News
- Paleontology
Dinosaurs shrank continually into birds
Steady miniaturization and rapidly changing skeletons transformed massive animals into today’s fliers.
- Astronomy
When looking for aliens, try finding their pollution
Future telescopes may discover civilized aliens by detecting the industrial pollutants called fluorinated gases in exoplanet atmospheres.
- Quantum Physics
Birds’ turns match math of quantum matter
Equations that describe superfluidity may explain how information about which way and when to turn spreads in a starling flock.
- Earth
Early life probably fell victim to massive space rocks
Planet-sterilizing impacts probably snuffed out early life on Earth until around 4.3 billion years ago.
- Quantum Physics
Quantum Cheshire Cat experiment splits particles from their properties
When facing a fork in the road, neutrons appear to go in one direction and their spins in the other.
- Life
For yeast life span, calorie restriction may be a wash
A new technique for growing and tracking yeast cells finds caloric restriction doesn’t lengthen life span, though some researchers question the study method.
- Astronomy
Tilted binary stars test theories of planet formation
Tilted disks in binary star systems may help astronomers explain variety of exoplanet orbits.
- Earth
Merging magma can set off supervolcanoes in less than 10,000 years
The reconstruction of a massive eruption 4.5 million years ago near Yellowstone National Park suggests that magma chambers merging together beneath a supervolcano can trigger explosions in less than 10,000 years.
- Neuroscience
Hippocampus may help homing pigeons explore
When researchers remove pigeons’ hippocampi, birds fly straighter on early parts of journey home.
- Genetics
Gene activity change can produce cancer
Scientists have long thought that epigenetic changes, which alter gene activity, can cause cancer. Now they have demonstrated it in a mouse experiment.
- Health & Medicine
Long-term Parkinson’s treatment sheds bad rep
Prolonged used of levodopa doesn’t increase the severity of side effects from the Parkinson’s drug, new research shows.
- Chemistry
Molecular cage traps rare gases
Organic compound could cull valuable xenon from the air and detect cancer-causing radon in homes.
