News
- Animals
Hitchhiking oxpeckers warn endangered rhinos when people are nearby
Red-billed oxpeckers do more than just eat parasites from rhinos’ backs. The birds can alert the hunted mammals to potential danger, a study finds.
- Space
New search methods are ramping up the hunt for alien intelligence
Six decades of radio silence hasn’t stopped scientists searching for intelligent life beyond Earth. In fact, new technologies are boosting efforts.
- Climate
The largest Arctic ozone hole ever measured is hovering over the North Pole
A strong polar vortex in early 2020 led to what may be a record-breaking hole in the ozone layer over the Arctic.
- Life
The Great Barrier Reef is suffering its most widespread bleaching ever recorded
Major bleaching events are recurring with increasing frequency on the Great Barrier Reef, hindering its recovery.
- Space
Red giant stars that eat planets might shine less brightly
Some stars may shine less brightly after ingesting a planet. That finding, if confirmed, could have implications for calculating cosmic distances.
- Space
Saturn’s auroras may explain the planet’s weirdly hot upper atmosphere
Data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft could help solve Saturn’s mysterious “energy crisis.”
- Quantum Physics
Quantum mechanics means some black hole orbits are impossible to predict
Computer simulations reveal that foreseeing the paths of three orbiting objects sometimes requires precision better than the quantum limit.
- Health & Medicine
Can plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients treat the sick?
Researchers are racing to set up clinical trials of antibody-rich convalescent plasma from recovered patients to treat or prevent COVID-19.
- Chemistry
Beets bleed red but a chemistry tweak can create a blue hue
A new blue dye derived from beet juice might prove an alternative to synthetic blue dyes in foods, cosmetics or fabrics.
- Health & Medicine
Just breathing or talking may be enough to spread COVID-19 after all
Until now, experts have said that the virus spreads only through large droplets released when people cough or sneeze, but it may spread more easily.
- Neuroscience
Mice’s facial expressions can reveal a wide range of emotions
Pleasure, pain, fear and other feelings can be reflected in mice’s faces, sophisticated computational analyses show.
- Humans
Southern Africa may have hosted a hominid transition 2 million years ago
Braincases excavated from the Drimolen caves suggest Homo erectus and Paranthropus robustus may have coexisted in southern Africa.
