Tag Archives: ScienceAlert

As your youth fades further into the past, you may start to fear growing older. But research my colleague and I have recently published in the journal Intelligence shows there’s also very good reason to be excited: for many of us, overall psychological functioning actually peaks between ages 55 and 60. And knowing this highlights why people in this age …

The small, furtive companion of one of the brightest stars in Earth’s night sky has just turned out to be something no one suspected. Instead of being the kind of object astronomers expected to find orbiting mega-weirdo Betelgeuse, the binary companion appears to be a young, Sun-like star. This discovery offers a new window into the troubled star’s mysterious past. …

Scientists have repaired a natural gateway into the brains of mice, allowing the clumps and tangles associated with Alzheimer’s disease to be swept away. After just three drug injections, mice with certain genes that mimic Alzheimer’s showed a reversal of several key pathological features. Within hours of the first injection, the animal brains showed a nearly 45 percent reduction in …

In the middle of the night, the world can sometimes feel like a dark place. Under the cover of darkness, negative thoughts have a way of drifting through your mind, and as you lie awake, staring at the ceiling, you might start craving guilty pleasures, like a cigarette or a carb-heavy meal. Plenty of evidence suggests the human mind functions …

A strange new phase of ice has been discovered during experiments with the world’s largest X-ray laser. Meet ice XXI, a bizarre phase that forms at room temperature, under extreme pressure. The solidified water we’re most familiar with here on Earth is technically known as ice I, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg – for instance, aliens on …

A giant dent in Earth’s magnetic field is continuing to expand, according to the latest data from a trio of satellites monitoring our world. It’s called the South Atlantic Anomaly, stretching across the gulf that separates Africa from South America, and the latest data suggests that it has expanded by roughly half the size of continental Europe since 2014, while …

COVID-19 infection causes changes to sperm in mice that may increase anxiety in their offspring, a study released Saturday said, suggesting the pandemic‘s possibly long-lasting effects on future generations. Researchers at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health in Melbourne, Australia, infected male mice with the virus that causes COVID, mated them with females, and assessed the impacts on …

A leading treatment for androgenetic alopecia (AGA) – the classic pattern hair loss – could be made more effective with the clever addition of the natural sweetener stevioside, derived from the stevia plant (Stevia rebaudiana). Minoxidil is a popular treatment for AGA that is rubbed into the scalp: it works by revitalizing hair follicles with increased blood flow, but not …

JWST might have spotted the ‘smoking gun’ of a hypothetical object called a dark star in the distant Universe. If confirmed, this discovery could solve several mysteries of physics. A dark star may sound like an oxymoron, but it would still emit light and energy. It wouldn’t be powered by nuclear fusion like a garden-variety star, however – it would …

The complex dance of two black holes locked in a doomed orbit has been revealed in a first-of-its-kind direct radio image. It’s the first time astronomers have directly imaged the distinct jets of both black holes in a known binary – finally confirming the model of the double core of a galaxy called OJ 287. In OJ 287, located some …