A total solar eclipse shines a light on the sun’s elusive atmosphere. When the moon blocks the sun, it’s finally possible to see how this diffuse cloud of plasma, called the corona, is magnetically sculpted into beautiful loops. The material there is about a trillionth the density of the solar surface. From its delicate and ... Read more
Horses can leap over high hurdles, gallop at speeds of up to 70 kilometers per hour and haul around up to nearly 1,000 kilograms of body weight — and all with just one big toe on each foot. Now, a new study published August 23 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B helps explain why: ... Read more
The brain chemical missing in Parkinson’s disease may have a hand in its own death. Dopamine, the neurotransmitter that helps keep body movements fluid, can kick off a toxic chain reaction that ultimately kills the nerve cells that make it, a new study suggests. By studying lab dishes of human nerve cells, or neurons, derived ... Read more
When it comes to some oddball fish, looks can be deceiving. Polypterus, today found only in Africa, and its close kin have generally been considered some of the most primitive ray-finned fishes alive, thanks in part to skeletal features that resemble those on some ancient fish. Now a new analysis of fish fossils of an ... Read more
The largest marsupial to ever walk the Earth just got another accolade: It’s also the only marsupial known to migrate seasonally. Diprotodon optatum was a massive wombat-like herbivore that lived in what’s now Australia and New Guinea during the Pleistocene, until about 40,000 years ago. Now, an analysis of one animal’s teeth suggests that it ... Read more
Pluto has no rings — New Horizons triple-checked. An exhaustive search for rings and dust particles around the dwarf planet before, during and after the spacecraft flew past Pluto in 2015 has come up empty. “It’s a very long paper to say we didn’t find anything,” says team member Tod Lauer of the analysis, posted ... Read more
Astronomers may have just spotted the first asteroid caught visiting the solar system from another star. The Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii discovered the object, initially dubbed A/2017 U1 and later named ‘Oumuamua, on October 18. More observations from other telescopes around the world suggest the object’s trajectory is at an unusually steep angle to ... Read more
Bit by qubit, scientists are edging closer to the realm where quantum computers will reign supreme. IBM is testing a prototype quantum processor with 50 quantum bits, or qubits, the company announced November 10. That’s about the number needed to meet a sought-after milestone: demonstrating that quantum computers can perform specific tasks that are beyond ... Read more
Bit by qubit, scientists are edging closer to the realm where quantum computers will reign supreme. IBM is now testing a prototype quantum processor with 50 quantum bits, or qubits, the company announced November 10. That’s around the number needed to meet a sought-after milestone: demonstrating that quantum computers can perform specific tasks that are ... Read more
What looks like a spider, but with a segmented rear plus a long spike of a tail, has turned up in amber that’s about 100 million years old. Roughly the size of a peppercorn (not including the tail, which stretches several times the body length), this newly described extinct species lived in forests in what ... Read more