News
- 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.
- Archaeology
New clues suggest people reached the Americas around 30,000 years ago
Ancient rabbit bones from a Mexican rock-shelter point to humans arriving on the continent as much as 10,000 years earlier than often assumed.
- Neuroscience
A deep look at a speck of human brain reveals never-before-seen quirks
Three-dimensional views of 50,000 cells from a woman’s brain yield one of the most detailed maps yet.
- Animals
The mere sight of illness may kick-start a canary’s immune system
Healthy canaries ramp up their immune systems when exposed to visibly sick birds, without actually being infected themselves.
- Physics
Auroras form when electrons from space ride waves in Earth’s magnetic field
New lab results confirm that auroras are triggered by disturbances in Earth’s magnetic field called Alfvén waves.
- Health & Medicine
FDA approved a new Alzheimer’s drug despite controversy over whether it works
A new Alzheimer's treatment slows progression of the disease, the drug’s developers say. But some researchers question its effectiveness.
- Health & Medicine
Food that boosts gut microbes could be a new way to help malnourished kids
Malnourished children in Bangladesh fed a food aimed at restoring gut health grew more than those who got a traditional high-calorie supplement.
- Plants
These ferns may be the first plants known to share work like ants
Staghorn ferns grow in massive colonies where individual plants contribute different jobs. This may make them “eusocial,” like ants or termites.
- Physics
Nuclear clocks could outdo atomic clocks as the most precise timepieces
Better clocks could improve technologies that depend on them, such as GPS navigation, and help test fundamental ideas of physics.
