You probably already had a feeling you should skip the vending machine for an afternoon snack. But it turns out ultra-processed foods are even worse than we already thought. A new study, out in Cell Metabolism, shows these foods cause weight gain even when they don’t have more fat, sugar, or carbohydrates than their healthier counterparts. There’s something about the processing itself that causes people to eat more before they feel full. On the flip side, switching to a whole f ...read more

Last week, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos revealed his spaceship company's new lunar lander, dubbed Blue Moon, and he spelled out a bold and broad vision for humanity's future in space. Faced with the limits of resources here on Earth, most fundamentally energy, he pointed to life in space as a solution. "If we move out into the solar system, for all practical purposes, we have unlimited resources," Bezos said. "We could have a trillion people out in the solar system." ...read more

(Inside Science) -- Refrigeration has been around for about 100 years, but hasn’t changed much in that time. A time traveller from the early 1900s would still recognize the big box full of chilled food in your kitchen. But soon, researchers say, new materials could replace refrigeration as we know it, making it more adaptable, efficient and environmentally friendly. Standard fridges work using a process called vapor compression. A compressor increases the pressure on a gas, which raises i ...read more

Who can resist a smooshed nose, wrinkly wide grin, and buggy eyes? Flat-faced dog breeds like bulldogs and pugs have become the popular “it” pets of the moment. But the iconic looks that make Frenchies and the like so photogenic can also be harmful to their health and wellbeing. Veterinarians have long known that brachycephalic breeds – or dogs bred to have condensed snouts – are prone to breathing issues. One of the most worrisome conditions is what& ...read more

After New Horizons streaked past Pluto in 2015, its main task was over, but it still had work to do. On New Year’s Day of 2019, it made a flyby of another, even more distant object named 2014 MU69, more commonly called Ultima Thule. Since then, the spacecraft has been slowly but steadily sending streams of information back across the increasingly vast gulf of space between it and Earth. From that information, scientists now know that the snowman-shaped space rock formed from a gentle coll ...read more

We all know our plastic problem is out of control. So far, humans have produced more than 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic, and that number is only growing. Now, a new study in Scientific Reports claims that the problem goes deeper than we thought — literally. The Plastic Beneath An Australian team of researchers traveled to the Cocos (Keeling) Islands (CKI), a remote archipelago in the Indian Ocean that’s roughly 1,700 miles off the northwest coast of Australia. There, they ...read more

Don't get a big head, your mother may have told you. That's good advice, but it comes too late for most of us. Humans have had big heads, relatively speaking, for hundreds of thousands of years, much to our mothers' dismay. Our oversize noggins are a literal pain during childbirth. Babies have to twist and turn as they exit the birth canal, sometimes leading to complications that necessitate surgery. And while big heads can be painful for the mother, they can downright transformative for ...read more

Tonight, SpaceX will launch the first flock of their Starlink satellites to space. These are the vanguard of what CEO Elon Musk hopes will eventually become a network of 12,000 orbiting devices providing cheap, global internet coverage. The launch window opens at 10:30 p.m. E.T. The satellites, which are densely packed inside the cargo hold already, will be delivered to space on a Falcon 9 rocket. The weather forecast for Cape Canaveral, SpaceX’s standard launch site, looks promising for ...read more

On Monday night, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced the space agency has named its planned mission to put humans back on the lunar surface: Artemis. As the Greek deity most associated with the Moon, and the god Apollo’s twin sister, the namesake choice was an obvious fit. On the logistical side, Bridenstine also announced that NASA will ask Congress for an additional $1.6 billion in funding to jumpstart the program. NASA has not put forward a full budget for the ambitious Arte ...read more

Climate change is decimating coral reefs. As humans put greenhouse gasses into Earth's atmosphere, they warm the planet before settling back down into the oceans and making the water more acidic. These combined factors have caused coral die-offs around the world. But now researchers have found a set of corals in Hawaii’s Kāne’ohe Bay that can already tolerate warmer temperatures and more acidic waters. Scientists are calling them "supercorals." These corals even bounced back aft ...read more