All Stories by Emily Conover
- Space
Spin in this Milky Way bar may show cosmic dark matter does exist
A method akin to studying a tree’s rings reveals the timeline of a slowdown in those stars at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy.
- Animals
Birds could get their sense of direction from quantum physics
Songbirds could detect north and south using a protein in their eye. It works somewhat like a compass.
- Physics
Nuclear clocks are nearly here
More precise clocks could improve technologies such as GPS and help scientists test major ideas in science.
- Space
Light from space has record-breaking energy
Hundreds of newly detected gamma rays hint at environments in the cosmos that accelerate particles to energy extremes.
- Materials Science
‘Smart’ pasta morphs into fun shapes as it cooks
The trick to this shape-shifting are grooves cut into the raw pasta. Those grooves affect how the noodles swell as they cook.
- Space
Here’s why people picked certain stars as constellations
Patterns of human eye movement help explain why particular sets of stars form iconic shapes, a high school student showed.
- Chemistry
Extreme pressure? Diamonds can take it
Diamond retains its structure even at extreme pressures, which could reveal how carbon behaves in the cores of some exoplanets.
- Tech
A robot made with a Venus flytrap can grab fragile objects
Scientists have “borrowed” the hair-trigger leaves of Venus flytraps to make a gentle grabber that can be controlled by a cellphone app.
- Physics
2020 Physics Nobel goes for delving into black holes
Although Einstein’s general theory of relative suggested black holes might exist, this year’s winner’s helped show they actually are out there.
- Physics
The exotic ‘atom’ positronium surprises scientists
New measurements of a weird but simple atom, one without a nucleus, suggest it may have unexpected properties. Scientists find this troubling.
- Physics
Could ripples in spacetime point to wormholes?
A new calculation reveals that strange gravitational waves detected by LIGO and Virgo could see if a black hole were falling into a hypothetical tunnel in spacetime.
- Physics
Flying snakes wriggle their way through the air
Flying snakes go tens of meters (yards) without wings. They do it by undulating back and forth and up and down, a new study shows.
