News
- Planetary Science
A Comet’s Long Tail Tickles Ulysses
Stretching more than half a billion kilometers, the ion tail that Comet Hyakutake flaunted when it passed near the sun in 1996 is the longest ever recorded and suggests that otherwise invisible comets could be detected by searching for their tails.
- Physics
Nanotubes get into gear for new roll
Atoms on the surface of carbon nanotubes appear to mesh when tubes roll across a graphite surface, making the tubes possible atomic-scale gears, which have been long-sought in nanotechnology.
- Physics
Devilish polygons speak of past stress
A new theory and a simple test with cornstarch and water may help explain the polygonal geometry of rock columns in the Devil's Postpile in California and elsewhere.
- Paleontology
Dinosaurs, party of six, meat eating
The bones of six carnivorous dinosaurs discovered in a fossil bed in Patagonia may indicate that big, meat-eating dinosaurs were social creatures.
- Paleontology
Fossil gets a leg up on snake family tree
A 95-million-year-old fossil snake with legs may be an advanced big-mouthed snake, not a primitive ancestor.
- Math
Random packing of spheres
A new definition of random packing allows a more consistent and mathematically precise approach to characterizing disordered arrangements of identical spheres.
- Math
Orbiting in a figure-eight loop
Three gravitationally interacting bodies of equal mass can, according to precise calculations, trace out a figure-eight-shape orbit in space.
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Fading to black doesn’t empower fish
Field studies of three-spined stickleback fish dash a textbook example of the theory of how one species can take on a competitor's characteristics.
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Hey, we’re richer than we thought!
The latest inventory of life in the United States has turned up an extra 100,000 species of plants, animals, and fungi.
- Earth
Titanic iceberg sets sail from Antarctica
An iceberg about the size of Connecticut recently split off from the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.
- Planetary Science
Reviewers see red over recent Mars programs
NASA's two most recent missions to Mars failed because they were underfunded, managed by inexperienced people, and insufficiently tested, according to a report released March 28.
- Health & Medicine
Cell mixture attacks pancreas tumors
White blood cells injected into patients with pancreatic tumors incite an immune response that blunts the cancer in some patients and extends survival.
