Bumblebees may be small, measuring only about an inch long, but they play an enormous role in global agriculture. About one third of the world's food production relies on pollinators such as bees. At the same time,...
Mount Etna has fascinated geologists for decades. The towering volcano on the Italian island of Sicily is the most active in Europe, erupting several times a year, yet scientists have never fully understood how it...
Since physicist Freeman Dyson first proposed the idea in 1960, the hypothetical "Dyson sphere" has become one of the most intriguing concepts in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Rather than a single solid...
Nobel-winning chemist Omar Yaghi is leaving UC Berkeley for China's Tsinghua University, where he will lead a new AI institute focused on accelerating the discovery of advanced materials. "Last week, Tsinghua University...
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Humanoid robots have surgically removed the gallbladders from living animals in an unprecedented medical experiment -- but not as autonomous machines capable of...
A common belief that baby rattlesnakes are more dangerous than adults has been overturned by a new study from Loma Linda University. After reviewing the history and spread of the myth, researchers concluded that bites...
The success of mRNA vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 during the COVID-19 pandemic transformed vaccine science. Now, the same Nobel Prize winning technology is being adapted to fight cancer, with experimental mRNA vaccines...
A tiny spider with a bright red smile on its back has surprised scientists by turning up thousands of miles from where they thought its famous relatives lived. For more than 100 years, the Happy Face spider was believed...
A physicist at the University of Birmingham has created a laboratory "mini universe" that brings scientists a step closer to answering one of the biggest questions in physics: What is time? In a study published in...
LHS 3844b is an exoplanet just slightly larger than Earth that orbits the red dwarf star LHS 3884, located 48.5 light years from our solar system. Unlike Earth, it is tidally locked, meaning it rotates once on its axis...
BrianFagioli writes: The Linux Foundation intends to launch the Open Health Stack Software Foundation, a new vendor-neutral home for the Google Open Health Stack project. Google is contributing the project code and...
Mars was not always the cold, dry world we see today. Billions of years ago, scientists believe it may have been warm, wet, and wrapped in a much thicker atmosphere, creating conditions that could have supported simple...
Nearly 150 years after gallium was first discovered and added to the periodic table, scientists at the University of Auckland have uncovered previously unknown details about the metal's atomic structure and behavior...
Trees do not necessarily keep growing for as long as they keep photosynthesizing, according to a new study published in Science Advances. Researchers found that oak trees continue absorbing carbon dioxide well after...
Scientists at Johns Hopkins University have uncovered how humans develop sharp central vision before birth, identifying a carefully timed interaction between a vitamin A derived molecule and thyroid hormones in the...
A new study proposes using shoebox-sized detector satellites to sniff out nuclear weapons launched by adversary nations. The idea is aimed at addressing fears that a space-based nuclear detonation could destroy...
Silicon chips have been the foundation of modern computing for decades. Now, researchers are giving them an entirely new role in biotechnology. In addition to processing information, these chips are increasingly being...
A new theory developed by physicists at Heidelberg University brings together two long competing ideas in quantum physics, offering a unified explanation for how an unusual particle behaves inside a crowded quantum...
For the first time, scientists have documented live goblin sharks ( Mitsukurina owstoni ) thriving in their natural deep ocean environment. The historic observations, led by a University of Hawai'i at Mānoa research...
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: An Australian beach community was confused -- and later delighted -- by the discovery of six metallic-looking spheres that washed ashore last week. The...
New Zealand startup Zenno Astronautics has completed the first orbital test of its "Supertorquer," a shoebox-sized superconducting magnet system that uses solar power and Earth's magnetic field to help control a...
A genetic study of 132 people buried in a large megalithic tomb near Bury, about 50 kilometers north of Paris, has uncovered evidence of a dramatic population collapse and replacement during the Stone Age. The findings,...
Japan's Hayabusa2 probe captured rare close-up images of near-Earth asteroid Torifune, revealing a snowman-like shape made of two joined lobes. Phys.org reports: The fridge-sized Hayabusa2 skimmed asteroid Torifune on...
A new study suggests multilingualism may slow brain aging, with bilingual people showing brains that appear about six years younger than monolingual speakers and people who speak four languages showing brains that...
CNN reports: Prehistoric human relatives, nicknamed "hobbits" due to their short stature, may have been scavengers, rather than skilled hunters capable of taking down big game or building cooking fires, according to new...
South Carolina's pine forests "have spent centuries hiding a secret as old as America itself," reports CBS News: In August 1780, British and American soldiers clashed there, leading to a terrible defeat for the...
The Verge argues that researchers "have made genuine progress in quantum computing — it's just been largely incremental and too esoteric to immediately capture the public's imagination." And there are predictions that...
The US age-adjusted death rate fell to a record low in 2025, likely pushing life expectancy to a record high as overdose deaths declined and mortality improved across all age groups. CNN reports: There were about 689...