Sadly, bits and pieces of plastic are turning up all over, including in the snow on Mount Everest! Researchers found plastic in snow scooped from a spot 8,440 meters (27,690 feet) high, near Everest's summit.

Members of the US House of Representatives voted (232-197) to impeach President Donald Trump for the second time in four years. Trump was charged with "incitement of insurrection" against the United States government on January 6, 2021. Read about the reason and what might happen next.

Joe Biden has won the 2020 election and will become the next US President, replacing Donald Trump.

On January 20th, 2021, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. became America's 46th President just moments after Kamala D. Harris took her oath of office and became the first woman vice president.

On December 14, the first Americans got a vaccine designed to protect them from COVID-19. Health-care workers were put at the head of the line to get these shots. So were older adults living in care facilities. What about kids under age 16? They won't be getting the shots. At least not yet. However, plenty of doctors are anxious to see that change.

It sounds unbelievable, but scientists from Harvard University believe our entire universe may have been created in a lab by an advanced civilization with an immense knowledge of physics and how to control it.

A cougar chases after a cub. The ending is amazing.

This is a kit that lets you interface electronics with real roaches. Don't watch if you are easily grossed out. Gross to watch, but kind of cool at the same time. I don't like how they are treating the bugs.

New technology is being used in a building in Mexico City that transforms pollutants into harmless chemicals. These buildings eat smog!

Northern elephant seals are the true masters of the power nap.



These marine mammals swim at sea for months between brief breaks on shore. During those sea voyages, the seals snooze less than 20 minutes at a time. On average, they get a total of just two hours of shut-eye per day.



This extreme sleep schedule rivals African elephants for the least sleep seen among mammals.



Researchers shared the discovery in the April 21 Science.



Its important to map these extremes of [sleep behavior] across the animal kingdom, says Jessica Kendall-Bar. She studies marine mammals at the University of California, San Diego. Learning how much or how little sleep different animals get could help reveal why animals, including people, sleep at all.





Knowing how seals catch their zzzs also could guide efforts to protect places where they sleep.





Tracking seal sleep



Northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) spend most of the year in the Pacific Ocean. At sea, those animals hunt around the clock for fish, squid and other food.



The elephant seals, in turn, are hunted by sharks and killer whales. The seals are most vulnerable to such predators at the sea surface. So they come up for air only a couple minutes at a time between 10- to 30-minute dives.



People had known that these seals dive almost all the time when theyre out in the ocean. But it wasnt known if and how they sleep, notes Niels Rattenborg. He wasnt involved in the new study, but he has studied animal sleep. He works in Seewiesen, Germany, at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence.



Explainer: How to read brain activity



Kendall-Bars team wanted to find out if northern elephant seals really do sleep while diving. To do this, the researchers outfitted two northern elephant seals with special caps. Those caps recorded the animals brain waves, revealing when they were asleep. Motion sensors were also strapped onto the seals.



By looking at both brain-wave readings and motion data, the researchers could see how seals moved while asleep.



Kendall-Bars team took their two seals from Ao Nuevo State Park. Thats on the coast of California, north of Santa Cruz. The researchers then released the seals at another beach, one about 60 kilometers (37 miles) south of Ao Nuevo. To swim home, the seals had to cross the deep Monterey Canyon. The waters here are similar to those in the deep Pacific, where the seals swim during their months-long trips at sea.





Matching the seals brain-wave readings to their diving motions on this journey showed how northern elephant seals get their sleep on long voyages.



Deep-sea snoozes



The data revealed that when a northern elephant seal wants to sleep at sea, it first dives 60 to 100 meters (200 to 360 feet) below the surface. Then, it relaxes into a glide. As the seal nods off, it keeps holding itself upright for several minutes.



But then, the seal slips into a stage of rest known as REM sleep. During this sleep stage, the animals body becomes paralyzed. A slumbering seal now flips upside-down and drifts in a gentle spiral toward the seafloor.



A northern elephant seal can descend hundreds of meters (yards) deep during one of these naps. Thats far below the waters where sharks and killer whales normally prowl. When a seal wakes after a five- to 10-minute nap, it swims back to the surface. The whole routine takes about 20 minutes.



Explainer: Tagging through history



Now that Kendall-Bars team knew how seals moved during sleep, they could pick out naps in motion data from other seals who hadnt been outfitted with the special caps.



The researchers looked for naptime dive motions in tracking data on 334 other northern elephant seals. Those seals had been outfitted with tracking tags from 2004 to 2019. The seals movements revealed that while at sea these creatures conk out, on average, only around two hours per day.



But northern elephant seals arent short on sleep all the time. They snooze nearly 11 hours per day when they come on land to mate and molt. On the beach, they can catch up on sleep without worrying about getting eaten.



What the seals are doing [at the beach] might be something like what we do when we sleep in on the weekend, Rattenborg says.



Northern elephant seal naps are no joke. While on land, these animals can conk out for a solid 11 hours per day. But at sea, the seals catch only brief bits of sleep.Photo by Jessica Kendall-Bar, NMFS 23188



Extreme animal sleep



Northern elephant seals arent the only animals that sleep very little, at times, and then a whole lot. Rattenborgs group has found a similar sleep pattern in great frigate birds. They fly over the ocean. They can sleep while theyre flying, Rattenborg says. So on those trips, they sleep less than an hour a day for up to a week at a time, he says. Once back on land, they sleep over 12 hours a day.



Curiously, the sleep habits of northern elephant seals seem quite different from those of other marine mammals. When studied in the lab, many marine mammals sleep with just half their brain at a time. That half-awake state allows dolphins, fur seals and sea lions to constantly watch for predators. They literally sleep with one eye open.



Its pretty cool that elephant seals get by without one-sided sleep, Kendall-Bar says. Theyre shutting off both halves of their brain completely and leaving themselves vulnerable. Diving far below predators is what allows the seals to rest easy.



It seems the key to their enjoying such deep sleep is sleeping deep in the sea.

Low power. Your device will power down unless plugged into a power outlet.



How many of us have gotten such a warning from one of our digital devices? Looks like its time to plug it in and recharge the batteries with electricity.



But what is electricity?



Electricity is the term we use to describe the energy of charged particles. Electricity might be stored, like in a battery. When you connect a battery to a light bulb, electricity flows. This happens because electrical charges (electrons) are free to carry energy from the battery through the bulb. Sometimes electricity is described as the flow of electrons between neighboring atoms.





Several terms help us describe electricity and its potential to do work.



Current refers to the flow of electric charges. That is, how much charge is moving per second. When people talk about electricity, theyre usually referring to electric current.



Currents are measured in units known as amperes, or amps, for short. A single ampere of current is about 6 quintillion electrons per second. (Thats the number 6 followed by 18 zeroes.) For many devices, its common to see currents that are only thousandths of an amp, or milliamps.





Voltage offers a gauge of how much electrical energy is available to power devices. Voltage could be stored in a battery or capacitor. You may have seen a 1.5-volt label on AA and AAA batteries. In the United States, every regular electrical outlet supplies 120 volts. Large appliances like refrigerators and some air conditioners are powered by a special outlet. That outlet supplies 220 volts.



Current and voltage are related. To understand how, imagine water flowing downhill in a river. Voltage is like the height of the hill. Current is like the moving water. A tall hill could cause more water to flow. In the same way, a bigger voltage can yield a bigger electrical current.



But the height of a hill isnt the only thing that affects how the water flows. A wide riverbank would allow lots of water to flow. But if the river is narrow, the path is restricted. Not as much water can get through. And if the river gets clogged with fallen trees, the water might even stop flowing. Just like many factors affect the waters ability to flow, there are several ways that the flow of electric current can be helped or resisted.



Resistance describes how easily current can flow. A bigger voltage can lead to a bigger current, but more resistance lowers that current. Resistance varies from material to material. It also depends on the condition of a material. For instance, dry skin has a high resistance. Electricity does not easily pass across it. Getting skin wet, however, drops the resistance to almost zero.



Its important to realize that any amount of resistance may be overwhelmed by too much current trying to pass through it. As an example, electricity will not flow through wood if you simply hold the electrode of a small battery against the trunk of a tree. But a powerful bolt of lightning packs enough energy to split the tree in half.



In this simple circuit, you can see how the circuit is a loop. When the orange copper switch is open (as shown), the loop is not complete and electricity will not flow. When it is closed, electricity can flow from the battery through the circuit to turn on the light bulb.haryigit/iStock/Getty Images Plus



Circuits describe the paths that electrical currents take. Think of a circuit as a loop. In order for electricity to flow, this loop must remain closed. That means it has no gaps. When you connect a light bulb to a battery, the electricity flows from one end of the battery, through a wire, to the light bulb. Then it flows back to the battery through another wire. The circuit will continue to light the bulb as long as the loop is closed. Cut the wire and theres no longer a circuit because the path is broken.



Conductors and insulators are types of materials that respond differently to electricity. Conductors have very low resistance, so they can easily transmit a current. Most metals are very good conductors. So is saltwater. (This is why its dangerous to go swimming during a lightning storm! The chemicals in a swimming pool and the salts on our bodies make the water an especially good conductor of electricity.)



Insulators, in contrast, strongly resist the flow of electricity through them. Most plastics are insulators. Thats why electrical cords are jacketed in a layer of plastic. Electricity will flow through the copper (metal) wire inside a power cord, but the plastic coating outside makes the cord safe for us to handle.



Electricity flows through the copper wires bundled inside a power cord. The plastic coating jackets the wires so that we can safely touch the cord.Jose A. Bernat Bacete/Moment/Getty Images Plus



Semiconductors are materials that are in between conductors and insulators. In semiconductors, the flow of electricity can be precisely controlled. That makes these materials useful for directing electrical current, like tiny traffic guards, inside electronics. Computer chips depend on the ability of semiconductors to interact in complex circuits. The most common semiconductor material is the element silicon. (Not to be confused with the silicone found in flexible ice cube trays and baking tools!)



Transformers, as their name suggests, are devices that transform electrical voltage. They can be found in the box-shaped plugs at the end of device chargers. Most of these transformers convert a wall outlets 120 volts into a much, much lower level. Why? Household outlets are primed to run high-power appliances such as lamps, toasters, vacuum cleaners or space heaters. But that voltage is far more than smartphones and computers can handle. So the transformer in a charge cord steps down the electricity to a safe level that can run your device without frying it. Each device has its own specific needs for how much voltage it can handle. Thats why its important to use the right charging cable for each electronic device.



