Video
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Animals
There’s more to pufferfish than that goofy spiked balloon
Three odd things about pufferfishes: how they mate, how they bite and what’s up with no fish scales?
- Astronomy
In a first, physicists re-created the sun’s spiraling solar wind in a lab
Some of the sun’s fundamental physics have been re-created with plasma inside a vacuum chamber
- Materials Science
Permanent liquid magnets have now been created in the lab
Magnets that generate persistent magnetic fields are usually solid. But new little bar magnets have the mechanical properties of liquids.
- Planetary Science
How NASA has kept Apollo moon rocks safe from contamination for 50 years
NASA wouldn’t let our reporter touch the Apollo moon rocks. Here’s why that’s a good thing.
- Neuroscience
Both fish and humans have REM-like sleep
Sleeping zebrafish have brain and body activity similar to snoozing mammals, suggesting that sleep evolved at least 450 million years ago.
- Health & Medicine
Vision cells can pull double duty in the brain, detecting both color and shape
Neurons in a brain area that handles vision fire in response to more than one aspect of an object, countering earlier ideas, a study in monkeys finds.
- Planetary Science
With Dragonfly, NASA is heading back to Saturn’s moon Titan
NASA’s next robotic mission to explore the solar system is headed to Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.
- Life
‘Sneezing’ plants may spread pathogens to their neighbors
A “surface tension catapult” can fling dewdrops carrying fungal spores from water-repellent leaves.
- Health & Medicine
Extra fingers, often seen as useless, can offer major dexterity advantages
Two people born with six fingers on each hand can control the extra digit, using it to do tasks better than five-fingered hands, a study finds.
- Life
Some fungi trade phosphorus with plants like savvy stockbrokers
New views show how fungi shift their stores of phosphorus toward more favorable markets where the nutrient is scarce.
- Anthropology
Hominids may have been cutting-edge tool makers 2.6 million years ago
Contested finds point to a sharp shift in toolmaking by early members of the Homo genus.
- Life
How bacteria nearly killed by antibiotics can recover — and gain resistance
A pump protein can keep bacteria alive long enough for the microbes to develop antibiotic resistance.
