News
- Planetary Science
Methylated gases could be an unambiguous indicator of alien life
On Earth, methylated gases are produced by organisms cleaning up their environment — and by little else. The same might be true on some exoplanets.
- Health & Medicine
4 key things to know about lung infections caused by fungi
News that three kinds of fungi are more widespread than previously thought prompted reader questions about risk, symptoms and more. We answer them.
- Physics
Rare ‘dark lightning’ might briefly touch passengers when flying
Gamma-ray blasts from thunderstorms might occasionally zap passing airplanes, briefly exposing passengers to unsafe levels of radiation.
- Archaeology
Complex supply chains may have appeared more than 3,000 years ago
Finds from one of the world’s oldest shipwrecks hint that miners in Central Asia and Turkey provided a crucial metal to Mediterranean rulers.
- Physics
Here’s how to make a fiber-optic cable out of air using a laser
A hollowed-out laser beam heats a tube of air that surrounds cooler air, providing a way to guide light much the way fiber optics do.
- Archaeology
Lasers reveal sites used as the Americas’ oldest known star calendars
By around 3,100 years ago, Mesoamerican ritual complexes tracked celestial cycles using a 260-day count, a huge lidar mapping project shows.
- Microbes
Meet some of the microbes that give cheeses flavor
Knowing which genus of bacteria is responsible for which flavor could open the door to new types of cheese.
- Earth
Indigenous people may have created the Amazon’s ‘dark earth’ on purpose
Modern Amazonians make nutrient-rich soil from ash, food scraps and burns. The soil strongly resembles ancient dark soils found in the region.
- Animals
Jumping beans’ random strategy always leads to shade — eventually
Jumping beans use randomness to maximize their chances of getting out of the sun’s heat, a new study finds.
- Physics
We could get messages back from spacecraft sent through a wormhole
A simulation of a probe sent to the other side of a wormhole shows it could send speedy messages back before the hole closes and the probe is lost.
- Health & Medicine
Brain scans suggest the pandemic prematurely aged teens’ brains
A small study suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic may have aged teen brains beyond their years.
- Life
Sleeping glass frogs hide by storing most of their blood in their liver
Glass frogs snoozing among leaves blend in by hiding almost all their red blood cells in their liver until the tiny animals wake up.
