(Credit: T. L. Furrer/Shutterstock)
What if I told you that countless tiny beings living inside your body right now were responsible for everything from the health of your gut to your mental health? It sounds crazy. But, that’s exactly what research into the microbiome is showing us.
Tens of trillions of bacteria inhabit our bodies — scientists call them the human microbiome. The past decade or so has seen an explosion of studies linking gut bacteria with all sorts of diseases ...read more
Sandpiper eggs in a nest. (Credit: Drakuliren/Shutterstock)
The speckled brown eggs of seabirds may look like lifeless lumps of shell, but inside, developing chicks are already paying attention to their parents. Researchers studying yellow-legged gull chicks have discovered that the animals can respond to their parents’ alarm calls while in the egg and even pass on the information to younger nestmates by rattling their shells.
The discovery shows that “even before hatching, em ...read more
As the Suomi NPP satellite watched overhead on July 21, 2019, a swirling low-pressure system over Siberia pulled wildfire smoke into its giant vortex . (Source: NASA Earth Observatory)
Heat records were obliterated across Western Europe yesterday, with Paris reaching an unfathomable all-time high of nearly 109 degrees.
It's the second heat wave in the region in as many months — and this one has been even more brutal than June's. As I wrote earlier this week, research shows that huma ...read more
The eruption of the Icelandic volcano Hekla may have led to the collapse of multiple thriving Bronze Age societies. (Credit: Abraham Ortelius/Wikimedia Commons)
Life, as they say, goes on. Until one day
it doesn’t. For ancient societies, without the means to predict natural
disasters, destruction could often come suddenly and completely by surprise.
Below are four of the most devastating natural events in recorded human
history, and the societies that they wiped off the map.
The Stor ...read more
Homo floresiensis, popularly called the "hobbits," may have interacted with the ancestors of modern humans. (Credit: daderot/Wikimedia Commons)
60,000 years ago, diminutive beings dwelled on the Indonesian island of Flores, alongside komodo dragons, pygmy stegodons and real-life rodents of unusual size. The now-extinct humans — known scientifically as Homo floresiensis, and popularly as the hobbits — stood less than 4 feet tall, with brains one third the size of living people. Yet ...read more
Since 2000, I’ve been an avid scuba diver in Southern California.
When the Yukon, a 366 ft. long Canadian warship, sunk off the coast of San Diego in July of 2000, it became an artificial reef for divers to explore, piquing my interest in and igniting a lifelong passion for diving.
In late 2006, my dive buddy, Barbara Lloyd, and I found ourselves at a crossroads. Both of us had earned various diving certifications, up to and including Rescue Diver and Master Diver. We had logged over ...read more
An unexpected asteroid named 2019 OK just flew between Earth and the moon, hammering home the need for continued improvements in both finding and tracking potentially hazardous asteroids. (Credit: Illustration via Pixabay)
Earth had a close encounter Thursday morning when Asteroid 2019 OK sped by at 1:22 GMT, at a speed of nearly 55,000 miles (88,500 kilometers) per hour. The closest it came to Earth was just under 45,000 miles (72,500 km), a safe distance, but still much less than ...read more
The forecast for maximum temperatures shows brutal heat across large parts of Western Europe. (Source: Climate Reanalyzer)
Here we go again — another Western European heat wave, except this one is even more intense than the one back in June and early July.
With a "heat dome" strengthening over the continent, high temperature records have tumbled in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. In fact, Germany may have just seen the highest temperature ever recorded in the country: 104.9 d ...read more
Much of dreaming remains a mystery, but scientists have some ideas as to why some people are better than others at remembering their dreams. (Credit: Shutterstock)
Soaring with the birds. Teeth falling out. A crazy psychopath is chasing you.
For many of us, our dreams transport us to a surreal world where logic and reason have no reign. Some of us may even look forward to sleep – and the adventures we’ll go on in our dreams.
But does everyone take a nightly trip to dreaml ...read more
Not getting enough sleep is tied to a host of health issues. (Credit: JimAK_Photo/Shutterstock)
Are you one of the roughly one-third of Americans who sleep less than seven hours each night? If so, I’ve got some bad news for you: you’re probably not getting enough Zs.
While you sleep, your body and brain undergo several important changes. Gradually, you get cooler. Your breathing and heart rate slow down. Chemicals that decrease your appetite are released so you don’t wake ...read more
