All Stories by Maria Temming
- Chemistry
New recycling technologies could keep more plastic out of landfills
Recycling plastics is really hard — especially into useful materials. But new chemical tricks could make recycling easier.
- Earth
Rock rising from below the Atlantic may drive continents apart
Molten rock rising from the deep mantle at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge may drive plate tectonics there more than had been expected.
- Archaeology
Unusual mud shell covers an Egyptian mummy
In ancient Egypt, commoners may have been mummified and then encased in mud to repair damage to the body or to imitate royal techniques used with royals.
- Climate
2020 was warmest year on record for Earth’s oceans
2020 continued the trend of record-breaking heat for the world’s oceans. The three previous warmest years on record were 2019, 2017 and 2018.
- Earth
Space station sensors saw how weird ‘blue jet’ lightning forms
A mysterious type of lightning in the upper atmosphere has been traced to a brief, bright flash of light at the top of a storm cloud.
- Animals
Newfound technique allows some tree snakes to climb wide trees
When a tree is too wide to climb, brown tree snakes use a lasso-like trick to slowly ascend up to snacks.
- Physics
Physicists have clocked the shortest time span ever
The experiment revealed how long it takes light to cross a hydrogen molecule: just a couple hundred zeptoseconds.
- Chemistry
A new catalyst turns greenhouse gas into jet fuel
The catalyst is an improvement over its predecessors. Made of cheap materials like iron, it produces jet fuel in a single step.
- Space
Why Arecibo’s loss is such a big deal for astronomy
Damage to the radio telescope in Puerto Rico has robbed scientists of a special tool for studying everything from asteroids to galaxies.
- Space
Jupiter may have ‘sprites’ or ‘elves’ in its atmosphere
This is the first time that scientists have seen hints of these weird side effects of lightning storms somewhere other than on Earth.
- Space
There’s water on sunny parts of the moon, scientists confirm
The new observations were made by a telescope on board a jet in Earth’s atmosphere. They confirm the presence of water on sunlit areas of the moon.
- Animals
The diabolical ironclad beetle is nearly unsquishable
The diabolical ironclad beetle is an incredibly tough little creature. A peek inside its exoskeleton reveals what makes it virtually uncrushable.
