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A diver swims alongside the world’s largest coral colony, located in the Solomon Islands.

See Staggering Photos of the World’s Largest Coral, Newly Discovered by Scientists in the Pacific Ocean

The enormous organism is bigger than a blue whale and made up of millions of genetically identical, tiny animals called polyps

Pocket gophers are a type of burrowing rodent known for their extensive tunnels.

New Research

How a Team of Gophers Restored Mount St. Helens After Its Catastrophic Eruption With Less Than a Day of Digging

After the volcanic eruption of 1980, scientists released the burrowing rodents for only a brief time, but their activities left a remarkably enduring impact, according to a new study

The Super Hunter's Moon of October 2024 rises over a headland near Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia.

See the Full Beaver Moon on Friday, the Last Dazzling Supermoon of 2024

November’s spectacle closes out a series of four big and bright full moons that have captivated sky watchers since late summer

An artist's rendering of the X-37B conducting an aerobraking maneuver using the drag of Earth's atmosphere, with the bottom of the craft glowing red as it heats up.

The Secretive Spaceplane of the U.S. Space Force Conducts First-of-Its-Kind Maneuvers

Called aerobraking, the technique allows the highly classified craft to change orbit without using propellant—and some are wondering why the agency has let us in on this news

The Leonids sometimes produce fireballs, or unusually bright streaks of light that linger in the night sky. 

How to See the Stunning Leonid Meteor Shower This Weekend

Though the nearly full moon will likely outshine some of these speedy meteors, you may still be able to catch a glimpse of bright fireballs and low Earth-grazers

In 1986, Voyager 2 took this image of Uranus during its flyby.

New Research

Voyager 2 Measured a Rare Anomaly When It Flew Past Uranus, Skewing Our Knowledge of the Planet for 40 Years, Study Suggests

The roughly six-hour flyby in 1986 revealed Uranus’ protective magnetic field was strangely empty. Now, researchers say that the data could have been affected by a solar wind event

Screenshot from a video of the fireball reported to the American Meteor Society.

Watch a Starlink Satellite Plummet Through the Atmosphere in Videos Captured Last Weekend

The fireball—one of many decommissioned satellites from SpaceX’s internet service—was spotted by dozens of people across at least four states, and many mistook it for a meteor

A depiction of the 1833 Leonids, based on a first-person account of the 1833 storm by a minister, Joseph Harvey Waggoner, on his way from Florida to New Orleans.

On This Day in History

Americans Fell in Love With Science When the Breathtaking Leonid Meteor Shower Lit Up the Skies Across the Nation

In 1833, hundreds of thousands of shooting stars inspired songs, prophecies and a crowdsourced research paper on the origins of meteors

Mary, the 54-year-old Asian elephant at the Berlin Zoo, loves using a hose to rinse off.

These Elephants Can Use Hoses to Shower—and Even ‘Sabotage’ Each Other, Study Suggests

Mary, a 54-year-old Asian elephant at the Berlin Zoo, is the “queen of showering,” but her companion Anchali seems to have figured out how to exploit that habit to play pranks

This adult Partula tohiveana snail doesn't have a dot of UV-reflective paint on its shell, meaning it was born in the wild.

These Tiny Snails Are Breeding in the Wild for the First Time in 40 Years in French Polynesia

During a release of captive-bred snails in September, researchers discovered wild-born individuals from the Partula tohiveana species—which had been considered extinct in the wild—marking a huge milestone in a global effort to save them

Four plaster casts from the House of the Golden Bracelet were made in 1974.

New Research

DNA Evidence Is Rewriting the Stories of Victims Who Perished in Pompeii Nearly 2,000 Years Ago

A new study has shattered historians’ long-held assumptions about some of the people who died in Mount Vesuvius’ eruption in 79 C.E.

The penguin was malnourished after swimming thousands of miles from Antarctica.

Surfer Spots an Emperor Penguin on a Beach in Australia, Thousands of Miles From Its Antarctic Home

It’s not clear how the juvenile male ended up so far north, but experts suggest he was motivated by his appetite

Officials are trying to recapture more than 40 monkeys that escaped from a research facility in Yemassee, South Carolina.

Forty-Three Monkeys Are on the Loose in South Carolina After Escaping a Research Facility When a Door Was Left Unsecured

Once the first primate made a break, the 42 others followed suit in a simple case of monkey-see, monkey-do

The universe will die before chimpanzees have a chance to type the complete works of Shakespeare, researchers found.

Chimpanzees Could Never Randomly Type the Complete Works of Shakespeare, Study Finds

While testing the “infinite monkey theorem,” mathematicians found that the odds of a chimpanzee typing even a short phrase like “I chimp, therefore I am” before the death of the universe are 1 in 10 million billion billion

Researchers performed DNA testing on the bones highlighted in this image.

New Research

Archaeologists Are Bewildered by a Skeleton Made From the Bones of at Least Eight People Who Died Thousands of Years Apart

Found in a cremation cemetery in Belgium, the skeleton includes bones dating to the Neolithic period and a Roman-era skull, according to a new study

The beloved baby penguin Pesto is in his "awkward" phase, molting his downy feathers in favor of adult plumage.

See New Images of Pesto, Australia’s Enormous Baby Penguin, in His ‘Awkward Phase,’ Molting His Downy Feathers

The viral king penguin chick at Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium is beginning to lose his youthful down, a process that will give him his distinctive and waterproof adult plumage

This fragment of a terror bird’s left tibiotarsus, a lower leg bone in birds equivalent to that of a human tibia or shin bone, dates to around 12 million years ago during the Miocene epoch.

New Research

Rare ‘Terror Bird’ Fossil Found in Colombia Reveals the Enormous Size of a Prehistoric Predator

The bone, described two decades after its discovery, suggests the species might have grown up to 20 percent bigger than other terror birds

Cassius held the title of the largest crocodile in captivity for much of his life. His age? That's harder to know.

After the Death of Cassius, the World’s Largest Captive Crocodile, Scientists Are Trying to Solve the Mystery of His Age

The beloved reptile in Australia died last weekend and was thought to be up to 120 years old, though that age is only an estimate. Research on his bones might reveal a more exact number

Image captured by Juno during its 66th perijove, then further processed with color enhancement by Gerald Eichstädt and Thomas Thomopoulos.

Check Out the Stunning New Images of Jupiter From NASA’s Juno Spacecraft

On its 66th flyby of the king of planets, Juno has captured spectacular views of the stormy atmosphere, processed by citizen scientists

Vampire bats are the only mammals that feed solely on blood.

New Research

Watch Vampire Bats Run on a Tiny Treadmill to Shed Light on Their Blood-Fueled Metabolism

In a rare technique among mammals, the bats burn proteins from blood, rather than carbs or fat, to power their pursuits of prey, according to a new study

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