News

Physics

Hydrogen hoops give superfluid clues

Tiny rings of hydrogen molecules show signs of possible superfluid behavior, suggesting that helium might not be the only superfluid after all.

Physics

Electrons get a crack at the nucleus

As long suspected but never before shown, electrons orbiting an atom can directly excite the atom's nucleus.

Earth

A late arrival for platinum and gold?

An extraterrestrial source may explain why Earth's mantle holds more platinum, gold, and certain other elements than it should.

Earth

Strange crystal birth found in mine

Deep in a Wisconsin mine, researchers have uncovered a new way for crystals to grow in nature.

Health & Medicine

Old polio vaccine free of HIV, SIV

Three laboratories analyzing remaining samples of polio vaccine used in the late 1950s find that none contains any human or simian immunodeficiency virus, or chimpanzee DNA—making polio vaccine unlikely to be the cause of the initial HIV outbreak in central Africa.

Health & Medicine

Stem-cell transplant works on lupus

Severe lupus can be reversed with a transplant of the patient's own bone marrow stem cells, after they're allowed to mature outside the body, and medication that neutralizes self-attacking immune cells.

Astronomy

Ulysses makes a return trip

Just as the sun has reached the stormy peak of its 11-year activity cycle, the European Space Agency's Ulysses spacecraft has begun its second and final pass over the sun's poles.

Astronomy

Magnetic-mapping mission resurrected

The European Space Agency successfully launched Cluster II, a group of four spacecraft that will fly in tandem to generate a three-dimensional map of Earth's magnetosphere.

Astronomy

Spirograph in the sky

Some 2,000 light-years from Earth, an elderly star has ejected its outer layers to form a puffy, gaseous cocoon that resembles a "spirograph" pattern.

Animals

Snapping shrimp whip up a riot of bubbles

High-speed video and fancy math demonstrate that snapping shrimp make so much noise by popping bubbles.