Among the possible origins for the asteroid Bennu, which recently became the first asteroid ever sampled by a NASA mission, a surprising indication is that it may have come from a water world. The development arose after researchers analyzed the mixture of rocks and dust from bodies beyond Earth, collectively called…
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A genetically specific pesticide has shown to be lethal to the destructive Colorado potato beetle while leaving all other tested species, even the beetle’s close relatives, unharmed. Every year, this native of the Rocky Mountains causes $500 million or more in damages across the Northern Hemisphere—all across which it’s now found…
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In South Africa, biologists and scientists have developed a novel way of disincentivizing poaching that will allow rhinos to keep hold of their horns. Previously it was widespread practice to capture and de-horn rhinos to disincentivize poachers from killing them, but the lack of a horn deeply interfered with the animals’…
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In a fairly rare cosmic occurrence this month, two annual meteor showers will appear to ‘peak’ at the same time on the night of July 30th. Both will appear in the southern sky, and though they will radiate out from different constellations, it will be difficult to tell which shooting stars…
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For two years, an international team has been exploring what astronomers refer to as the Cosmic Dawn—the period in the first few hundred million years following the Big Bang where the first galaxies were born. Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), they’ve now discovered two of the earliest and most…
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A UK ag-tech firm is pioneering bacterial batteries that they hope will allow farmers in the future to collect precise data about soil conditions with computing equipment powered by the soil itself. Designed to be installed and forgotten about, the batteries absorb power through bioelectrochemical processes that occur within soil microbes….
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Archaeologists examining finds dug up in a Spanish cave network in 1989 found skull fragments of a 6-year-old Neanderthal, which would have been exciting on its own, but the skull carried two major surprises. The first is that an analysis of the inner ear canal showed signs of Down Syndrome, the…
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