Isaac Schultz

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

What Does Mars Sound Like? The Perseverance Rover Is Going to Find Out

Nothing on the hills seems to be alive, so the rocky terrain of Mars will be filled with the sounds of solitude when the NASA’s Perseverance rover lands in Jezero Crater next month. One of the rover’s many tasks will be listening to the Martian environment with microphones—the first effort at acoustic data collection made … Continued

ScienceBiology

At Long Last, Paleontologists Scrutinize a Dinosaur Cloaca

Despite the huge number of dinosaur fossils found, from bones to feathers, precious little exists in the fossil record to explain dinosaur defecation, urination, or copulation. Thankfully, all three occasions happened in one place, and researchers have now achieved the first comprehensive look at the preserved exterior of a dinosaur cloaca. This particular cloaca was … Continued

SciencePhysics & Chemistry

A Prime Suspect for Dark Matter Might Be Escaping From Neutron Stars

After axions were first theorized by physicists in the suburbs of Chicago 45 years ago, they quickly became a robust candidate for explaining dark matter. All this time, though, the ultra-small particles have remained hypothetical. Now, a team of astrophysicists have proposed that axions may be responsible for an excess of X-ray emissions seen coming … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

This Black Hole Is Really Taking Its Time Eating a Poor Star

On November 14, 2014, a telescope spotted a burst of light in a galaxy 570 million light-years away. It was thought to be a supernova, an arrestingly bright explosion that marks a star’s death. This week, astronomers revealed that the burst was not a supernova after all, but rather a black hole having dinner—one of … Continued

SciencePhysics & Chemistry

Astronomers Detected Gravitational Waves. Now They Want to See the Cosmic Ocean

Using a signal from dozens of rapidly spinning, dead stars, astrophysicists have gotten closer to realizing their goal of detecting a background rumble of gravitational waves in the universe. When the existence of gravitational waves was confirmed in 2016, a new field of astrophysical research opened up. Two black holes collided, sending out a ripple … Continued

ScienceBiology

Tasmanian Tigers and Wolves Evolved Uncannily Similar Skulls

The extinct thylacine had the stripes of a tiger, the body of a canid, and the pouch of a kangaroo. These ill-fated, predatory marsupials are a classic example of convergent evolution, in which species independently evolve the same traits, and a new study breaks down just how remarkably similar Tasmanian tigers’ skulls were to those … Continued

ScienceBiology

Newborn Megalodons Were Larger Than Adult Humans and Probably Ate Their Siblings

Picture this: It’s about 20 million years ago, and you’re inside the giant womb of an extremely pregnant Otodus megalodon. Everything’s hunky-dory—some baby sharks have already hatched, and others are on the way. But before any more of those egg-bound brethren can emerge, one of the baby sharks wriggles over and gobbles them up. That … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Meteorites From the Beginning of the Solar System May Have Carried Water Quite Recently

Meteorites that formed in the earliest days of the solar system may contain liquid water, according to new research, lending credence to the theory that meteorites brought water and other precursors for life to our planet billions of years ago. Carbonaceous chondrites are a special group of meteorites that trace their origins back to the … Continued

ScienceBiology

Researchers Take Another Look at Platypus DNA, and Yup, Still Weird

Waddling, wriggling, ambling, digging, laying eggs. There’s no shortage of verbiage when it comes to describing monotremata—the taxonomic order made up of only two animals, the platypus and the echidna. Rattling off the numerous weird traits of these creatures is trope in news coverage—and it’s near impossible to avoid, since they are mammals that lay … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Physicists Are Looking for Dark Matter in Tiny, Ancient Black Holes

On the night of November 23, 2014, a powerful telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii was trying to pick out the enigmatic movements of a black hole traveling through space. In the seven hours the telescope peered at the cosmos, it may have caught one, as a structure about the size of Earth eclipsed a … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Astronomers Calculate Universe’s Age With Atacama Desert Telescope

High up in Chile’s Atacama Desert, miles away from the dull glow of light pollution, the secluded Atacama Cosmology Telescope is in prime position to search the sky for answers. The question most recently on its mind? The age of the universe, a cosmic quandary that can be answered in different ways, depending on how … Continued

ScienceHuman History

Iron Age Settlement With Large Roundhouses and Roman Trinkets Found in the UK

Over the course of 2020, a patchwork of circles were dug out from below the topsoil of Tye Green, Cressing in England. The circles—each a ring of polygonal depressions—were the footprints of large structures, all that remained of a settlement that began in the late Iron Age and lasted through the Roman conquest of Britain. … Continued

Tech News

Meet the Pint-Sized Robots That Spontaneously Dance

In January 2020, a second-floor lab at Northwestern University was filled with the mild-mannered clacking of three robots pushing each other around. The trio were in a small ring as they hit against one another, though the petite robots weren’t the rock ‘em, sock ‘em variety. These were smart, active particles—“smarticles”—outfitted with two paddle-like flaps … Continued

ScienceHuman History

2,000-Year-Old Food Just Came Out of a Pompeii Snack Bar

Before its demise at the explosive hands of Mt. Vesuvius, Pompeii was a bustling town with a strong agricultural economy and an appetite to match. Painted scenes and archaeological remains have long hinted at the diets of its doomed residents. On Saturday, the Pompeii Archaeological Park announced the excavation of one of the town’s thermopolium, … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

A Huge Jet of Radiation From the Early Universe Has Been Spotted

When the universe was a fledgling billion years old, a galaxy spewed a ginormous, fast-moving jet of radiation and plasma into the cosmos. Nearly 13 billion years later, that jet is visible to humans in the form of a blazar. The jet was recently imaged and analyzed by a team of Italian astronomers. Their findings, which … Continued

ScienceHuman History

Archaeologists Find Evidence That a Massive Tsunami Hit Ancient Levantine Coast

When Gilad Shtienberg began digging on an Israeli beach in August 2018, the last thing he expected to find were seashells. Boring some 30 feet below the sandy surface, Shtienberg, a geomorphologist at the Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology in California, was excavating a doorknob-shaped cove called the Bay of Dor. Nearly 10,000 years ago, … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Scientists Find a Meteorite That Could Reshape Our Understanding of Asteroids

Scientists have released an analysis of a meteorite fragment gathered after a 2008 asteroid near-collision with Earth. They show the parent asteroid was huge, and the results suggest that special, water-holding type of asteroids can be larger and have different mineral compositions than previously thought. The study’s findings were published this week in the journal … Continued