This is what a black hole looks like. A world-spanning network of telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope zoomed in on the supermassive monster in the galaxy M87 to create this first-ever picture of a black hole. “We have seen what we thought was unseeable. We have seen and taken a picture of a black […]
Black holes have been beguiling from the very beginning. Hinted at as early as the 1780s and predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity, they didn’t get the name we know today until the 1960s. Bizarre beasts that squash gobs of matter into infinitely dense abysses, black holes were once thought to be merely a […]
WASHINGTON — In 2021, wildfires pillaged the world’s carbon-rich snow forests. That year, burning boreal forests released 1.76 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, researchers reported March 2 in a news conference at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. That’s a new record for the region, which stores about […]
Full-grown snapping shrimp were already known to have some of the fastest claws under the waves. But it turns out they’re nothing compared with their kids. Juvenile snapping shrimp produce the highest known underwater accelerations of any reusable body part, researchers report February 28 in the Journal of Experimental Biology. While the claws’ top speed […]
A surprise ingredient may explain how lemon juice puts the squeeze on kidney stones. Lemons contain nanoparticles that, when fed to rats, block stone formation, scientists report in the Feb. 22 Nano Letters. If the tiny sacs do the same for humans, the nanoparticles might one day offer a way to prevent kidney stones in […]
A new atlas of human genetic diversity reveals what human ancestors’ DNA may have looked like before people migrated out of Africa. Ancestral humans carried 40.7 million more DNA base pairs than people do today, researchers report online August 6 in Science. That’s enough DNA to build a small chromosome, says study coauthor Evan Eichler, […]
Memory Transfer Seen — Experiments with rats, showing how chemicals from one rat brain influence the memory of an untrained animal, indicate that tinkering with the brain of humans is also possible. In the rat tests, brain material from an animal trained to go for food either at a light flash or at a sound […]
Large-scale climate patterns that can impact weather across thousands of kilometers may have a hand in synchronizing multicontinental droughts and stoking wildfires around the world, two new studies find. These profound patterns, known as climate teleconnections, typically occur as recurring phases that can last from weeks to years. “They are a kind of complex butterfly […]
A close look at one protein shows how it moves molecular passengers into cells in the kidneys, brain and elsewhere. The protein LRP2 is part of a delivery service, catching certain molecules outside a cell and ferrying them in. Now, 3-D maps of LRP2 reveal the protein’s structure and how it captures and releases molecules, […]