Electricity can safely power our homes and our devices when used properly. Keep in mind, however, that even common household electricity can cause severe injury or death. Always tell an adult about any broken plugs or cracked electrical wires. Dont overload circuits by plugging in too many devices at once. Never use electricity near water. And make sure that a devices power is turned off when changing its batteries. Finally, follow all of the safety warnings that come with electrical devices. Its better to be safe than to risk injury or fire.

The residents ofNew Orleans can't seem to catcha break from natural disasters. Just over a year after being battered by Hurricane Ida,the beautiful city has been hit by a powerful tornado. The twister, which boasted wind speeds of 160 mph,made landfallshortly before 8:00pm local time on March 22, 2022.

In 2022, an underwater volcano in the South Pacific island nation of Tonga made history. It spewed a plume of ash and water high enough to touch space. It also launched a tsunami as tall as the Statue of Liberty. Now, scientists find that it triggered lightning at the highest altitudes ever seen.



The eruption plume sparked lightning flashes that began 20 to 30 kilometers (about 12 to 19 miles) above sea level. Thats all the way up in the stratosphere even higher than most airplanes fly.





Researchers shared these findings on June 28. The work appeared in Geophysical Research Letters.



Lets learn about lightning



Lightning is most often born inside storm clouds. But lightning can also form inside a volcanos eruption plume. That plume is made of tiny bits of ash, gas and dust. When these tiny bits bump into each other, they make static electricity. Once enough static electricity builds up, lightning zips through the plume.



Alexa Van Eaton led a team that looked at how high the Tonga eruptions lightning was. Shes a volcano scientist at the U.S. Geological Surveys Cascades Volcano Observatory. Thats in Vancouver, Wash.



To estimate the lightnings height, Van Eatons team looked at a few different types of data. One was radio waves created by the lightning. They also examined satellite images of the eruption plume and infrared light from the flashes.



These data revealed the lightning started more than 20 kilometers (12 miles) above sea level. Lightning doesnt typically start that high. Air pressure at that height is usually too low to form lightning leaders. These are the channels of hot plasma that make up the lightning in thunderstorms.



Explainer: The volcano basics



The rising eruption plume may have increased the air pressure over the volcano, says Van Eaton. That might have been enough to create lightning leaders at strangely high altitudes.



In those eruption data, were seeing stuff that weve never seen before, says Jeff Lapierre. Hes a coauthor on the study. Hes also the principal lightning scientist at the Advanced Environmental Monitoring. Its a company based in Germantown, Md.



This eruption has completely changed the way we think of how natural events can change the atmosphere, Lapierre says. Its also changed the environment where we thought lightning could exist.

Earths largest ecosystem is getting cooked. Every day for the last 13 months, average temps over most of the seas surface have been the highest for that date in recorded history.



Thats according to data gleaned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. Last year, scientists described the early stages of this as the first time Earths oceans became hot-tub hot.



And we’re currently outpacing last year, notes Robert West. Hes a meteorologist in Miami, Fla. He works for NOAA. And its not over, West adds. We’re continuing to set records, even now.



An El Nio has helped heat the seas. This climate event periodically develops when warmth spreads across surface waters in the tropical Pacific. El Nios emerge every few years. The latest started in late spring of 2023.



But natural climate cycles cant explain all the warming. Heat is being stored within the seas top 2 kilometers (1.3 miles). This stored heat has been growing for decades, notes Hosmay Lopez. Hes a NOAA oceanographer who works in Miami. And, he adds, the rate of warming in that upper ocean has been speeding up.



Why? Since 1971, the ocean has absorbed more than 90 percent of the excess heat that greenhouse gases have trapped in Earths atmosphere. Were talking about more than 380 zettajoules of heat. Thats a lot. Its about 1.5 million times as much energy as was released two years ago during the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haapai volcanic eruption. Its also some 25 billion times as much energy as was released by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.



Sending all that heat into the ocean has lots of impacts. Here are a few.




Soaring sea temps



Since the middle of March 2023, the average sea surface temperature outside the polar oceans (at latitudes from 60 N to 60 S) has broken the daily record every single day. NOAA collected those data from satellites, ships and buoys in the sea. Each temp was warmer than records set on that day, a year earlier.







A hyperactive Atlantic hurricane season?



Hurricanes feed on water vapor and heat coming off the ocean. Right now, the Atlantic is very hot. So expect a very active hurricane season.



On April 4, researchers at Colorado State University in Fort Collins released their 2024 outlook. The biggest hurricanes get names. The outlook forecasts 23 named storms for this upcoming season. Five will likely rank as at least a Category 3, it said. Such storms have minimum sustained winds of 179 to 208 kilometers per hour (111 to 129 miles per hour). It also put the chance of a major hurricane hitting the United States at 62 percent.



Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania issued their own outlook three weeks later. It predicts some 33 named storms for this season.



Most hurricanes form in a stretch of the Atlantic between the Caribbean Sea and West Africa. Sea-surface temps in this co-called main development region, or MDR, have been super high. Right now, theyre more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal, NOAA data show.



Since 1981, there have been only 10 months for which the MDRs surface has been that warm, West says. Eight of those months not yet including April 2024 have occurred in the last year.



Explainer: El Nio and La Nia



La Nia is the counterpart to an El Nio. It develops where surface waters become relatively cool across much of the tropical Pacific. The likely emergence of a La Nia contributes to the new hurricane forecasts. Why? Winds over the Atlantic tend to tear apart developing hurricanes. These winds weaken during a La Nia. That makes hurricanes more likely to occur.



As of April 11, NOAA reported an 80 percent chance that La Nia will emerge by August to October. Thats peak hurricane season. 



It only takes one hurricane making landfall to make it an active season, the Colorado State report says.




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Do you have a science question? We can help!



Submit your question here, and we might answer it an upcoming issue of Science News Explores




Corals are bleaching globally



Sweltering seas can imperil the worlds corals. These living structures support roughly one-fourth of all known marine species.



When stressed by heat, corals expel the vibrantly colored algae that live in their tissues. These photosynthetic houseguests normally provide them with food. But their departure lays bare the corals white skeletons. These are known as bleaching events. And they can be fatal to corals.



Since early 2023, coral bleaching has gone global. In fact, on April 15, NOAA announced that conditions formally qualify as a global coral bleaching event. Its only the fourth such event since mass bleaching was first observed in the 1980s.



This boulder star coral sits in the Caribbean waters off St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. It bleached white last year (middle panel) in response to 2023s extreme ocean heating. By March of this year, however, its photosynthetic algae had returned, allowing the coral to survive.NOAA



From February 2023 to April 2024, significant coral bleaching has been documented in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres of each major ocean basin,” noted Derek Manzello. Hes a NOAA coral-reef ecologist who works in College Park, Md.



How many corals die in this event is something we wont know until months or years after its over, says marine ecologist Carly Kenkel. She works at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. I can say that this is the worst bleaching that weve ever seen for the Caribbean. And its certainly looking like that for the Great Barrier Reef [off Australia] as well.



Antarctic sea ice reaches new lows



The Southern Ocean has absorbed almost as much heat from human-caused climate change as the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans combined. Thats partly because strong winds circulate over the Southern Ocean. They continuously draw cold, heat-sapping waters to its surface. The result of absorbing all that heat: Over the last year, Antarctic sea ice has fared poorly.



In a typical February, Antarctic sea ice dwindles to a yearly minimum. It had been bottoming out around 3 million square kilometers (1.2 million square miles). Thats according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Its in Boulder, Colo. This past February, that ice retreated even more to just 2 million square kilometers. That was a tie for the second-lowest annual minimum on record. Just five months before, the yearly maximum ice cover for the year there reached a new record low some 17 million square kilometers (6.6 million square miles).



Ocean warming and changes in air currents probably drove these lows, says Monica Ionita. It was too warm above the ice and too warm below, says this climatologist. She works at the Alfred Wegner Institute Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research. Its in Bremerhaven, Germany.




Sea ice retreat



Antarctic sea ice coverage fluctuates by season, typically reaching its lowest extent in summer (February or March) and highest at the end of winter (in September). This past February saw the sea ice reach its second-lowest minimum, tying February 2022s record. Last Septembers maximum was a new record low.







Antarctic sea ice had been more or less stable since the 1980s. Around 2015, that all changed.



Suddenly, surface temps in the Southern Ocean began climbing. And now there have been three Antarctic summers during which sea ice hit record lows. Some researchers worry that these low Antarctic sea ice levels are a new normal.



And why do we care? As that ice melts, the extra water has to go somewhere. And that somewhere is eventually onto land, where it can swamp coastal communities across the globe.



The data would seem to indicate that a permanent shrinking in Antarctic sea ice is underway, Ionita says. But to be sure, it would help to have more than 40 years of satellite data on this.





On the other end of the planet, Arctic sea ice had been falling steadily. It had been dropping some 12 percent each decade. But in recent years, this sea ice has not set new record lows. That may be because the Arctic has already settled into its own new norm, Ionita speculates.



If a similar transition is underway in Antarctica, she notes, a decline in sea ice might temporarily stabilize there, too. Well have to see.



For now, scientists dont know when sea-surface temperatures will stop breaking records.



A La Nia might help cool the seas surface, Lopez says. However, the seas kept breaking temperature records during the La Nia that stretched from 2020 to 2023. What that shows, West says, is that even if Pacific waters near the equator cool, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you stop breaking records everywhere.

Neil makes a really good point about GMO (genetically modified foods) and how we have always had them. Just doing the natural section in a lab makes no difference. What do you think? You can answer in the comments section.

On January 13, 2021, the US House of Representatives voted to impeach former president Donald Trump for the second time. However, the verdict did not result in Mr. Trump'sconviction or removal from office. It will also not prevent the former US leaderfrom runningfor publicoffice again.Those measures canonly be takenif theUS Senate, which began its trial onFebruary 9, 2021,also votes in favor of the impeachment.Here is how we got here and what to expectnext.

Last year saw brutal, record-breaking heat scorch much of the globe. Forecasts show that above-average temps are likely to hit most of the United States this summer, too. But one thing will be different in 2024: An online tool will be available that maps and rates the heats risk to health. It displays those risks using a convenient five-color scale.



