Chelsea Wood always wanted to be a marine biologist. As a child growing up on New York’s Long Island, she envisioned traveling the world, studying big animals that live in the ocean. “There was just never any question in my mind,” she says. Then, during college, she worked in a lab that focused on parasitic
Some ecologists value parasites — and now want a plan to save them Read More »
Last October, a team of marine explorers sent Hercules — a remote-controlled vehicle — to the bottom of the ocean. Its mission: to visit an octopus neighborhood. It was off the coast of central California, near an undersea volcano. Late one night, after scanning a long stretch of empty seafloor, Hercules’ spotlight and camera revealed a parade of
Whales get a second life as deep-sea buffets Read More »
Armies of zombie computers caused a lot of mayhem in 2018. In January, one cluster of infected, connected machines attacked the three biggest banks in the Netherlands. The attack crippled computer systems and left customers uncertain about their money. In February, a website for computer programmers, called Github, was knocked offline by a network of
Rise of the botnets Read More »
Frank Borman was probably the first person to barf in space. Borman was part of NASA’s Apollo 8 mission, which lifted off a launch pad in Florida on December 21, 1968. Over the next six days, the mission made history as it circled the moon and returned home. But Borman, who led the mission, became
En route to Mars, astronauts may face big health risks Read More »
Many smartphone apps don’t cost anything to download and use. But don’t be fooled: There’s still a price. “Your privacy is what’s paying for it,” says Brian Krupp. He’s a computer engineer at Baldwin Wallace University in Berea, Ohio. Behind the scenes, he says, apps are “leaky.” They may deliberately collect more data than they
How to stop phone apps from spying on you Read More »
If you’re interested in the smallest things known to scientists, there’s something you should know. They are extraordinarily ill-behaved. But that’s to be expected. Their home is the quantum world. These subatomic bits of matter don’t follow the same rules as objects that we can see, feel or hold. These entities are ghostly and strange.
The quantum world is mind-bogglingly weird Read More »
Ong uyan madongo? You probably don’t know how to answer that question — unless you happen to be one of the roughly 430 people in the world who speak a language called Matukar Panau. Then you would know it means, “How are you?” Matukar Panau is one of the world’s rarest languages. It is
Saving endangered ‘tongues’ Read More »
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, reminding us once again of the deadly threat icebergs can pose to life. Still, the bad reputation icebergs sometimes have isn’t entirely deserved — even if the scientists who study these floating islands of ice are the first to admit just how risky th
Icy inns at Earth’s end Read More »
If aliens ever sent us a message, scientists hope to pick it up in a remote part of northern California. There, in a clearing nestled amid the volcanoes of the Cascade Range, 42 radio dishes point together at the sky. The dishes, each 20 feet across, form a single, giant scientific instrument called
The sun’s next cycle is off to a slow start, say researchers at the National Solar Observatory in Tucson. This short news article for kids is adapted from a Science News article by Ron Cowen.
Not Seeing Sunspots Read More »
