Fragmenting planets sweeping extremely close to their stars might be the cause of mysterious cosmic blasts of radio waves. Milliseconds-long fast radio bursts, or FRBs, erupt from distant cosmic locales.…
Author: ID
Most bats don’t echolocate in broad daylight. Here’s an exception
Despite their excellent vision, one city-dwelling colony of fruit bats echolocates during broad daylight — completely contrary to what experts expected. A group of Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus) in…
Coastal cities around the globe are sinking
Coastal cities around the globe are sinking by up to several centimeters per year, on average, satellite observations reveal. The one-two punch of subsiding land and rising seas means that…
A newly discovered planet renews debate about how some giant worlds form
A young, massive planet is orbiting in an unusual place in its star system, and it’s leading researchers to revive a long-debated view of how giant planets can form. The…
This hieroglyph is the oldest known record of the Maya calendar
Buried within the Las Pinturas pyramid in San Bartolo, Guatemala, thousands of painted plaster mural fragments offer a window into ancient Maya civilization. Two of those fragments form the earliest…
This is the biggest known comet in our solar system
The nucleus of a comet discovered in 2014 is the largest ever spotted. The “dirty snowball” at the center of comet C/2014 UN271 is about 120 kilometers across, researchers report…
How ancient, recurring climate changes may have shaped human evolution
Recurring climate changes may have orchestrated where Homo species lived over the last 2 million years and how humankind evolved. Ups and downs in temperature, rainfall and plant growth promoted…
More than 57 billion tons of soil have eroded in the U.S. Midwest
With soils rich for cultivation, most land in the Midwestern United States has been converted from tallgrass prairie to agricultural fields. Less than 0.1 percent of the original prairie remains.…
‘Paradise Falls’ thrusts readers into the Love Canal disaster
Paradise FallsKeith O’BrienPantheon, $30 In December 1987, my family moved from sweltering Florida to a snow-crusted island in the Niagara River just north of Buffalo, N.Y. There on Grand Island,…
Climate change intensified deadly storms in Africa in early 2022
Climate change amped up the rains that pounded southeastern Africa and killed hundreds of people during two powerful storms in early 2022. But a dearth of regional data made it…
