Video
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Space
Realigning magnetic fields may drive the sun’s spiky plasma tendrils
Solar spicules emerge near counterpointing magnetic fields, hinting that self-adjusting magnetism creates these filaments, which may heat the corona.
- Animals
Flipping a molecular switch can turn warrior ants into foragers
Toggling one protein soon after hatching makes Florida carpenter ants turn from fighting to hunting for food.
- Animals
Silver-backed chevrotains have been ‘rediscovered’ by science after 29 years
With help from Vietnamese villagers, researchers captured photos of a species of deerlike ungulate thought lost to science nearly three decades ago.
- Neuroscience
Sleep may trigger rhythmic power washing in the brain
Strong, rhythmic waves of cerebrospinal fluid wash into the human brain during sleep and may help clean out harmful proteins.
- Life
Vampire bat friendships endure from captivity to the wild
Vampire bats can form social bonds that persist from a lab setting to the outdoors, suggesting the cooperative relationships are like friendships.
- Life
Saharan silver ants are the world’s fastest despite relatively short legs
Saharan silver ants can hit speeds of 108 times their body length per second.
- Space
The solar system may have a new smallest dwarf planet: Hygiea
New images reveal Hygiea is round, a final criterion for promoting the wee world from asteroid to dwarf planet status.
- Animals
Humpback whales use their flippers and bubble ‘nets’ to catch fish
A study reveals new details of how humpback whales hunt using their flippers and a whirl of bubbles to capture fish.
- Space
A supermassive black hole shredded a star and was caught in the act
Astronomers have gotten the earliest glimpse yet of a black hole ripping up a star, a process known as a tidal disruption event.
- Climate
Malin Pinsky seeks to explain how climate change alters ocean life
As global temperatures rise, Malin Pinsky’s research attempts to understand how marine ecosystems are changing and why.
- Life
We’ve lost 3 billion birds since 1970 in North America
Scientists estimated the change in total number of individual birds since 1970. They found profound losses spread among rare and common birds alike.
- Humans
A 3.8-million-year-old skull reveals the face of Lucy’s possible ancestors
A fossilized hominid skull found in an Ethiopian desert illuminates the earliest-known Australopithecus species.