Anyone in the United States can enter their zip code. Up will pop the current heat risk. It also will show air-quality levels and a seven-day, heat-risk forecast for your area, notes Mandy Cohen. So, you can plan your day and you can plan your week with your health in mind. Cohen directs the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Ga. She unveiled this new HeatRisk tool at a news conference on April 22. 



Explainer: How heat kills



Extreme heat kills more than 1,200 people in the United States each year, CDC estimates. Thats more than hurricanes, floods and tornadoes combined, says Rick Spinrad. He heads the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Heat-related illnesses are even more widespread. Last year alone, they led to almost 120,000 emergency room visits. Too-warm nights also make it hard to sleep, upping the risk of accidents, poor work performance and more.





The HeatRisk maps are based on temperature forecasts from NOAAs National Weather Service. They also include heat and health data from the CDC. As a package, they show where rising temperatures are likely to pose a threat to our health.



The maps rate risk on a scale that goes from pale green (for no risk) to deep magenta (for extreme risk). Those rankings are based on several factors. These include how unusual temps are for the time of year and how long an excess heat spell may already be. They also account for whether nights will offer a cool reprieve from the heat and whether conditions will likely be hot enough to impair health.



Users can zoom into the color-coded map and find local heat forecasts for the week. Another part of the site provides tips on how to spot signs of heat-related illness and how to stay safe. Theres even a Spanish-language version.



When it comes to heat, its never too early to prepare, Spinrad said.



As they prepare for another scorching summer, federal weather and health officials have released an online tool that forecasts the health impacts of that heat on people in the United States. It allows users to find the threats posed by heat in their local area. NOAA

Ancient peoples fashioned many tools from bones. These included awls, needles and fish hooks. Two turkey leg bones with sharpened ends point to a more colorful use. Native Americans used them to make tattoos some 3,620 to 5,520 years ago. Thats the conclusion of a new study.



The sharpened turkey bones turned up at a dig site in Tennessee called Fernvale. Excavations in 1985 uncovered the bones in a mans burial pit.



These pigment-stained bones are the worlds oldest known tattooing tools, says Aaron Deter-Wolf. Hes an archaeologist with the Tennessee Division of Archaeology in Nashville. The find suggests that Native American tattoo traditions in eastern North America extend back at least 1,000 years earlier than previously thought.



The oldest known tattoos belong to tzi the Iceman. He lived around 5,250 years ago in Europe. But researchers have yet to find any of the tools used to make his tattoos.





Deter-Wolf was part of a team that studied the bones under a microscope. Tools used to create skin designs are tough to find and recognize, he says. But two turkey-leg bones showed distinctive damage on and near their tips. The pattern looks like the wear previously seen on experimental bone tattooing tools, Deter-Wolfs team says.



In that research, Christian Gates St-Pierre made tattooing tools out of deer bones. An anthropologist, he works at the University of Montreal in Quebec, Canada. Gates St-Pierre used his bone tools to tattoo lines in fresh slabs of pig skin. First, he coated the tips in a homemade ink of soot, water and wax. Then he made a series of punctures in the skin. Experimental tattooing left ink remnants several millimeters from the tools tips. The Fernvale tools showed the same pattern, only theirs are red and black pigment residues.



Other artifacts found in the same Fernvale grave suggest they may have been part of a tattoo kit. Two turkey wing bones display microscopic wear and pigment residues. Those likely resulted from applying pigment during tattooing, the scientists say. The grave also contained pigment-stained seashells. These may have held liquids into which tattooers dipped their tools.



Deter-Wolfs team described its new research in the June Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

It felt like magic. Joshua Vermillion was describing the first time he used artificial intelligence, or AI, to make an image.





Vermillion is an architect and designer who teaches at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He creates artwork of otherworldly spaces. Before he started using AI to do this, Vermillion would make maybe 10 pieces in a year. Last year, though, he made around 150 works. I can just simply tell the computer what I want in plain English, he says. What a time to be alive!



Many other artists, though, arent so thrilled about AI-generated art. Katria Raden is an independent illustrator and author based in Belgrade, Serbia and Berlin, Germany. People used to hire her regularly to create art for marketing materials or to illustrate childrens books. Last year, almost no one reached out about these types of jobs. The rise of AI may help explain this. At times I think its a bad dream, she says. I feel scared and angry, but also pretty sad.




View this post on Instagram A post shared by Katria Raden (@katriaraden)
Katria Raden creates digital illustrations in her studio. When people create art, she says, our inspiration is colored through our personal lives, our emotions. She feels a sense of community and connection when she views human art. In contrast, bot art seems empty and meaningless to her.



Using AI to create an image is quick and easy. Popular image generators include Dall-E 3, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. They are cheap or even free to use. They also pose threats to some artists jobs.



But the problems go deeper than that. To train an AI model to produce images, developers need to show it a huge number of example images. Such a library of examples is called a data set. OpenAI, the creator of Dall-E 3, has kept its training data secret. But the company Stability.AI, which makes Stable Diffusion, shared its data set. It contains 2.3 billion images tagged with text. Midjourney reportedly used this same training data.



These images were scraped from the internet. Data scraping automatically pulls files from webpages. Often, no one asks permission or checks what these files contain. Thousands of artists names and works have been found in the data set. Illegal or harmful images and peoples personal photos are also among those data.



Raden doesnt like the way AI image generators were trained or how theyre being used. It’s cheating and it’s basically fraud, she says. Many artists agree with her. Their rallying cry on social media is create, dont scrape.



Vermillion sees their point. But for him, the rise of AI tools has been mostly positive. At design workshops he runs, he always asks people how they use AI in their work. He recalls one participant saying, Sometimes I just need a creative partner that doesnt think like I do. AI, he feels, can play that role.



AI image generators are getting more powerful. Some can now produce video. And theyre easier than ever for more people to access. In the past, new forms of technology have led to new types of art. Can AI boost human creativity and storytelling? Or might it exploit and overshadow both?



Catching copycats



AI image generators are supposed to produce brand-new pictures that dont belong to anybody. Yet they can mimic or even reproduce images from their training data. In 2022, one of the most popular prompts on Stable Diffusion was a name: Greg Rutkowski. Hes a Polish artist who paints dramatic fantasy scenes, often with wizards and dragons. Stable Diffusion allowed people to make new images in his style.



Let’s learn about artificial intelligence



In the United States, copyright laws protect creators ownership of creative works, including art, books, movies and popular characters. Using or copying someone elses creative work without their permission isnt allowed. So Rutkowski and a group of artists filed a lawsuit claiming that AI companies violated their copyright. Many similar lawsuits are ongoing as well.



Reid Southen is an artist based in Detroit, Mich. He works on concept art for major movies, including The Hunger Games and Blue Beetle. His job is to design sets and illustrate key moments in a movie. Then the rest of the team works toward capturing that image on film.



Southen isnt involved in any lawsuit. But, he says, I do know that my work is in the [training] data set. And if youve ever uploaded a photo online, he says, there’s a good chance that your image may have ended up in one of these models or data sets.



That bothers him a lot.




One ‘videogame hedgehog,’ please



In experiments with Dall-E 3 (left) and Midjourney (right), the prompt videogame hedgehog led these bots to generate images of a very familiar character Sonic! Instead of inventing a new hedgehog character, the bots copied one theyd seen in their training data.





Gary Marcus and Reid Southen/Dall-E 3





Gary Marcus and Reid Southen/Midjourney






Once, many years ago, Southen says, he took a trip to the Comic-Con convention with friends. We had our car broken into and all our stuff stolen, he says. They had to drive more than two hours back home on a cold night with a broken window. Whats happening now with AI image generators feels similar to him. Its someone taking your stuff, he says. It feels wrong, and theres nothing you can really do about it.



Southen may feel powerless, but hes making his voice heard. He partnered with AI expert Gary Marcus to run some experiments in Midjourney and Dall-E 3.



They got these AI models to spit out copies of screenshots and characters from existing movies and video games. They used short, vague prompts. The single word screencap led to a variety of copyrighted content, says Southen. You get Spider-Man Elsa from Frozen video games, too. The pair described their findings in IEEE Spectrum in January 2024.



The goal of their work was to point out that AI image generators will easily reproduce copyrighted content. The user doesnt even have to ask directly for it.



How many of these characters do you recognize? Midjourney made these copyrighted characters in response to a one-word prompt, screencap. This prompt doesnt work the same way anymore. The company likely fixed the issue in response to this type of testing. Gary Marcus and Reid Southen/Midjourney



Rewriting laws



Midjourneys terms of service say that users may not use the tool to violate copyright. To Southen, putting this responsibility on users doesnt seem fair. His research shows that users may accidentally get copycat content without knowing.



As it stands, breaking this rule can get a users Midjourney account shut down. This penalty happened to Southen three times while generating screenshots for his research. Each time, he paid for a new account so he could continue testing.



AI image generators tend to exaggerate stereotypes



Southen says Midjourneys data set must contain the images it manages to copy. They don’t have permission to use that data. This is the same thing that angers Raden and many other artists. Before feeding her work to an AI model, Raden says, they should be required to ask me.



People are generally allowed to use others copyrighted work without asking if they arent directly making money from it. They can use it for inspiration, research or analysis. For example, art students often copy other painters in their classes. And search engines like Google display links to copyrighted material in their results.



J. Vermillion/Midjourney
Joshua Vermillion created this odd creature with Midjourney. Art, he believes, always requires a human touch and critical thinking. When people use AI to generate images, they should consider context, cultural awareness, ethics and empathy, he says.




AI companies have argued that training AI technology on copyrighted images is a similar type of use. They dont think they should have to ask permission or pay copyright owners. If the courts decide that they do, I think we will see a slowdown in training AI in the U.S., said Amir Ghavi, implying that such a change could hinder innovation and progress. Ghavi was speaking at a May 2024 conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Hes a lawyer who represents Stability.AI and many other AI companies.



Image-generating AI did not exist when copyright laws were written. So governments and courts will have to decide whos right and whos wrong here. Japans legal system has (for now) sided with the AI companies. In the United States, those legal battles are ongoing.



Its not just AI-generated images on trial. AI-generated articles, books, videos, voices and more are triggering controversy, too. During the summer of 2023, Hollywood screenwriters went on strike. They managed to get their industry to agree to a set of rules limiting how AI may be used in the creative-writing process.




