News
- Physics
Here’s why icicles made from pure water don’t form ripples
A new study explains why icicles made from pure water have irregular shapes rather than the ripples typical of the salty icicles found in nature.
- Animals
Why male giraffes drink potential mates’ pee
In giraffes, an organ that detects pheromones has a stronger connection to the mouth than the nose. That’s different from many other mammals.
- Astronomy
The James Webb telescope spotted the earliest known ‘quenched’ galaxy
A galaxy dubbed GS-9209 ceased forming stars more than 12.5 billion years ago after a 200-million-year-long sprint.
- Climate
Climate ‘teleconnections’ may link droughts and fires across continents
Far-reaching climate patterns like the El Niño-Southern Oscillation may synchronize droughts and regulate scorching of much of Earth’s burned area.
- Animals
Cockatoos can tell when they need more than one tool to swipe a snack
Cockatoos know when it will take a stick and a straw to nab a nut in a puzzle box. The birds join chimps as the only known nonhumans to use a tool kit.
- Paleontology
This dinosaur might have used its feet to snag prey in midair like modern hawks
Fossilized toe pads suggest a hawklike hunting style in Microraptor, a dinosaur that some scientists think could hunt while flying.
- Paleontology
In the wake of history’s deadliest mass extinction, ocean life may have flourished
Ocean life may have recovered in just a million years after the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, fossils from South China suggest.
- Anthropology
Hominids used stone tool kits to butcher animals earlier than once thought
Finds in Kenya push Oldowan tool use back to around 2.9 million years ago, roughly 300,000 years earlier than previous evidence.
- Life
Orca moms baby their adult sons. That favoritism pays off — eventually
By sharing fish with their adult sons, orca moms may skimp on nutrition, cutting their chances of more offspring but boosting the odds for grandwhales.
- Health & Medicine
How fingerprints form was a mystery — until now
A theory proposed by British mathematician Alan Turing in the 1950s helps explain how fingerprint patterns such as arches and whorls arise.
- Astronomy
The Kuiper Belt’s dwarf planet Quaoar hosts an impossible ring
Quaoar’s ring lies outside the Roche limit, an imaginary line beyond which rings aren’t thought to be stable.
- Microbes
Some ‘friendly’ bacteria backstab their algal pals. Now we know why
The friendly relationship between Emiliana huxleyi and Roseobacter turns deadly when the bacteria get a whiff of the algae’s aging-related chemicals.
