A flower’s ability to mimic the sexually attractive traits of pollinators to lure them to its nectar has long fascinated scientists. Flowers can’t buy glasses and a wig to create a disguise, so how...
Once more, we’re talking about the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. First the US Department of Energy’s review gave more emphasis to the laboratory leak hypothesis than previously, although the confidence...
An interstellar object that is currently on its long journey back out of our Solar System has a completely natural explanation, in spite of its odd quirks. The peculiar acceleration of ‘Oumuamua, new research...
The ghost, at long last, is actually in the machine: For the first time, scientists have created neutrinos in a particle collider. Those abundant yet enigmatic subatomic particles are so removed from the rest...
The secret behind the ghost catfish’s iridescent twinkle has been uncovered by a team of scientists. Kryptopterus vitreolus casts ethereal, flickering rainbows along its flanks when it shimmies through water. This eye-catching sheen within...
For billions of years, viruses and bacteria have been locked in a never-ending arm’s race, and it has caused one predator to evolve “a monster of a tail”. The unique bacteria-devouring virus, or bacteriophage,...
Walk through a maze of mirrors, you’ll soon come face to face with yourself. Your nose meets your nose, your fingertips touch at their phantom twins, stopped abruptly by a boundary of glass. Most...
Space probes designed to study the Sun are the last places you’d expect to have a moisture problem. Yet a recent investigation has found aluminum filters on two different satellites are degrading as water...
The spectacular, hexagonal shapes texturing salt deserts such as the Badwater Basin in Death Valley, California, and Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia have long mystified travelers and scientists alike. Considered by some to be...
Who would’ve thought a wrinkled-up, nearly blind sac of a mammal would be such a guru on ways to stay forever young? That pink and flabby-skinned rodent we fondly call the naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus...