The new crater lake at Kīlauea's summit, spotted on August 15, 2019. M. Patrick, USGS-HVO
Over the last few weeks, we've had two newsworthy events that involve volcanoes and water. This is a common combination on our planet and can have dramatically different results. One is a very small feature that's new to one of the most active volcanoes on Earth. The other is now a large feature spreading across the Pacific that came from a previously unknown volcano under the sea.
First, the sma ...read more
Does alcohol cause cancer? Here's what recent research tells us. (Credit: Mateone/Shutterstock)
Humans and the bottle go a long way back. Archaeologists have found our love of alcohol began some 9,000 years ago (and maybe even 10 million years ago, according to some reports).
Evidence of people boozin’ it up has been found in nearly every society throughout history. And today, alcohol is still ingrained in cultures around the world, especially in places like the Midwest – dubbe ...read more
An artist's illustration of a neutron star, a proposed source for fast radio bursts. (Credit: Casey Reed - Penn State University/Wikimedia Commons)
Fast radio bursts are one of the most puzzling phenomena in
astrophysics. But a new discovery of eight new sources for them might help
scientists figure out what’s causing these intense outbursts of energy coming
from distant galaxies.
The newly discovered bursts are from repeating sources,
meaning they were observed to burst multiple tim ...read more
The La Silla Observatory in Chile, where at least three new exoplanets have been discovered. (Credit: Iztok Boncina/ESO)
There is a triplet of Earth-sized planet candidates orbiting
a star just 12 light-years away, a new study has found. And one appears to be
in the habitable zone.
All three candidates are thought to be at least 1.4 to 1.8
times the mass of Earth, and orbit the star every three to 13 days, which would
put the entire system well within Mercury’s 88 day orbit of the S ...read more
The world of wine is complex. But there are a few simple things you can do to up your skills. (Credit: nd3000/Shutterstock)
Only 256 people in the world can call themselves Master Sommeliers: experts at tasting, describing and selling wine. They’re so rare because each sip of wine is a perceptual puzzle: Over 25 different taste and smell variables (sweetness, acidity, texture, finish, etc.) define each wine.
But you don’t have to be a super-taster or super-smeller to become a ...read more
One Polish town has seen an unlikely string of female births stretching for nearly a decade. (Credit: Omar Lopez/Unsplash)
The tiny Polish village of Miejsce Odrzanskie has become the unlikely source of international media attention over the past fortnight as a result of what the New York Times called “a strange population anomaly”. It has now been almost a decade since the last boy was born in this place, with the most recent 12 babies all having been girls.
The mayor of the r ...read more
I was 14 years old when I first saw Saturn through a telescope, its rings glowing a vibrant yellow-orange. In that moment, the seemingly two-dimensional landscape of Earth’s surface was irreversibly transformed. From then on, I was hooked on the night sky. I was no longer just a kid from suburban Ohio, I was a resident of a vast cosmos waiting to be explored. Who knew that you could just walk into a backyard and look up, with a modest telescope, and unlock the secrets of the universe?
...read more
The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung (1875-1961) was one of the best-known psychologists of the 20th century. He introduced such famous concepts as introverted and extraverted personalities, and the idea of the psychological 'complex'.
Today, Jungian or analytical psychology retains an active community. But a recently published Open Letter from a number of prominent Jungians points to troubles within the fold.
The letter acknowledges that Jung's writings contained racism, and apologizes for ...read more
Beta Pictoris c, the large planet in the foreground of this artist’s concept, orbits the star Beta Pictoris much more closely than Beta Pictoris b, which is a similarly massive planet located farther out in the system. (Credit: P. Rubini/A.M. Lagrange)
The Beta Pictoris system swirls with activity — a dusty disk of debris, comets falling toward the central star, and at least one giant planet. And now, astronomers have uncovered evidence for yet another planetary Goliath, some nine ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock)
The roots of mental illness are still a mystery. But researchers think our mental health is shaped by a combination of factors, like genetics, our developmental environment and our life experiences.
But there’s one factor that scientists say may have gone unnoticed. It appears that where we live, and how polluted it is, can increase our likelihood of developing a mental illness.
That's according to a new large-scale population study published in PLOS Bi ...read more
