For nearly 650 years, the fortress walls in the Chinese city of Xi’an have served as a formidable barrier around the central city. At 12 meters high and up to 18 meters thick, they are impervious to almost everything — except subatomic particles called muons. Now, thanks to their penetrating abilities, muons may be key […]

Today’s red jungle fowl — the wild forebears of the domesticated chicken — are becoming more chickenlike. New research suggests that a large proportion of the wild fowl’s DNA has been inherited from chickens, and relatively recently. Ongoing interbreeding between the two birds may threaten wild jungle fowl populations’ future, and even hobble humans’ ability […]

The worst procrastinators probably won’t be able to read this story. It’ll remind them of what they’re trying to avoid, psychologist Piers Steel says. Maybe they’re dragging their feet going to the gym. Maybe they haven’t gotten around to their New Year’s resolutions. Maybe they’re waiting just one more day to study for that test. […]

Supercooled water is two of a kind, a new study shows. Scientists have long suspected that water at subfreezing temperatures comes in two distinct varieties: a high-density liquid that appears at very high pressures and a low-density liquid at lower pressures. Now, ultrafast measurements have caught water morphing from one type of liquid to the […]

2022 was the year many people decided the coronavirus pandemic had ended. President Joe Biden said as much in an interview with 60 Minutes in September. “The pandemic is over,” he said while strolling around the Detroit Auto Show. “We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lot of work on it. […]

A group at the National Bureau of Standards at B­oulder, Colo., now reports an extremely accurate [speed of light] measurement using the wavelength and frequency of a helium-neon laser.… The result gives the speed of light as 299,792.4562 kilometers per second. UpdateThat 1972 experiment measured the two-way speed of light, or the average speed of […]

Some immune defenses of the brain may have their roots in the gut. A new study in mice finds that immune cells are first trained in the gut to recognize and launch attacks on pathogens, and then migrate to the brain’s surface to protect it, researchers report online November 4 in Nature. These cells were […]

It’s official: 2020 now has the most named storms ever recorded in the Atlantic in a single year. On November 9, a tropical disturbance brewing in the northeastern Atlantic Ocean gained enough strength to become a subtropical storm. With that, Theta became the year’s 29th named storm, topping the 28 that formed in 2005. With […]

Mystery mummies from Central Asia have a surprising ancestry. These people, who displayed facial characteristics suggesting a European heritage, belonged to a local population with ancient Asian roots, a new study finds. Until now, researchers had pegged the mummified Bronze Age bunch as newcomers and debated about where in West Asia they originally came from. […]

One of the hottest names in college football coaching searches is officially off the market. Penn State's James Franklin agreed to a deal Tuesday that will keep him at the school for the next 10 years, until 2031. Franklin is in his eighth season leading the Nittany Lions.Franklin had been linked to numerous open coaching […]