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Stories from Margherita Bassi

Ning Zeng and other researchers discovered this 3,775-year-old preserved log while conducting a wood vaulting pilot project in Quebec, Canada.

This 3,775-Year-Old Log May Hold the Secret to a Low-Cost Climate Solution

Researchers say burying wood could be a viable method to prevent carbon from reaching the atmosphere

View from the researchers' airplane flying over Japan

Scientists Have Found Bacteria and Fungi 10,000 Feet Up in the Air

The discovery has implications for human health, since the microbes included some that were still viable, some that could be infectious to humans and others that carried drug-resistant genes

Heart tissues within one of the launch-ready chambers

Heart Tissue Shows Signs of Aging After Just One Month in Space, Study Finds

Scientists sent bioengineered heart tissue samples to the ISS to study how to keep astronauts safe during future long-term space travel

An illustration of night parrots by Elizabeth Gould, completed in 1890.

Rare and Elusive Australian Bird, Once Thought Extinct for 100 Years, Discovered by Indigenous Rangers and Scientists

Using sound recordings, the team identified the largest known population of the night parrot, a secretive species known as the “Holy Grail of birdwatching”

A Bryde’s whale photographed in the Mariana Archipelago

Mysterious ‘Mechanical-Sounding’ Noise Near the Mariana Trench May Now Have an Explanation

An acoustic survey in 2018 and new analysis with A.I. suggest the sounds are vocalizations from the elusive Bryde’s whale

A cross section of a chambered nautilus shell shows the newly defined shape, the "soft cell," repeating outward in a spiral.

Mathematicians Discover a New Class of Shape: the ‘Soft Cell’

If the structures look familiar, it’s probably because nature has been using them for a long time in places like nautilus shells, zebra stripes and onions

The Horned Serpent Panel, painted by the San people in southern Africa, shows a mysterious creature's tusks in blue at the upper right.

Remarkable 200-Year-Old Rock Painting May Depict a Strange Animal That Went Extinct 250 Million Years Ago

The Horned Serpent Panel from southern Africa predates the first Western scientific description of the dicynodont, a large mammal ancestor with tusks, by at least a decade

This "everlasting" crystal contains the entire human genome, recorded using ultra-fast lasers, and is meant to instruct future species on how to create humans.

In Case Humans Go Extinct, This Memory Crystal Will Store Our Genome for Billions of Years

Scientists have created “a form of information immortality” meant to instruct future species on how to recreate humans. But who, or what, will find it?

An illustration of Earth with a ring.

Did Earth Once Have a Ring Like Saturn? Geologists Find Evidence for a Halo of Orbiting Space Rocks 466 Million Years Ago

A ring could explain a mysterious arrangement of impact craters near the equator and might even have caused an ice age, according to a new study

A vertebra fossil of an extinct dolphin species found at the site.

Construction Project Unearths Millions of Fossils Beneath a Los Angeles High School

The discoveries include sharks, shorebirds, mammals and saber-toothed salmon, with the oldest remains dating to almost nine million years ago

A view from the webcast of the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Ceremony.

Anus-Breathing Animals and Pigeon-Guided Missiles: Ig Nobel Prizes Reward Unusual but Valuable Science

The annual award ceremony featured costumes, songs and paper airplanes as scientists recognized comedic research across ten disciplines

A mountain in the Dickson Fjord after 33 million cubic yards of its rock and ice collapsed in a landslide.

A Mysterious Seismic Signal Lasted Nine Days Last Year. It Was a Mega-Tsunami Caused by Climate Change, Researchers Say

A melting glacier caused a mountain in Greenland to collapse into a narrow fjord, setting off an oscillating wave that rattled seismic detectors around the world

Jared Isaacman takes the first commercial spacewalk.

Astronauts Achieve First-Ever Private Spacewalk on Polaris Dawn Mission

This morning, tech billionaire Jared Isaacman opened the hatch on a SpaceX Dragon capsule in Earth orbit, as cheering erupted on a livestream

An artist’s concept of NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System spacecraft in Earth orbit.

How to Spot NASA’s Solar Sail Demonstration Streaking Through the Night Sky

Amateur astronomers can use NASA’s mobile app to find the ACS3 for themselves—a reflective satellite that could appear as bright as the star Sirius

Boeing Starliner's capsule Calypso deploys parachutes during its descent toward Earth late at night on September 6.

Boeing’s Starliner Lands Successfully, but Without Its Astronauts on Board

The troubled spacecraft conducted a “bull’s-eye landing,” but NASA officials still say they made the right decision to leave its astronauts on the ISS out of an abundance of caution

The remains of a house that was once submerged in the Mornos artificial lake in Greece, along with several other structures, have re-appeared after drought caused the water level to drop.

Drought Reveals a Sunken Village in Greece as a Reservoir Dries Up

After the country’s hottest June and July on record, a shrinking artificial lake has uncovered ruins of a school and other buildings that were submerged in the 1970s

Plastic pollution in Madagascar

Humans Pollute the Environment With 57 Million Tons of Plastic Each Year, Study Suggests

Scientists used A.I. to model local waste management in 50,000 municipalities worldwide and say the results suggest a need to improve access to waste collection systems

Catalina Sky Survey's images identifying Asteroid 2024 RW1.

An Asteroid Hit Earth’s Atmosphere Today—Here’s Why Astronomers Say That’s a Good Thing

Asteroid 2024 RW1 was discovered early this morning, marking the ninth time in history that humans have detected an approaching space rock before its impact

The woolly rhino horn discovered by miners.

Miners Unearth a Mummified Woolly Rhino in Siberia, With an Intact Horn and Soft Tissue

The rare discovery will help scientists find out more about the prehistoric animal’s development, diet and living conditions

The drill site on Guliya Glacier, where researchers obtained an ice core representing 41,000 years of history.

Experts Discover 1,700 Ancient Viruses in a Tibetan Glacier

Studying how the viruses, which do not infect humans, adapted to previous major temperature shifts could hold clues to how modern viruses will react to the current climate change

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