Science

Ammonite fossils preserved in limestone. These fossil deposits help scientists understand biodiversity throughout Earth’s history. Credit: Herve Conge/Science Photo Library Large language models (LLMs), such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, are trained to recognize patterns in written text, helping them choose a statistically likely word to complete a sentence. Paleontologists have now trained a similar model with … Read more

“Hearst and Yahoo magazines may earn commissions or revenue from some articles through these links.” Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: 2.4 billion years ago, not much oxygen could be found in a poisonous atmosphere of methane and carbon dioxide, but that began to change when the frozen Earth began to melt. … Read more

Coral bleaching is a major problem for ocean ecosystems as the ocean warms. Stanford researchers have found a new method to regenerate bleached corals. Scientists working with corals discovered that when they accidentally touched a healthy, bleached specimen in the laboratory, the healthy coral’s symbionts that form its food were able to spread to the … Read more

For more than 80 years, a manuscript written by one of the founders of quantum physics has been gathering dust in an Austrian library. Now brought to light by physics historian Flavio Del Santo of the University of Geneva, the three-page document is the very soul of brevity, but scribbled on it is a long-lost … Read more

On a summer morning on Mars, NASA’s Curiosity rover woke up in its usual crater, opened its shutter and took in a sprawling view carpeted in blues and grays. The panorama subverts the usual perception of the Red Planet, a reputation that dates back to ancient civilizations. The Romans called him Mars, the god of … Read more

Follow Us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter On September 30, NASA formally concluded OSIRIS-REx, the historic first U.S. mission to extract a pristine piece of an asteroid and return it safely to Earth. The van-sized OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, visited … Read more

Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter SpaceX has just launched its mysterious return capsule “Starfall” for the second time in its history. Starfall was one of 32 payloads from the company’s Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission, which launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket at 7:04 a.m. EDT (1104 … Read more

Weather cleared and SpaceX executed a predawn launch Tuesday morning that offered viewers another serving of space jellyfish, albeit a smaller, shorter-lived version than the one seen last week. That launch created the effect of the expanding nebula that was seen among clear skies all the way up to Washington, D.C. Closer to the launch … Read more

Aging is the price paid for the ability to experience existence, one might philosophize. Natural cellular aging begins with differentiation. Once a stem cell becomes a specific type of cell, it is locked in forever: fat cells can never become muscle cells, no matter how much you want them to or poke and prod at … Read more

During a field trip in the lowland forests of Costa Rica’s Corcovado National Park, researchers observed a new predation event: an ornate hawk eagle capturing and killing a great crested owl. Predation of a crested owl (Lophostrix cristata) by an ornate hawk eagle (Spizaetus ornatus), to the best of scientists’ knowledge, has never been documented … Read more