Say What?

Psychology

Vocal fry

At the lowest registers of the human voice, a creaky, popping sound known as vocal fry emerges.

Animals

Invadopodia

Tiny footlike protrusions that enable a cell to invade neighboring tissues.

Physics

Exciton

Getting excited can kick a person’s energy to a higher level. At the nanoscale, strange almost-particles called excitons do the same trick.

Microbes

Osmotroph

An organism that eats by osmosis, relying on nutrients diffusing into its body from a higher concentration in its environment.

Plants

Kleptoplast

A cellular part such as a light-harvesting chloroplast that an organism takes from algae it has eaten.

Earth

Cryovolcano

An ice volcano that erupts slurries of volatile compounds such as water or methane instead of lava.

Plants

Tannosome

A newly discovered structure where mouth-puckering compounds called tannins form inside plant cells.

Materials Science

Qingsongite

This newly christened mineral has an atomic structure that’s similar to diamond and nearly as hard.

Planetary Science

Shergottite SHER-goh-tite n.

Shergottite is the most common kind of Martian meteorite.

Genetics

Chromothripsis

Chromothripsis is the catastrophic shattering of a chromosome.

Astronomy

Gravitational lens

grah-vih-TAY-shun-al LENZ n.