Is our universe just one of many? The idea may sound a bit bizarre, but it could be a reality, scientists say.
Three billion years after inanimate chemistry first became animate life, a newly synthesized laboratory compound is behaving in uncannily lifelike ways. The particles aren’t truly alive — but they’re not far off, either. Exposed to light and fed by chemicals, they form crystals that move, break apart and form again. “There is a blurry frontier…
A new study finds that diaries and writings from ninth-century Baghdad provide insight regarding strange weather from the era, which could allow scientists to better understand the planet’s weather history. The surviving documents were written by historians and scholars during the Islamic Golden Age between A.D. 816 and A.D. 1009. They represent one of the…
What if factors other than climate, like the food available nearby or the viruses, bacteria, and parasites native to the area, had an effect on various human populations’ genetic toolkits? It’s a fascinating question, but, given that we have to reconstruct all this supposed evolution from the current state of modern genomes, finding an answer…
It’s another batch of newly discovered earth-like planets, according to NASA officials. U.S. space agency officials announced they have discovered another series of planets, the latest such planets to hit the space agency radar. The space agency said the latest discover reveals some of the smallest earth-like planets yet discovered. Space agency officials said the…
A nine-year study conducted in the Plum Island estuary indicates that sewage and fertilizers may be seriously damaging salt marshes. The study, published in the journal Nature, indicates salt marshes may be crumbling from the inside out, due to polluted waterways and runoff from people’s lawns. It’s a concern because the marshes are critical to…
Mindfulness meditation has been shown to give patients control over their own depression and anxiety levels and levels of chronic pain, according to a paper published earlier this month in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Previous studies have found that mindfulness meditation can cut the recurrence of depression by 50%, and neuroimaging scans have…