A weathered sign in the Minnesota River Valley proudly proclaims: “World’s Oldest Rock.” Erected in 1975, it marks a 3.8-billion-year-old gneiss — or so scientists thought. Turns out, it’s not …
The decades-long mystery of a never-ending explosion of X-rays around the remains of a dead star may have finally been solved. The radiation probably originates from the scorching-hot wreckage left …
I confess: If I think about skeletons, it’s around Halloween. I especially enjoy the yard displays of larger-than-life skeletons engaging in mundane activities, like walking skeleton dogs. But our own …
Despite capturing hearts around the world, the wild axolotl — an aquatic salamander with feathery frills and a soft smile — faces extinction. Fortunately, for both axolotls and their fans, …
As the Mars rover Perseverance crested the top of Witch Hazel Hill, its operators back on Earth expected amazing things. This area on the western rim of the Jezero crater, …
Many teens who vape want to quit. A recent clinical trial suggests that a drug used to stop smoking can help. In the last four weeks of a 12-week trial, …
Warming temperatures may cause methane emissions from wetlands to rise — by helping methane-producing bacteria thrive. Higher temperatures favor the activity of wetland soil microbes that produce the potent greenhouse …
The James Webb Space Telescope has caught a distant galaxy blowing an unexpected bubble in the gas around it, just 330 million years after the Big Bang. The galaxy, dubbed …
Earth’s landmasses are holding onto a lot less water than they used to — and this loss is not just due to melting ice sheets. Terrestrial water storage, which includes …
The nearest single star to the sun, Barnard’s star, has a brood of planets all its own. The red dwarf star, about six light-years from Earth, hosts four close-in planets …