Red squirrels living in Canada’s Yukon territory can have a pretty hard knock life. Bitterly cold winters, resource scarcity, intense competition for habitat, threats from large predators like the Canada lynx, and even take big reproductive risks for their genetic ...
Read More »Monthly Archives: April 2024
Rare quadruple solar flare event captured by NASA
Earlier this week, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) recorded a rarely seen event—four nearly-simultaneous flare eruptions involving three separate sunspots, as well as the magnetic filament between them. But as impressive as it is, the event could soon pose problems ...
Read More »Can AI help tell the difference between a good and bad sweet potato?
Most grocery store patrons take for granted just what it takes to transport a humble sweet potato out of the ground and into a shopping basket. The slightly-sweet red root vegetable can come in various sizes and flavor profiles but ...
Read More »A ‘bionic eye’ scan of an ancient, scorched scroll points to Plato’s long-lost gravesite
A research team’s “bionic eye” deciphered thousands of new words hidden within an ancient scroll carbonized during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius—and the new text points to the long-lost, potential final resting place of the philosopher Plato. The 1,800-scroll collection, ...
Read More »Why animals run faster than their robot doppelgängers… for now
Modern robotics is awash with human-made machines mimicking the animal world. From stadium-surveying robot dogs to daddy long-legs-inspired exploration bots and just about everything in-between, there’s no shortage of mechanized animal doppelgängers roaming the world. Advancements in AI systems, new ...
Read More »This 400-pound prehistoric salmon had tusks like a warthog
About five million years ago, the North American Pacific Northwest was teeming with some pretty big fish that would have made the continent’s biggest salmon runs look small. An eight to 10-feet-long prehistoric salmon species called Oncorhynchus rastrosus stalked the ...
Read More »These birds help humans hunt for honey—but it’s not as sweet as you might think
What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere ...
Read More »NASA will unfurl a 860-square-foot solar sail from within a microwave-sized cube
NASA hitched a ride aboard Rocket Lab’s Electron Launcher in New Zealand yesterday evening, and is preparing to test a new, highly advanced solar sail design. Now in a sun-synchronous orbit roughly 600-miles above Earth, the agency’s Advanced Composite Solar ...
Read More »Inside the new $2 billion campus that GM hopes will launch it into the future
On the floor of General Motors’ new Design West building, various concepts and work-in-progress next-generation vehicles dot the vast, open space. From a level above and behind glass, all is quiet. Everyone appears to be wearing soft-soled, comfortable shoes, as ...
Read More »Bioluminescence may have evolved 300 million years earlier than scientists previously thought
Many marine organisms–including sea worms, some jellyfish, sea pickles, and more–can emit ethereal glow through a process called bioluminescence. The evolutionary origins of this light production remain a mystery, but an international team of scientists have found that bioluminescence may ...
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