Some frogs just can’t stick the landing. After launching into a leap, pumpkin toadlets careen through the air as if flung from a toddler’s fist. They roll, cartwheel or backflip…
Author: ID
Farmers in India cut their carbon footprint with trees and solar power
In 2007, 22-year-old P. Ramesh’s groundnut farm was losing money. As was the norm in most of India (and still is), Ramesh was using a cocktail of pesticides and fertilizers…
Ancient bacterial DNA hints Europe’s Black Death started in Central Asia
Although best known as a plague that killed millions of Europeans from 1346 to 1353, the Black Death originated about a decade earlier in Central Asia, a new study suggests.…
Butterflies may lose their ‘tails’ like lizards
On some butterfly wings, “tails” may be more than just elegant adornments. They’re survival tools too, a study suggests. The tails seem to attract the attention of attacking birds, keeping…
New Gaia data paint the most detailed picture yet of the Milky Way
1.6 billion stars. 11.4 million galaxies. 158,000 asteroids. One spacecraft. The European Space Agency’s Gaia space observatory, which launched in 2013, has long surpassed its goal of charting more than…
Lucy Cooke’s new book ‘Bitch’ busts myths about female animals
BitchLucy CookeBasic Books, $30 To Charles Darwin, nature had a certain order. And in that order, males always came out on top. They were the leaders, the innovators, the wooers…
A celestial loner might be the first known rogue black hole
A solitary celestial object — more massive than the sun, yet far smaller — is wandering the galaxy a few thousand light-years from Earth. It might be the first isolated…
Information energy accounts for dark energy, resolves Hubble tension, avoids the ‘big chill,’ and is falsifiable
Stellar heated gas and dust in the Centaurus-A galaxy. Credit: NASA Hubble. Stellar heated gas and dust has an entropy, or information content, with an equivalent energy of 1070 joules,…
New Gaia data paint the most detailed picture yet of the Milky Way
1.6 billion stars. 11.4 million galaxies. 158,000 asteroids. One spacecraft. The European Space Agency’s Gaia space observatory, which launched in 2013, has long surpassed its goal of charting more than…
Nasal vaccines for COVID-19 offer hope and face hurdles
A few weeks ago, I was obsessed with my nose and throat. I was on a trip to Seattle to speak at a small, masks-required virology meeting about being a…