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Cloaks and poison



Until new laws and rules get written, some people are taking matters into their own hands to protect human-made artwork from AI copycats.



See all the entries from our Artificial Intelligence story collection



Ben Y. Zhao led a team of computer scientists who worked closely with artists to develop a tool called Glaze. It can protect individual artists against people who want to train a model to mimic them, says Zhao. He is a professor at the University of Chicago in Illinois. Artists feed their original images through the tool and get back glazed copies to post online.



Glaze is like a disguise that fools AI models. It confuses them when they try to train, explains Shawn Shan. Hes a PhD student who worked on the tool in Zhaos lab.



When image-generating AI is training, it sorts pictures into a many-dimensional map. Thats called a feature space. This map groups pictures with similar elements or styles closer together. The AI model later uses this map as a guide to generate new images.




Glaze



Glaze is like a disguise that artists can apply to digital images before posting them online. The image looks the same to people. But AI models see it as a different style. So the AI model cant learn to mimic the actual style. University of Chicago




Glaze tricks an AI model into placing an image in the wrong place on the map. It alters the pixels of an image so it looks almost exactly the same to a human. But to an AI model, it seems to have an entirely different style.



Glaze is free for artists. In its first year, says Zhao, it was downloaded 2.3 million times.



Glaze helps artists defend their unique styles. But it doesn’t do much to solve the bigger problem, he says. It doesnt stop AI companies from grabbing files without regard for ownership or copyright. So the team made another tool, called Nightshade.



Zhao describes it as a poison pill.




That pic is poison



Nightshade is like a poison pill, says Ben Y. Zhao. It mixes up an AI model. For example, it might make the model think that pictures of cars are actually cows. Once a model has consumed 100 or more poisoned car images (see results above), it draws cows when people ask for cars.University of Chicago




Nightshade doesnt just misplace things on an AI models feature map. It scrambles the map itself. For example, Nightshade alters images of cars to make them all seem (to an AI model) like one very specific cow. They still look like cars to people.



Once a model has seen enough of this, says Zhao, they will be convinced that a car really does have four legs and a tail and a big white head with a nose. Nightshade also makes dogs seem like cats, hats seem like cakes and so on. It mixes up styles as well as objects.



Zhao, Shan and their team discovered that adding just 100 poisoned images of a concept to a set of 10,000 normal examples can mess up the AI models training. And things got really wild when they poisoned hundreds of different concepts at once. In one test, they poisoned 250 different concepts with 100 altered images each.




Generating gibberish



When Nightshade poisons lots of different concepts at once, an AI model breaks down. In this example, the concepts of person, painting and seashell werent poisoned. Yet an AI model that had consumed 250 or more poisoned images of other things could no longer draw them. University of Chicago




This breaks down the structure of the AI model, Zhao says. Afterwards, even if you ask for a concept that wasnt poisoned, all you get is random gibberish, he says.



Raden already uses Glaze and is excited about Nightshade, which came out in February 2024. In the future, she says, I will use it on all of my pieces for sure.



Imagining a future for AI in art



Raden hopes that Nightshade will teach AI companies to ask permission before grabbing images. What if they take in poisoned data and their tool breaks? Serves them right, she says.



Katria Raden protected this and all her other digital images with Glaze. She plans to use Nightshade, too. Artists like her are having a tough time right now. But she believes human art eventually will win out over images generated using AI. We as humanity will get through this, she says. K. Raden


Zhao sees no value in AI generators of any kind. The only real impact he sees is that quality work has become harder to find. On the internet, in e-book stores, on sound streams, anywhere that there is content, it is now being filled with trash, he says. Why? Because it is so cheap to produce trash.



Southen worries that art will suffer from a loss of human talent. It just scares me, he says. If things keep going this way, brand-new artists who might have a lot of really awesome or important things to say are just not going to do it.



To him, the best way to fix the situation is to start over. Scrap the data set, he says. Kill the models.



But not everyone feels this way about AIs place in creative work. Some feel that creators will adjust and grow with AI just as they have with other new tech in the past. When photography was invented, some sketch artists and portrait painters lost work. But the new medium also led to new types of art. Vermillion notes that cameras freed up artists to try new forms of expression.



Southen doesnt buy this argument. Photographers didn’t steal from artists to make the technology work, he explains.



Vermilion accepts that there are serious issues with image-generation AI that need to be worked out. Hes glad artists are making their voices heard. We need to enter the fray, use the tools, experiment with them and be critical of them, he says.



Joshua Vermillion worked with Harpers Bazaar on a photo shoot that placed real models and clothing into AI-generated scenes.Joshua Vermillion/Mirko Tabaevi/Luka Ukropina/Ana Ostoji/Maja Mihajlovi



But in his experience, AI is already making possible new types of creative work. Vermillion worked with Harpers BAZAAR magazine to do a shoot with real models and clothing but AI-generated landscapes and settings. He says they needed to involve more people than usual in the project, not fewer. Everything I’ve worked on has not displaced any human labor, he says.



Vermillion is also excited about AIs potential to help build a metaverse of virtual-reality experiences. Hes experimenting with AI tools to fill in hidden parts of his flat images and turn them into spaces in virtual reality.





Which of these AI-generated places would you most want to visit? Architect Joshua Vermillion created these using Midjourney. Hes working on ways to turn such images into virtual-reality experiences.















J. Vermillion/Midjourney









J. Vermillion/Midjourney









J. Vermillion/Midjourney









J. Vermillion/Midjourney









J. Vermillion/Midjourney










He also appreciates that AI can stoke his imagination. I want to be surprised by the results, he says.



Many other artists are finding interesting ways to incorporate AI into their work. Sondra Perry, an artist based in New Jersey, uses AI-generated images and video. Agnieszka Pilat, a Polish-American artist based in San Francisco, Calif., works with robots to create art. She sees them as collaborators.



Artist Agnieszka Pilat (pictured) says that using AI to mimic human art got very boring already. She thinks this phase will pass. In the future, though, she imagines that robots might become artists. Her installation piece Heterobota, at the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia, involves robots that draw.A. Pilat


AI can help artists be more productive or make new types of art. It also opens up the world of visual expression to people who dont have art skills or who cant afford to hire artists. Are these benefits worth all the downsides? Thats up to us as a society to decide.



Some are already finding better ways to build AI models. The company Adobe released an AI tool called Firefly in 2023. Adobe made sure they had permission to use all the images in the data set they used for training. Firefly also applies labels to generated images noting that they are made by AI.



Explains Jingwan (Cynthia) Lu, a researcher at Adobe, the company realized it needed to create responsible AI. She spoke in May at the MIT conference.



To Raden, art is a way to connect with other humans and to share experiences. When she finds out an image was AI-generated, it feels similar to finding out an athlete cheated. I do not want to enjoy generated content, she says. I want art.

Isaac Newton. Not sure we will ever have such a genius like this again. Makes me want to work harder as I hear how great this man was back in his day.

Athletes Peyton Manning and Serena Williams led their colleagues with endorsements of food and beverages that are unhealthful.

Can you answer any of these questions? If so, a Noble prize may be waiting for you!

Here is a great list of 25 places to get free public domain books! Really great resource to keep handy!

Father's Day, which will be celebrated on June 20, 2021, promises to be extra special this year. The Earth will join in the festivities with the June solstice,kicking off the Northern Hemisphere'sfirst day of summer.Conversely, Southern Hemisphere residents will celebrate the astronomical start of winter, or winter solstice, with the shortest day of 2021.

Nuclear clocks could be the GOAT: Greatest of all timepieces. If physicists can build them, nuclear clocks would be a brand-new type. These clocks would keep time based on the physics of atoms hearts.



Some scientists believe the first of these could debut in a few years.



At the center of each atom is a nucleus. Thats where protons and neutrons are found. Clocks based on atomic nuclei could be 10 times as precise as todays most exact clocks.



Better clocks could improve technologies such as GPS navigation. But its not just about timekeeping, physicist Peter Thirolf said June 3. Nuclear clocks could allow new tests of fundamental ideas in physics. Thirolf works at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt Mnchen in Germany. He spoke at an online meeting of the American Physical Society.





Currently, the most precise clocks are atomic clocks. They arent based on the nucleus. They tally time using the energy jumps of electrons. Electrons in atoms can carry only certain amounts of energy, in specific energy levels. To bump electrons in an atom from one energy level to another, the clocks atoms must be hit with a laser. And the lasers light must be just right.



Explainer: How lasers make optical molasses



Light is made up of electromagnetic waves. Frequency is the rate at which those waves pass by. Only light of a certain frequency will make the electrons jump. That frequency serves as a highly precise timekeeper. Imagine using the rate at which waves wash up on a beach to keep track of time. But in this case, theyre light waves.



Protons and neutrons within an atoms nucleus also occupy energy levels. Nuclear clocks would rely on jumps of those particles instead of electrons.



Adriana Plffy is a theoretical physicist. She works at Friedrich-Alexander-Universitt Erlangen-Nrnberg in Germany. An atoms nucleus isnt as affected by stray electric or magnetic fields as the atoms electrons are. She says that suggests nuclear clocks would be more stable and more accurate.



But theres a problem. Typical lasers cant access nuclear-energy levels. For most nuclei, that would require higher energy light than normal lasers can achieve.





How excited



Luckily, theres one lone exception. A freak-of-nature thing, Marianna Safronova said in a June 2 talk at the meeting. She is a theoretical physicist at the University of Delaware in Newark.



The exception is thorium. Thorium is a metallic chemical element. There is a variety of the element known as thorium-229. It has a pair of nuclear energy levels that are close together. The energy levels are so close, in fact, that a laser might be able to set off the jump.



Scientists recently pinpointed how much energy a thorium-229 nucleus needs to make the jump. This is a crucial step toward building a thorium nuclear clock.



Thirolf and his colleagues estimated the energy by measuring electrons that the nucleus emitted when it jumped between levels. The team described its findings in Nature two years ago.Another team took a different approach. It measured the energy of other jumps the thorium nucleus can make and subtracted them. Those researchers reported their findings in Physical Review Letters last year.



Both teams agree that thorium-229s nucleus takes about 8 electron volts to jump energy levels. This energy corresponds to the edge of lasers power. That suggests lasers might be able to prompt a jump.



