Scientists have made one of the most precise maps of the universe’s matter, and it shows that something may be missing in our best model of the cosmos. Created by pooling data from two telescopes that observe different types of light, the new map revealed that the universe is less “clumpy” than previous models predicted … Read more
As climate change transforms our world, the impacts will be felt unequally, with some animals struggling to survive and others finding ways to overcome the resulting challenges. This phenomenon is increasingly described as the “winners and losers under climate change,” said Giovanni Strona (opens in new tab), an ecologist and former associate professor at the … Read more
The Teutonic Knights were one of the great chivalric orders that emerged from the Crusades, alongside the Hospitallers and Templars, but while those other knights made their names in the Holy Land, the Teutonic Knights fought their greatest battles in Europe. In the latest issue of All About History (opens in new tab), on sale … Read more
The world’s most notorious pirates terrorized the seven seas and amassed huge riches between the 16th and 19th centuries. Many of these ship plunderers remain famous to this day, but they were very different from the often-friendly pirates seen in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie franchise. Many of history’s most famous pirates began as … Read more
A “replica” sword that has been part of the collection at the Field Museum in Chicago for nearly a century is actually a 3,000-year-old artifact from the Bronze Age. Curators made the shocking discovery while preparing for an upcoming exhibition called “First Kings of Europe.” The 3-foot-long (91 centimeters) bronze sword had been in storage … Read more
Young stars are surrounded by chaos: Clouds of gas, dust and ice swirl about in a so-called protoplanetary disk. And when gravity binds this material together, planets are born. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, researchers developed a new technique to measure and date infant exoplanets forming in these protoplanetary disks. By … Read more
Dust collected from the surface of an ancient, peanut-shaped and “potentially-hazardous” asteroid has revealed that some space rocks are much bouncier and harder to destroy than first thought — posing concerns about Earth’s long-term safety. The analysis of three tiny dust particles — gathered from the surface of the 1640-foot-long (500 meters) rubble pile asteroid … Read more
Are aliens using a quirk of the sun’s gravity to transmit information through an interstellar communication network? For the first time ever, astronomers explored this intriguing possibility and scanned for signals coming from hidden nonhuman probes orbiting the sun. So far, the method hasn’t turned up signs of spacefaring aliens, but it represents a promising … Read more
Once life gains even the tiniest foothold on a planet, it may have the power to transform that world, forcing us to broaden our definition of “habitable,” new research suggests. We don’t really know where life might arise. We have only one example of a life-hosting planet, Earth, which started to get interesting perhaps only … Read more
An elusive object in space has posed a riddle for scientists. It looks like a black hole. It acts like a black hole. It may even smell like a black hole. But it has one crucial difference: It has no event horizon, meaning that you can escape its gravitational clutches if you try hard enough. … Read more
