Science
Scientific discoveries and research
Circular polarization could cut laser backscatter in fusion experiments
Experiments at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF) require breathtaking precision. Each of the 192 lasers is focused to a...
Suburban street design has driven emissions since WWII, study suggests
Half of all Americans live in the suburbs. For decades, planners and policymakers have blamed suburban sprawl's environmental and social costs on one thing: dis...
Rice gene switch helps plants rebound from cold and use nitrogen more efficiently
Global climate change has increased the frequency of regional cold spells, causing substantial yield losses and even crop failure. Meanwhile, excessive nitrogen...
Asteroid Donaldjohanson wobbles as it rotates, Lucy flyby reveals
Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) scientists studying the inner main-belt asteroid Donaldjohanson have found that its rotation wobbles. Rather than rolling th...
Laser pulses set layered metals vibrating 1 trillion times per second, revealing electron-driven motion
How does light turn into motion within a metal? A team of researchers from European XFEL, the University of Potsdam and other participating institutions has sho...
Climate change is now causing more local extinction in temperate regions than the tropics, study shows
Imagine returning to a favorite hiking trail 15 years after your first visit and discovering that many of the plants and animals that once lived there are gone....
Early warning tool may protect river fish in heat waves
Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) have proposed a warning tool that predicts, up to three weeks in adva...
Low-development regions suffer far higher losses in climate disasters, study warns
People living in regions with lower scores on the Human Development Index face a substantially higher risk from climate-related disasters, even when these are n...
Fermi mission uncovers possible sibling supernova remnants
A new study of two supernova remnants, the debris left behind after stars explode, suggests the explosions came from stellar siblings that once orbited each oth...
Hidden fungus inside desert moss could rewrite 470-million-year story of how plants moved onto land
Mosses are survivors. They can dry into what looks like green dust, only to spring back to life minutes after rain. They can grow on rocks, in deserts, and ther...
How cracks in dry soil impact moisture evaporation
Soils that are exposed to prolonged drought often develop desiccation cracks, which impact soil properties and exacerbate moisture loss through evapotranspirati...
How a telescope's mirror stability makes or breaks exoplanet detection
Finding life beyond our solar system is a major goal of modern astronomy. NASA's planned Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) aims to take direct images of Earth-...