Last year, scientists announced the discovery of two new minerals: elaliite and elkinstantonite. These were fascinating finds, perhaps even more so because they came from a 15-ton meteorite that had hurtled through space to crash down in Somalia. While there are currently nearly 6,000 mineral species recognized by the International Mineralogical Association, Robert Hazen, a mineralogist at the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory and George Mason University, says there are an estimate ...read more

Snakes are cold-blooded animals, or ectothermic, because they get their temperature from their surroundings and cannot generate their own body heat. While this can come in handy, the downside of being a cold-blooded animal is the struggle to survive in cold environments. Incidentally, if the outside temperature rapidly drops, their physical temperature can drop to temperatures that are life-threatening, too. Species that live in habitats where winter months are inhospitable stay safe in the form ...read more

We humans seem to have an on-again, off-again relationship with facial hair. Prehistoric cave drawings reveal the myriad tools our ancient ancestors used to shave: shark’s teeth, sharpened flints and even clam shells. Nowadays, beards are back in style and people are taking a razor to their brows, instead. But is there a reason we evolved to have these hairy baubles in the first place? And, if so, what evolutionary advantage might we be throwing away for the sake of staying on trend?  Turns o ...read more

A little over 110 years ago, the remote wilderness of the Alaska Peninsula experienced what was likely the largest, more explosive eruption of the 20th century. This eruption covered the region with tens of meters of volcanic ash and debris, creating the aptly-named Valley of the 10,000 Smokes. Multiple volcanoes not eEven today, when the winds pick up during the late summer and fall, ash from this blast can be whipped up and lofted high into the air, sometimes even making people think an erupti ...read more

Archaeologists in New Zealand have recently uncovered nine new penguin specimens from the Paleocene Epoch, which occurred between 66 million years ago and 56 million years ago. Researchers have assigned the largest of these nine specimens to a new species known as Kumimanu fordycei.  According to the study published by Cambridge University Press, based on humerus length and humerus proximal width, K. fordycei weighed anywhere between 148 kilograms (326 pounds) and 159.7 kilograms (352 poun ...read more

As much as we like to think of ourselves as superior, humans are animals. We descended from a common ancestor of humans, shared with what became chimpanzees and bonobos between 6 and 8 million years ago. Though we’ve evolved since then, we’re still 98.8 percent the same as chimpanzees and bonobos. Humans and monkeys are so much alike that documenting our similarities is much easier than listing our few differences.   Shared Use of Tools  According to Stephanie Poindexter, a primatologi ...read more

La Niña typically casts a bit of a chill over the globe, and that certainly has been the case during its reign over the past three years. Yet despite the climate phenomenon's continuing influence, last month turned out to be one of the warmest Januarys ever recorded globally. Moreover, even though La Niña exerted its maximum cooling effect in 2022, that year still entered the record books as being warmer than 2021. The reason, of course, was human-caused climate change. Now, La Niña is fadin ...read more

Without the aid of modern anesthesia or, for that matter, modern disinfection, a Bronze Age practitioner of some kind wielded a tool with a sharp, beveled edge and began a grisly business. In about 1500 B.C., the primitive surgeon cut away a polygon of scalp just above the left eye and peeled it off, leaving scratches in the bone below. Then began the painstaking process of slicing into the “living bone,” according to a new archaeological study, leaving remarkably clean grooves and carving ...read more

The speculations surrounding the death of Dr. Charles R. Drew are steeped in rumor. Drew, a pioneer in blood banking and blood and plasma storage, may have died after being refused a blood transfusion.  In 1950, Drew was brought to a segregated hospital in North Carolina after falling asleep at the wheel while driving to a medical conference with other physicians. But surgeons at the hospital recognized the famed scientist and tried to save his life, making the rumors about his death false. ...read more

Einstein’s special theory of relativity governs our understanding of both the flow of time and the speed at which objects can move. In special relativity, the speed of light is the ultimate speed limit to the universe. Nothing can travel faster than it. Every single moving object in the universe is constrained by that fundamental limit. Speed and Mass This isn’t something like the speed of sound. Early scientists wondered if we could ever go faster than that speed, not because of some fundam ...read more