Wavelike patterns in 115-million-year-old amber suggest that a long-ago tsunami inundated what is now northern Japan, researchers report May 15 in Scientific Reports. Tsunamis can be destructive and, to anything …
Astronomers have found a giant interstellar cloud surprisingly close to Earth. Lurking about 300 light-years from our solar system, this immense cloud of gas and dust is the closest of …
A potential dark galaxy — one made primarily of dark matter — may have been spotted in the local universe. Dark galaxies are theoretical, starless systems whose discovery could help …
For wounded chimpanzees, help sometimes comes in the form of first aid — care rendered not by humans but by other chimps. New research reveals the nature and prevalence of …
The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79 is perhaps most famous for entombing the Roman city of Pompeii. But in nearby Herculaneum, also buried in the eruption, the preserved …
Add a little-known species of assassin bugs to the list of animals that can fashion and wield tools. And true to their name, the insects use that tool to draw …
After 35 years, the Hubble Space Telescope is still churning out hits. In just the last year or so, scientists have used the school bus–sized observatory to confirm the first …
A strange type of ice thought to dwell deep in the oceans of alien planets has finally been proven to exist. For the first time, researchers have directly observed a …
Sprinklings of life appear key to the recipe for rain. Lofted flecks of organic material like bacteria, pollen and fungal spores play a profound role in regulating rainfall patterns, a …
Ancient oxygen-making microbes may have oxygenated large swaths of Earth’s seafloor hundreds of millions of years before the element filled the atmosphere. Geochemical analysis of sediments deposited roughly 2.6 billion …