Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Archaeopteryx represents a pivotal point in the grand evolutionary journey linking dinosaurs to their avian descendants. But paleontologists still have questions about the Jurassic era animal’s anatomy and behavior roughly 165 years after its discovery. One of the most pressing lingering…
Could aeronutrients explain the benefits of being in nature? Daniel Ernst/Stills Around 10 years ago, British tabloid newspaper The Sun ran a memorable article about a couple who claimed to be “breatharians”, able to survive on a little water and even less food. Instead, they said, they derived sustenance from air, sunlight and the energy of…
They’re buggin’ out. After lying dormant for nearly two decades, billions of sex-crazed cicadas will be emerging from their subterranean sleep pods hungry for love. However, this year, many will be extra horny thanks to the spread of a creepy, “The Last Of Us”-esque zombie fungus. “Nature is stranger than any science fiction that’s ever…
This is a guest blog written by Anna Dimas, a graduate student in Clinical Psychology in Dr. Alleva’s lab at Maastricht University. Eating disorders are complex conditions that disrupt almost every aspect of a person’s life—including a person’s relationship with their body. While eating disorders can affect individuals from all backgrounds, regardless of gender, age,…
Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 You can now get a sense of the awe-inspiring Parthenon in all its former glory thanks to a multiyear endeavor merging history and 3D computer modeling. University of Oxford archeologist Juan de Lara combined primary source information, astronomical data, and CGI to digitally recreate the ancient Greek pilgrimage site…
A model of Kosmos 482, which was originally set to go to Venus Wikimedia Commons More than 50 years after its launch, a Soviet spacecraft called Kosmos 482 is about to come crashing back to Earth. It was originally intended to land on the surface of Venus, but it started to fall apart in low…
The strange reproductive habits of a large, carnivorous New Zealand snail were once shrouded in mystery. Now footage of the snail laying an egg from its neck has been captured for the first time, the country’s conservation agency said Wednesday. What looks like a tiny hen’s egg is seen emerging from an opening below the head of…
How do the experiences of teen boys and girls differ? That question motivated a survey of U.S. teens between the ages of 13 and 17 by the Pew Research Center. The findings, recently released, revealed a number of ways that the boys and girls differed. For example, girls said they feel more pressure to look…
Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 The mighty Incan empire wasn’t the first society to spread across the Andes Mountains—2,000 years earlier, there were the Chavín. Although their own name for themselves remains unknown, the Chavín of Peru clearly shared common agricultural techniques, buildings, and artwork from roughly 900 BCE to 650 BCE. They also…
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