Science

The narwhal's defining feature – its continuously growing tusk – is the only straight structure of its kind seen in nature. Now, scientists have cracked the code on how these elusive Arctic whales grow such an impressive and unique tool. Continue Reading Category: Biology , Science , Refractor: Science & Health Tags: Marine Biology , Whale , Marine Innovations , Tools , Biomechanics , Sensory , T…

Some time around February 2025, after experiencing a handful of tremors at home in my Taipei apartment (tremors, mind you, that locals wouldn't blink an eye at), I began feeling quakes that weren't there – especially when still, in bed, at night. Continue Reading Category: Environment , Science , Refractor: Science & Health Tags: Earthquake , Signal Processing , Neuroscience , nature , Geology , …

An extensive gallery of ancient rock art paintings in Southern China has long intrigued archaeologists by somehow surviving the brutal tropical elements for around 2,000 years. Continue Reading Category: Archaeology , Science , Refractor: Science & Health Tags: China , Archeology , ancient , Blood , Art , tribes , History

Sixteen different PFAS compounds have been discovered in the feathers of Antarctic penguins, demonstrating that the insidious spread of "forever chemicals" now reaches the most remote wildlife on Earth. Continue Reading Category: Environment , Science , Refractor: Science & Health Tags: PFAS , Penguins , Antarctic , Pollution , Wildlife

An international team led by researchers from the University of Oxford has discovered two of the lowest-density giant planets on record. Continue Reading Category: Astronomy , Science , Refractor: Science & Health

Many of us have enjoyed watching Bluey with our kids, sharing laughs as each episode perfectly (and hilariously) captures the ups and downs of parenting and relationships. Continue Reading Category: Biology , Science , Refractor: Science & Health Tags: Television , Parenting , Children , Relationships

For the first time, a European Southern Observatory (ESO) study has quantified the threat to astronomy posed by a large number of highly reflective satellites planned to launch in the coming years. Continue Reading Category: Astronomy , Science , Refractor: Science & Health Tags: Satellite , Astronomy , Stars , light-pollution , ESO

Europe's most active volcano, Mount Etna, has always been a geological puzzle. The Sicilian volcano has erupted several times a year, and glassy peaks of over 3,000 meters (10,000 feet) have fascinated scientists for decades. Though renowned, Etna has stubbornly defied categorization in the traditional volcano lifecycle. Continue Reading Category: Physics , Science , Refractor: Science & Health T…

Large sinkholes in nature have traditionally been viewed as a win for biodiversity, protecting plants that would be exposed to environmental stress above ground. However, a new genetic study indicates they are an evolutionary death trap. Continue Reading Category: Environment , Science , Refractor: Science & Health Tags: Chinese Academy of Sciences , Biodiversity , Tree , Light , Photosynthesis ,…

In cloned populations of a newly described single-celled protist, a few cells undergo a voracious transformation. They metamorphose into much larger “supergiants” that shift their shape, alter their movement, and begin hunting and eating their own genetically identical relatives. Continue Reading Category: Biology , Science , Refractor: Science & Health Tags: Micro-organisms , Hunting , Cells , p…

Daddy longlegs, also called harvestmen, have been documented catching and consuming living frogs larger than themselves in South American rainforests. All without the use of venom. Continue Reading Category: Biology , Science , Refractor: Science & Health Tags: Spiders , Frogs , Predator , Ecology

For the first time in more than 15 years, the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) committee has significantly revised the protocols governing how scientists “evaluate, verify, and announce evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.” Continue Reading Category: Astronomy , Science , Refractor: Science & Health Tags: SETI , aliens , 3I/ATLAS , …

Why does the "poop emoji" look the way it does? Physics has the answer: as most animals defecate downward, each new coil falls a shorter distance, naturally forming the familiar tapered swirl. Continue Reading Category: Physics , Science , Refractor: Science & Health Tags: Materials , Animals , Waste , Fluid

One day, far in the future, a leaf will turn brown and crumble to dust, representing the end of all plants on Earth. Without a crystal ball, nobody knows for certain when that day will come. Continue Reading Category: Environment , Science Tags: Plants , Extinction , Photosynthesis , Earth , Sun

The volatile seismic zone along the roughly 750-mile (1,200-km) San Andreas Fault and the smaller San Jacinto Fault are now "critically stressed" – reaching a 1,000-year high level of pressure – increasing the likelihood of a big earthquake hitting the US West Coast. Continue Reading Category: Environment , Science Tags: California , Earthquake , Seismic , Geology , nature , Stress

The permanent loss of amputated digits and limbs is the cost of being human. While worms, amphibians, fish and echinoderms all contain species capable of regenerating body parts, few mammals have the knack. Continue Reading Category: Biology , Science Tags: Regenerative Medicine , Mice , wound-healing , Scarring , Texas A&M Universty , Marine Biology , Skin , Bones

Parrot feathers found at a thousand-year-old burial tomb in Peru provide new evidence for an expansive live bird trade network across the Andes Mountains that pre-dates the Inca Empire, a new study suggests. Continue Reading Category: Archaeology , Science Tags: Parrot , Birds , Inca , Archaeology , Australian National University

For decades, scientists believed that associative learning – understanding that two events are linked to each other, like a stimulus and a response – required at least some form of neural machinery. But now, a tiny unicellular creature without a trace of gray matter and living at the bottom of ponds may upend this long-held assumption. Continue Reading Category: Biology , Science Tags: Brain , Le…

The floor is literally lava on a nearby exoplanet, new telescope observations show. Given its small size and strange history, one team of scientists suggests planet L 98-59 d’s molten ocean and odd atmosphere might represent an entirely new category of extraterrestrial world. Continue Reading Category: Astronomy , Science Tags: Planet , Exoplanet , Super-Earth , University of Oxford , University …

The Earth’s rotation has never been perfectly stable; the spin has changed significantly throughout history. Even slight changes on the planet, from melting ice sheets to flux in the Moon's gravitational effects, can make days longer or shorter. But for most of Earth’s history, the changes were tiny and driven mostly by natural forces. Now, a new study shows that modern, human-induced climate cha…