Science

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Discovering a machine that could somehow produce thrust without releasing propellant would be a game-changer for human space travel. There’s just one problem—such a device would defy the laws of physics. This limitation has not stopped people from investigating the possibility, and the latest addition to the propellant-less club is an …

Scientists are about to unleash a powerful new weapon in the hunt for dark matter, the mysterious substance that accounts for around 85% of the “stuff” in the universe. Like a super-weapon developed by a stereotypical supervillain, this new dark matter detector is hidden over a mile deep beneath the French Alps. This highly sensitive detector, developed by an international …

From glowing mushrooms on forest floors to plankton that light up the sea, nature has long revealed beauty through bioluminescence. These natural spectacles capture human imagination, inspiring ideas of glowing gardens and self-lit cities. Scientists are now moving closer to that vision, crafting houseplants that radiate their own soft light. Scientists create glowing plants In a recent study …

There are more than 12,000 active satellites circling Earth at the moment, a growing figure that has nearly doubled in less than three years. This recent boom in the satellite industry has been a major headache for astronomers, with bright satellites appearing as streaks in telescope images of the universe and tarnishing views of the night skies. A new paper …

Deep in the first moments of the Big Bang, the entire cosmos shook and rumbled. Those quakes still reverberate to the present day. It will take the most sensitive instruments ever imagined to reveal those ripples, but if they are discovered, they will change our understanding of the entire universe. In 1916, Albert Einstein discovered that his theory of general …

NASA’s Perseverance rover has captured a striking new image of massive, wind-carved sand formations known as “megaripples” during its latest exploration stop on the Red Planet. The photo, taken on Aug. 13, reveals a field of these ridges at a site called Kerrlaguna, where Perseverance is investigating how Martian winds continue to shape the landscape. According to a recent NASA …

Icebergs in Disko Bay (West Greenland) discharged by the Jakobshavn Isbrae, one of the fastest moving outlet glaciers in the world. Mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet has contributed nearly 2 cm (three quarters of an inch) to global sea-level rise over the past three decades. Credit: Torbjörn Törnqvist/Tulane University Satellites confirm that mid-1990s climate projections of sea-level rise …

Paralvinella hessleri accumulates microscopic particles of arsenic on its outer skin, which reacts with sulfide to form a microscopic armour of yellow orpiment.Credit: Wang et al./PLoS Biol (CC BY 4.0) A bright-yellow worm that lives in deep-sea hydrothermal vents is the first known animal to create orpiment, a brilliant but toxic mineral used by artists from antiquity until the nineteenth …

Researchers in Taiwan have observed sheet web spiders (Psechrus clavis) capturing fireflies and leaving them glowing in their webs for up to an hour. This unusual tactic turns the fireflies’ mating signals into a deadly lure, with other insects attracted to the light before becoming trapped themselves. Keen to find out more about the hunting strategy, scientists from Tunghai University devised a …

A gigantic crocodile-like hypercarnivore likely hunted dinosaurs 70 million years ago in what is now Argentina, a new study reveals. Researchers discovered the fossilized skeleton from the extinct apex predator in southern Patagonia in 2020. It grew up to around 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) long and weighed about 550 pounds (250 kilograms). The creature is named Kostensuchus atrox after the …