A very rare rainbow in the Atacama Desert in Chile. (Credit: Carlos González-Silva)
Exterminating Rains
The rain fell in the Atacama Desert in Chile for the first time in hundreds of years, and it caused a mass extinction.
It might seem natural to think that such rains would be followed by blooming flowers and new life. But, an international team of planetary astrobiologists found, this precipitation killed most of the microbial life in the region.
“When the rains came to the ...read more
Sputnik Planitia on Pluto, where strange ridges can be found. (Credit: NASA/Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/O. White)
Scientists have traced strange landforms on Pluto back to their ancient glacial origins.
A letter by SETI Institute scientist Oliver White and colleagues shows how ridged landforms on Pluto provide evidence for glaciers on the dwarf planet some 4 billion years ago. Their research targeted the landscape that borders the ice-covered impact basin Sputn ...read more
Kratom is a drug popular in Southeast Asia that’s derived from the leaves of Mitragyna speciosa, a tree in the coffee family. Kratom’s pain relieving properties allowed it to surge in popularity in the United States in the wake of the opioid crisis. (Rattiya Thongdumhyu/shutterstock)
Across America, thousands of people are throwing away their prescription drugs and picking up kratom, a plant-based drug from Southeast Asia usually brewed as a tea. Within the leaves of this tropical ...read more
This stunning view of the total solar eclipse in 2017 was made by combining seven exposures ranging from short to long. The surface of the Moon is visible in this image because it is illuminated by light reflected off Earth, called Earthshine. (Credit: Michael S. Adler)
On August 21, 2017, over half of the population of United States took at least a few minutes out of their busy schedules to glimpse the first total solar eclipse to cross the continental U.S. in nearly 40 years. As many of us g ...read more
The Northrop Grumman Antares rocket, with Cygnus spacecraft aboard, is seen on Pad-0A, Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018, at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. (Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky)
An Impending Launch
This week, Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket will launch the Cygnus cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station. The craft will deliver supplies and scientific equipment to the astronauts on board as part of Northrop Grumman’s NG-10 mission.
Originally scheduled to l ...read more
(Credit: Andre Marais/Shutterstock)
Finding food is a risky undertaking for wild animals. But for some predators, the element of risk, and it’s twin, luck, is a much greater factor.
Predators like the cheetah aren’t guaranteed meals when they set out to hunt, researchers find in a new study, and that puts them at risk in rapidly changing environments. Where they once could count on getting lucky often enough to survive, a scarcity of prey now makes predators susceptible to sta ...read more
Soy formula exposure during infancy may cause more severe period cramps in adulthood. Around 12 percent of babies are regularly fed soy. (Credit: MaraZe/Shutterstock)
Many women accept menstrual cramps as a fact of life. But researchers say that some women have it worse than others and that it may be related to what they were fed as infants.
Female babies fed soy formula are prone to more painful periods during their young adult years, according to a new study published this week from the ...read more
A female orangutan and her baby in Gunung Leuser National Park, Sumatra, Indonesia. (Credit: By Don Mammoser/Shutterstock)
It’s easy enough to spot similarities between orangutans and humans — the “man of the forest” can certainly act human, and they share our big brains, social structures and even opposable thumbs. It shouldn’t be too surprising, since we also share about 97 percent of our DNA with the great apes.
But a new finding, published today in Science Adv ...read more
Topography under Hiawatha glacier in Greenland, mapped with airborne radar data (1997 to 2014, NASA; 2016 Alfred Wegener Institute). Black triangles and purple circles are elevated peaks around the rim and center. Dotted red lines and black circles show locations of additional sampling. (Credit: Kjæer et al. / Science Advances)
Most of Earth’s surface has been plotted, mapped and measured. And along the way, scientists have turned up a plethora of craters big and small. But there w ...read more
The Bay of Naples in Italy, with the Campi Flegrei to the north (top) and Vesuvius to the east (right). Image taken 2002, NASA.
First things first. This new article in Science Advances I’m about to discuss does not — I repeat, does not — say that an eruption will be happening soon at the Campi Flegrei in Italy. There is nothing in the paper that says we need to elevate the alert status or that anything fundamentally has changed about the current state of the caldera. So, nobod ...read more