Detectors (shown in this false-color image made by a scanning electron microscope) measured the light emitted when thorium-229 atoms jumped between energy levels. Those measurements allowed physicists to estimate the energy of the jump needed to make a nuclear clock.Matthus Krantz



Making the jump



Physicists now are aiming to trigger that jump with lasers.



Chuankun Zhang is a physicist at JILA, a research institute in Boulder, Colo. At the meeting, Zhang reported efforts to use a frequency comb. A frequency comb is a laser with an array of light frequencies. The comb will hopefully let Zhangs team spur the nucleus to jump. It also could let the team better measure the energy needed to make the jump. If its a success, Zhang said, we can directly build a nuclear-based optical clock from that.



Thirolfs team also is working with frequency combs. His team aims to create a working nuclear clock within the next five years.



Meanwhile, Plffy is looking into using whats called an electronic bridge. Rather than using a laser to hit an atoms nucleus directly, the laser would first excite the atoms electrons. Those excited electrons would then transfer energy to the nucleus. Plffy presented this idea at the meeting.



Test of time



Nuclear clocks could let researchers devise new tests of fundamental constants of nature. A fundamental constant is a number that never changes. At least we think it doesnt ever change. Tests with nuclear clocks would help scientists figure out if the numbers are in fact constant, or if they vary over time.



Nuclear clocks could also test a foundation of Einsteins gravity theory the equivalence principle. It states that two different objects in a vacuum should fall at the same rate.



This new type of clock might even aid in the search for dark matter. Dark matter is invisible. Its made of particles that scientists have yet to detect. Physicists think these particles account for most of the universes matter. If dark matter were to interact with a nuclear clock, the interaction could tweak the clocks ticking.

Ghostly particles from space are giving us a new view of our galaxy.



Known as neutrinos, these subatomic particles have little mass and no electric charge. Theyre sometimes called ghost particles. Thats because they easily pass without a trace through gas, dust and even stars. High-energy neutrinos zip everywhere throughout the cosmos, carrying information about distant places. But where the particles come from has typically been a mystery.



Lets learn about ghost particles



Now, researchers found the first signs of high-energy neutrinos coming from within our Milky Way. They mapped the particles to create a new image of our galaxy. Its the first made with something other than light.





The map also hints at possible sources for these high-energy neutrinos. They could be the remains of past supernovas star explosions. Or they might come from the cores of collapsed supergiant stars or other unidentified objects. More research is needed to figure out the sources for all these neutrinos.



The new map of our galaxy was unveiled June 30 in Science.



Previously, only a few high-energy neutrinos have been traced back to their potential birth. They all came from outside the Milky Way. Two appeared to come from black holes shredding their companion stars. Others came from a type of galaxy called a blazar.



Explainer: Stars and their families



Its clear now that researchers are spotting neutrinos from both inside and outside our galaxy, says Kate Scholberg. Shes a physicist at Duke University in Durham, N.C., who did not take part in the new mapping project. Theres so much more to learn, she says. It can be tremendous fun to figure out how to see the universe with neutrino eyes.



Those neutrino eyes might one day allow us to see distant objects in a way that no other telescopes can match.



Some telescopes rely on visible light. Others pick up X-rays, gamma rays or the charged particles that make up cosmic rays. All of those types of light can be deflected or absorbed as they travel through space. Neutrinos, though, can cross huge expanses without being deflected. This allows the particles to tell us about very distant objects.




Three ways to map the Milky Way



Here are views of the Milky Way in visible light (top), gamma rays (middle) and high-energy neutrinos (bottom). Dust obscures portions of the visible-light map, and a variety of sources can generate gamma rays. Neutrinos have the potential to pinpoint remnants of supernovas, cores of collapsed stellar giants and other cosmic features.


IceCube Collaboration/Science 2023IceCube Collaboration/Science 2023





New look at old data



The ability of neutrinos to pass through things so easily also makes them extremely hard to detect. Scientists found the Milky Way particles using a neutrino detector in Antarctica. Called IceCube, this detector is embedded deep in the ice. To better detect ghostly neutrinos, its enormous. Its 5,160 sensors are arranged in a cube one kilometer (3,281 feet) on each side.



Even so, the experiment sees only a tiny share of the neutrinos that zip through space. IceCube scientists observe 100,000 or so neutrinos a year. Some of these neutrinos leave tracks in the detector. The scientists can sometimes trace these tracks back to the neutrinos source. Most of the neutrino signals that IceCube picks up, though, are a type called a cascade event. These leave bursts of light in the detector, but do not reveal a neutrinos origins as well as tracks can.



Astronomers used to throw away data on cascade events, says Naoko Kurahashi Neilson. Shes a physicist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pa. Those data can hold useful information about where the neutrinos come from. Its just hard to pick out which of those tens of thousands of cascade events are most important.





Kurahashi Neilson and her team took up the challenge. They dug through a decade of IceCube cascade-event data. They enlisted the help of an artificial-intelligence system known as a neural network. You can train the neural nets to identify which events are worth keeping, Kurahashi Neilson explains.



She pioneered this approach in 2017. Over the years, Kurahashi Neilson has steadily improved it. She and her colleagues have now used it to identify the neutrinos used to make the new map.



Its an impressive analysis, Scholberg says. And the technique may have the potential to be developed even more. Clearly a lot more work needs to be done, she says. But its very exciting to see the basic expectation [of Milky Way neutrinos] verified.

Pulsar (noun, PUHL-sahr)



Pulsars are dense, quickly spinning cores of dead stars that blast radio waves into space.



When a star thats a few times as big as the sun dies, it shoots most of its mass off into space in a huge explosion. That explosion is called a supernova. But the core of the star collapses in on itself and forms an ultra-dense neutron star. All that mass clumps together under the force of gravity. That causes the dead star to spin faster, just like an ice skater pulling in their arms during a turn. Neutron stars can spin faster than the tires on a race car at top speed anywhere from once every few seconds to hundreds of times per second. Thats millions of times faster than the Sun spins.





A pulsar is a special kind of neutron star that blasts out two beams of radio waves in opposite directions. As the dead star spins, those beams sweep through space like the lights on a lighthouse. If Earth is in the path of one of those beams, we see a flash of radio waves every time it sweeps past us. That makes the pulsar appear to pulse at very regular intervals.



This animation shows a pulsars radio beams (purple) sweeping through space. When one of the beams passes over Earth, the pulsar appears to flash.



Astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell first discovered pulsars in 1967. At first, some scientists thought the radio beams she saw might be coming from aliens. That was because the pulses were so regular. But then Bell Burnell found radio pulses coming from a different part of space, far from the first signal. It was unlikely that two groups of aliens were signaling us at the same time from so far apart, so scientists looked for a different explanation. They eventually learned the radio waves were coming from pulsars scattered throughout space.



Scientists today use pulsars to make maps of space and keep time in the cosmos. Pulsars can also be used study the fundamental laws of physics that rule the universe.



In a sentence



Scientists time the radio flashes from pulsars to look for gravitational waves.



Check out the full list of Scientists Say.

Massive numbers of sharks died abruptly 19 million years ago, new data show. Fossils from sediments in the Pacific Ocean reveal that 90 percent of them vanished. And so far, scientists dont know why.



Its a great mystery, says Elizabeth Sibert. She led the new study. A paleobiologist and oceanographer, she works at Yale University. Thats in New Haven, Conn. Sharks have been around for 400 million years. And yet this event wiped out [up to] 90 percent of them.



Explainer: How a fossil forms



Sharks have suffered losses in the past. It started 250 million years ago during the Great Dying. This event marked the end of most large ocean species. Much later, about 66 million years ago, a huge asteroid fell to Earth. It killed off most dinosaurs and 30 to 40 percent of shark species. After that, sharks enjoyed about 45 million years as the oceans top predator. They even survived large climate disruptions, such as an episode about 56 million years ago when global levels of carbon dioxide spiked and temperatures soared.





The newly discovered fossils are a surprising twist in the sharks story.



Sifting sediment



Sibert sifted through fish teeth and shark scales in the sediment. She worked with Leah Rubin, a student at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine. Scientists had collected that sediment during various expeditions to the North and South Pacific oceans. The project came out of a desire to better understand the natural background variability of these fossils, Sibert explains.



Sharks bodies are mostly cartilage. Unlike bone, cartilage is difficult to preserve as fossils. But sharks skin is covered in tiny scales. Each scale is about the width of a human hair follicle. These scales make for an excellent record of past shark abundance. They contain the same hard mineral as sharks teeth. Both can turn to fossils in sediments. And we will find several hundred more [scales] compared to a tooth, Sibert explains.



Fossil shark scales provided clues to the change in biodiversity after a mysterious shark die-off. Researchers sorted the scales into two main types: those with lined grooves (left) and those with geometric shapes (right). The geometric shapes all but disappeared from ocean sediments following the extinction event.E.C. Sibert and L.D. Rubin/Science 2021



What her team discovered was a surprise. From 66 million to about 19 million years ago, the ratio of fish teeth to shark scales held steady at about 5 to 1. Then the ratio took a dramatic turn: 100 fish teeth appeared for each shark scale. The team estimates this change was abrupt within 100,000 years or so.



That sudden disappearance of shark scales came at the same time as a change in the scales shapes. This provides clues about shark diversity.



Most modern sharks have lined grooves on their scales, ones that may help them swim faster. Other sharks scales have geometric shapes. The researchers looked at the change in the abundance of various scale shapes before 19 million years ago and then again afterward. This revealed a huge loss in shark diversity. It appears some seven in every 10 shark species went extinct.



And this extinction event was quite selective, notes Rubin. After the event, the geometric scales were almost gone. And that previous diversity in sharks, she adds, was never seen again. She and Sibert describe their findings June 4 in Science.





A cautionary tale



An explanation for the massive shark die-off isnt obvious, Sibert says. Nineteen million years ago is not known as a formative time in Earths history. Solving the mystery is one question she hopes to answer. She wants to understand how the varied scale shapes might relate to shark lineages. Shed also like to learn what impact the sudden loss of so many big predators might have had on other ocean dwellers.



Answers to those questions could be helpful today. Overfishing and ocean warming in the last 50 years have decreased shark populations by more than 70 percent. This loss of sharks no doubt impacts the oceans ecology.



Catherine Macdonald is a marine conservation biologist at the University of Miami in Florida. She sees the study as a cautionary tale. Our power to act to protect what remains does not include an ability to fully reverse or undo the effects of the massive environmental changes we have already made, she notes.



