A new book reveals stories of ancient life written in North America’s rocks
How the Mountains GrewJohn DvorakPegasus Books, $29.95 Imagine a world where pigeon-sized dragonflies soar above spiders with half-meter-long legs, where 2-meter-long millipedes slither and...
SCIENTIFIC NEWS
Black holes born with magnetic fields quickly shed them
Like a shaggy dog in springtime, some black holes have to shed. New computer simulations reveal how black holes might discard their magnetic fields....
Greece’s Santorini volcano erupts more often when sea level drops
When sea level drops far below the present-day level, the island volcano Santorini in Greece gets ready to rumble. A comparison of the activity...
A hammerhead shark baby boom near Florida hints at a historic nursery
It seems like an unlikely place for a nursery of endangered hammerhead sharks, but a recreational hot spot just off the coast of Miami...
A super-short gamma-ray burst defies astronomers’ expectations
A surprisingly short gamma-ray burst has astronomers rethinking what triggers these celestial cataclysms. The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected a single-second-long blast of gamma...
New delta variant studies show the pandemic is far from over
The coronavirus’s delta variant is different from earlier strains of the virus in worrying ways, health officials are discovering. And those differences may mean...
A skeleton from Peru vies for the title of oldest known shark attack victim
When news broke that the oldest known case of a person killed by a shark involved a member of Japan’s Jōmon culture around 3,000...
Viruses can kill wasp larvae that grow inside infected caterpillars
When parasitic wasps come calling, some caterpillars have a surprising ally: a viral infection. Insects called parasitoid wasps lay their eggs inside young moth...
Dinosaur-killing asteroid may have made Earth’s largest ripple marks
The asteroid impact that slew the dinosaurs may have also indirectly sculpted the largest ripple marks ever found on Earth. A series of ridgelike...
Polar bears sometimes bludgeon walruses to death with stones or ice
Walruses, weighing as much as 1,300 kilograms with huge tusks and nearly impenetrable skulls, are almost impossible for a hungry polar bear to kill....
DR Congo: Hunger deepens for millions amid conflict, Ebola and climate shocks 
African Athletes Should be Free to be Themselves 
Green Cities Can Make Room for New Homes and the Farms That Feed Them 
This Halloween, amateur astronomers may be in for a dwarf planet treat