In 1977, NASA loaded two spacecraft, each the size of a Honda Civic, into a rocket and sent them off on a five-year mission to explore our solar system’s outer planets. Named Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, these twin craft were designed to fly past Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus on their way out of…
When watching YouTube, Katy Tam noticed that she would switch between videos a lot. If a video didn’t get to the point in the first 30 seconds, she’d scroll away to something else. Or if a movie’s plot felt too slow for her, she’d fast-forward. “But I realized that I wasn’t truly enjoying the content…
Grocery store shelves are full of foods in eye-catching colors. A bright blue sports drink or a rainbow cereal might look fun. But some scientists think that the synthetic dyes used to impart these colors could affect how some kids’ brains work. These chemicals might make it harder for them to focus or control their…
Sophia Zhang is on a mission to solve an environmental crisis in her home state of Utah. The Great Salt Lake has been shrinking for decades, largely due to excess water use and climate change. Since learning about this problem during a school project, Sophia, 14, spoke about it at the United Nations. For a…
The International Space Station, or ISS, is one of humanity’s most remote outposts. Space agencies around the world teamed up in the 1980s and 1990s to construct this distant laboratory. Pieces of the station were built in different countries and launched into orbit around Earth. Some 400 kilometers (250 miles) above the surface, astronauts and…
Frost Quake (noun, “Frahst Kwayk”) In winter, a sudden drop in temperature can trigger a frost quake. During one of these events, the ground splits with a loud boom and shakes like an earthquake but on a much smaller scale. People who have felt a frost quake say it feels like a car ran into…
Guides to identifying trees usually rely on leaves to distinguish between species. But if you live where it gets cold in winter, the trees around you may look a little barer at this time of year. Many trees shed their leaves to save energy during the chilly season. This can leave trees looking sleepy and…
A cyclist is pedaling down the street. Signs, trees and fire hydrants whip by. As the rider bikes along, their brain takes in information from what they’ve perceived but can no longer see. There are all sorts of info — the color, shape and text on signs, for example. The cyclist’s brain sorts through it…
Airplane plumage might be the next big thing in aviation. Bird wings are shaped in part by overlapping rows of feathery tufts. These spread out from near the flyers’ shoulders. Known as “covert feathers,” they help birds maneuver through the air. And now, research shows that putting similar features on airplane wings may boost their…
The James Webb Space Telescope has snapped a baby photo of six Jupiter-sized worlds. These newborn objects are cradled in a stellar nursery some 1,000 light-years away. And the tiniest among them is swaddled in a dusty disk that might someday form moons. Such detailed views of distant infant worlds could provide new insights into how…
This is another in our series of stories identifying new technologies and actions that can slow climate change, reduce its impacts or help communities cope with a rapidly changing world. Today, many people regularly live with dangerous summer heat. To stay cool, most rely on air-conditioned buildings. But this A/C is an energy hog. And the electricity that…
A mountainside in Greenland collapsed catastrophically into the ocean, last year. The landslide triggered a wave as tall as the Statue of Liberty. This wave — a tsunami — swept 80 kilometers (50 miles) down a fjord there. Its rapid and violent motion ripped up the coastline. And its vibrations were so violent that they…
A few years ago, Casey Harrell was diagnosed with a devastating brain disease. Known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, it left him paralyzed and unable to speak. But last year, a doctor implanted tiny electrodes in the speech center of Harrell’s brain. They pick up brainwaves that a computer can convert into words. Today,…
Octopuses are about as strange as any fictional aliens we might dream up. Each of these soft-bodied cephalopods has eight arms attached to its head. And each of those arms is lined with hundreds of suckers that taste what they touch. Three hearts pump blue blood throughout an octopus’s body. And pigment-holding cells in octopuses’…
When you turn on a faucet, water flows one way: out into the sink, then down the drain. That one-way flow is important. If the flow reversed, clean water might become dirtied by germs or other contaminants. But keeping the flow moving one direction isn’t always easy; it often requires valves that can break. Researchers…
