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Caltech researchers used the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to determine that surface water left salt minerals behind as recently as 2 billion years ago. Mars once rippled with rivers and ponds billions of years ago, providing a potential habitat for microbial life. As the planet’s atmosphere thinned o...

Stanford researchers have created SandAI, an AI tool that reveals the ancient history of quartz sand grains, identifying how wind, rivers, waves, or glaciers shaped them. By using machine learning, SandAI enhances the accuracy and objectivity of microtextural analysis, making it valuable for geologi...

Earliest Human Footprints in the Americas Footprints found at White Sands National Park in New Mexico provide the earliest unequivocal evidence of human activity in the Americas and offer insight into life over 23,000 years ago. The footprints were formed in soft mud on the margins of a shallow lake...

Researchers at the University of Bath are investigating whether the natural properties of bacteria could help in developing a new type of environmentally friendly plasterboard. They are working with start-up company Adaptavate, which makes sustainable building materials. Their biodegradable plasterb...

An inexpensive repurposed drug called fluvoxamine (FDA can save the lives of COVID-19 patients and cut hospital admissions by up to 30 percent, says a study co-led by McMaster University. Fluvoxamine is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) that is approved by the Food and Drug Administrat...

Working Through a Mental Bloch Lightspeed is the fastest velocity in the universe. Except when it isn’t. Anyone who’s seen a prism split white light into a rainbow has witnessed how material properties can influence the behavior of quantum objects: in this case, the speed at which light propagates. ...

The University of Arizona team created maps of global temperatures for each 200-year interval since the last ice age. A University of Arizona-led effort to reconstruct Earth’s climate since the last ice age, about 24,000 years ago, highlights the main drivers of climate change and how far out ...

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured a striking image of Saturn and its rings from 90 kilometers above the Moon’s surface. From a viewpoint about 90 kilometers (56 miles) above Lacus Veris, “Lake of Spring,” the camera aboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft i...

Yukon permafrost DNA reveals mammoths and horses lasted until 5,000 years ago, reshaping extinction timelines and highlighting horses as native North American animals. Mere spoonsful of soil pulled from Canada’s permafrost are opening vast windows into ancient life in the Yukon, revealing rich new i...

Even undisturbed sand piles creep like glass, with grains constantly in motion. Experiments reveal soil behavior can be tuned by disturbances, offering new clues for landslide prediction. A recent study published in Nature Communications finds that piles of sand grains, even when undisturbed, are in...

Ancient human and animal DNA can remain stably localized in sediments, preserved in microscopic fragments of bone and feces. Sediments in which archaeological finds are embedded have long been regarded by most archaeologists as unimportant by-products of excavations. However, in recent years it has ...

Hardware and software improvements shorten ‘run time’ from year to a day. A Sandia National Laboratories supercomputer simulation model called SNAP that rapidly predicts the behavior of billions of interacting atoms has captured the melting of diamond when compressed by extreme pressures and tempera...

The accidental experiment will shed light on the physics of impacts in space. On March 4, 2022, a lonely, spent rocket booster will smack into the surface of the Moon at nearly 6,000 mph. Once the dust has settled, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will move into position to get an up-close view o...

China’s Tianwen-1 lander and Zhurong rover touched down on the Martian plain Utopia Planitia on May 14, 2021 after spending about three months orbiting the Red Planet. While the Chinese Space Agency has shared images of the rover and lander (including a cute family portrait taken by a wireless remot...