Either way you look at it, paper cutting is painful. Magazines, papers and books harbor a devious potential for small self-inflicted agonies. But other types of paper – such as thin paper or the thicker ones used for postcards – are less likely to offend. Scientists have now explained the physics behind why certain cards … Read more
African rock art depicting a mythical tufted creature may reflect the appearance of fossilized real-life relatives of ancient mammals called dicynodonts. Abundant fossils exposed in South Africa’s Karoo Basin include dicynodont skulls with tusks that bend down and back, like those of the long-bodied animal depicted in roughly 200-year-old rock art by the region’s San … Read more
Extreme Climate Survey Scientific news is collecting questions from readers about how to navigate our planet’s changing climate. What do you want to know about extreme heat and how it can lead to extreme weather events? Most “radiant cooling” designs involve roofs designed to receive and then emit the sun’s energy in infrared wavelengths that … Read more
A distant stellar nursery holds a cluster of newborn worlds the size of Jupiter, the smallest of which is surrounded by a disk of dust that may one day form moons. The detailed discovery, made thanks to the unprecedented sensitivity of the James Webb Space Telescope, could provide new insights into the formation of stars … Read more
Scientists have just narrowed down the possible hiding places for dark matter particles. The LUX-ZEPLIN, or LZ, experiment has searched for and ruled out the existence of dark matter particles with a wide range of properties, researchers report Aug. 26 at two conferences. Dark matter is a substance whose influence can be seen on the … Read more
Extreme Climate Survey Scientific news is collecting questions from readers about how to navigate our planet’s changing climate. What do you want to know about extreme heat and how it can lead to extreme weather events? McCall: Argivoltaics is a term for the co-location of solar and agricultural activities, such as grazing, crop production and … Read more
A lucky alignment of two sun-studying spacecraft may have finally solved a decades-old solar mystery. Data from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter suggest that plasma waves known as Alfvén waves inject energy into the solar wind as it leaves the sun’s outer atmosphere, potentially explaining why the solar wind … Read more
The texture of mayonnaise inspires love and hate. Either way, it’s perfect for physics experiments. The classic seasoning is useful for understanding how materials behave, not only when spread on sandwiches or spread on potato salads, but also when used in nuclear fusion experiments. Mechanical engineer Arindam Banerjee of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., and … Read more
Heat deaths in the United States are on the rise. But how bad will it be 20, 30 or 40 years from now? Scientists now have a clue. Currently, about 8,000 more deaths in the United States each year are associated with extreme temperatures, hot and cold. Within the next few decades, that number could … Read more
The biggest conundrum in cosmology may be closer to being solved, thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope. Scientists disagree on the expansion rate of the universe, known as the Hubble constant. There are two main methods for measuring it – one based on exploding stars called supernovae and the other on the universe’s oldest … Read more