News

Life

The top side of an elephant’s trunk stretches more than the bottom

New research on elephant trunks could inspire different artificial skins for soft robots.

Astronomy

Clouds in the Milky Way’s plasma bubbles came from the starry disk — and far beyond

Gas clouds in the Fermi bubbles have a wide range of chemical compositions, suggesting some may have been ripped from other galaxies.

Environment

Underground heat pollution could be tapped to mitigate climate change

Data from thousands of groundwater well sites in Europe reveal that more than half of the locations possess usable underground heat.

Health & Medicine

Here are experts’ answers to questions about COVID-19 vaccines for little kids

Pediatricians recommend that parents vaccinate their kids, toddlers and babies against COVID-19 to protect them from coronavirus infection.

Astronomy

A fast radio burst’s rapid, steady beat offers a clue to its cosmic origin

Amped-up neutron stars, pairs of magnetically entangled neutron stars or magnetar quakes could explain a three-second-long train of radio blips.

Animals

Do gophers farm roots? It’s not as clear as viral articles claim

Pocket gophers aerate and fertilize the soil in a practice that encourages rudimentary food production, researchers claim. But not everyone agrees.

Tech

This octopus-inspired glove helps humans grip slippery objects

The human hand, for all its deftness, is not great at grasping slippery stuff. A new glove aims to change that.

Astronomy

The most distant rotating galaxy hails from 13.3 billion years ago

Astronomers have spotted a rotating galaxy whose light comes from just 500 million years after the Big Bang.

Health & Medicine

Two pig hearts were successfully transplanted into brain-dead people

The transplants kept the patients’ blood flowing for three days and are an early step in figuring out if the procedure might work in living people.

Environment

Flower shape and size impact bees’ chances of catching gut parasites

Bumblebees have higher chances of contracting a gut parasite from short, wide flowers than from blooms with other shapes, experiments show.

Astronomy

Here are the James Webb Space Telescope’s stunning first pictures

President Biden revealed the NASA telescope's image of ancient galaxies whose light has been traveling 13 billion years to reach us.

Physics

Wiggling metal beams offer a new way to test gravity’s strength

A new experiment aims to get a better handle on “Big G,” the poorly measured gravitational constant.