Science

A genus of orange and brown butterflies that had been excruciatingly hard to define and separate has been called Saurona after the Dark Lord antagonist from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Any old scientist can name a species—there are tens of millions out there that have needed a name. But…

NASA is testing an all-terrain slithering robot to explore tunnels, glaciers, and snowdrifts on Saturn’s icy moon of Enceladus. The 13-foot-long (4 meter) machine is called EELS, or the Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor, owing to theories that the icy-covered world of Enceladus may have a subsurface ocean of liquid water—one of…

A child’s imagination can turn a molehill into a mountain, or a stick into a sword. That wasn’t necessarily required when Elise’s teacher saw the 8-year-old holding a “rock” she found in the schoolyard at Our Children’s School in Osøyro, Norway. That’s because Elise had stumbled upon a remarkable find—a 3,700-year-old…

Scientists completed a vast evolutionary jigsaw puzzle in 4D—and they discovered that butterflies originated in America around 100 million years ago. They determined that it was a group of “trendsetting” moths that started flying during the day rather than at night, taking advantage of nectar-rich flowers that had co-evolved with bees….

Microbes that can eat plastic at low temperatures, making them more cost-effective than current ones, have been found in the Alps. Several microorganisms capable of destroying plastic polymers have already been discovered. As a result, businesses have latched onto bioengineering the enzymes found in various bacteria and fungi as a means…

The largest explosion ever seen has been captured by astronomers—more than 10 times brighter than any known supernova, and 3 times brighter than the most radiant tidal disruption event, where a star falls into a black hole. The explosion, known as AT2021lwx, was detected in 2020 in Hawai’i and California and…

A tiny implant has placed a big target on the back of breast cancer tumors in mice, according to the results of a new study reported by South West News Service and New Scientist. In the small study, a self-charging battery enabled a new class of medications to kill the tumors—and…