Invasive mosquito fish are often fearless. Free from the predators of their native range, these mosquito fish run rampant, throwing naive ecosystems from Europe to Australia out of whack. To keep the problematic fish in check, scientists are trying to strike fear back into the hearts of these swimmers with a high-tech tool: robots. In…
The demise of a West Antarctic glacier poses the world’s biggest threat to raise sea levels before 2100 — and an ice shelf that’s holding it back from the sea could collapse within three to five years, scientists reported December 13 at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting in New Orleans. Thwaites Glacier is “one…
Tropical forests are disappearing at an alarming clip across the globe. As lush land is cleared for agriculture, climate-warming carbon gets released and biodiversity declines. But when farmland is left alone, nature can make a surprisingly quick comeback. After just 20 years, forests can recover by nearly 80 percent in certain key areas, including biodiversity and…
Wildfire smoke and urban air pollution bring out the worst in each other. As wildfires rage, they transform their burned fuel into a complex chemical cocktail of smoke. Many of these airborne compounds, including ozone, cause air quality to plummet as wind carries the smoldering haze over cities. But exactly how — and to what…
An elusive form of matter called a quantum spin liquid isn’t a liquid, and it doesn’t spin — but it sure is quantum. Predicted nearly 50 years ago, quantum spin liquids have long evaded definitive detection in the laboratory. But now, a lattice of ultracold atoms held in place with lasers has shown hallmarks of…
From teeny hummingbirds to giant whooping cranes, roughly half of the world’s more than 10,000 bird species migrate. Longer wings and beefed-up flying muscles often help these birds crisscross vast expanses of air. But a study of nearly all bird species suggests many migrators share another unexpected flight aid: lighter-colored feathers. Being a tad more…
In a remote corner of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, researchers have spent decades catching and measuring birds in a large swath of forest unmarred by roads or deforestation. An exemplar of the Amazon’s dazzling diversity, the experimental plot was to act as a baseline that would reveal how habitat fragmentation, from logging or roads, can hollow…
When it comes to knowing what actually lies deep inside the Earth, diamonds are a geologist’s best friend. A tiny bit of rock trapped inside a diamond is now opening a brand-new window into what the planet’s lower mantle looks like. Inside the diamond is a newly identified silicate mineral dubbed davemaoite that can only…
From the maw of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87, two enormous jets stream thousands of light-years into space. Scientists still don’t fully understand the physics behind the jets, which are made of a mix of electrically charged particles, or plasma (SN: 3/24/21). But they are “really, really amazing,” says…
The Dawn of EverythingDavid Graeber and David WengrowFarrar, Straus and Giroux, $35 Concerns abound about what’s gone wrong in modern societies. Many scholars explain growing gaps between the haves and the have-nots as partly a by-product of living in dense, urban populations. The bigger the crowd, from this perspective, the more we need power brokers…
Hermit crabs have been taking shelter in abandoned shells for millions of years, but scientists now have evidence suggesting that the “hermit” lifestyle has existed far longer than that. Besides hermit crabs, a few modern-day species of crustaceans and worms inhabit the cast-off shells of other marine creatures, mostly for protection against predators, says Martin…
Global temperatures are rising and so, it seems, is part of the sky. Atmosphere readings collected by weather balloons in the Northern Hemisphere over the last 40 years reveal that climate change is pushing the upper boundary of the troposphere — the slice of sky closest to the ground — steadily upward at a rate…