Tag Archives: ScienceAlert

The world’s most popular sport is reckoning with serious health concerns. The largest study of its kind has now found that repetitively heading a soccer ball can negatively impact the brain, even in amateur players who don’t report concussions. Among 352 amateur adult soccer players, those who took more than a thousand headers a year showed microscopic changes to the …

78 million years ago, a 1.6 km asteroid slammed into what is now Finland, creating a crater 23 km (14 mi) wide and 750 km deep. The catastrophic impact created a fractured hydrothermal system in the shattered bedrock under the crater. There’s evidence from other impact structures that in the aftermath of a collision, life colonized the shattered rock and …

Metformin has been prescribed to people with type 2 diabetes to manage blood sugar for more than 60 years, but scientists haven’t been exactly sure how it works. A new study suggests it works directly in the brain, which could lead to new types of treatment. The study, carried out by researchers from the Baylor College of Medicine in the …

MIT physicists have proposed a way to make a super sci-fi-sounding device: a neutrino ‘laser,’ which could help us probe the mysteries of the Universe. Neutrinos are the most abundant particles that have mass, but in a cruel irony, they’re extremely elusive, earning them the term ‘ghost particle’. Although there are trillions of them zipping through your body at any …

From the sands of Mongolia’s Gobi Desert emerges a new, exquisitely preserved fossil that could revolutionize our understanding of pachycephalosaurs – those iconic dinosaurs sporting a dome of thick bone at the top of their heads. The newly discovered Zavacephale rinpoche is the oldest known pachycephalosaur ever found, with an age dating back at least 108 million years ago, pushing …

While many of us are excited about the prospect of finding life on other planets, there’s still also so much about life on Earth we have no idea about. Like, what the heck these floating xenomorph-ish babies become when they grow up. Scientists have known about microscopic facetotectans since the 1880s, yet still haven’t managed to pin the larva on …

There could be a 90 percent chance that in the next decade, astronomers will spot a deep space explosion that confirms several long-standing theories about black holes – and which releases a complete collection of every particle in existence, known and unknown. That’s according to a new study from physicists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst), which proposes …

Following nearly 30 percent of successful breast cancer treatments, tumors return, claiming 685,000 lives worldwide every year. Now, we may have a new method for significantly reducing those recurring cases. A study led by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania shows that actively targeting dormant tumor cells (DTCs) lingering in the bone marrow and other parts of the body can …

Cats may have a reputation for independence, but emerging research suggests we share a unique connection with them – fueled by brain chemistry. The main chemical involved is oxytocin, often called the love hormone. It’s the same neurochemical that surges when a mother cradles her baby or when friends hug, fostering trust and affection. And now studies are showing oxytocin …

Ancient bones discovered in a cave in Vietnam could belong to one of the world’s earliest known victims of homicide. An analysis of the bones and circumstances of his death suggests that the man, aged around 35 years at the time of his death, some 12,000 years ago, died at the hands of another human. If so, it would be …