In the Yangtze Delta, about 160 kilometres southwest of Shanghai, the archeological ruins of Liangzhu City are located. There, a highly advanced culture blossomed about 5,300 years ago, thanks to the engineering of large hydraulic structures. The walled city had a complex system of navigable canals, dams and water reservoirs. This system made it possible…
Warming temperatures may cause methane emissions from wetlands to rise — by helping methane-producing bacteria thrive. Higher temperatures favor the activity of wetland soil microbes that produce the potent greenhouse gas, at the expense of other microbes that can consume it, researchers report April 23 in Science Advances. The scientists, led by microbiologist Jaehyun Lee…
Carnivorous ‘Bone Collector’ Caterpillars Wear Corpses as Camouflage Nicknamed the “bone collector,” this newly confirmed caterpillar in Hawaii secretly scrounges off a spider landlord by covering itself with dead insect body parts By Gayoung Lee edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier Caterpillars nicknamed the “bone collector” create protective shelling out of dead insect bones and body…
Feed a black hole enough energy and you could create an explosion Art Furnace/Shutterstock Physicists have built the first ever black hole bomb, a long-theorised phenomenon where energy is boosted by a black hole and trapped by surrounding mirrors until an explosion occurs. Thankfully, this version is just a safe toy model rather than using…
Are plants really unlike us as the biological system of classification dictates, or could they be similar to us? Do plants too enjoy the beauty of the morning sun, smelling the fragrance of their flowers, listening to the lovely buzzing bees, consuming the meal of minerals and water, and most crucially, conveying their feelings through…
Despite claims of anti-vaccine activists no different than groups that used to claim vaccines cause autism, COVID-19 vaccines do not impact fecundability—the probability of conception per menstrual cycle—in female or male partners who received the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson vaccines. The prospective study instead indicates that COVID-19 infection among males may temporarily reduce fertility—…
After 35 years, the Hubble Space Telescope is still churning out hits. In just the last year or so, scientists have used the school bus–sized observatory to confirm the first lone black hole, reveal new space rocks created by a NASA asteroid-impact mission and pinpoint the origin of a particularly intense, mysterious burst of radio…
Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feldman. I love spending time in nature, but that can feel really hard to do when you live in a city, even out in the suburbs. It’s tough to feel like you’re really outside when you’re outside, but if you start thinking like an urban naturalist,…
Sharing a quantum computer could put you at risk of hacking BlackJack3D/Getty Images Hackers may be able to “vandalise” other people’s results on a quantum computer, say researchers, who warn that the problem will only get worse as devices become larger and host more users simultaneously, unless manufacturers plug the security gap. Sharing access to…
The Cosmological Principle is a fundamental idea in cosmology that states the universe is uniform (homogeneous) and looks the same in all directions (isotropic) when viewed on large scales, despite local irregularities. Homogeneity is a property that describes something with similar elements throughout, like milk, which has a uniform consistency even though it contains various…
