Last fall, Ambae (aka Aoba) made headlines after almost 13,000 people had to be evacuated due to the increasingly violent eruptions from the volcano in Vanuatu. The activity subsided after a few weeks and people were able to return to their homes. Since November of last year, the volcano settled down, producing minor steam-and-ash plumes from the summit caldera lake, Lake Voui. However, starting in mid-March, the volcano has become more restless again. Ash from eruptions (see below) h ...read more

Dinosaurs may hog the Mesozoic spotlight, but some of the neatest finds of recent note in paleontology come from under the sea: a very pregnant ichthyosaur and the partial remains of another that was a supersized specimen (think blue whale territory). A quick ichthyosaur refresher: these marine reptiles show up in the fossil record and explode in size and number during the Triassic, get smaller but are still plentiful in the Jurassic (201-145 million years ago) and then die out durin ...read more

From Spock to "The Rock," arched eyebrows can speak volumes. Now researchers suggest that communicative eyebrows may have proven key to the evolution of modern humans, a marked advance over the prominent brow ridges of early humans. Modern humans possess smooth foreheads with expressive eyebrows. In contrast, early humans had sloping foreheads with thick brow ridges. "There have been many explanations over the years for why early humans had these huge bony ridges," said study co-author ...read more

Well, well, well...you could say a new and highly significant fossil is really giving the finger to the human evolution and migration timeline once considered all but carved in stone. A discovery in the Arabian desert confirms Homo sapiens had wandered far beyond our ancestral African homeland thousands of years earlier than previously thought. Over the past few years, a number of separate research teams have been turning up evidence, including fossils, artifacts and genet ...read more

The tales we tell — from Homer and Genesis to your friend’s ninth recounting of that epic rave last summer — are rich with drug use. But studies show our ancestors were chewing, brewing and blazing long before they started to record their intoxicated escapades. Virtually all human societies use mind-altering substances. What’s more, about 90 percent give drug-induced altered states of consciousness a role in their fundamental belief systems, according to a survey of ...read more

In late 2016, staff at the US embassy in Havana, Cuba, began to report hearing unusual sounds. Over the coming months, some staff were struck down by hearing loss and concussion-like symptoms. The strange sounds were interpreted as the cause, perhaps even reflecting a sonic weapon of an unknown nature. The story of the 'Havana embassy attack' has been told in detail but, until recently, there were no scientific studies of the event or its aftermath. That changed on February 15th, w ...read more

Let's think about what a fossil really is. A creature turned to rock, right? For the lucky few that get immortalized (or nearly) by geology and chemistry, hard tissues slip away as minerals take their place, molecule by molecule. The ancient dinosaur, or crustacean or plant is wiped entirely from the face of the Earth, and in its place is a kind of negative image. Negative, I suppose, in the sense that rock has replaced what once was living, breathing tissue, but also because the soft ...read more

A seemingly cheap and ordinary technology may have paved the way for a cultural exchange breakthrough that saw South Korean K-pop idols receive an unprecedented welcome from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. It was not the first time that democratic South Korea has sent music acts to North Korea as part of diplomatic overtures to the authoritarian regime. In 1999, two pioneering K-pop groups, including the girl group Fin.K.L. and the boy band Sechskies, performed in the North Kore ...read more

When NASA launched John Glenn on its first ever orbital mission in 1962, there was a pretty realistic chance that he was going to die. Not because the agency was taking an unnecessary risk. It wasn't; every element of the flight was tested and proven to a point where everyone, Glenn included, was confident. But still, it was the early 1960s and rockets had a nasty habit of blowing up. With that in mind, a memo reached Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson on January 16, 1962. It was from O. B ...read more

By: Julia Travers Scientists need your help to find out what ants in your neighborhood like to eat. Would you ask an ant to join you for lunch? A team of researchers at North Carolina State University in Raleigh calls on citizen scientists around the world to flip the picnic concept – they want *us* to feed the ants. By counting ants, recording their meal preferences, and sending in data, you can help Dr. Magdalena Sorger and her colleagues better understand what foods ants have access t ...read more