Contemporary coelacanths are often described as living fossils. Superficially, that may be true. But new evidence now makes that nickname less valid. The two species of the large-boned lungfish alive today don’t look that much different than the first known coelacanth fossil dating back over 410 million years ago. But two new fossils show that the species did evolve — albeit slowly and subtly. Also, scientists for the first time link evolution to tectonic activity, according to a report in N ...read more
What parent hasn’t been there? It’s been a long day, you still have dinner to make, maybe lunches for tomorrow too, and you just don’t have the energy to wrangle your kids into a new art project or plead with them to pick up a book.Instead, you give in when they beg for more iPad time. Or maybe they promise they’ll do their homework after just a few more YouTube videos, and it’s easier to agree than have another argument. Now you’re not only exhausted, you feel like a bad parent too. ...read more
Boeing’s crew transport space capsule, the Starliner, returned to Earth without its two-person crew right after midnight Eastern time on Sept. 7, 2024. Its remotely piloted return marked the end of a fraught test flight to the International Space Station which left two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams, on the station for months longer than intended after thruster failures led NASA to deem the capsule unsafe to pilot back.Wilmore and Williams will stay on the Internation ...read more
Large language models like ChatGPT are revolutionizing the way people write. But that creates a problem for scientists. These models are trained on human knowledge that already exists, whereas science is generally concerned with new findings that extend this body of knowledge. So scientific papers can contain information that an LLM will never have seen. That means asking one of these machines to write a scientific paper raises important questions about whether it can write accurate statements ...read more
When a flock of crows began antagonizing an owl in my neighborhood, we could hear the commotion from blocks away. It was late morning, a time when owls typically sleep.Dozens of crows swarmed the owl as it moved from a tree branch to a rooftop to a fence post. The owl seemed old and was missing an eye, and at times it seemed as though it was bracing itself when the crows darted close.The crows antagonizing the owl were exhibiting mobbing behavior. In the past 50 years, more scientists have becom ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine