3+ hour, 3+ min ago  (387+ words) For centuries, the question of what makes something "alive" has fascinated philosophers and scientists alike. Energy use, growth, reproduction, and development are hallmarks of life, but until now, these processes have been observed only in natural organisms. The idea of…...

1+ day, 1+ hour ago  (228+ words) Bats have long been portrayed as mysterious creatures of the night: their silent flight and secret habits have inspired myth and art for centuries. However, the actual complexity of their behavioral ecology has only recently begun to be uncovered by…...

1+ day, 22+ hour ago  (563+ words) For nearly fifty years, scientists have known that malaria parasites slip into human red blood cells through a fleeting ring-shaped structure called the moving junction. The structure appears, does its job, and vanishes in under a minute, too fast for…...

2+ day, 1+ hour ago  (384+ words) The Soviet PFM-1, also known as the butterfly mine for its winged shape, was designed with chilling precision. Dropped from aircraft, it flutters to the ground like a maple seed, small enough to evade detection and cruelly engineered to maim…...

2+ day, 4+ hour ago  (198+ words) Recently, condensed matter physicists have been pushing the boundaries of the Golden Rule restrictions on electron pairing. MIT Researchers have now reported a striking discovery in rhombohedral multilayer graphene: a new family of superconductors that thrive not in spite of…...

2+ day, 23+ hour ago  (446+ words) Now researchers at the SETI Institute have shown that the interplanetary medium, filled with millions of small atoms around distant stars, is a turbulent environment affected by stellar winds and strong quasi-static electromagnetic fields from coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which…...

3+ day, 5+ hour ago  (606+ words) The share of the world population living in cities with more than one million people rose from 11% in 1975 to 24% in 2025 (our estimates). Will most people end up living in large cities? This depends on whether large cities tend to grow…...

4+ day, 20+ hour ago  (528+ words) Drawing inspiration from the master architects of the natural world: termites, wasps, and honeycomb worms, scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder have developed a bio-inspired pathway to fabricate high-performance, 3 D-printed earthen structures. Inspired by nature, it is a versatile…...

6+ day, 49+ min ago  (495+ words) Gas giants orbiting stars similar to the Sun with periods between 20 and 300 days are uncommon in the universe. Scientists have long wondered how these mid-orbit giants form. Do they form close to their stars, or do they start far away…...

6+ day, 4+ hour ago  (828+ words) The image is not just a spectacle. It is a scientific tool, a map of crowded starlight where astronomers hunt for planets using one of the most subtle tricks in astrophysics: microlensing. Euclid's visible-light camera rivals the sharpness of Hubble's…...