News
- Physics
Levitating plastic beads mimic the physics of spinning asteroids
"Tabletop asteroids," buoyed by sound waves, hint at why some loosely bound space rocks have odd shapes and can’t spin too quickly.
- Astronomy
NASA’s exoplanet count surges past 5,000
With a new batch of 60 confirmed exoplanets, the number of known worlds in our galaxy reaches another milestone.
- Astronomy
The universe’s background starlight is twice as bright as expected
Images from the New Horizons spacecraft suggest that light from all known galaxies accounts for only half of the cosmos’ visible background glow.
- Planetary Science
Diamonds may stud Mercury’s crust
Billions of years of meteorite impacts may have flash-baked much of a primitive graphite crust into precious gemstones.
- Climate
Smoke from Australia’s intense fires in 2019 and 2020 damaged the ozone layer
Massive fires like those that raged in Australia in 2019–2020 can eat away at Earth’s protective ozone layer, researchers find.
- Particle Physics
How light from black holes is narrowing the search for axions
The orientation of light waves from the region around galaxy M87’s central black hole rules out the existence of axions of a certain mass.
- Archaeology
Ancient seafarers built the Mediterranean’s largest known sacred pool
The Olympic-sized pool, once thought to be an artificial inner harbor, helped Phoenicians track the stars and their gods, excavations reveal.
- Health & Medicine
A gene therapy for hemophilia boosts levels of a crucial clotting protein
A one-time, gene-based treatment for hemophilia increased the amount of a necessary blood clotting protein in men with a severe form of the disease.
- Materials Science
This fabric can hear your heartbeat
With special fibers that convert tiny vibrations to voltages, a new fabric senses sounds, letting it act as a microphone or a speaker.
- Physics
Physicists explain the mesmerizing movements of raindrops on car windshields
Wind and gravity compete to make some raindrops go up while others slide down, a mathematical analysis suggests.
- Life
Lithium mining may be putting some flamingos in Chile at risk
Climate change and lithium mining are threatening the flooded salt flats that flamingos in Chile depend on, a study suggests.
- Health & Medicine
School mask mandates in the U.S. reduced coronavirus transmission
Mandatory masking lowered transmission rates to nearly one-fourth those of schools where masks were optional, data from over 1 million children show.
