OMG science

OMG science

Water molecules are central to life, providing a solvent that maintains the functional structures and activities of biomolecules within cells. Cellular water molecules are bound by macromolecules, forming the hydration layer or freely diffuse in the bulk. These two portions of water are referred to as interfacial water and free water, respectively1. Water potential, which can be understood as the availability of free water, governs water uptake from the soil and transport within the plant3,4. The cellular water potential is sensitive to environmental fluctuations, particularly drought, high salinity and temperature stress1,2,5.

The research team found that dust from volcanic and ice-free regions around the Ross Sea replaced dust originating from South America, the dominant source during colder periods. This shift in origin they say reflects significant changes in the Ross Sea environment and regional wind patterns caused by a major retreat of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

More than 200 million years ago a bizarre, beaked, toothless reptile with tiny arms stomped around on its hind legs in what's now New Mexico. It may not have looked like it, but this newly identified creature was an ancient relative of a group of modern-day animals with a fearsome reputationcrocodiles.

After 21 dead gray whales surfaced in the bay last year, nearly half of which were struck by ship or freighter, scientists and community leaders put their hopes in a new AI-powered tool.

The 'cute little guy' was first spotted in 2015 during a deep-sea expedition, when a remotely operated underwater robot scanned the ocean floor near Darwin Island. As the camera explored around an underwater mountain 5,800 feet (1,773m) deep, the researchers noticed an octopus. Audio from the recorded footage includes the scientists' first reactions to the animal, with researchers exclaiming 'It's blue!' and 'He's tiny!'

Sea levels are just the start of how climate change will upend the ocean. Rising temperatures are also threatening a critical artery that runs through the ocean known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC. This current, in short, sends warm water northwards and dumps colder water southwards in a giant loop, massively influencing the world's weather systems along the way.

The Sun has broken a new record for continuous radio wave transmissions, blasting a powerful signal four times longer than any other similar phenomenon ever recorded. Data from the cosmic outburst, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, details the record-breaking event, which lasted from August 21st to September 9th of 2025 - setting a record of 19 full days.

Space is filled with cosmic voids—vast regions mostly free of matter that have opened between dense threads of material that make up a cosmic web. Far from being vacant backwaters with little to study, these voids may hold solutions to some of the most persistent cosmic mysteries, such as the behavior of gravity, the nature of dark energy, and the so-called Hubble tension, an observational mismatch in the expansion rate of the universe that has caused astronomers' headaches for years.

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.

Called a Kelvin wave, scientists have identified a massive pool of warm water in the Pacific carrying temperatures up to 13.5 degrees Fahrenheit above average in similar parts of the ocean. As the Wall Street Journal notes, that's a major heat wave as far as the ocean is concerned, as deep water temperature patterns take much longer to shift than they would on land.

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 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.

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.'”

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.

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.

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.