May 14 See the strange creatures NOAA found at the bottom of the sea By Rebecca Jacobson, Inside Energy Each year, the NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer maps an area of the seafloor the size of West Virginia. When compared to the total Atlantic Ocean, which spans 41 million square miles, West Virginia’s not so large. But the… Continue reading
May 05 Computer scientists prove 80s pop music is boring By Nsikan Akpan “Pop music is dead.” You’ve heard the refrain dropped by nostalgic music lovers at backyard barbecues. And it’s no surprise. Everyone thinks the tunes of their generation marked a sort of cultural pinnacle and that music has since become bland. Continue reading
Apr 29 Why the Nepal earthquake may have been inevitable By Nsikan Akpan On Saturday, a portion of the thrust fault underneath central Nepal ruptured, causing an earthquake that killed at least 5,200 people, injured more than 10,000 and destroyed centuries-old temples, towers and buildings. Continue reading
Apr 15 Are some people wired to fall for placebos? By Nsikan Akpan Some people are born believers. Fake surgeries have been shown to relieve traumatic knee pain; “dummy pills” have wiped away migraines. A new report from Harvard University describes how certain genes predispose people toward believing placebos, or experiencing… Continue reading
Apr 01 This tiny songbird flies Canada to Puerto Rico nonstop By Jenny Marder Every year, from September to November, millions of tiny songbirds gather along the Northeastern coastline, get fat feasting on insects and take to the skies. And then they fly and they fly and they fly. It’s long been believed… Continue reading
Mar 25 Photo essay: DIY airplanes, submarines, Lamborghini and other homemade Chinese inventions By Laura Santhanam What do restaurants, gunpowder and paper money have in common? They were all invented in China. Continue reading
Mar 18 How a St. Patty’s Day solar storm turned on the Northern Lights By Rebecca Jacobson, Inside Energy When a wave of charged particles and magnetic field from the sun hits the Earth, the planet becomes a neon light bulb. Continue reading
Mar 11 How the itsy bitsy spider evolved from a giant prehistoric sea creature By Jenny Marder It’s hard to believe that a prehistoric sea creature the size of Shaquille O’Neal could teach us anything about a modern dust mite. But a 7-foot-long, 480-million-year-old marine animal called an anomalocaridid is an ancestor to modern arthropods , the… Continue reading
Mar 04 This jawbone may change everything we know about early human history By Rebecca Jacobson, Inside Energy Human evolution had a nice clear line from Lucy 3.2 million years ago to Homo habilis to Homo erectus and finally Homo sapiens -- us. Or so it seemed. A new jawbone shows that humans evolved earlier than we thought,… Continue reading
Feb 25 Photo essay: How to swim safely with sharks By Ariel Min Ocean Ramsey wants you to know that sharks are vastly misunderstood. They’re scavengers, and rarely confrontational, said the biologist and scuba instructor, who has studied the animals for 15 years and leads cageless shark diving expeditions off the coast of… Continue reading