Much of our genome has no apparent purpose. Is it so-called "junk DNA" or do we simply not understand it? (Credit: ktsdesign/Shutterstock)
Would
you purchase a book with over 98 percent of the text written in gibberish?
Biology has no business in the book industry, yet it still writes a pretty
fascinating guidebook: DNA. Our genetic manual holds the instructions for the proteins
that make up and power our bodies. But less than 2 percent of our DNA actually
codes for them.
The
rest — ...read more
Hemlock trees killed by hemlock woolly adelgid in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina. (Courtesy Songlin Fei)
With its sparkling green wings, the emerald ash borer, a tiny beetle no longer than a knuckle-length, is almost beautiful. The insect however has been ravaging America’s forests for nearly 20 years. First seen in Michigan in the early 2000s, the invasive pest has killed millions of ash trees in more than 30 states.
The ash borer is not the only species d ...read more
In this artist illustration, the sun (the yellow star at center) moves through a clump of interstellar gas that may still be raining down radioactive iron from a long-ago supernova explosion. (Credit: NASA/Goddard/Adler/U. Chicago/Wesleyan)
Antarctica is one of the most pristine places on the planet. Thanks to its generally inhospitable nature, as well as its natural isolation, it’s a good place for astronomers to search for meteorites and other materials that fall from the sky. They te ...read more
10 Shaft in the Superior-Resolution copper prospect in Arizona. Resolution Copper.
Copper is one of the most valuable metals on the planet. Sure, it lacks the cachet of gold, silver, platinum -- no, those are "precious metals". Yet, without copper, the world as we know it would not operate. If you have electricity, you need copper.
This week, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, one of the world's largest mining companies, were given permission from the US Forest Service to move ahead with the Res ...read more
Lightning was detected in association with a thunderstorm located over the Arctic Ocean on Saturday, Aug. 11. (Source: National Weather Service)
We're accustomed to lightning crackling within thunderstorms over relatively warm places like Florida — which happens to be the U.S. lightning champ.
But lightning near the North Pole? Well, that's what happened on Saturday. And so now we get to add this to the list of extreme events that have befallen the Arctic this summer.
These incl ...read more
Our goosebumps are one of those weird quirks that make us human. (Credit: Michal Cervenansky/Shutterstock)
Human bodies do a lot of weird stuff. But goosebumps may be one of our strangest bodily functions.
Goosebumps are humanity's near-universal reaction to the cold. But for some reason, those unmistakable, tiny bumps on the skin also appear when we’re scared or when we’re moved by something awe-inspiring.
What is it about these starkly different experiences that triggers ...read more
(Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab)
(Inside Science) -- Experts believe the building blocks of life first bumped into each other about 3.5 billion years ago. This serendipitous collision somehow helped form the first rudimentary cell -- and the first life on Earth.
At least, that's been the predominant theory. Now, a team of scientists from the University of Washington is challenging this idea in a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Ac ...read more
The Vela pulsar is known to glitch something like once every three years, when it speeds up for a few seconds. (Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ of Toronto/M.Durant et al; Optical: DSS/Davide De Martin)
When a massive star dies, it leaves behind a dense core called a neutron star. Many of these exotic suns spin rapidly, sending out beams of radiation like lighthouses, and these are called pulsars. They can rotate thousands of times a second, and spin so steadily that they can be used as cosmolog ...read more
