Lichens come in many colors. (Credit: Field Museum) 65 million years ago, a meteor catastrophically changed our planet’s biodiversity. All non-avian dinosaurs went extinct. By some estimates, 15,000 teragrams (that’s equal to the mass of 10 million redwood trees) of soot darkened the air. Lush and flowering plants that had proliferated around 40 million years earlier were decimated, deprived of life-giving sunlight. Surrounded by death, fungi flourished – their favorite food ...read more

(Credit: aijiro/Shutterstock) Nearly a third of all deaths in the world are due to heart diseases. Now, a new study suggests that an infusion of gut bacteria might hold promise for treating cardiovascular conditions. The proof-of-concept study looked at obese people given a daily supplement of helpful bacteria that had been killed with heat, or pasteurized. The study paves the way for a larger human trial aimed at turning the discovery into a commercially-available food supplement that co ...read more

The solar eclipse took place around 4:30 p.m. EDT over parts of South America. (Credit: Mike Newbry on Unsplash) A total solar eclipse blazed a path through parts of South America on July 2, 2019. Tens of thousands of tourists and locals looked skywards in Chile and Argentina to see the midday light turn to darkness as the sun and the moon crossed paths. Totality, the point at which the Moon covers the Sun completely, lasted for a little over two minutes. The event was predictably a hit o ...read more

(Credit: Evgeniy Kalinovskiy/Shutterstock) Nearly 37 million people suffer from human immune deficiency virus or HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The go-to treatment for the infection is antiretroviral therapy, better known as ART. It can prevent the progression of the disease, enabling infected individuals to live longer, healthier lives. But even with ART, the virus still lingers in the body.  Now researchers describe a new form of ART dubbed LASER ART that, in combination with CRIS ...read more

The Deep Synoptic Array-10, which spotted the burst, is located at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory. (Credit: Caltech/OVRO/Gregg Hallinan) Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are one of astronomy’s hottest topics — and biggest mysteries. These brief bursts of radio waves from outside the Milky Way typically pop off for only a fraction of a second, then disappear forever, never to be seen again. Only two FRBs have ever been caught repeating, one of which astronomers traced back to i ...read more

Asteroids like Psyche 16, thought to be the core of a vanished planet, could be worth trillions. (Credit: Maxar/ASU/P. Rubin/NASA/JPL-Caltech) What if the key to protecting our planet … was leaving it? Well, in part, at least. As worries about climate change mount, and the race to obtain resources from space heats up, some experts and über-rich CEOs are seriously considering moving our industry off-planet. That means using robots to build satellites and space stations by mining as ...read more

Private spaceflight companies will carry commercial payloads to the Moon in advance of NASA’s crewed landing slated for 2024. (Credit: NASA) NASA wants to return humans to the Moon by 2024 under a program called Artemis. And this time, they want the stay to be of a more permanent nature. In addition to landing humans on the lunar surface, NASA wants to put a Gateway space station in orbit around the moon, to host the next generation of space experiments and to serve as a waystation betw ...read more

(Credit: Sergey Uryadnikov/Shutterstock) Within the rainforests of Salonga National Park, in the heart of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, bonobos wade through swamps. The slender, three-and-a-half-foot tall apes are searching for rushes and white water lilies. They pluck the herbs from the water and then discard the flowers and leaves. The bonobos are after the soft pith at the base of the leaves and other parts of the plants that grow underwater. Now researchers find the aquatic h ...read more

This summer, whether you're at home, fishing on a lake, or walking along the beach, consider getting involved in one or more of the citizen science projects featured below. Each one empowers us to keep an eye on the health of our water sources. Cheers! The SciStarter Team Stream Selfie More than one-third of us drink water that runs through streams. But how clean are those streams? To find out, we first need to know where they are. Share a picture of your local s ...read more

The crew capsule and its launch abort safety system lifted off on time from Cape Canaveral. (Credit: NASA) On Tuesday morning at 7am EDT, NASA successfully completed the final major flight test for their Orion crew capsule. This is the new craft NASA will use to transport humans to the Moon and Mars as a new age of space exploration begins. The Artemis Moon mission is slated to begin next year with an uncrewed flight to the Moon. With this final flight test cleared, that should be the ne ...read more