News
- Astronomy
Dust and a cold spell on Betelgeuse could explain why the giant star dimmed
Scientists had two options to explain Betelgeuse’s weird behavior in late 2019. They chose both.
- Science & Society
Moral judgments about an activity’s COVID-19 risk can lead people astray
People use values and beliefs as a shortcut to determine how risky an activity is during the pandemic. Those biases can lead people astray.
- Chemistry
Many cosmetics contain hidden, potentially dangerous ‘forever chemicals’
Scientists found signs of long-lasting PFAS compounds in about half of tested makeup products, especially waterproof mascaras and lipsticks.
- Plants
A widely studied lab plant has revealed a previously unknown organ
A cantilever-like plant part long evaded researchers’ notice in widely studied Arabidopsis thaliana, grown in hundreds of labs worldwide.
- Paleontology
An ancient creature thought to be a teeny dinosaur turns out to be a lizard
CT scans of hummingbird-sized specimens trapped in amber reveal that the 99-million-year-old fossils have a number of lizardlike features.
- Physics
Gravitational waves confirm a black hole law predicted by Stephen Hawking
The first black hole merger detected by LIGO affirms that the surface area of a black hole can increase over time, but not decrease.
- Space
Most planets on tilted orbits pass over the poles of their suns
Nearly all of the worlds on misaligned trajectories in other solar systems orbit at nearly 90 degrees to their stars’ equators.
- Animals
Mouse sperm thrived despite six years of exposure to space radiation
A space station experiment suggests future deep-space explorers don’t need to worry about passing the effects of space radiation on to their children.
- Health & Medicine
Here’s what you should know about COVID-19 vaccine booster shots
No one knows if coronavirus booster shots will be necessary. But researchers are working on figuring that out.
- Astronomy
An arc of galaxies 3 billion light-years long may challenge cosmology
Dubbed “the Giant Arc,” the purported structure is much larger than expected in a cosmos where matter is thought to be evenly distributed.
- Earth
Scientists have found the origins of a mysterious, deadly flood in India
A landslide of rock and ice caused the deadly flood that washed out two hydroelectric power plants in an Indian Himalayan state in February.
- Particle Physics
Physicists dream big with an idea for a particle collider on the moon
A lunar particle collider that dwarfs any such facility on Earth might not be impossible, according to new calculations.