What happens to communities of the oceans top predators can be critical signs of those changes. Unraveling how the ocean ecosystem responded to shark losses in the past could help researchers predict what may await us now, Sibert says. The sharks are trying to tell us something, she explains, and I cant wait to find out what it is.

Predator and Prey, (nouns, PREH-duh-tor and PRAY)



The words predator and prey describe the roles in a relationship between two species. In this relationship, one species eats the other. The predator is the species that does the eating. The prey is the one that gets eaten. Predator/prey relationships are important links in food webs. These links move energy and nutrients through an ecosystem.



A bear fishing salmon from a river is one example of a predator/prey relationship. The bear is the predator. The salmon is the prey. But salmon must eat too. They snack on plankton, insects and other small critters. So in those cases, the salmon plays the role of predator.





Animals arent the only predators and prey. A rabbit chomping on grass is a predator, while the grass is its prey. But plants can also play the role of the predator. For example, a Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) snares flies in its leafy jaws and digests them.



Predators and prey drive each others evolution. Over time, predators adapt to better catch prey. For example, the cheetahs powerful body can out-race its impala prey. But prey have evolved ways to avoid being eaten. The nimble impala can make a hard swerve that leaves behind the cheetah. Many plants have toxins, spines or other defenses that make eating them unpleasant. And millions of years ago, the need to escape marine predators likely helped drive some species from water to land.



In a sentence



Thanks to its predator/prey relationship with ants, the Australian ant-slayer spider (Euryopis umbilicata) evolved a cool somersault technique for capturing prey.



Check out the full list of Scientists Say.

Modern-day rhinos,which weigh anywhere from 1,800 to5,100 pounds, are no lightweights. However, they pale in comparison totheir prehistoric cousinthat roamed China about 26million years ago.The massive mammal weighed 46,000 pounds almost as much as four largeAfricanelephants. Standing ata heightof23ft (7m), it was alsotaller than a giraffe.

Orcas,also known as killer whales, are the largest members of the dolphin family. The mammalshunt in pods of up to 40 individuals. Theyareknown for theircoordinatedattacks onmarine animals. But the whalesrarely pose a threat to humans.

Thought experiment (noun, THAWT Ex-PAIR-eh-mint)



A thought experiment is a hypothetical scenario addressing a big question.



The scenario can sometimes seem absurd. But considering such scenarios can highlight the consequences of a particular idea or theory.



One famous thought experiment is known as Schrdinger’s cat. Physicist Erwin Schrdinger devised it in 1935. He did this to illustrate a point about quantum theory.



Lets learn about the quantum realm



Quantum theory attempts to describe physics at the tiniest scale. One aspect of quantum theory is a concept known as superposition. Superposition says that particles can exist in different states at the same time. Quantum theory also says that when these particles interact, they adopt just one state.



But many scientists took this a step further. They said that just observing such a particle caused it to pick a state. Schrdinger found that idea ridiculous. So, he came up with a thought experiment.



His scenario describes a box with a cat inside. This box connects to a single atom. This atom represents the superposition idea. The atom has a chance of decaying. That means the atom has two potential states: decayed and undecayed.



The cat’s fate is bound to the atom in this thought experiment. If the atom randomly changes state from undecayed to decayed, then poison “kills” the imaginary cat Schrdingers cat, as it came to be known.



And here’s the important part. In this scenario, the cat, box and atom are all unobserved. With no observer, that atom would hypothetically be in a state of superposition. It would be both decayed and undecayed at the same time. But the cats life is linked to this atoms state. So, if the atom exists in two states, so does the cat. The cat is both alive and dead. And its state dead or alive would only be determined if someone observed the cat or the atom.



That, Schrdinger pointed out, is absurd. But it doesnt mean quantum theory is flawed. In fact, this thought experiment has become a helpful device for understanding the absurd nature of subatomic particles.



Thought experiments are not limited to science. Other fields, such as philosophy, history and economics use them, too. Thought experiments help us reconsider information we already know. But they can also help propose new ways of thinking through and discussing complex questions.



In a sentence



Thought experiments help to illustrate the quantum mechanics principle of superposition.



Check out the full list of Scientists Say.

How brainy was Tyrannosaurus rex? It depends on who you ask.



Last year, the iconic dinosaur received the glow up of a lifetime. Neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel calculated that the fearsome reptile had 3.3 billion neurons nerve cells in just one part of the front of its brain. The discovery seemed to put the brainpower of T. rexs forebrain on a par with that of modern baboons.



In fact, it suggested the ancient predator might have had the mental hardware to develop culture and make tools. But that claim raised some eyebrows and doubts.



A new set of calculations has now spat out a much lower neuron count.



Dinos had closer to 360 million neurons in the telencephalon, this new study suggests. That part of the forebrain plays a role in sensing, thinking and coordinating motion. If true, this lower count would put T. rex on the mental level of crocodiles, not baboons. An international team of researchers shared the new count April 26 in The Anatomical Report.




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Those new calculations dont convince Herculano-Houzel, who works at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. Theres a fatal mistake here, that leads to the lower count, she says.



To calculate how many neurons an animal has, you must know how closely packed those brain cells were. And that can be tough because neuron density varies widely across animals. Also, brain cells arent well preserved in fossils. So when scientists study extinct animals, they must estimate neuron densities based on their modern relatives.



And here lies the issue: T. rex belongs to a group of dinosaurs known as theropods. Its related to both reptiles and birds. But these two groups have vastly different neuron densities. Reptiles have fewer neurons per unit volume of brain than birds have. When calculating the number of neurons in extinct theropods like T. rex, researchers must decide whether to base their work on birds, reptiles or some mix of the two.



Bird-brained or reptile-headed



For her 2023 study, Herculano-Houzel worked out the relationship between brain size and body mass for some 30 different dinos. She then looked at how these numbers stacked up against modern birds and reptiles. Using ancient bird families hinted that theropod brains were more like bird brains. Thus, she used modern bird densities to do her calculations.



Lets learn about why turkeys are dinosaurs



That assumption is flawed, even if birds are living dinosaurs, says Cristin Gutirrez-Ibez. A comparative neuroscientist, he works at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. There, he studies the brains of different creatures. Birds vary in their ratio of brain size to body mass. So his team considered more birds that are alive today in their new study. That left T. rexs brain-to-body ratio closer to that of scaly reptiles.



Herculano-Houzels study also inflated the numbers of neurons another way, Gutirrez-Ibez says. She assumed that dinosaur brains occupied the whole braincase. As its name implies, this part of the skull houses the brain. But unlike modern birds, the brain of T. rex and many other dinosaurs floated in a fluid much as do those in modern crocodiles.



T. rexs brain occupied about 30 to 40 percent of its braincase (dark blue). How many nerve cells were packed in this relatively small space is at the center of a debate on this species smarts.WehaveaTrex, CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED; adapted by Cristin Gutirrez-Ibez/Univ. of Alberta



Recalculating T. rexs brain size based on filling less of the braincase slashed the neuron count, Gutirrez-Ibez says. The estimate for the telencephalon dropped from 3.3 billion to 1.2 billion. Using reptile neuron density cut the amount even more: to between 245 million and 360 million.



Herculano-Houzel counters that her study indeed accounts for dinosaur brains not filling the braincase. Whats more, she argues, it doesnt make sense to consider the body-brain ratios of a wide variety of modern birds. For her study, she considered only birds that are most closely related to dinosaurs. She says that by throwing in birds like pelicans and penguins which have very different body-to-brain ratios the new study incorrectly concluded that T. rex was like modern crocs.





Brains and behaviors



In any case, whether T. rex had a lot of neurons might not be a good gauge of the dinosaurs overall brainpower, says Amy Balanoff at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Md. An evolutionary biologist, she did not take part in either study.



Even if the neuron density in T. rex was on a par with primates, the cells probably helped the dinosaur move its large body or gather sensory information. For instance, the smell centers of the T. rex forebrain were huge, Balanoff points out. Even if the telencephalon was loaded with neurons, many were likely devoted to processing odor, she says. And scientists dont yet have much evidence that these early dinos used their noggins for things like shaping tools or developing culture.   



Gutirrez-Ibez agrees. Having the same number of neurons as a primate does not make you a primate, he says. To suggest that these dinosaurs used tools or that they were as smart as a primate seems like a large leap.



Still, Herculano-Houzels work has been helpful. Balanoff says, I do really appreciate the original study for starting the conversation. You cant move science forward if youre unwilling to put the data out there.

A never-before-seen type of eruption explosively blasted debris high into the sky from Hawaiis Kilauea volcano in 2018. It wasnt one big ka-pow! Kilauea had been erupting lava. Then a series of 12 strange blasts occurred over a span of 11 days. These blasts sent gas, ash and rock eight kilometers (five miles) into the air.



Scientists now liken those blasts to the action of a stomp rocket. Thats a toy propelled from a launch pad as somebody stomps on a pocket of air, suddenly compressing it.



Its unlike the two well-known processes that trigger most volcanic explosions, notes Joshua Crozier. Hes a geophysicist at Stanford University in California. He also was lead author of the new study.



Explainer: The volcano basics



One standard process is a sudden release of pressure as hot magma moves up pipe-like channels from underground. The magma contains bubbles of gas. As they expand, molten rock will blast out the top of the crater. Most other explosions arise when a rising plume of magma flash-heats groundwater pooled in some of the volcanos rocks. This will shoot steam and broken bits of rock skyward.



But neither such process seems to explain what happened at Kilauea six years ago.



Instruments near the volcanos summit collected data as it blew its top again and again between May 16 and May 27, 2018. Those data now suggest the strange sequence of explosions were due to something scientists had never noticed before.





For one thing, the erupted material didnt contain bubbly bits of magma. Thats what youd expect from the first process, Crozier says. And rocks in the caldera were already far too hot to contain much liquid water. That eliminates the second scenario.



Instead, it seems large chunks of the craters rock fell down into the chamber of magma below. Each drop suddenly compressed air in the magma chamber. This must have sent volcanic debris shooting skyward, Croziers team now argues.



They liken this to the way stepping hard on the air bladder of a stomp rocket sends its foam projectile flying.



Croziers team described this novel volcanic action May 27 in Nature Geoscience.



Instruments documented telltale activity



A falling of the roof rock at the volcanos summit appears to have smooshed magma in the chamber below. Such a collapse of the craters rock is known as subsidence. And this collapse didnt happen all at once. There were a series of successive drops. Each likely triggered another explosive burst.



Almost as soon as the eruptions began, Crozier and others began suspecting these bursts traced to those collapses in the volcanos caldera. To confirm their hunch, the team pored over abundant data that has been continuously collected at the site.



Kilauea is one of the most extensively instrumented volcanoes in the world. Networks of seismometers keep close watch on Kilaueas inner workings. Meanwhile, GPS-armed tiltmeters near its summit record subtle changes in the movement and slope of the ground. This tracks how magma moving below strains the rock.



Cameras at the top of Kilauea tracked its crater dropping. Here, the cameras show the widening collapse of the opening or caldera over 11 days in June. This was several weeks after the stomp rocketstyle eruptions had ended. Red circles mark the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, or HVO, and the Volcano House hotel.Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, USGS



The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory also has a network of microphones that pick up frequencies below what the human ear can hear. These infrasound rumblings pointed to changes in air pressure. Some were likely caused by explosions.



Changes in the frequency of infrasound waves moving through the ground revealed a distinct pattern during May 2018. They suggest the chamber would enlarge, after which there would be an explosion. Seismic waves, meanwhile, showed a series of distinct earthquakes. Each was less than a magnitude 5 in intensity. These, too, were linked to the explosions.



What likely happened, the researchers say, is that the magma chamber drained enough to make its rocky roof unstable. This let that ceiling rock fall under its own weight. The falling rock suddenly compressed air above the magma like compressing a stomp rockets air bladder. Some 10 to 30 seconds later, cameras observed the summit shooting hot gas and rock up and out of the magma chamber.



Kilauea is likely not unique



This is the first time, to my knowledge, that such a mechanism has been suggested to drive eruptions, says Larry Mastin. He works at the U.S. Geological Surveys Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash.



Mastin did not take part in the new analyses. But as a volcanologist, he understands what can go on in and around magma chambers. Whats being reported is a rather unusual mechanism, he notes. But the circumstances of this eruption are unusual. And unusually good monitoring proved very useful in helping narrow down the cause.



The stomp-rocket mechanism only affected the very early stages of Kilaueas summit collapse, Mastin says. That was basically when the roof [was] falling in right above the magma. Over time, as the collapse in the caldera floors radiated outward, the tightly focused stomp-rocket compression ended. And that largely stopped the eruptions as debris clogged the vent in the central caldera.




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Stomp-rocket-style eruptions probably arent unique to Kilauea, Crozier says. The volcanos extensive monitoring just made it especially easy to detect the new phenomenon, he says. Knowing how to link seismic and infrasound data may one day help mitigate hazards elsewhere, he says at volcanoes with far less instrumentation.



In many cases, the first sign we have of an eruption is a seismic or infrasound signal, Crozier says. The better that science gets at relating such data to what the erupting plume is doing, he says, the better we can calibrate our models. And that, he says, could help warn of upcoming explosive risks.

They say that going to space changes you. The idea is that people get a new perspective from seeing our world from above. Its called the Overview Effect. But a new project offers clues to how spaceflight also changes our bodies. This Space Omics and Medical Atlas or SOMA has measured a broad range of effects.



Researchers have studied spaceflights effects on health since the dawn of the Space Age. Theyve looked into the effects of weightlessness, space radiation and other out-of-this-world conditions as people have rocketed into low-Earth orbit and sometimes spent months there.



Well-known problems include bone loss and an increased risk of cancer. But there have been signs of vision impairment and drops in certain types of brain tissue. It may weaken immunity and change the switches that turn on genes.



Whats not always been as clear is what might be changing at a molecular level. SOMA hoped to find out.




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The project’s new data come from short stays, such as travel into orbit via Axiom missions (Ax-1 and -2) and SpaceXs Inspiration4. Additional data came from some missions by NASA and the Japanese Space Agency.



SOMAs initial findings appear as a series of 30 papers. They came out June 11 in various Nature journals. And already, they make up the largest published database on aerospace medicine and space biology.



Professional astronauts working for government space agencies must undergo rigorous tests to screen for potential health problems. The same is not true for private space travelers. And thats why SOMAs data are so important. A major shift is underway in human spaceflight: the rise of commercial space tourism.



Astronaut Mark Kelly gives himself a flu shot in 2015 while taking part in NASAs Twins Study. While Mark remained on the ground, his twin Scott spent a year in space. By comparing how the health of each twin changed over that year, researchers investigated the impact of space travel on the body.NASA



Space lengthens DNA caps



Perhaps the most well-known long-term biomedical NASA study involved identical twins. Scott and Mark Kelly both trained as astronauts. Scott spent 340 days on the International Space Station. Afterward, researchers looked at how that affected his physiology, gene expression, immune system and mental reasoning. To better understand any changes, they compared these features to those in Mark, the twin who stayed on the ground.



One fascinating finding: Space travel lengthened Scott Kellys telomeres. These are short bits of repeating nucleic acids. Found at the ends of our DNA, they act sort of like the cap on a shoelace. They protect our strands of DNA. As cells divide, telomeres shorten. Its a change generally linked with aging.



So did Scotts stay in space make his body seem younger? No. In fact, the telomere change may increase his risk of cancer. 



Certain cancers protect telomere lengths or cause telomere elongation, explains Eliah Overbey. At the University of Austin in Texas, she studies the health effects of spaceflight. That’s part of why these cancers are tricky, she says. They’ll divide, divide, divide but their telomeres aren’t getting any shorter. Fortunately for Scott Kelly, once back on Earth, his telomeres shrank back to their preflight size.



Still, this experiment was limited by its tiny sample size: two men. NASA didn’t repeat these sorts of studies on their future crews, Overbey notes.



Mission commander Jared Isaacman, a tech entrepreneur, works alongside medical officer Hayley Arceneaux on Inspiration4, a private space mission. The two performed science experiments during their three days in space.Inspiration4/SpaceX



What SOMA found



Through SOMA, Overbey and her colleagues have now collected many types of molecular data. That includes telomere length. Other examples are immune responses and the bodys ability to repair DNA and manage stress.



Even a few days in space can trigger genetic changes, SOMAs data show. In fact, short-term changes differed little from ones seen during longer missions. 



As with Scott Kelly, telomeres of the Inspiration4 crew got longer during their jaunt. Even though they were only up there for three days, we were actually still able to see what was a pretty dramatic effect, Overbey says. Once they got back on the ground, though, their DNA-cap lengths went back to normal.



Many other molecular changes also followed patterns similar to those in the Twins Study. They seemed to shift during spaceflight regardless of its length. Then they largely went back to baseline once the travelers were back on Earth.



What do such data mean for an astronauts health? That isnt clear, especially when thinking about the long timescales of a Mars mission or a stay at a moon base. And the total number people going to space is still small. After all, each new private mission carries only a crew of four.



Still, Overbey and her team intend SOMA to become a hub for health data on commercial and government crewed missions.





In an April 24 TED Talk, this Brown University student extols the wonders and promise of space tourism, from the first trip (which cost $20 million) to her vision for lowering that cost within 10 years to $100,000. Thats a bit more than twice as much as todays most expensive plane ticket.



Few health guidelines for space tourists



An increase in space tourism poses many ethical issues. To get into orbit, professional astronauts must undergo a lot of training and be in tip-top health. The U.S. government has no health requirements for space tourists.



Twenty years ago, Congress passed a temporary ban on new human-safety rules for commercial space travel. It didnt want to interfere too much as the private space industry was starting to develop. That ban was set to expire in 2012. Instead, it has been extended most recently to January 2025. And some bills, if passed, would push this date back for up to six more years.



This means that the Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA, which oversees launch licenses, cant make private astronauts undergo health tests before strapping into a rocket seat.



If you want to climb Mount Everest, you need to submit a health certificate, notes Dana Tulodziecki. That’s more than you currently officially need to do to go to space, says this philosopher. She works at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.



The FAA suggests that private astronauts consult with their doctor before signing up to travel. Preferably, that doctor should be trained in spaceflight issues. But no one can ensure that happens. And even if a doctor said a tourist wasnt healthy enough to rocket off, that person could simply keep asking around until they found a doctor who gave them an okay.



These are obviously really complicated issues, Tulodziecki says. She thinks that before the ban ends, lawmakers should consider what laws might be needed to ensure the safety of tourists who want to buy a ticket to space.



This isnt an issue of theoretical risks that might play out one day in the distant future. Its already happening, she says of space tourism. So, its really something urgent.

Beakiation (noun, Beek-ee-AY-shun)







Beakiation is a technique that parrots use to move along thin branches. Scientists recently discovered beakiation in experiments with a parrot species called rosy-faced lovebirds (Agapornis roseicollis). These birds are native to dry woodlands in southwestern Africa.



To beakiate, a parrot first hangs from a branch with both feet. Second, the bird stretches its neck to grab a spot on the branch to the side of its feet with its beak. Third, the parrot swings its feet toward the other side of its beak to grab the branch in a new spot. The parrot repeats this motion to sidestep its way down the branch.





This rosy-faced lovebird (Agapornis roseicollis) moves across an obstacle course that scientists set up in a lab to study beakiation. The bird stretches its neck and grabs onto a thin bar. Then, it releases the bar from its feet and swings its body to the side. Finally, it grasps the bar again with its feet in a new spot.



The newly found maneuver is similar to a motion seen in primates called brachiation. Thats when a primate uses its arms to swing between tree limbs.



More research is needed to find out whether other parrot species also beakiate. And how much these birds might use the trick in the wild. Beakiation may help parrots navigate forests that are too dense to fly through. The technique highlights how many different tasks birds can use their beaks for. And it underscores just how smart parrot species can be.



In a sentence



Parrot species have shown a whole bunch of clever behaviors besides beakiation.



Check out the full list of Scientists Say.

For the first time, an orangutan has been seen doctoring a wound. Scientists describe it as the first evidence of a wild animal caring for a wound using a natural substance thats known to aid healing.



Researchers shared their discovery May 2 in Scientific Reports.



The team had been studying great apes in Indonesias Gunung Leuser National Park. Some 150 orangs live in its Suaq Balimbing research area. Scientists have been studying these animals since 1994. In June 2022, Ulil Azhari was watching a male Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii) named Rakus.





