allows others closer access to prey. Color plays a role in several different ways, including helping animals fade into natural surroundings, causing confusion with their colored patterns  and even altering their color. Camouflaged Animals When animals change colors, it’s done by pigments containing cells called chromatophores, located in their organs and skin. Let’s take a look at the methods of camouflage f ...read more

The scent of death revealed the location of the grisly, cannibalistic end to a hopeful trip to California nearly 175 years ago. This is thanks to cadaver-sniffing dogs who seem to have proven the ability to detect death thousands of years after some burials at historic sites. The Donner Party was a group of pioneers that attempted to migrate from Illinois to California in search of opportunity via a wagon train that partly followed the Oregon Trail starting in the spring of 1846. Tragically, the ...read more

In the months after the Jan. 6 riot in Washington, D.C. in 2021, several defendants claimed that their crimes weren’t their fault. According to their defense teams: The crowd made them do it. At least for some of them, the defensive strategy failed to deliver, and they were found guilty on multiple charges. That said, it all begs the question: Can crowds really make people behave in ways that are deeply at odds with their values? If so, are any of us immune to collective behavior? Contagion Th ...read more

It’s a dirty little habit that many participate in, and few would admit to. As many as 91 percent of the population picks their noses from time to time. Many people do it to remove the dry nasal mucus, namely boogers, that can build up and irritate the nose. If you have allergies that clog your nasal passages, there’s even more of a temptation to clear them up. And in some cases, nose-picking can become a compulsive habit, like biting your nails. Nose Pickers Researchers have found that no ...read more

Following its arrival in Coventry, U.K., Dippy the Dinosaur drew over 10,000 visitors in its first week on display. The opening marked the beginning of Dippy’s three-year stay at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum. Dippy is a Diplodocus, or more specifically, a Diplodocus fossil. Diplodocuses were gigantic dinosaurs that lived in the Late Jurassic Period, about 161 to 145 million years ago. The behemoth fossil itself is over 85 feet long and likely weighed between 22,000 to 30,000 pounds when ...read more

You might be the laziest person on the planet, but your brain never rests. So what does it get up to when you’re more or less checked out? In the 1930s, Hans Berger, a German psychiatrist who had recently invented the electroencephalogram (EEG), suggested that our brains are always active, even when we don’t seem to be doing much with them. Few people took the idea seriously at the time (maybe because Berger had spent much of his career trying to prove telepathy, or perhaps because he wa ...read more