Science

Should astronauts ever make a trip to Uranus, they’ll want to hold their breath. Scientists have confirmed that Uranus smells really bad. That’s not a joke — well it is, but it’s also a true fact about the seventh planet in our solar system. The clouds of the gas giant …

A team of Canadian physicists has developed a new way to improve our knowledge of the Big Bang by measuring radiation from its afterglow, called the cosmic microwave background radiation. The team’s results, published in the journal Foundations of Physics, predict the maximum bandwidth of the Universe, which is the …

The indigenous Bajau people of Southeast Asia spend their whole lives at sea, working 8-hr diving shifts with traditional equipment and short breaks to catch fish and shellfish. In a new study published in the journal Cell, an international team of scientists led by the Universities of California at Berkeley, …

NASA’s Juno mission took its twelfth trip around Jupiter on April 1, 2018, and the orbiter has sent back extraordinary images of the gas giant. This image of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot and surrounding turbulent zones was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The color-enhanced image is a combination of three …

Galaxies come in all shapes and sizes, from large spiral pinwheels like our own Milky Way to comparatively tiny spherical ones dense with stars. Astronomers have long known that the shape of a galaxy can tell us about its past, but for the first time scientists have confirmed another important …

A team of scientists from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and the Universities of New South Wales and Sydney has identified a new DNA structure — called the intercalated motif (i-motif) — inside living human cells. A twisted ‘knot’ of DNA, the i-motif has never before been directly seen …

Space may be the final frontier, but it’s an expensive one to explore. There are ample problems with which to contend here on Earth, and that leads some people to wonder if space exploration is worth the hassle. At ExtremeTech, we believe the answer is unequivocally “yes.” Here are five …

A colossal impact between proto-Mars and a Vesta-to-Ceres-sized object likely produced the two Martian moons, Phobos and Deimos, according to new research. Mars is kept company by two cratered moons — an inner moon named Phobos and an outer moon named Deimos. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Malin Space …

As astronomers look out across unfathomable distances and observe other solar systems, they often see so-called “super-Earths.” These worlds are rocky like Earth, but they can be several times more massive. They might also be our best hope of finding life outside our solar system. We’ll have to go to …

Entomologists are claiming they have discovered a new species of so-called ‘exploding ant’ living in the remote rainforests of Borneo, Thailand, and Malaysia. When their colony is threatened by an intruder, minor workers of the new species — named Colobopsis explodens — can tear their own body apart, in order …