Antarctica’s Hidden Under-Ice Rivers Could Play a Significant Role in Sea-Level Rise

Underneath Antarctica’s vast ice sheets there’s a network of rivers and lakes. This is possible because of the insulating blanket of ice above, the flow of heat from within the Earth, and the small amount of heat generated as the ice deforms.   Water lubricates the base of the ice sheets, allowing the ice to … Read more

The Science Behind Why Some of Us Can’t Grow Big Muscles After Turning 50

There is perhaps no better way to see the absolute pinnacle of human athletic abilities than by watching the Olympics. But at the Winter Games this year – and at almost all professional sporting events – you rarely see a competitor over 40 years old and almost never see a single athlete over 50.   … Read more

Breathtaking New Chandra Pics Show Cosmic Objects Like You’ve Never Seen Them Before

Human vision may be limited to a specific range of wavelengths, but that doesn’t mean we’ll never understand the full complexity of light in our Universe. Instruments can peer into the cosmos in regimes that are otherwise invisible to our eyes, showing us not just the dynamics of the stars, but their absolutely awe-inspiring beauty. … Read more

Our Brains Keep Us 15 Seconds ‘in The Past’ to Help Us See a Stable World, Says Study

Our eyes are continuously bombarded by an enormous amount of visual information – millions of shapes, colors, and ever-changing motion all around us. For the brain, this is no easy feat.   On the one hand, the visual world alters continuously because of changes in light, viewpoint, and other factors. On the other, our visual … Read more

Bioengineers Have Modeled The Workings of The World’s Most Basic Synthetic Life Form

Life is complicated. Even the smallest cells contain a mind-blowing assortment of chemical reactions that allow them to thrive in a chaotic landscape. If we want to know where to draw the line between life and bubbles of stale old organic soup, it helps to strip away the non-essential extras to expose the core components, … Read more

Astronomers Have Identified a New Kind of Supernova We Never Knew Existed

We often think of supernova explosions as inevitable for large stars. Big star runs out of fuel, gravity collapses its core, and BOOM! But astronomers have long thought at least one type of large star didn’t end with a supernova. Known as Wolf-Rayet stars, they were thought to end with a quiet collapse of their core … Read more

Glimpse of The Future as La Niña Raises Sea Levels in Western Pacific by Up to 20 cm

Severe coastal flooding inundated islands and atolls across the western equatorial Pacific last week, with widespread damage to buildings and food crops in the Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, and Solomon Islands.   On one level, very high tides are normal at this time of year in the western Pacific, and … Read more

Astronomers Spot a Ghostly ‘One-Winged Butterfly’ Blazing Through Space

The beautiful birth of a star has produced an exquisitely ethereal structure in interstellar space. It’s called the Chamaeleon Infrared Nebula, located about 520 light-years away, and in a new image from the NSF NOIRLab’s International Gemini Observatory in Chile, it appears in the sky like a pale gossamer butterfly wing.   At its core, … Read more