Are horseshoe crabs truly “living fossils”?
Scientists discovered a 445-million-year-old horseshoe crab fossil showing that these animals have maintained the same reproductive system…
Category: Big Questions
The long-term fate of Earth’s biosphere
Scientists modeled how Earth’s temperature and atmosphere will change over billions of years and predicted that plants and the life they…
Can melting ice increase glacial hazards?
Scientists determined the driving forces behind catastrophic events linked to glaciers in the Eastern Himalayas.
Testing local weather knowledge in the Bolivian Altiplano
Researchers compared traditional Aymara weather signs with decades of meteorological data and found that some local indicators are strongly…
What colors were prehistoric mammals?
Paleontologists used fossilized pigment cells to reconstruct the fur colors of Mesozoic mammals, shedding light on their nocturnal…
Predicting microbial antibiotic resistance with AI
Scientists used machine learning models to predict the prevalence of antibiotic resistance genes in agricultural soil under future climate…
The Sun’s twin star may have tilted the planets’ orbits
A scientist simulated the early solar system to determine how interactions between the Sun and other stars affected its planetary orbits.
Using seaweed to harvest valuable metals
Researchers demonstrated that blooms of the free-floating seaweed Sargassum can sustainably extract rare earth elements from water.
Industrial waste solidified a UK beach in just 35 years
Scientists analyzed the composition of mineral cements on a beach in Derwent Howe and found that furnace waste had rapidly solidified the…
Viruses help plants obtain nitrogen
Scientists discovered soil viruses that help legume plants convert atmospheric nitrogen into biologically available nutrients.