This artist’s concept of a lake at the North Pole of Titan shows the raised features that inspired the theory that exploding pockets of liquid nitrogen may be forming craters, which become lake basins.
(Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Saturn’s moon Titan is a distant and frigid world, but it also carries intriguing similarities to Earth’s own terrain. Liquid lakes and seas dot its landscape, though the methane and ethane that fill them are a far cry from terrestrial water. Now a n ...read more
A skull from Sima de los Huesos showing evidence of blunt force trauma. (Credit: Sala et al./PLOS One)
From the scene, authorities recovered DNA, a stone handaxe and more than 7,000 scattered bones, including a bashed human skull. It was a case for the ages. But there was one complication: the events unfolded 430,000 years ago.
The evidence was unearthed by anthropologists beginning in the 1980s at Sima de los Huesos — the “pit of bones” — in Spain’s Atapuer ...read more
This is one of the Neanderthal footprints discovered at Le Rozel. (Credit: Image courtesy of Dominique Cliquet)
At first glimpse, it looks like the Neanderthals might have just vanished around the corner. Their footprints are engraved in the soft oceanside rock, like photographic negatives of their passage, seemingly ready to be swept away by the nearby ocean.
In reality, the impressions are around 80,000 years old, pressed into ancient sediments by a group of ancient humans and preserved ...read more
(Credit: Grisha Bruev/Shutterstock)
Car batteries don’t last forever. Generally, they need to be replaced every five to six years, sometimes sooner, depending how worn they are. But engineers working to develop batteries for Tesla claim to have created one that can outlast a typical vehicle’s power source by over a decade.
Researchers at Dalhousie University in Canada tested a new lithium-ion cell battery that could last for roughly 20 years, or one million miles, according to ...read more
Electrophorus voltai, one of the two newly discovered electric eel species, lives in the Brazilian highlands. (Credit: L. Sousa)
In the murky freshwater rivers and streams that snake across the Amazon lurks an eight-foot fascination: the electric eel. Since their discovery more than 250 years ago by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus, researchers have thought the electric eel was a one-of-a-kind phenomenon, with only one species, Electrophorus electricus.
Now scientists say they have di ...read more
(Credit: shepele4ek2304/Shutterstock)
Yes, physical activity is good for your health, but sometimes – OK, maybe a lot – you just don’t want to. How do you get yourself up and going when inspiration lags? According to a new study, the answer may be a little friendly competition.
In a study out Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers have found that gamifying physical activity objectives encourages people to take more steps per day than merely s ...read more
As cement hardens through a process called hydration, the molecules within the mixture develop millions of microscopic crystals, like those seen in this screenshot from the NASA video below. These interlocking crystals help the cement molecules bind with each other, as well as other concrete ingredients like gravel, sand, and small rocks. (Credit: NASA ScienceCasts)
Concrete, in one form or another, has been a staple of human construction for some 5,000 years. Now, researchers have finally b ...read more
This photo of the Virkam lander shows it being hoisted and readied, prior to its launch this past July. (Credit: ISRO)
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) isn’t giving
up hope for its lost lunar lander just yet. The space agency will keep trying to
establish contact with the Virkam lander for 14 days, according to the Times
of India.
On September 6, the spacecraft was scheduled to have a soft landing in the moon’s south pole region. But as it neared the one-mile marke ...read more
(Credit: halfbottle/Shutterstock)
There are many things that set us humans apart from other species: large brains, bipedalism, a predilection for puns. But we’re also defined by our singular vulnerability to cardiovascular disease.
Heart attacks and strokes, the leading causes of death in humans worldwide, are rampant in our species and our species alone. Even chimpanzees, our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, suffer from cardiovascular disease at far lower rates, and for diff ...read more
Wrangell and its ice-filled caldera seen from the International Space Station in August 2005. NASA.
Alaska is full of volcanoes. Most of them lie along the long, arcuate chain along the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands, stretching far into the Pacific Ocean. However, they are not the only volcanoes in the vast state. to the east of the Aleutian arc are the Wrangell-St. Elias Range. It is one of the most complex tectonic area in North America and home to at least 10 volcanoes. In fact, s ...read more
