In Tom Edison’s Shaggy Dog, a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Edison discovers that dogs are intellectually superior beings. They’re so smart, in fact, that the canines found the…
Author: ID
The worldwide water-lifting power of plants is enormous
When it comes to hoisting water, plants are real power lifters. For a tall tree, slurping hundreds of liters of water each day up to its leaves or needles, where…
Indigenous Americans ruled democratically long before the U.S. did
On sunny summer days, powerboats pulling water-skiers zip across Georgia’s Lake Oconee, a reservoir located about an hour-and-a-half drive east of Atlanta. For those without a need for speed, fishing…
What you need to know about the new omicron booster shots
Revamped COVID-19 vaccines are poised to do battle with the super-contagious omicron variant. On September 1, U.S. health officials greenlit the first major update of the mRNA-based shots, reformulated to…
Here’s the James Webb telescope’s first direct image of an exoplanet
This is the first picture of an exoplanet from the James Webb Space Telescope. “We’re actually measuring photons from the atmosphere of the planet itself,” says astronomer Sasha Hinkley of…
A clever molecular trick extends the lives of these ant queens
For some ant queens, the secret to long life might be a self-produced insulin blocker. Ant queens are famously long-lived, even though they shouldn’t be. Generally, animals that put lots…
Who has the highest risk of long COVID? It’s complicated
For millions of people, COVID-19 doesn’t end with a negative test. Weeks or months after traces of the virus disappear from noses and throats, symptoms can persist or come back.…
Ancient ‘demon ducks’ may have been undone by their slow growth
Giant flightless birds called mihirungs were the biggest birds to ever stride across what is now Australia. The animals, which weighed up to hundreds of kilograms, died out about 40,000…
The curious case of the 471-day coronavirus infection
As omicron subvariant BA.5 continues to drive the coronavirus’ spread in the United States, I’ve been thinking about what could come next. Omicron and its offshoots have been topping the…
This bizarre ancient critter has been kicked out of a group that includes humans
No ifs, ands or butts about it: A teeny roughly 530-million-year-old critter that lacks an anus is not, as previously thought, the oldest member of a wide-ranging animal group that…
