A comparison of Horned Larks collected inside and outside of industrial areas during the early twentieth century. The specimens on the left were collected in Illinois, inside the U.S. Manufacturing Belt. The specimens on the right were collected along the western coast of North America, away from industry. (Credit: Carl Fuldner and Shane DuBay)
Enterprising researchers working at the Field Museum in Chicago dusted off a collection of Horned Larks to get a better look at the dirt trapped in the ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock)
Acupuncture is a form of traditional medical therapy that originated in China several thousand years ago. It was developed at a time bereft of tools such as genetic testing or even a modern understanding of anatomy, so medical philosophers did the best they could with what was available – herbs, animal products and rudimentary needles. In the process, perhaps, they stumbled on an effective medical approach.
In the past century, some modernization has taken place. F ...read more
An artist’s conception of the ancient moon with lava venting gases into a thin atmosphere. (Credit: NASA MSFC)
Barren and desolate today, our moon was once swathed by a thin atmosphere.
Born from geothermal eruptions when the moon was still young, gaseous traces of carbon monoxide, sulfur, hydrogen and oxygen once swirled across the moon’s surface, say researchers from NASA. The atmosphere would have persisted for about 70 million years, they estimate, and existed three t ...read more
1. For centuries, academics thought colored light was modified white, or “pure,” light. (We’ll get back to how wrong they were in a bit.)
2. And color sometimes is a modifier. For example, coloring foods goes back at least 3,500 years, when ancient Egyptians added wine and other colorants to candy to increase its visual appeal.
3. The history of coloring food is stained with nefarious deeds. Toxic lead- and mercury-based compounds were once pervasive in Asia and Europe to add c ...read more
It sounds crazy. In recent years, scientists have confirmed a remarkable link between two kinds of objects that should, by all rights, have nothing to do with each other: black holes and strange metals. The former are the famous guzzlers of deep space, able to swallow anything — including stars, planets and even light itself — that gets too close. The latter are closer at hand, though less familiar: the stuff left behind when so-called high-temperature superconductors, materials with ...read more
Humanity only just arrived on Earth. But its future is in the cosmos.
Thirteen point eight billion years after its birth, our universe has awoken and become aware of itself. From a small blue planet, tiny conscious parts of our universe have begun gazing out into the cosmos with telescopes, repeatedly discovering that everything they thought existed is merely a small part of something grander: a solar system, a galaxy and a universe with over a hundred billion other galaxies arranged into a ...read more
In the Kent State University laboratory for experimental archaeology, the Spot Hogg Hooter Shooter, an automatic bow launcher, fires arrows filmed by high-speed cameras. The arrows are tipped with stone points, which are replicas of ancient artifacts.
The replicas are “worthless ... so we can break them and use them in ways that we can’t with the real artifacts that are priceless,” explains archaeologist Metin I. Eren, who leads the lab. To better understand ancient stone tools ...read more
An adult female Lord Howe Island insect. (Credit: Rohan Cleave, Melbourne Zoo)
Lord Howe Island stick insects are back for good. Nearly a century ago, they were exiled from their homeland by invasive rats and thought extinct, only to be rediscovered in 2001, confined to a lonely rock spire in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The insects looked different though. They were skinnier and had lost some of their spines, raising questions about their origins.
Now, a new genetic analysis confirms that ...read more
