Astronomers have discovered a large underground lake of liquid water lurking just below the surface of Mars. The find could end a more than century-long debate over whether or not the Red Planet still has liquid water. The newfound lake stretches some 12 miles from end-to-end, and was discovered using a radar instrument called MARSIS on board the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, which first reached Mars nearly 15 years ago. The results were published Wednesday ...read more

One thing that many people in the Pacific Northwest are holding their breath for is "The Big One" -- the next recurrence of a massive earthquake in the Cascadia Subduction zone. This earthquake could be greater than a magnitude 8 and cause immense damage to cities like Portland, Seattle and Vancouver. This hypothetical earthquake could even potentially triggering a tsunami that will cross the Pacific Ocean just like a similar temblor in 1700 did when waves washed ashore in Japan. It is a ser ...read more

If you're a fan of muscley men, listen up: those guns might come at the cost of a man's fertility. In this study (published in the journal Animal Behavior, because we ain't nothin' but mammals), the researchers report that physical strength in men, while seen as attractive by women, is also associated with "lower ejaculate quality." Boxer shorts, anyone? Perceived physical strength in men is attractive to women but may come at a cost to ejaculate quality "Studies of sexual selectio ...read more

To learn more from fossils they find in nature, paleontologists are trying to create their own. For decades, paleontologists have been experimenting with heat, pressure, and other factors to mimic nature’s ability to preserve the bodies of living things as fossils. Trying to copy fossilization in a laboratory would allow paleontologists to better understand the process and learn more about the history of life on our planet from the fossils they find. In a study published i ...read more

In October 1957, a basketball-sized metallic sphere began circling Earth, transmitting a beacon from above. For many, the launch of Sputnik 1 heralded in the Space Age. But lost often in the story of Sputnik, the Space Age, and the Space Race is that Sputnik wasn’t the first spaceflight, and that the first image of Earth from space didn’t come in the 1960s, but the 1940s. The actual first spaceflight is a matter of debate. The Air Force defines space as ...read more

A mind-altering parasite that can make rats suicidally attracted to cat pee may also make people more likely to start a new business, according to new findings. The scientists say that their results reveal how parasites could help shape the global economy. The parasite Toxoplasma gondii infects more than 2 billion people — that is, more than a quarter of the world population. The protozoans can live in many warm-blooded creatures, where they reproducing asexually, but they ul ...read more

Lingwulong shenqi, a newly described, 174-million-year-old dinosaur, is more than just another giant herbivore to add to the fossil record. Its age and location are unexpected, and upset notions about dino diversity and distribution during the Jurassic Period. Lingwulong's name translates as "the amazing dragon of Lingwu," the region in northwestern China where multiple specimens have been excavated over the past 13 years. I'll be honest with you ...read more

I don't know about you, but nothing wakes me up in the morning quite like an announcement from a peer-reviewed journal declaring that paleontologists have found Bigfoot in the Black Hills region of the U.S. Sooooo...yeah. Not quite. But they are claiming the dinosaur foot they found belonged to the biggest dino ever — which they nicknamed "Bigfoot." Sneaky clickbait? Sure. But also some interesting science. Read on: The game is afoot. The new study's title actually kicks of ...read more

A version of this article originally appeared on The Conversation. Many of us may be considering “burning some fat� so we feel better in our bathing suits out on the beach or at the pool. What does that actually mean, though? The normal fat cell exists primarily to store energy. The body will expand the number of fat cells and the size of fat cells to accommodate excess energy from high-calorie foods. It will even go so far as to start depositing fat cell ...read more

You may have heard about California's Ferguson Fire, which has killed one firefighter and is threatening to spread into Yosemite National Park. But a series of other fires, sparked by lighting to the north, are also raging. And now, thousands of firefighters struggling to contain the blazes must contend with a heat wave descending on the region. In the image above, acquired today (Monday, July 23) by NASA's Terra satellite, look for a thick pall of smoke in ...read more