A preserved tusk revealed how far the animal ranged during its 28-year lifetime. A mammoth that lived in Alaska about 17,000 years ago traveled so far and wide that, if it had walked in a straight line, it would have gone all the way around the world — nearly twice.Continue Reading
Manure pits produce toxic gases that can be deadly. Three men in Ohio died this week after entering a manure pit and passing out from the fumes, according to news reports. The men, who were brothers, had entered the manure pit to fix a pump, according to local news outletContinue Reading
An ocean-powered buoy brings technology closer to the dream of obtaining energy from the sea One key to harvesting the ocean’s clean energy—at least a little of it—may lie in static electricity. A team of researchers in Portugal has now successfully used it to run small generators inside a navigationalContinue Reading
The tablet is the earliest discovered example of applied geometry. A 3,700-year-old clay tablet has revealed that the ancient Babylonians understood the Pythagorean theorem more than 1,000 years before the birth of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who is widely associated with the idea. The tablet, known as Si.427, was usedContinue Reading
Your fingerprints are different from those of everyone else on Earth. The whorls and ridges on your fingertips are determined partly by your genetic makeup. But if you had an identical twin with the same genetic makeup as you, would your fingerprints still be unique? Identical twins, also known asContinue Reading
Meet the sheepshead fish, a common Atlantic coast swimmer with a very crunchy diet. Last week (Aug 3), anglers at Jennette’s Pier in North Carolina pulled up something unexpected — and uncanny — from the Atlantic: a fish with human teeth. Yes, this fish — and its teeth — areContinue Reading
Satellite tracking of water vapor, critical for accurate forecasts, may be foiled by cellphone tower transmissions Federal agencies are competing with one another over radio waves used to help predict changes in the climate as the sky is increasingly cluttered with noise from billions of smartphones. On one side areContinue Reading
New simulations show one way the voids might lose their ‘hair’ Like a shaggy dog in springtime, some black holes have to shed. New computer simulations reveal how black holes might discard their magnetic fields. Unlike dogs with their varied fur coats, isolated black holes are mostly identical. They areContinue Reading
Four of the panels date as far back as 40 years before Thomas Becket’s grisly death. The stained-glass windows of England’s Canterbury Cathedral are so old that they “witnessed” one of medieval England’s most infamous murders, a new study reveals. The analysis shows that some of the cathedral’s stained-glass windows,Continue Reading
A new study is a take on the adage, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” When parasitic wasps come calling, some caterpillars have a surprising ally: a viral infection. Insects called parasitoid wasps lay their eggs inside young moth larvae, turning the caterpillars into unwitting, destined-to-die incubators forContinue Reading