Dopamine (noun, “DOPE-uh-meen”) Dopamine is a chemical messenger in the brain. It helps you learn and focus and even motivates you to achieve your goals. Though related to feelings of happiness or satisfaction, think of dopamine more as the chemical that drives us to achieve those feelings, rather than happiness itself. For example, when working…
Two years ago, a couple of high-school classmates each composed a mathematical marvel. It was a trigonometric proof of the Pythagorean theorem. Now, at age 19, they’ve just reported finding 10 more proofs of it. For more than 2,000 years, such proofs were considered impossible. That didn’t deter Ne’Kiya Jackson and Calcea Johnson. The pair…
In the guts of a new type of computer, a bunch of tiny LEDs emit a green glow. Those lights have a job to do. They’re performing calculations. Right now, this math is telling the computer how to identify handwritten images of numbers. The computer is part of a research program at Microsoft. This device…
When baby Atlantic puffins in Iceland venture out of the cliffside burrows where they had hatched, they look for the light of the moon. It will guide them to the sea. But nearby town lights sometimes confuse them. This leads many to make wrong turns en route to the ocean. A community-based Puffling Patrol searches…
This is another in a year-long series of stories identifying how the burgeoning use of artificial intelligence is impacting our lives — and ways we can work to make those impacts as beneficial as possible. Chatbots talk to people using artificial intelligence, or AI. They can explain computer code or help students with their homework. Google runs Gemini,…
Objective: To measure how much mass eggshells can support Areas of science: Materials science Difficulty: Medium intermediate Time required: 2–5 days Prerequisites: None Material availability: Readily available Cost: $20–50 Safety: Adult supervision and safety goggles are required if a rotary motor tool is used. Thoroughly clean any surface the raw eggs touched because they can…
Vampire bats live on a strictly blood-based diet. So strict, in fact, that they seem to process their food more like some blood-feeding flies than like other known mammals. Researchers discovered this by coaxing common vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) to run on a tiny treadmill. Running isn’t that unusual for these bats in the wild. When…
Organoid (noun, “OR-guh-noid”) An organoid is a model of an organ made from living cells. Organoids are lab tools that mimic the functions of real organs. Organs carry out specific jobs in our bodies. Digestion begins in the stomach. The brain processes information about the world. Kidneys remove wastes from the blood. Organoids are small…
Trees are important for the health of our planet. For one, they pull carbon dioxide, a planet-warming gas, out of the air. But they also take up methane gas, scientists have now learned. Methane is even more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. This means that to slow climate change, protecting forests is…
Brains are usually thought of as a bacteria-free zone. But that’s not the case for some fish. Wild and lab-grown members of the salmon family harbor active microbial communities in their brains. More than half of the bacteria found in brains of lab-reared rainbow trout appear to have initially come from their blood and guts….
One of the biggest superstars in human history lies in the National Museum of Ethiopia. Here, in Addis Ababa, sit the fragile remains of the world’s most celebrated human ancestor: Lucy. Once, she was a hardy survivor in a harsh landscape. Now, her partial skeleton gets round-the-clock protection in a specially constructed safe. Nearly 3.2…
To Sally Warring, protists are an absolutely underrated type of wildlife. “Protists are very charismatic and interesting,” says Warring, who studies these creatures at the Earlham Institute in Norwich, England. Among this richly diverse group of mostly single-celled eukaryotes (creatures whose DNA is packed in a nucleus), some are hunters and others prey. Some live…
Nearly 1,000 years ago, astronomers in China and Japan saw something strange in the sky. It seemed to be a new star. Even stranger, for several weeks that star was bright enough to be seen in the daytime. Eventually the new star faded from view — because it wasn’t a new star at all. It…
Mackensey Wilson, 14, never planned on doing a science fair project. But when one of her dogs kept getting rashes that seemed to be linked to what pet food she’d been eating, Mackensey got curious. She wanted to know what chemicals people were feeding their furry friends. In her research, Mackensey read some past studies…
Sonic isn’t your typical hedgehog. He boasts incredible superspeed that lets him launch off springs, sprint over water and even clear loop-de-loops. In the Sonic the Hedgehog games, our favorite blue hedgehog runs through these loops to complete levels. If he enters one too slowly, though, he risks falling off the track. Animals — including…
