They are beautiful, otherworldly, full of secrets, and can kill you. It takes bravery and special training to venture into the hydrogen sulfide atmosphere of the Bahama caves known as inland blue holes. Those who dare are looking for the chemistry of how our earth supports evolving life.
Scientists at the University of Arizona have created mosquitoes that are completely safe from the parasite that causes malaria. It does so by reducing the lifespan of the engineered mosquitoes. Most mosquitoes live only two to three weeks, but the parasite needs twelve to sixteen days to develop inside a mosquito. Consequently, these mosquitoes don’t live long enough to become dangerous.
Scientists used geographic modeling software to come up with a realistic answer to an unrealistic question: what would happen if the earth ceased its rotation? If earth ceased rotating about its axis but continued revolving around the sun and its axis of rotation maintained the same inclination, the length of a year would remain the same, but a day would last as long as a year.
Scientists have unveiled fossils from west Africa that push back the dawn of multicellular life on Earth by at least 1.5 billion years. Just how complex the newly discovered organisms are is sure to be hotly debated. But there can be no doubt that the creatures unearthed from the hills of Gabon, visible to the naked eye, have upended standard evolutionary timelines.
Scientists have successfully reintroduced giant tortoises to a Galápagos island where the species once teetered on extinction, raising conservation hopes for the rest of the archipelago.
This time-lapse video was recorded during six hours at the Enoshima Aquarium in Fujisawa, Japan. It shows a Japanese spider crab shedding its shell. The crab measures over twelve feet across.
Diverting the Mississippi River could protect Louisiana's coasts against some of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, scientists say. By shifting some of the Mississippi's flow from its southernmost branch, the Atchafalaya River, to the Mississippi's main river body could create a strong current of fresh water that would act as a barrier against the oil.
In nature, most animals have little or no contact with their biological fathers, but humans do and we certainly aren’t alone. In celebration of all the great dads of our readers and the great dad readers, here’s a collection of some of the best animal fathers around in no particular order.
Here on land, we undertake great engineering projects to get rid of biological waste from cities and livestock farms. What about the sea, where huge animals produce a lot of it? It turns out that whales have the ability to offset greenhouse gasses with their poop!
Scientists at the International Polar Year conference in Norway this week revealed startling new images of the Gamburtsev Mountain Range of Antarctica, a huge and mysterious “ghost range” buried beneath more than a mile of ice.
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