Take an online journey through the history of math
Around 1900 B.C., a student in the Sumerian city of Nippur, in what’s now Iraq, copied a multiplication table onto a clay tablet. Some...
SCIENTIFIC NEWS
Scientists vacuumed animal DNA out of thin air for the first time
On a dreary winter day in December of 2020, ecologist Elizabeth Clare strolled through the Hamerton Zoo Park in England wielding a small vacuum...
A genetic analysis hints at why COVID-19 can mess with smell
For many people, one of the fastest tip-offs that they have COVID-19 is the loss of taste or smell. Now researchers have pinpointed some...
Part donkey, part wild ass, the kunga is the oldest known hybrid bred by humans
From mules to ligers, the list of human-made hybrid animals is long. And, it turns out, ancient. Meet the kunga, the earliest known hybrid...
50 years ago, NASA’s space shuttle program got the green light
The decision on the shuttle is ‘go’ — Science News, January 15, 1972 President Nixon’s announcement last week of the decision to begin development of a space...
An early outburst portends a star’s imminent death
A star’s death usually comes without warning. But an early sign of one star’s imminent demise hints at what happens before some stellar explosions....
Quantum particles can feel the influence of gravitational fields they never touch
If you’re superstitious, a black cat in your path is bad luck, even if you keep your distance. Likewise, in quantum physics, particles can...
Organic molecules in an ancient Mars meteorite formed via geology, not alien life
When researchers in 1996 reported they had found organic molecules nestled in an ancient Martian meteorite discovered in Antarctica, it caused quite a buzz....
The largest group of nesting fish ever found lives beneath Antarctic ice
Five hundred meters below the ice covering Antarctica’s Weddell Sea sits the world’s largest known colony of breeding fish, a new study finds. An...
Astronomers identified a second possible exomoon
Some of the same researchers who found the first purported exomoon now say that they’ve found another. Dubbed Kepler 1708 b i, the satellite...
A choir of katydid ancestors filled the Jurassic rainforest with song 
FAO and the Global South: Advancing Agrifood Transformation through South-South and Triangular Cooperation 
DURBAN CONFERENCE, 25 YEARS ON – Paul Divakar Namala: “Solidarity and Resistance Work in the Long Run” 
Innocent-looking AI reasoning can make bad behavior harder to catch