All Stories by Maria Temming
- Tech
A new artificial eye mimics and may outperform human eyes
A new artificial eyeball boasts a field of view and reaction time similar to that of real eyes.
- Chemistry
Moisture, not light, explains why Munch’s ‘The Scream’ is deteriorating
Edvard Munch’s 1910 “The Scream” is famous for its loud colors. New insight into paint preservation could keep those pigments from fading out.
- Tech
Wiggling wheels could keep future rovers trucking in loose lunar soil
A rover that wriggles through soil could climb hills on the moon or Mars that are too steep for a simple wheeled bot.
- Archaeology
Brewing beer may be an older craft than we realized in some places
Newly discovered microscopic signatures of malting could help archaeologists detect traces of ancient beer.
- Earth
Greenland and Antarctica are gaining ice inland, but still losing it overall
Inland ice accumulation is not enough to counteract the amount of ice melting off Antarctica and Greenland into the oceans, satellite data show.
- Paleontology
A ‘crazy beast’ from the time of dinosaurs belongs to an obscure mammal group
Paleontologists have finally matched a bizarre fossil, Adalatherium hui, to an obscure group of ancient mammals called gondwanatherians.
- Planetary Science
This is the most comprehensive map of the moon’s geology yet
Cartographers merged Apollo-era maps and modern lunar observations to into a new geologic map of the moon.
- Paleontology
The first frog fossil from Antarctica has been found
An ancient amphibian from Antarctica gives new insight into when the continent got so cold.
- Planetary Science
Unlike Earth, the gases in Venus’ atmosphere aren’t uniformly mixed
Measurements of Venus’ atmospheric nitrogen show that a planet’s upper atmosphere doesn’t necessarily match the lower atmosphere.
- Space
A weird stellar explosion may have caused the brightest supernova yet seen
Astronomers may have spotted the first known example of a rare “pulsational pair-instability” supernova.
- Space
‘Spacefarers’ predicts how space colonization will happen
In Spacefarers, Christopher Wanjek provides an optimistic yet realistic view on how humans might colonize the rest of our solar system.
- Animals
Cold War nuclear test residue offers a clue to whale sharks’ ages
One unexpected legacy of the Cold War: Chemical traces of atomic bomb tests are helping scientists figure out whale shark ages.
