News in Brief
- Particle Physics
In a first, physicists accelerate atoms in the Large Hadron Collider
Ionized lead atoms took a spin around the world’s biggest particle accelerator.
- Neuroscience
Soccer headers may hurt women’s brains more than men’s
Women sustain more damage from heading soccer balls than men, a brain scan study suggests.
- Particle Physics
A new quasiparticle lurks in semiconductors
Strange entities called collexons hint at undiscovered physics among interacting subatomic particles in a semiconductor.
- Health & Medicine
What leech gut bacteria can tell us about drug resistance
A bacteria found in leeches becomes drug resistant after only a small exposure to common antibiotics.
- Paleontology
Paleontologists have ID’d the world’s biggest known dinosaur foot
Bigfoot has been found in Wyoming. It’s not a hairy, apelike creature; it’s a dinosaur.
- Health & Medicine
Pediatricians warn against chemical additives in food for kids
Common food additives found in meats, plastic packaging or metal cans may contain chemicals that harm children’s health.
- Earth
The giant iceberg that broke from Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf is stuck
A year ago, an iceberg calved off of the Larsen C ice shelf. The hunk of ice hasn’t moved much since, and that has scientists keeping an eye on it.
- Particle Physics
One particle’s trek suggests that ‘spacetime foam’ doesn’t slow neutrinos
Neutrinos and light travel at essentially the same speed, as predicted.
- Paleontology
This amber nugget from Myanmar holds the first known baby snake fossil
Amber preserves the delicate bone structure of a 99 million year old baby snake.
- Astronomy
Move over, Hubble. This sharp pic of Neptune was taken from Earth
A new strategy at the Very Large Telescope lets astronomers take space telescope–quality pictures from the ground.
- Computing
Solving problems by computer just got a lot faster
A new computer program sifts through all possible solutions to find the best answer to a given problem far faster than other algorithms.
- Planetary Science
First global maps of Pluto and Charon show the worlds’ highs and lows
New charts of Pluto and its moon Charon, compiled using New Horizons’ data, reveal high peaks, deep depressions and strange ridges.
