Analyze This!
Exploring science through data, graphs, visualizations and more.
- Animals
Analyze This: How many insects are in the air?
Weather data have helped estimate the density of flying insects in U.S. skies. That could help track climate change’s impact on insects.
- Microbes
Analyze This: Which cells are the speediest?
The cellular Olympics would be an amazing spectacle. Some cells move at mind-boggling speeds by jumping, gliding, swimming, expanding or shrinking.
- Animals
Analyze This: Primates may have evolved in the cold
Scientists thought the ancestor of humans and apes lived in the tropics. A new study points to a chilly location instead for primate evolution.
- Space
Analyze This: What are the chances of an asteroid hitting Earth?
The odds of a big space rock striking the planet are higher than you might think. But don’t worry — asteroid strikes may be preventable.
- Chemistry
New materials yank ‘forever chemicals’ from water
Materials known as metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, trap some PFAS fast — and can be reused again and again.
- Animals
Analyze This: Some bats feast on songbirds midflight
Sensor data reveal greater noctule bats chasing, catching and chewing on birds during nighttime hunts.
- Space
Analyze This: Ice around baby stars may hint at origins of Earth’s water
Scientists have now gotten a good look at the ice around a baby star. It might help them unravel the origins of the water needed for life on Earth.
- Animals
Birds of paradise have a newly discovered glow
Many male birds of paradise have bellies, bills and other parts that glow under certain types of light. This special gleam may help them woo mates.
- Science & Society
Analyze This: Do bad childhoods make movie villains?
In DC and Marvel movies, a rough childhood doesn’t always mean that characters become villains.
- Animals
Analyze This: Moving frogs to new places helped an endangered species spread
Frogs resistant to a deadly fungus jump-started populations in these new areas.
- Animals
Analyze This: Why the fastest creatures are neither tiny or huge
The “Goldilocks zone” for fast animal speed seems to depend on a body not being too small or so big it gets in the way of its own strength.
- Earth
Analyze This: Smartphone data may help improve GPS
Data from millions of phones helped fill in maps of the ionosphere, an atmospheric layer that can muddle radio signals key for navigation systems.
