To learn more about life’s origins, scientists investigated some of the oldest remnants of crust on Earth—rocks 3.7 billion to 3.8 billion years old from Isua on the southwestern coast of Greenland.
The huge NASA rover speeding toward an August landing on Mars may be the most capable and complex Red Planet explorer ever launched, but it’s far from the first. The 1-ton Curiosity rover — which will search for evidence that Mars is, or ever was, capable of supporting microbial life — represents humanity’s 40th effort…
The hormone-disrupting chemical makes it hard for some fish to recognize their own species, a problem that could ripple throughout ecosystems.
Human and chimp brains look anatomically similar because both evolved from the same ancestor millions of years ago. But where does the chimp brain end and the human brain begin? A new UCLA study pinpoints uniquely human patterns of gene activity in the brain that could shed light on how we evolved differently than our…
Shellfish respond to increasing acidification in seawater – such as that produced by climate change – by producing lighter, thinner shells. As more and more carbon dioxide is generated by human beings, it becomes dissolved in the oceans, making them more acidic. And according to British, Australian and Singaporean scientists, this is affecting the size…
Mixing it up helps birds ensure that their songs are heard no matter what the habitat, say researchers at Australian National University and the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center. When the researchers combined acoustical data with temperature and precipitation records and other information such as habitat and latitude, they found a surprising pattern — males that…
There are big things happening with the Big History Project, an educational initiative started by Bill Gates to create a free online course for high school students.