NASA’s Perseverance rover has bagged its first hint of ancient microbes on Mars. “We’re not able to say that this is a sign of life,” says Perseverance deputy project scientist Katie Stack Morgan of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif. “But this is the most compelling sample we’ve found yet.” The rover drilled up … Read more
Sometimes science fiction does inspire science research. À la Jurassic Park’s entombed mosquito, scientists have developed a method to store DNA in an amberlike material and still extract it easily hours later. This storage method is cheaper and faster than existing options, the researchers report in the June Journal of the American Chemical Society. If … Read more
Slimy heralds of hope are hopping around Yosemite National Park. Being a frog hasn’t been easy in the High Sierra or in many other places ever since a fungal parasite began exterminating frogs in the United States, Australia and Central America 30 or so years ago. But now some impacted species are beginning to recover … Read more
Reading people’s faces can literally give you a hint of how they are feeling on the inside. Mapping the face’s hot and cool spots can provide clues to a person’s biological age — that is, how fast their cells are aging — and even detect signs of chronic diseases as such as diabetes and high … Read more
A new look at decades-old data from the Apollo missions has uncovered evidence of tens of thousands of previously unrecognized moonquakes. The results could reveal details about the moon’s inner workings and could have implications for future human missions. “There were more tectonic events on the moon, it’s more tectonically active than considered before,” says … Read more
Brief blasts of light might make some materials into fleeting superconductors. A new study strengthens the case for this controversial claim, first made more than a decade ago. But while some physicists are convinced, others remain skeptical. Superconductors transmit electricity without resistance, typically only at low temperatures. But since 2011, some scientists have claimed that … Read more
Meteorologist Thea Sandmael watched the storm close in. It was near enough for her to spot a rotating dome of clouds emerging from its dark underbelly — the quickening of a tornado. By the time the spinning mass was 10 minutes away, Sandmael and her colleagues had shut down their radar instruments and evacuated their … Read more
Stonehenge had a hard Scottish heart, a new study suggests. The ancient site’s central stone, a large slab known as the Altar Stone, consists of rock transported at least 750 kilometers from northeastern Scotland to southern England, say geoscientist Anthony Clarke of Curtin University in Perth, Australia, and colleagues. An analysis of the age and … Read more
For millennia, humans have seen inexplicable things in the sky. Some have been beautiful, some have been terrifying, and some — like auroras and solar eclipses before they were understood scientifically — have been both. Today’s aircraft, balloons, drones, satellites and more only increase the chances of spotting something confounding overhead. In the United States, … Read more
To expand the periodic table, it might be time to go titanium. A new study lays the groundwork to expand the periodic table with a search for element 120, to be made by slamming electrically charged titanium atoms, or ions, into a californium target. If produced, the new element would have an atomic nucleus brimming … Read more