Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) use their internal clock and the sun to guide them 4,000 kilometers south on their annual fall migration from eastern North America to central Mexico. Scientists have struggled to determine how butterfly brains combine visual cues from the sun with molecular timekeeping in their antennae to make the epic journey. A […]
An X-ray space telescope that went silent last month has been officially declared dead. The Japanese space agency, JAXA, announced April 28 that it has stopped trying to communicate with the orbiting observatory ASTRO-H (aka Hitomi) and will now focus on figuring out what went wrong. ASTRO-H launched on February 17 and seemed to be […]
Fossil discoveries in southern China point to an evolutionary crossroads around 34 million years ago that resulted in humans evolving in Africa rather than Asia, scientists say. A sharply cooler and drier climate at that time, combined with upheavals of landmasses that forged the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau, destroyed many tropical forests in Asia. […]
Turns out, it is possible to be a lucky snakebite victim. Depending on the circumstances (and the snake’s mood, presumably), a timber rattlesnake may choose to strike its prey with only one fang and to pump out little or no venom when it does so. Far from being mindless, hair-triggered biting machines, timber rattlers don’t […]
SALT LAKE CITY— A literal moonshot just might reveal the thickness of Europa’s icy crust. A new plan to launch an SUV-sized rocket canister at Jupiter’s famous, frigid moon could shake the surface so much that the tremors would be visible from space, said mechanical engineer T.J. Campbell of the Catholic University of America in […]
SALT LAKE CITY — In the Indian Ocean off the coast of Sri Lanka, pygmy blue whales are changing their tune — and they might be doing it on purpose. From 2002 to 2012, the frequency of one part of the whales’ calls steadily fell, marine bioacoustician Jennifer Miksis-Olds reported May 25 at a meeting […]
Gun debate cross fireIn “Misfires in the gun control debate” (SN: 5/14/16, p. 16), Meghan Rosen reported on the roadblocks researchers face in collecting informative data on gun violence in the United States. Readers responded passionately, expressing many different viewpoints about the story and the controversial topic of gun control. “I thought Ms. Rosen’s article […]
Jupiter has a new visitor. After traveling 2.8 billion kilometers across space, NASA’s Juno probe — a mission to investigate Jupiter’s deep interior (SN: 6/25/16, p. 16) — arrived at the giant planet July 4. Juno’s scientific instruments were switched off on June 29 before the probe slid into its first of 37 orbits, so […]
Microscope work may have solved the puzzle of Asian snails’ “useless” snorkels. The small Alycaeidae land snails of Asia grow what looks like a tiny breathing tube curling partway along the outside of their shells. Similar tubes let some other land snails breathe when a little blast-door operculum shuts the main opening of their shells. […]
To understand human longevity, look to the animal world, says James Carey, a biodemography specialist at the University of California, Davis. Studying other species, from insects to elephants, “provides important information for why we age and why we live as long as we do,” Carey says. By looking at how long other organisms can live, […]