When you hear news reports about volcanoes spewing lava and ash, you may worry about the people nearby. In fact, almost 1 in 10 people around the world live within 100 kilometers of an active volcano. For those living close to volcanoes, farming on their fertile soils, or visiting their spectacular landscapes, it is crucial ...
The pygmy right whale, Caperea marginata, is the weirdest whale you’ve probably never heard of. It is the smallest of the living baleen whales and is restricted to the Southern Hemisphere. Its tank-like skeleton is unique among whales, and its ecology and behavior remain virtually unknown. Even its mitochondria — the power plants of the ...
The search for planets outside our Solar System — exoplanets — is one of the most rapidly growing fields in astronomy. Over the past few decades, more than 5,000 exoplanets have been detected and astronomers now estimate that, on average, there is at least one planet per star in our galaxy. Many current research efforts ...
The search for habitable conditions beyond Earth has just become more interesting with the discovery on Saturn’s moon Enceladus of biologically available phosphorus. Phosphorus is the most elusive of the six crucial elements needed for life. In research published in Nature, data from the Cassini spacecraft were used to find phosphorus compounds called phosphates in ...
Kangaroos are an enduring symbol of Australia’s uniqueness. To move, they do what no other large mammals do: They hop along on oversized hind legs. So you may be surprised to learn that there are tree-kangaroos that actually live in trees, and are among the most endearing and threatened of all marsupials. Today, biologists recognize ...
The human brain is made up of around 86 billion neurons, linked by trillions of connections. For decades, scientists have believed that we need to map this intricate connectivity in detail to understand how the structured patterns of activity defining our thoughts, feelings, and behavior emerge. Our new study, published in Nature, challenges this view. ...
Astronomers have been working to better understand the galactic environments of fast radio bursts (FRBs) — intense, momentary bursts of energy occurring in mere milliseconds and with unknown cosmic origins. Now, a study of the slow-moving, star-forming gas in the same galaxy found to host an FRB has been published in The Astrophysical Journal. This ...
Most diamonds are formed deep inside Earth and brought close to the surface in small yet powerful volcanic eruptions of a kind of rock called “kimberlite.” Our supercomputer modeling, published in Nature Geoscience, shows these eruptions are fueled by giant “pillars of heat” rooted 2,900 kilometers below ground, just above our planet’s core. Understanding Earth’s ...
Fast radio bursts — intense, milliseconds-long flashes of radio energy from outer space — have puzzled astronomers since they were first spotted in 2007. A single burst can emit as much energy in its brief life as the Sun does in a few days. The great majority of the short-lived pulses originate outside our Milky ...
When stars like our Sun die, they tend to go out with a whimper and not a bang — unless they happen to be part of a binary (two) star system that could give rise to a supernova explosion. Now, for the first time, astronomers have spotted the radio signature of just such an event ...