Over the last few years, low-level red light (LLRL) therapy has become popular to control myopia, or nearsightedness, especially in children. In LLRL therapy, children are instructed to look into a red light-emitting instrument for three minutes, twice a day, five days a week, for the duration of the treatment period, which could last years. …
Dubbed the “bone collector,” this caterpillar found on a Hawaiian island disguises itself while stalking spider webs for trapped insects to eat.
“In space no one can hear you scream.” That now classic tagline (from Alien, one of the greatest science-fiction horror movies ever made) hinges on a big assumption that most of us broadly make: space is empty. And it is—mostly. But there is stuff out there between the stars, and in some cases there’s enough…
Volcano eruptions can influence the climate by releasing sulphur dioxide Shutterstock/Daniel Lopez Toriello The largest volcanic eruption in human history resulted in a few years of warm weather, according to an analysis of ancient sediments, and not a severe volcanic winter as some researchers had thought. The Toba supervolcano, located on the Indonesian island of…
How could we learn about our solar system? How did the planets form, their ends, how did life form on Earth, and are there other life forms in the universe? The key to these questions lies in understanding exoplanets. Exoplanets, by definition, mean planets outside the solar system orbiting another star. The first exoplanets were…
Astronomy has long been dominated by expert amateurs but with geospatial data everywhere, thanks to widely available internet and smartphones, it is not just that directions that were once only available in a paper map are now updated on your phone in real time to account for traffic. It is changing the relationships of science also….
A weathered sign in the Minnesota River Valley proudly proclaims: “World’s Oldest Rock.” Erected in 1975, it marks a 3.8-billion-year-old gneiss — or so scientists thought. Turns out, it’s not the world’s oldest rock (Since 2019, that title has been held by an estimated 4-billion-year-old Canadian Acasta Gneiss). An analysis of minerals in the Minnesota…
Ancient DNA Reveals Phoenicians’ Surprising Ancestry Phoenician civilization spread its culture and alphabet across the Mediterranean but not, evidently, its DNA By Ewen Callaway & Nature magazine A death mask from the third or second century bc found in the Phoenician trading city of Carthage in what is now Tunisia. Peter Horree/Alamy Stock Photo An…
Encrypted messages could be hidden within a normal-looking conversation on social media Tero Vesalainen/iStockphoto/Getty Images Secret messages can be hidden inside fake conversations generated by AI chatbots. The technique could give people a way to communicate online without arousing the suspicion of oppressive governments. When messages are encrypted for secure transmission, the resulting cipher text…
For thousands of years, people have gazed up at the Moon, Earth’s ever-present nightlight. From the ancient Sumerians to the wise Greeks and story-telling Chinese, everyone has been curious about this glowing disc in the night sky. If it ever occurred to you—how old is the Moon?, scientists have got your back. Estimating Moon’s Age…
