Star Breaking Death's Speed Limit
A binary star with a 72-minute orbit shouldn't exist. Our best models say so. What does it mean that we've now found ten?
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Latest Stories
The Whale That's Been Calling the Wrong Number for Decades
Other whales can hear it. Scientists confirmed that decades ago. So why has no whale ever answered? The mystery of 52 Blue goes deeper than you'd expect.
Humans Have a Third Set of Teeth. A New Drug Could Make Them Grow.
Your mouth has been keeping a secret: dormant tooth buds, a latent third set, held in reserve. A Japanese drug trial is asking whether they can finally be switched on.
Neanderthals Ate Bugs. Europeans Avoided Them for 9,000 Years.
Western bug aversion may be older than any cultural explanation. New research traces it to inherited biology going back 9,000 years. So is this really just a marketing problem?
The Baby Incubator Spent Decades as a Carnival Act Before Hospitals Would Touch It
The NICU as we know it didn't start in a hospital. It started on a Coney Island boardwalk, next to the roller coasters, funded by 25-cent tickets.
Alaska's Rivers Are Turning Orange, and the Ground Itself Is to Blame
Alaska's rivers aren't being polluted from outside. The ground is thawing open, and centuries of frozen chemistry are waking up. What happens next is unwritten.
This Fly Lands on a Deer, Rips Off Its Own Wings, and Dials Down Its Vision
A blood-feeding fly sheds its wings on landing, then halves its own visual output, and researchers are asking whether evolution can't, or just won't, finish the job.
Helium Leak Confirms Atmosphere on a Habitable-Zone Rocky Planet
Astronomers detected an atmosphere on a rocky, potentially habitable world beyond our solar system. The clue wasn't oxygen or water vapor. It was a gas leak.
Medieval Europe Put Pigs, Rats and Weevils on Trial. Cats Were Somehow Above the Law.
Medieval courts tried pigs, rats and weevils for actual crimes. Dogs faced charges regularly. Cats, despite ample provocation, were almost never touched.
Daddy Longlegs Are Eating Frogs Whole
A daddy longlegs with no venom and no web just pinned down a live frog bigger than itself. Scientists say this might be happening all over South American tropical forests.
Bees in Peru Granted Legal Standing. Their Lawyer Is a Human.
They've been pollinating the Amazon for 96 million years. What changed? Two Peruvian municipalities just gave them legal standing to fight back.
A Supermassive Black Hole Is Wandering the Universe Without a Galaxy. We Know Because It Ate a Star.
A star died 600 million light-years away, but not where it should have. The mismatch points to something adrift in the dark that theory predicted but nobody had actually caught.
The Yellow Sea UAP Video Ends With Four Seconds of Nothing
Military sensors tracked something over the Yellow Sea for nearly 5 minutes. The footage degraded, skipped, and went dark. The official record documents every second. It explains none of it.
The Last Thing a Black Hole Said Before It Went Quiet
Two black holes collided. The universe swallowed the evidence. Scientists read it anyway. What did the signal say about the place nothing escapes?
Ghost Shark Sports a Shorter Snout and a Very Long Head Start
Three museum specimens, two decades on a shelf, and one biology student who looked closer revealed a new shark species in the Costa Rican Pacific.
Springtime Brings a Rumble to the Hudson River
A mysterious low rumble shakes New York's Hudson River each spring. What's causing it? A fish older than dinosaurs, doing what it's always done.
What Powers the Universe's Brightest Blue Flashes Is Worse Than a Supernova
A decade-long cosmic mystery, a class of events so violent they outshine entire galaxies for days.
The Men Who Split the Atom Couldn't Explain the Green Lights
In 1949, the scientists who built the atomic bomb held a secret meeting about something flying over their facility. They ran the numbers. They left without an answer.