Science

  On March 7, 2009, the Kepler Space Telescope took off from Cape Canaveral aboard a Delta II rocket. For almost a decade, the space telescope expanded our understanding of the universe before it finally went dark for good last October. But it’s worth revisiting the spacecraft one last time, …

  Things have been going swimmingly for NASA’s InSight lander on the surface of Mars. After a textbook landing, InSight found itself in a nice, flat area perfect for deploying its seismic sensors. The weather monitoring package even allowed NASA to set up the first interplanetary weather report. It wouldn’t …

  It’s not a matter of if but when another giant asteroid or comet strikes the Earth. It’s happened all throughout history, and our mere presence on this planet won’t protect it. Although, we are the only species in the history of Earth with rockets and explosives (that we know …

  The dream of resurrecting species like the woolly mammoth via genetic engineering is old enough that I remember reading articles about it in school 30 years ago. We may never be able to recover enough pristine genetic material from an intact woolly mammoth to make that approach feasible, but …

  Genetically modified plants have existed for many years, but the processes used to make the modifications are surprisingly inefficient. Researchers at the University of California Berkeley have developed a technique that could make plant genetics considerably more precise. Rather than the “spray and pray” approach, scientists might soon be …

Twins are traditionally classified as monozygotic (identical) or dizygotic (fraternal). Monozygotic twinning results in genetically identical individuals, whereas dizygotic twins share approximately 50% of their DNA sequence identity, as do full siblings. Sesquizygosity is a third form of twinship, in which individuals share between 50% and 100% of genetic identity. …

A team of archaeologists led by Washington State University scientists has discovered an ancient tattoo tool in southeastern Utah. With a handle of skunkbush and a cactus-spine business end, this unusual artifact was made 1,900 years ago by the Ancestral Pueblo people of the Basketmaker II period (ca. 500 BC – …

  Twenty years ago, the question of whether Mars ever had large reserves of liquid water was still open to debate. Today, the discussion has shifted to an evaluation of the nature and size of those reserves, where they existed, and what this implies for any effort to find life …

A multinational team of researchers has successfully sequenced the genome of the Antarctic blackfin icefish (Chaenocephalus aceratus), opening a genetic window on fish that evolved over the last 77 million years to survive in extreme Antarctic temperatures. The Antarctic blackfin icefish (Chaenocephalus aceratus). Image credit: Thomas Desvignes. Antarctic icefishes are …

Humans and other mammals are limited to seeing a range of wavelengths of light called visible light, which includes the wavelengths of the rainbow. But infrared radiation, which has a longer wavelength, is all around us. People, animals and objects emit infrared light as they give off heat, and objects …