Notebook
- Animals
50 years ago, scientists wondered how birds find their way home
In the 1970s, lab tests hinted that birds can navigate using magnetic fields. New studies suggest that beak and eye proteins are behind the ability.
- Space
50 years ago, scientists found a lunar rock nearly as old as the moon
Studies of such rocks continue to reveal secrets about the moon’s history.
- Physics
50 years ago, superconductors were warming up
Superconducting temperatures have risen by about 250 degrees since the 1970s, but are still too cold to enable practical technologies.
- Health & Medicine
50 years ago, computers helped speed up drug discovery
In 1974, a computer program helped researchers search for promising cancer drugs. Today, AI is helping speed up drug discovery.
- Anthropology
50 years ago, evidence showed that an extinct human ancestor walked upright
Fossil finds have since pushed back the ability of hominids to walk on two legs by millions of years.
- Health & Medicine
A 25-year-effort uncovers clues to unexplained deaths in children
When Laura Gould’s daughter died in 1997, there was almost no research in unexpected deaths in children older than one. Gould helped change that.
- Paleontology
50 years ago, trilobite eyes mesmerized scientists
Decades of research has confirmed that for such simple creatures, trilobites had astoundingly complex eyes.
- Animals
Parrots can move along thin branches using ‘beakiation’
The movement involves swinging along the underside of branches with their beaks and feet, similar to how primates swing between trees.
- Life
These snails give live birth, and it’s the babies that may do the labor
Protecting eggs in mom’s body may have given rough periwinkle snails an advantage over egg-laying cousins, letting them spread to far more coastline.
- Physics
50 years ago, timekeepers deployed the newly invented leap second
After more than 50 years, metrologists will stop using the leap second to align the time kept by atomic clocks with the rate of Earth’s spin.
- Animals
50 years ago, the U.S. Navy enlisted sea lions and other marine mammals
Today, dolphins and sea lions in the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program protect harbors and participate in research on animal health and well-being.
- Quantum Physics
A maverick physicist is building a case for scrapping quantum gravity
To merge quantum physics and general relativity, physicists aim to quantize gravity. But what if gravity isn’t quantum at all?
