The Milky Way Galaxy, seen edge-on. (Credit: NASA)
Although it’s relatively nearby, the far side of the Milky
Way is one of the hardest parts of the observable universe to see. That means there
are still outstanding questions in astronomy as to what our galactic home
really looks like.
But a new study charting over 1,100 new stars on the Milky
Way’s distant side provides astronomers fresh insight into its architecture, allowing
us to better understand the shape of the galaxy we ...read more
A sampling of some of the scores of artifacts produced by First Americans at the Cooper's Ferry site in western Idaho. Dotted lines along some of the tools indicate patterns of wear. (Credit: Davis et al 2019)
Stone tools, charcoal and other artifacts from Cooper's Ferry, Idaho, are the latest evidence that the First Americans arrived more than 16,000 years ago — well before an overland route existed. It's looking more and more likely the first people arrived via a Pacific Coast route. ...read more
A new study into the genetics of same-sex attraction reveals how complex it is. (Credit: EpicStockMedia/Shutterstock)
In the largest study of its kind yet, researchers find no single gene influences whether a person engages in same-sex sexual behavior. Instead, like height, variations in many genes throughout the human genome contribute to sexual preference, researchers report Thursday in the journal Science. The work reiterates that there is a biological component to having a same- ...read more
An artist's illustration shows Earth from orbit. (Credit: Dima Zel/Shutterstock)
Our planet is getting warmer today, that's a fact. But, this isn't the hottest time in our planet's history — far from it, in fact. At various points, millions or billions of years ago, Earth was much more toasty than it is now.
One of the most notable hot flashes came 56 million years ago, during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM. It was a relatively brief period of rapid, abnormal warming. ...read more
This composite image of the cloud-covered planet Venus uses data from the Japanese probe Akatsuki. (Credit: Institute of Space and Astronautical Science/Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)
Something mysterious
swirls amidst the clouds of Venus.
The planet’s hot, harsh
atmosphere is thick with carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid. Atmospheric gases
circulate amid cloud layers according to patterns that scientists don’t fully
understand. And Venusian clouds also contain strange, dark ...read more
The robot snake in a model of human veins. (Credit: Kim et al., Sci. Robot. 4, eaax7329 (2019))
You probably didn’t picture the robots of the future to be slimy, magnetized snakes. But a hyper-flexible robot modeled after the legless reptiles and designed by researchers at MIT could make it easier to diagnose and treat blood clots, aneurysms and perform other small-scale procedures in the brain.
The device, less than a millimeter thick, was designed to crawl through the narrow, twis ...read more
Mimosa plants have long inspired intrigue with their ability to move when touched. (Credit: Discover/Stipple engraving by R. Earlom, 1789, after G. Romney. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY)
When The Secret Life of Plants came out in 1973, Lincoln Taiz was a graduate student, just embarking on what would become a many-decades long career in plant biology. Plants, the book revealed, can make their own trace elements through fusion, just like the sun. More, they can recognize people. If someo ...read more
At 3.8 million years old, this mostly complete cranium of Australopithecus amanensis is the oldest australopith skull in the fossil record. (Credit: Dale Omori, courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History)
On Feb. 10, 2016, the face of a ghost emerged from weathered Ethiopian sandstone. The nearly complete skull, 3.8 million years old, was found less than 20 miles from the site where Lucy, the most famous of our distant evolutionary relatives, was discovered in the 1970s.
Lucy was ...read more
Gas glows white, lit by a stellar nursery, in this view of a region within the Large Magellanic Cloud, the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxy. Most cosmic gas is not so visible and lies outside of galaxies — in halos surrounding galaxies and in the vast spaces in between. Yet the gas determines galactic life cycles. (Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA)
Most of what astronomers know about the universe comes from what they can see. So their ideas have been prejudiced toward stars and g ...read more
An albino lizard hatchling, one of the first to be gene edited with CRISPR. (Doug Menke)
Skittering among the Caribbean flora are anole lizards, tiny reptiles no bigger than a finger’s length. Sporting shades of grey, brown and green, island life has spurred the evolution of some 150 species there.
As a result, anole lizards have become a key scientific model for research into how reptiles develop and evolve. But scientists have been missing a critical element: the tools to investig ...read more
