All Stories
- Animals
King cobras may be riding trains across India [COMIC]
The snakes may be tempted onboard by tasty rodents — but train rides can carry cobras far from their forest habitats.
- Earth
Scientists Say: Subsidence
This word describes land that sinks after water, minerals, oil or other materials are removed below ground.
- Animals
Chatty cats and talking dogs could one day ‘speak’ in our language
Scientists are making advances in decoding animal sounds. That might someday make animal translators a possibility.
- Archaeology
The mystery of the ‘Plain of Jars’ in Laos may now be solved
The remains of at least 37 people sit in an ancient stone “jar.” They suggest thousands of such jars in Laos are burial vaults.
- Oceans
Big waves shape this surfer-scientist’s research and life
Professor and pro surfer Cliff Kapono studies human-ocean interactions through the lens of a surfer, from molecular to macro scales.
- Physics
Physics explains why gold doesn’t ‘rust’
Metals like copper tarnish when they react with oxygen in the air. Gold doesn’t, thanks to a quick rearrangement of atoms on its surface.
- Space
Scientists Say: Event horizon
Past this boundary, nothing that enters a black hole can ever leave — not even light.
- Microbes
Fuzzy microbes may fuel cows’ methane burps
Production of this potent greenhouse gas is triggered by a newfound feature of these microbes — one with a funny name: hydrogenobody.
- Physics
Trying to break a photon would create a quantum mess
Attempting to cut a light particle in half would spawn up to infinite new photons, a new model shows.
- Animals
Here’s how ‘singing’ mice belt out their tiny tunes
Balloon-like air sacs in the mice's throats create whistling songs. No other animal is known to make calls in this way.
- Earth
Earth’s crust under Africa is thinning in a way never seen before
Africa’s Turkana Rift Zone has been caught in the act of “necking" — a key point in breakup of continental crust.
- Agriculture
Scientists Say: Corn Sweat
Cornfields release moisture into the air — or “sweat” — a couple of ways. One is evaporation. The other is transpiration.
