Notebook

  1. 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.

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  2. 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.

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  3. 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.

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  4. 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.

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  5. 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.

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  6. Paleontology

    50 years ago, trilobite eyes mesmerized scientists

    Decades of research has confirmed that for such simple creatures, trilobites had astoundingly complex eyes.

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  7. 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.

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  8. 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.

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  9. 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.

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  10. 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.

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  11. 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?

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  12. Astronomy

    50 years ago, astronomers challenged claims that Barnard’s star has a planet

    Astronomers have been searching for planets around the sun’s close neighbor for decades.

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