The ape was chewing on a thick woody vine, or liana. The animal then rubbed the liana paste onto an open cheek wound that was several days old. He likely got it in a fight with another male. Rakus applied the paste several times over the span of about seven minutes. Then he smeared pulp from the plants leaves over his injury. He used those leaves almost like a bandage.



Local people, it turns out, use the same plant (Fibraurea tinctoria) in traditional medicine. Its known to slow or limit the growth of bacteria and to fight inflammation.



Isabelle Laumer is a cognitive biologist on the research team. She works at the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior in Konstanz, Germany. After reading Azharis notes, she recalls immediately getting very excited. This ape, she points out, only treated his wound and not any other body part. And this was done repeatedly.



Rakus was seen munching on liana leaves again the day after he applied a paste to his facial wound that he had treated with the same plant. The gash had completely closed about five days after the treatment, with no signs of infection.Saidi Agam


That wound closed within five days of being treated. And it never got infected. The orangs focused effort convinced Laumer that Rakuss use of the liana paste to treat his gash had been deliberate. It showed purpose.



There’s a lot of [published reports] about animals applying things to areas that hurt, says zoologist Michael Huffman. He works at Nagasaki University, in Japan, where he has studied primate self-medication for decades. But this, I think, is the first published paper, he says, with details of both the chemical properties of the plant and the progress of the treatment.



Laumer says she hopes her teams finding will make people care more about protecting orangutans. One look at these apes and you understand how they got their name. Orang means person in the Malay language. Hutan means forest. The apes human likeness doesnt stop with their bright eyes, mustache and beard. Yet all three species of orangutans are critically endangered. It would be so sad, she says, if they would vanish from this world.

For a long time, scientists thought Venus was geologically dead. But newfound evidence suggests active volcanoes may be common on this second planet from the sun. The finding emerged during a careful review of photos taken more than 30 years ago.



This definitely is another step in the path to understanding Venus as a living, breathing world, says Paul Byrne. He works at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. A planetary scientist, he did not take part in the new study.



Venus is nearly Earths size. Some scientists had suspected its core is about as hot as our planets. Internal heat is the main cause of things such as volcanoes and quakes.





Between 1990 and 1992, a NASA spacecraft called Magellan snapped radar pictures of Venus. Much later, two researchers took another look at them. Last year they reported spotting a volcanic vent. It was changing shape and seemed to be spilling out lava.



For the new study, a new team of scientists scoured Magellan photos for signs of volcanic activity. It was a huge job. Venus has three times as much dry land as Earth does.



Their new review turned up two more sites showing signs of volcanic activity. One was on the western slopes of a large, low volcano. Its called Sif Mons. The other was Niobe Planitia. This flat region hosts many volcanic vents. During two of Magellans passes over the planet, long winding features appeared at both sites.



The researchers thought these snake-like features might be due to landslides, not volcanoes. But the features appeared to spill across the land as lava would. They also showed up at fairly flat sites. Landslides wouldnt be expected here, the researchers say.



In these two instances the changes in how the surface looks in radar is best explained by there being lava flows, Byrne agrees.



Researchers in Italy reported their finding May 27 in Nature Astronomy.



It wasnt easy to uncover these signs of active volcanism. The reason: Magellans data is relatively low-resolution and Venus is so large. Byrne now suspects there are other volcanic sites on the planet. There’s likely much more to be found, he says.



Both he and the study authors agree that Venus could have as much volcanic activity as Earth. But we may have to wait to find out for sure. NASA is planning to launch two probes in the 2030s. They will map the surface of Venus in far more detail. That should make it easier to spot signs of active volcanoes.

Superconductor (noun, SOOP-er-con-DUCK-tor)



A superconductor is a material that conducts electricity without resistance.



Many materials conduct electricity. That is, they allow electric currents to flow through them. Such materials are called conductors. For instance, metal wires conduct electricity that powers our electronics and home appliances.



But in almost all conductors, electric currents meet some resistance. Why? As electrons move through a conductor, they can smash into other particles. This resistance causes some energy to be wasted. We can feel this wasted energy as heat. Thats why our computers need cooling fans.



But superconductors conduct electricity without resistance. This property appears only at super-cold temperatures. Thats because any heat energy jostles electrons, which causes collisions. Less heat means less jostling. That leads to fewer collisions and less resistance.



When very cold, the elements mercury and lead become superconductors. Some compounds do too. Alloy made with titanium and niobium is one.





Lots of tech depends on superconductors. Quantum computers, for instance. They rely on these materials to store data in units called qubits.



Scientists can use superconductors to make electromagnets. This is a type of magnet that only becomes magnetic when an electrical current runs through it. Conducting electricity without resistance allows superconductors to create intense magnetic fields.



Superconducting magnets power MRI machines. These devices take detailed images of the insides of a person’s body. Such pictures help doctors identify medical problems such as brain injuries or tumors.



Magnets made from superconductors also propel the worlds fastest trains. Maglev which stands for magnetic levitation is one such train. Maglev trains don’t ride on rails. They hover. Magnets in the rail and train car repel one another. The train car floats rather than rests over its track. That means theres no friction to slow things down.  



The first commercial maglev train opened in Shanghai, China, on January 1, 2004. This train clocks in at 431 kilometers (268 miles) per hour. A Japanese LO Series maglev train scorches by at 603 kilometers (375 miles) per hour. Whizzing at such speeds would allow a person to ride from the U.S. east coast to the west coast in about seven hours.



Todays superconductors only work below certain temperatures. For example, the magnets in maglev trains must be chilled to about 268 Celsius (450 Fahrenheit).



In a sentence



Imaging technology that uses lasers to explore electron movements could reveal why superconductors conduct electricity with no resistance.



Check out the full list of Scientists Say.

Kids like Tola Martins in Disneys Iwj dont drive to school, they fly. Harry Potter and Ron Weasley pulled a similar stunt when they missed the train to Hogwarts. As did Flint Lockwood when he had to stop a giant spaghetti storm in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.  



Flying cars have soared through sci-fi and fantasy stories since the early 1900s. But theyre not flying across our actual skies. At least, not yet. And if they do someday become commonplace, they might look a bit different than in the movies. 



Prototypes for flying cars (such as this EH216-S) often rely on propellers, rather than wings, for lift. This allows the vehicles to take off vertically, like a helicopter, instead of needing an airplanes long runway.Tomohiro Ohsumi/Stringer/Getty



The technology to make flying cars already exists, says Xiaosong Du. Hes an aerospace engineer at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla. Hundreds of companies, such as Terrafugia, are working to make flying cars a reality. Some have even flown prototypes, such as Joby Aviations air taxi and Airbus Vahana. 



The key to making flying cars work is a combination of helicopter and airplane technology, Du says. It would not be very practical for flying cars to take off like airplanes. For that, theyd need runways, which would take up lots of space. Instead, a flying car would take off vertically, like a helicopter. Rotating blades would chop through the air, generating a force known as lift to bring the vehicle off the ground. 





Electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, known as eVTOLs, might be used as flying taxis in the future. Jobys electric aircraft can fly four passengers about 240 kilometers (150 miles).



Once it’s completed takeoff, Du says, you can fly like a normal airplane. Airplane wings could rotate out from the body of the aircraft, allowing for flight with less air resistance than a helicopter experiences.  



Another option is to attach propellers to a flying cars wings. At first, the wings would be tilted upwards, so that the propellers could lift the vehicle. Then, once the car takes off, the wings would tilt to lay flat, like those on a normal airplane, says Pat Anderson. Its like a Transformer. Anderson is the former director of the Eagle Flight Research Center at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla. 



Vehicles with rotating blades and propellers don’t sound much like the flying cars of science fiction. They dont even sound much like cars. Instead, these vehicles would look more like the two-winged choppers that military personnel pilot around Pandora in the Avatar movies, Anderson says. 





Another eVTOL, Airbus Vahana, has flown over 100 test flights so far and is up to four times faster than regular cars, the company says.



Still, building airborne cars is about more than just bringing sci-fi to life. Its about using more of the available space in the world to get people where they need to go. Todays drivers can only travel in two dimensions: north-south and east-west. Flying cars could unlock a third dimension: up-down. Imagine a world where you could beat rush-hour traffic by simply lifting off the ground and zooming over the other drivers.  



This could be especially useful as the worlds population continues to grow. I think that, eventually, we will see a day where we use the third dimension to help us get around, Anderson says. Otherwise, [Earth is] going to be a pretty congested place. 



Whats the holdup? 



One of the biggest barriers to people commuting in flying cars is expense. The company Alef Aeronautics, for instance, plans to sell personal cars that can drive on roads and take off into the skies. These cars look and function similarly to those in many science fiction movies, but they come with a steep price tag. When they go into production as early as next year, the cars will likely cost around $300,000 each.  



A handful of wealthy people may own cars like these, Anderson says. But most people could never afford one. Even repair costs would be much more expensive than for a normal car. If you get in a fender bender, you just destroyed an airplane instead of a car, Anderson says. 



But average people may still ride in flying vehicles one day. Anderson imagines that a rideshare service for flying cars something like Uber or Lyft for the skies may be more practical than everyone owning one. 





Even though some companies plan to release cars sooner, flying Ubers probably wont be common for 10 or 20 years, Anderson says. First, aircraft need to be tested over and over for safety. And the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration will need to create regulations for flying cars. Rules of the road arent enough. Flying cars will need rules of the sky. You don’t want airplanes falling on top of other people and hurting them, Anderson says. 



Du agrees that reliability and safety are the key topics now for making flying cars a reality.  



Powering flying taxis is another holdup. Because of their sustainability, people are kind of in love with batteries, Anderson says. But batteries are heavy, and like those in electric cars have a limited range.  



Lets learn about batteries



Flying takes a lot of power, especially during takeoff. Current rechargeable lithium-ion batteries can only support flying cars for 20 to 30 minutes, Du says. And while a car that runs out of charge can simply pull over, a flying car would fall out of the sky. So its extra important that these batteries last. Thats why researchers like Du are trying to improve battery efficiency before flying taxis hit the market. 



After making sure theyre safe and energy-efficient, a big step would be to make flying cars self-driving. Even self-driving cars on the ground are still a rarity. But if self-piloting vehicles ever got off the ground, kids of the future might be able to skip a flying license test and head straight to the skies. 




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