It usually takes two snakes — a female and a male — to make a litter of baby copperheads. But research now shows that copperheads and their venomous cousins cottonmouths don’t always require a partner to establish the next generation. These vipers are capable of virgin births. For some vertebrates, parthenogenesis — asexual reproduction in…
Dark energy, a mysterious substance thought to be speeding up the expansion of the Universe is really there, according to a team of astronomers at the University of Portsmouth and LMU University Munich. After a two-year study led by Tommaso Giannantonio and Robert Crittenden, the scientists conclude that the likelihood of its existence stands at…
How many scientists does it take to author a study on the Higgs boson particle? Around 6,000. Two articles by the teams at CERN, about 30 pages each, include 19 pages of single-spaced text with roughly 6,000 names of researchers who peer-reviewed the results of the experiments, making the discovery of the elusive God particle…
Rocks are phenomenal time keepers. Their composition, shape, and age can make an otherwise barren environment reveal its secrets. On Mars, rocks are front and center in the ongoing quest to uncover the planet’s history and find evidence of past life. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to send men to Mars yet; men with their…
A toddler’s “slave footprint” – how much forced labor in the global human trafficking economy is used to produce all her “stuff” – can be calculated on a new human trafficking website. And the results can surprise parents. It turns out that many of the toys and baby products that fill American family homes are…
In 1967, the United States joined the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union in signing the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies. The agreement, more casually known as the “Outer Space Treaty,” remains the closest thing the world…
Biology is making it clearer by the day that a man’s health and well-being have a measurable impact on his future children’s health and happiness. This is not because a strong, resilient man has a greater likelihood of being a fabulous dad — or not only for that reason — or because he’s probably got…
Priceless or worthless? That’s the question posed in a new report that lists the 100 most endangered animals, plants and fungi around the globe, as chosen by 8,000 experts for the Zoological Society of London and the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The question was raised because the species closest extinction don’t have an…
Biologists have discovered that the Pollia condensata fruit does not get its blue color from pigment but instead uses structural color – a method of reflecting light of particular wavelengths. Most colors around us are the result of pigments. However, a few examples in nature – including the peacock, the scarab beetle and now the…
In the past decade, astronomers have observed clay materials on Mars that seem to indicate large bodies of water once filled the Martian surface. But new research suggests that magma could form some of these slick deposits rapidly, and ancient Mars may not have been as wet as we thought. A region of French Polynesia…