Artist’s concept of an asteroid breaking up under the strain of its own spin.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Sun’s light touch explains asteroids flying in formation behind Mars
The power of sunlight appears to be simultaneously creating and destroying families of asteroids, acco...
(Left to right): Tim Fitzharris/Minden Pictures; NASA; SMITHGROUPJJR
Top stories: Vanishing insects, merging neutron stars, and why we haven’t made alien contact
Merging neutron stars generate gravitational waves and a celestial light show
Four times in the past 2&nb...
Diparttimento di Studi Umanistici Universita Ca Foscari Venezia
Image ‘stitching’ technique lets scientists explore shipwrecks from dry land
Shipwrecks and other underwater relics can tell archaeologists a lot about ancient people’s seafaring ways, but investigating...
PeopleImages/iStockphoto
The finalists are in: Pick your winner for this year’s Dance Your Ph.D.
With the holiday season upon us, it’s time for relatives to start asking you the dreaded question: So, what is your Ph.D. about? Often, people’s eyes glaze over with conf...
A painting of the Brazlian flag.
AK Rockefeller/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
In Brazil, researchers struggle to fend off deepening budget cuts
With time and money running out, Brazilian scientists are turning up the pressure on the federal government to avoid a total colla...
Secreatary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, whose department includes the Census Bureau.
U.S. Embassy Bangkok/Flickr (Public Domain)
Census Bureau puts new team in charge of 2020 U.S. count
The head of the 2020 U.S. census has been removed, a step that may signal an ...
Natural History Museum Rotterdam
This jaw bone bolsters the case for human contact with saber-toothed cats in Europe
DNA from a 28,000-year-old saber-toothed cat is shaking up the feline family tree. The fossil jaw bone (above), found in 2000 by a trawler in the Nort...
Public Domain
This week we hear stories about the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory’s latest hit, why wolves are better team players than dogs, and volcanic eruptions that may have triggered riots in ancient Egypt with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic.
Sar...
Geysers shoot from Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus, providing evidence for a global subsurface ocean.
NASA
Why haven’t we had alien contact? Blame icy ocean worlds
Might ET be buried under too much ice to phone Earth? That’s what planetary scientist Alan Stern of the So...
Spiders, up close and personal
Consider the spider. True, they can be terrifying to some squeamish humans—they all have venom of some sort and fangs to inject their poisons. And the only earthly refuge for an arachnophobe is Antarctica, the sole continent on which the eight-legged cri...
