The moon’s orbit around Earth appears so regular that civilizations have based the month on lunar motion for thousands of years. However, the moon is actually creeping slowly away from Earth. So will Earth lose its moon at some point? Scientists determined the rate at which the moon is drifting away from Earth with help … Read more
Gravity can turn itself into light, but only if space-time behaves in just the right way, a research team has found. Under normal circumstances, you cannot get something from nothing. Specifically, the Standard Model of particle physics, the reigning theory that explains the subatomic zoo of particles, usually forbids the transformation of massless particles into … Read more
Human beings can generate false memories of events mere seconds after they have occurred, a new study has found. The phenomenon, which researchers have dubbed “short-term memory illusions,” shows how easily and rapidly humans reimagine experiences to fit our preconceptions, rather than accurately recording what takes place. The researchers published their findings April 5 in … Read more
From the creepiest Cambrian critters to massive marine reptiles, wonderfully weird sea creatures have inhabited our oceans for over half a billion years. We’ve put together a list of 25 of the strangest ancient sea monsters ever to have lived, all of which went extinct long before humans came along. The only reason we know … Read more
Scientists have long debated the greatest possible age of a person, with previous studies placing the limit at up to 150 years. But in the past 25 years, no one has surpassed the record for the world’s oldest person, held by Jean Louise Calment, who died at age 122 in 1997. “This has led people … Read more
A person’s native language may shape how their brain builds connections between different hubs of information processing, a new brain scan study reveals. The observed differences in these language network structures were related to linguistic characteristics in the native languages of the study participants: German and Arabic. “So the difference we find there shouldn’t be … Read more
Astronomers studying a remote baby star have found a “missing link” that could finally explain the origins of water on Earth, a new study suggests. By training a powerful radio telescope at V883 Orionis, a protostar 1,300 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Orion, astronomers have spotted gaseous water with a chemical composition close … Read more
