Space
One possible recipe for life on Titan is a bust
An experiment mimicking conditions on the Saturn moon suggests that cell-like bubbles don’t form in methane lakes, puncturing hopes for alien life.
All Topics
Chemistry
Earth
Earth
Earth’s continental plates were moving 3.48 billion years ago
Magnetic crystals provide the earliest evidence yet of the plate tectonics that likely made Earth habitable, pushing its start back by 140 million years.
Humans
Archaeology
A new study questions when people first reached South America
Data suggest people lived at Chile’s Monte Verde site thousands of years later than thought, challenging key “pre-Clovis” evidence. Not all agree.
Life
Microbes
How warming is shifting microbial worlds
Climate change is affecting microbes, and that has implications for all life on Earth.
Math
Chemistry
This molecule puts a new twist on the Möbius strip
A molecule made of carbon and chlorine is half as twisty as the paper loops common in math classes.
Physics
Physics
A static electricity mystery comes to the surface
Seemingly random charging of identical materials depends on the carbonaceous molecules stuck to their surfaces
Science & Society
Earth
To make a ‘Snowball Earth,’ sci-fi moves fast. Geology is far slower
The Day After Tomorrow, Snowpiercer, Snowball Earth: Such end-of-days visions of a frozen Earth are fantastical … but can contain a snowflake of truth.
Space
Space
One possible recipe for life on Titan is a bust
An experiment mimicking conditions on the Saturn moon suggests that cell-like bubbles don’t form in methane lakes, puncturing hopes for alien life.
Tech
Health & Medicine
AI may be giving teens bad nutrition advice
AI-generated meal plans for fictional teens cut an entire meal’s worth of calories and carbs while overemphasizing protein and fats, a new study reports.
