Science

Moderate adolescent cannabis use may have adverse effects on cognitive functioning, specifically verbal memory, that cannot be explained by familial factors, according to a study of siblings led by the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Ellingson et al aimed to examine whether moderate adolescent cannabis use has neurocognitive effects …

A new analysis of data gathered by the CONSERT (Comet Nucleus Sounding Experiment by Radio wave Transmission) instrument, a radar onboard ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft and its Philae lander, confirms that solar radiation has significantly modified the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as it travels through space between the orbits of Jupiter …

  SpaceX’s Starship has taken flight once again, although it’s not heading into space quite yet. The latest Starship prototype has completed another 150-meter hop test, proving that its engine works correctly and setting the stage for a promised high-altitude test flight. The Starship started life as the Big Falcon …

The Nebra sky disk, one of the oldest concrete depictions of cosmic phenomena, was created in the first millennium BCE, roughly 1,000 years later than previously assumed, according to new research by German scientists. The Nebra sky disk. Image credit: Dbachmann / CC BY-SA 3.0. The Nebra sky disk is …

A 16-m- (52.5-foot) long megalodon had a head 4.65 m (15.3 feet) long, a dorsal fin 1.62 m (5.3 feet) tall and a tail 3.85 m (9.4 feet) high, according to a study led by researchers from the University of Bristol and Swansea University. Paleoartistic reconstruction of a 16-m megalodon scaled against …

New research pieces together the activities and movements of a group of Homo heidelbergensis, a poorly understood species of archaic humans that lived between 700,000 to 200,000 years ago, as they made tools, including the oldest bone tools documented in Europe, and extensively butchered a large horse at the 480,000-year-old …

By analyzing leadership patterns of all-male African savannah elephant (Loxodonta africana) traveling groups along elephant pathways in the Makgadikgadi Pans National Park, Botswana, a team of researchers from the Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour at the University of Exeter found that the oldest bulls were more likely to lead …

A team of paleontologists from the University of Alberta has found the fossilized tracks of a marine wood-boring organism that lived approximately 110 million years ago (Cretaceous period). Apectoichnus lignummasticans. Image credit: Melnyk et al, doi: 10.1017/jpa.2020.63. Trace fossils are biologically produced sedimentary structures that include tracks, trails, burrows, borings, …

  During the height of the space race in the 1960s, the US launched a series of satellites designed to study the planet. The six Orbiting Geophysical Observatory (OGO) spacecraft improved our understanding of Earth’s magnetic field, shutting down a few years later. However, one of those forlorn satellites known …

A team of archaeologists from the United Kingdom has uncovered 15,000-year-old stone plaquettes extensively engraved with abstract designs at the Magdalenian site of Les Varines, Jersey, Channel Islands. The finds provide new evidence for technologies of abstract mark-making, and their significance within the lives of people on the edge of …