OMG science

OMG science

The telescope revealed tiny differences in the starlight's spectrum between the start, middle and end of the planet's transit in front of its star. The measurements showed that during each transit, the part of the atmosphere that crosses first in front of the star is covered with thick clouds - probably made of droplets of minerals rather than water, given that the planet's dayside temperature is at least 1,600 kelvin. But by the end of the transit, the trailing part of the atmosphere that crosses last is clear.

Gold sure does glitter, holding a shine far longer than most metals. And now two researchers have explained why. In a paper published today in Physical Review Letters, Santu Biswas and Matthew Montemore of Tulane University reveal the reason gold is harder to oxidize than similar metals. They key, they say, is the same chemical trickery that gives it a beautiful zigzag structure when viewed under a scanning tunneling microscope.

Researchers took dozens of measurements from inside the Khufu pyramid to characterize its fundamental frequency, a measure that can inform how a building might respond during an earthquake. You can think of a building's fundamental, or natural, frequency like the sway of a swing. It might take a lot of force to move the swing from a still position. But at a certain point, even just a small push to a moving swing can send it flying. A similar effect happens in structures: a building's natural sway affects how it responds during pushes or earthquakes.

Its long neck allowed its head to get a head start on its body, says the museum's exhibition and interpretation manager. So it could sneak up on prey and grab it [with its mouth] before its body and flippers created a disturbance in the water.

Scientists discovered that the last eruption of the Newberry Volcano in Oregon in 686 AD spread ash more than 3,100 miles (5,000km) across the globe - significantly further than was previously believed to be possible for a volcano of its size.

The Natural History Museum is inviting people to touch some poo in a new exhibition about the monsters of the Jurassic Oceans. It's hundreds of millions old though, so you're touching a stone. A pooy stone which will still make children (and some adults) go a bit ick at the thought.

“Oh, I don't, here we, conspiracy theory, I don't know,” DeChambeau said. “Look, Elon [Musk] says we've definitely gone there. So I tend to go that route, because he's the man that knows quite a bit about all that. 'Artemis just went around the Moon. So I do believe if we spent a lot of our resources like they say we did, I think we did. I don't think the footage is real. But I think we did go to the Moon. I don't know about the footage. It's quite, it's quite wild.'”

Since it was built, the magnificent structure has experienced significant tremors with magnitudes of up to 6.8. Earthquakes of this size are capable of causing significant damage to buildings within 155 miles (250km) of their epicentre. However the Great Pyramid, built for Egyptian Pharaoh Khufu, has suffered no major deterioration internally or externally. Now, experts have finally worked out why - and it's all thanks to remarkable engineering techniques that the ancient Egyptians used.

The spacecraft approached Mars from a high phase angle, or from the side opposite the Sun, making the planet appear as a thin crescent as Psyche moved in for the encounter. The wispiness of the thin Martian atmosphere was on full display, with sunlight shining through diffuse clouds of dust suspended dozens of miles over the sharp edge of the planet's rust-colored surface.

Photosynthetic machinery can be harvested from spinach and transplanted into the eyes of mice, where it transforms light into molecules that carry energy and can tame inflammation. To see how this approach might someday translate into therapeutic applications, researchers made drops, containing light-harvesting apparatus from spinach ( Spinacia oleraceae) cells, that soothed dry-eye disease in mice.

Colossal announced its newest development on the road to its announced goal: reversing the extinction of species, in this case, avian species. The development itself is essentially an artificial eggshell, one that allows almost the entire developmental process to occur without the shell. The company transferred the contents of eggs to their specially designed container within a day or two of laying and were able to have normal chicks walk away from it.

In the absence of any fossil of this last common ancestor, it's difficult for scientists to know what this creature may have looked like or how it behaved. While the search for such a fossil continues, some researchers have turned to other, less direct means of studying our ancient lineage, including fossils of extinct human cousins in the family tree, as well as the biology of modern humans and apes.

Adding an atom of fluorine into a drug molecule can make it more potent by slowing its breaking down in the body. The electrolytes used to shuttle ions through lithium-ion batteries are fluorine-containing materials. Refrigerants for keeping food fresh, medicines safe and buildings cool, often contain fluorine, as do propellants used to release gases in asthma inhalers and fire extinguishers. Fluorine is also a key component in the stable polymers used for non-stick cookware coatings and waterproof materials.

A few million years ago, just off the Pacific Northwest coast, the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate began to slip under North America, and all hell broke loose. We're talking earthquakes. We're talking tsunamis. We're talking bubbling molten rock-lava-spewing from the tops of angry stratovolcanoes. This is the fury of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which helped create some of the most dramatic mountains in our region: the Cascade Range.

It was DNA replication that first captured Isaac Witte's scientific imagination as a high school student in Overland Park, Kansas. "It's this orchestration of so many different proteins and molecules that come together to do this core element of life," he said. It always stuck with him how evolution could generate such a complex system that works - and that our cells run all the time.

She parted some creosote branches to reveal a shriveled shrub, just ankle-high. This doomed seedling was part of a National Park Service planting effort to replace dozens of Joshua trees cut down by a Southern California Edison contractor tasked with protecting the company's power lines. But of the 193 babies planted here roughly five years ago, only 27, or 14%, are still alive, according to the Park Service. If researchers don't figure out why so few survived, an imperiled icon of the California desert may disappear even more quickly.

Astronomers say the space rock, called 2026 JH2, is up to four times the size of a London bus and will get 'as close as you can without hitting'. It is expected to zoom by our planet at an estimated distance of around 56,000 miles (90,000km) at 10:23pm BST. This is exceptionally close - the equivalent of just a quarter of the distance between us and the moon.

One thing that has always been suspicious to us as chemists is that their only cargo was almost pure ethanol. In fact, the Mary Celeste was filled with over 1,700 barrels of pure alcohol, but when investigators came on board, nine of these barrels were mysteriously empty. Scientists think that up to 1,100 litres of ethanol leaked into the hold and vaporised, creating the perfect conditions for a terrifying fireball.

During the Trinity nuclear test on July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert—the world’s very first test of an atomic bomb—a new material spontaneously formed. It was discovered only recently, by an international research team coordinated by geologist Luca Bindi at the University of Florence, which identified the novel clathrate based on calcium, copper, and silicon. It’s a material never before observed either in nature or as an artificial compound created in the laboratory.

When marine snow made of dead plankton's shells, fish poop, dust particles, and other debris descends to the ocean floor, it carries atmospheric carbon the plankton used to make their calcite shells. It's one of the ways the ocean stores carbon, helping to keep greenhouse gases from turning the planet into an oversize toaster oven. Yet scientists realized that something has been dissolving those calcite shells and releasing carbon dioxide, reducing the ocean's carbon-trapping capacity.

Half of laboratory mice are not what scientists think they are, a genetic analysis of hundreds of strains that are distributed globally for animal research has found. The study, published today in Science, uncovered widespread inconsistencies between the reported names of mouse strains and their actual genetic makeup. The mismatches have the potential to compromise the reproducibility of mouse studies and undermine research conclusions, scientists say.

Astronomers say the space rock, called 2026 JH2, is up to four times the size of a London bus and will get 'as close as you can without hitting'. It is expected to zoom by our planet at an estimated distance of around 56,000 miles (90,000km) late on Monday night. This is exceptionally close - the equivalent of just a quarter of the distance between us and the moon.