SCIENCE

Scientists Tell Octopus Species Apart by Counting Their Warts

Recognizing the different skin growth patterns will make it easier to identify them in the future.

Watanabe. 2017. The Auk: Ornithological Advances.

A New Way to Tell If a Dead Duck Could Fly

One fossil expert developed a new system for classifying extinct ducks and geese.

This Planet Burns Hotter Than Most Stars

The dayside of the wildly whirling exoplanet reaches a boiling 7800°F.

How Does the International Space Station Maintain Its Orientation?

The answer involves torque.

15 Useful Facts About Lyme Disease

Look out for the bull's-eye.

Murray Foubister, Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0

‘Lost’ Galapagos Tortoise Species Could Make a Comeback

The descendants of one thought-to-be extinct species have apparently been chilling on the side of a volcano, eating grass for the last few hundred years.

Do Compression Tights Really Improve Running Performance?

A new Nike-sponsored study says no.

An illustration showing the merger of two black holes and the gravitational waves that ripple outward as the black holes spiral toward each other.

5 Things We Know About Gravitational Waves—And 2 That Are a Mystery

Astronomers once again detected ripples in the fabric of space-time.

A black-and-white image of a newly discovered faceless fish.

Deep-Sea Mission Nets a Fish With No Face

The “faceless cusk” is rarely seen … and it probably can’t see us.

Scientists Look to Prairie Vole Brains to Understand Monogamy

Monogamous relationships, or pair bonds, are a lot less common than you’d think, arising in fewer than 5 percent of mammal species.

NASA Details Plans to Fly to the Sun in 2018

The Parker Solar Probe will take us closer to the Sun than we've ever been before.

Karen Wetterhahn, the Chemist Whose Poisoning Death Changed Safety Standards

She followed the safety protocol, but the mother of two was dead within a year.

9 Molds Trying to Take Over Your Kitchen

“I can’t tell you how many times people have said, ‘I have a cut on my arm, should I put moldy bread on it?’”

NASA/CXC/SAO/S.Wolk et al; Optical: DSS & NOAO/AURA/NSF; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Astronomers Propose New Donut-Shaped Celestial Object

They say the synestia is a large mass of blistering-hot vaporized rock created when planets collide.

himmelskratzer, Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Boa Constrictors Form Hunting Parties and We’re Totally Fine with That

Just before sunset, Cuban boas line up and dangle from the ceiling of a cave like a curtain, waiting for bats to pass through.

Tree-Climbing, Seed-Spitting Goats Help Trees Grow in New Places

Goats climb argan trees and eat the fruit, then return to the ground, wander off, and spit the seeds into new soil.

Scientists Use the Tweaked Genes of a Virus to Halt Vision Loss

They turned the virus's ability to invade cells into a delivery system for eyesight therapy.

This enhanced-color composite photo shows Jupiter’s south pole from NASA’s Juno spacecraft 32,000 miles above the gas giant. The oval features are cyclones up to 600 miles wide.

Much of What We Thought About Jupiter Is Wrong

The Juno spacecraft is already forcing us to rewrite the textbooks.

We Don’t Like Our Scientists to Be Too Good-Looking

A new study finds that people find attractive scientists more interesting, but less capable and credible.

Pink Pineapples Have Finally Arrived

Just in time for summer.

Farmer Sets Out to Grow a Pretty Plant—Creates World’s Hottest Pepper Instead

The Dragon's Breath chili is 1.5 times hotter than the Carolina Reaper.

A New Kind of Autopsy Could Mean Far Fewer Dissections

The researchers say their noninvasive approach can identify the cause of natural death in adults 92 percent of the time.

Scientists Think They Know How Whales Got So Big

These 200-ton ocean dwellers had a growth spurt 3 million years ago.

How Human War Affected the Weather in Space

A new study finds that nuclear weapon tests damaged satellites and disturbed our planet’s magnetic field.

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