NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is about to embark on one daredevil stunt of a space mission. Slated to launch August 4, the probe will be the first spacecraft to swoop through the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, a roiling inferno of plasma heated to several million degrees Celsius. Parker will whip around the sun two dozen […]

Despite mainstream opposition, a controversial comet impact hypothesis persists Around 13,000 years ago, Earth was emerging from its last great ice age. The vast frozen sheets that had covered much of North America, Europe and Asia for thousands of years were retreating. Giant mammals — steppe bison, woolly mammoths and saber-toothed cats — grazed or […]

Given the choice of taking a pill or injecting oneself with a needle, most of us would opt to regulate a chronic health condition by swallowing a pill. But for millions of people living with type 1 diabetes, a painful needle prick once or twice daily is the only option for delivering the insulin that […]

The results could be used by public health officials to improve cholera control strategies For the first time, the transmission of cholera has been tracked at the household level across Dhaka, Bangladesh, a city with a ‘hyper-endemic’ level of the disease. Researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and their collaborators found that nearly 80 per […]

There is something very distinct about the air over India and the surrounding countries in South Asia. It is the presence of formaldehyde – a colourless gas that is naturally released by vegetation but also from a number of polluting activities. The elevated concentrations have been observed by Europe’s new Sentinel-5P satellite, which was launched […]

Chalk up another win for Einstein’s seemingly invincible theory of gravity. A new study shows that the theory of general relativity holds true even over vast distances. General relativity prevailed within a region spanning a galactic distance of about 6,500 light-years, scientists report in the June 22 Science. Previously, researchers have precisely tested the theory by studying its […]

Marriage may protect against the development of heart disease/stroke as well as influencing who is more likely to die of it, suggests a pooled analysis of the available data, published online in the journal Heart. The findings prompt the researchers to suggest that marital status should be included as a risk factor for heart disease/stroke and […]

Explosive volcanic eruptions that shot jets of hot ash, rock and gas skyward are the likely source of a mysterious Martian rock formation, a new study finds. The new finding could add to scientists’ understanding of Mars’s interior and its past potential for habitability, according to the study’s authors. The Medusae Fossae Formation is a […]

Work has begun on a major upgrade to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle smasher. The High-Luminosity LHC will make it possible to study the fundamental building blocks of matter in more detail than ever before. Cern, the organisation that operates the LHC, held a ground-breaking ceremony on Friday to mark the beginning of civil […]

In Central America’s rain-drenched forests, leaf-cutting ants collect pieces of leaves on which they grow fungi for food. But the rain can hit hard, especially for a small ant. When leaf-cutting ants sense an incoming shower, they hoof it back to their nests, says a study in the May Insectes Sociaux. Researchers from Argentina, Mexico and Peru […]