Astronomers have spotted what appears to be a core of dark matter left behind from a wreck between massive clusters of galaxies. The result could challenge current theories about dark matter and how it behaves.
Loneliness can send a person down a path toward bad health, and even more intense loneliness, studies have shown. But while some have assumed the culprit was a dearth of others to remind a person to take care of himself or herself, new research suggests there’s a direct biological link between being lonely and ill…
The SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute is asking the public to join in its hunt for signals from intelligent civilizations out there in the universe. Anyone can register on the new website, SETI Live, to help analyze data from SETI’s radio telescope devoted to scanning the heavens for signals from E.T. The public will…
Some Scandinavian trees survived the last Ice Age, challenging a widely held notion that they were killed off by the huge ice sheet that covered the region. Modern trees in Scandinavia were thought to descend from species that migrated north when the ice melted 9,000 years ago, but research suggests some conifers survived on mountain…
Fossil hunters investigating the floor of a 385 million-year-old forest in an excavated upstate New York quarry found evidence of a complex ecosystem teeming with plant life. The journal Nature reported that excavation of the quarry in 2010 allowed researchers to study an intact portion of the forest floor complete with root systems. William Stein,…
Physicists have taken a step forward in their efforts to understand why the Universe is dominated by matter, and not its shadowy opposite antimatter. Physicists think the intense heat of the Big Bang should have forged equal amounts of matter and its “mirror image” antimatter. Yet today we live in a Universe composed overwhelmingly of…
Astronomers have managed to detect the telltale fingerprints of organic life on Earth using a new technique that examines sunlight reflected onto the moon by our planet. The so-called “earthshine” observations may pave the way for a similar tool to help spot signs of alien life in the universe, scientists say. While the existence of…
The world’s first asteroid sample return mission is providing some stunning insights to the evolution of the primordial pieces of rock floating around in our solar system. But far from asteroids being quiet, peaceful objects drifting through space, analysis of the tiny dust samples from the surface of near-Earth asteroid Itokawa has shown they are…
The 5,300-year-old Iceman had brown eyes, Lyme disease and modern-day Mediterranean relatives
Calling cassava “the Rambo of food crops,” scientists said the long-neglected root becomes even more productive in hotter temperatures and could be the best bet for African farmers threatened by climate change. Cassava is the second most important source of carbohydrate in sub-Saharan African, after maize, and is eaten by around 500 million people every…