Science

The pink light visible in recent timelapse footage from the International Space Station is not a camera effect or a reflection from Earth. Instead, it comes from a small plant-growing facility tucked inside the station’s Columbus laboratory, where astronauts have been tending crops as part of an ongoing experiment into how plants behave beyond our…

PC: W. M. Keck Observatory For decades, dark matter has been treated as the unseen framework around which galaxies take shape. Even the smallest galaxies are generally thought to be wrapped inside vast halos of it, with the invisible material outweighing the stars by a wide margin. That assumption has been challenged before by two…

Few natural experiences are as universally loved as the earthy scent that rises after the first drops of rain hit dry ground. Petrichor, what most people describe as the smell of fresh rain, but the rain itself has almost no scent. Instead, what your nose detects is a remarkable chemical called geosmin, produced by soil-dwelling…

Forecasts for the tropical Pacific have shifted noticeably over the past month, with climate scientists now placing greater confidence in the arrival of a particularly powerful El Niño later this year. While these events are part of a natural climate cycle, their effects rarely stay confined to the Pacific Ocean. Changes in ocean temperatures can…

As ice melts, the liquid water collects in depressions on the surface and deepens them, forming these melt ponds in the Arctic | Wikimedia Commons Climate change is often discussed in terms of global averages, but new research suggests that where warming or cooling occurs may be just as important as how much occurs. Using…

For mathematicians, there is not much in the world whose reasoning cannot be substantiated with calculation. The beings that are in love with numbers and associations, view the world through a numerical lens, as a puzzle to be solved with the right method. While many mathematicians have graced the world with shocking methods, theorems and…

Mice are some of the most invasive animals on the planet. Quick to enter and escape they have managed to make many a human mind burst with anger and panic. The max that can be done about them is setting up a trap or spreading some poison around. But imagine an island filled with mice…

Every day, countless substances cling to surfaces around us without becoming part of the material itself. This fascinating process is known as adsorption, and the verb that describes it is adsorb. Although it is often confused with absorption, the two processes are fundamentally different. While absorption involves a substance being taken into the interior of…

Sperm whales communicate by making clicks Scientists using artificial intelligence (AI) have uncovered a complex communication system among sperm whales, identifying a kind of phonetic alphabet. The discovery comes as experts also found sperm whales living in the eastern Mediterranean Sea have developed a distinct regional dialect that separates them from populations living in the…

Nikola Tesla (Image: Wikipedia) Anger has a strange way of taking up more room in your head than almost anything else. It can replay the same old argument for days, sometimes years, long after everyone else involved has moved on and forgotten about it. Nikola Tesla, the man whose work helped bring electricity into homes…