A plant that evolved hollow thorns for ants to shelter in. In exchange, the ants defend the plant from attacks from other insects and mammals. (Credit: Field Museum, Corrie Moreau) As alliances go, the one that exists between ants and plants is impressively robust. Symbiotic relationships exist between many species of flora and Formicidae fauna, and it’s evolved past simple you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours deals. Some plants have been living and working with ants for so ...read more

“First Man” gave us a look at a side of Neil Armstrong we don’t see too often, focusing on the family side of his life over the science element, but even that only gave us a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes home and family life of the notoriously stoic first man on the Moon. Now, the brand new Armstrong-Engel Family Gallery has published personal, never-before-seen images of Neil and his family beginning in 1955 during his Edwards days gong all the way to 1969 and the Moon land ...read more

Select Category Select Tag Select Archive ...read more

About 200,000 light-years from Earth, the SMC is a dwarf galaxy only about 7,000 light-years in diameter. This radio image shows hydrogen gas in the SMC, which is losing such gas at a higher rate than it is currently forming stars. (Credit: Naomi McClure-Griffiths et al, CSIRO’s ASKAP telescope) Just as each successive smartphone companies release includes a higher-resolution camera for sharper, more detailed photos, each new instrument astronomers build reveals the universe in ever-fine ...read more

Life on Mars: One of the scientists spies on a new commercial drilling site in Season 2. (Credit: National Geographic/Richard Donnelly) Mars the planet is a unique world: a little like Earth, a little like the Moon, but entirely a world unto itself. Mars the television show is similarly one of a kind, an unusual amalgam of scripted science fiction and serious science documentary. The fictional part of the story begins in 2033, when the spacecraft Daedalus lands on the Red Planet to establish t ...read more

Fast-moving monopoles likewise pump out this light, and so do the comparatively massive, slowpoke monopoles — but for a different reason. These monopoles, borne of the early Grand Unified era of the Big Bang when three of the fundamental forces were joined as one, would possess a vestige of the extreme energy density where the differences between Standard Model particles and forces disappear. “The Grand Unified monopole contains in its tiny heart a little bit of the Big Bang, when al ...read more

The richest countries use as much as 16 times more antibiotics, like Amoxicillin, than poor countries. (Credit: PureRadiancePhoto) The World Health Organization (WHO) released a new report Monday that finds large disparities in antibiotic consumption worldwide. Consumption rates documented in the report vary by as much as 16 times between countries. The discovery suggests some countries are likely overprescribing whereas others may not have appropriate access to the medicines. “Overuse a ...read more

The Milky Way is shown on a collision course with a smaller galaxy in this simulation. (Credit: Koppelman, Villalobos; Helmi, Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen, The Netherlands) There’s a “dark matter hurricane” blowing through our corner of the Milky Way galaxy. Right this second, it’s passing over Earth. And this fast-moving stream could reveal major details about dark matter, a new study finds. The dark matter is traveling in what is known as th ...read more

A researcher makes the case that all infectious diseases are seasonal. (Credit: Dirima/Shutterstock.com) (Inside Science) — During the height of the polio epidemic in the U.S. in the 1940s and ’50s, parents often kept their children away from swimming pools, concerned that the disease, which peaked in the summer, was frequently spread through the water. But this fear couldn’t account for the summertime outbreaks around the world where public pools were not as common. Then in ...read more