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Science

SCIENCE: Rumors of the Y Chromosome’s Demise Are Exaggerated

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X and Y chromosome - Deposit Photos

The sex we’re assigned at birth depends largely on a genetic flip of the coin: X or Y? Two X chromosomes and you (almost always) develop ovaries. An X and a Y chromosome? Testes. These packages of genetic material don’t just differ in terms of the body parts they give us. With 45 genes (in comparison to around 1,000 on the X), the Y chromosome is puny. And research suggests it has shrunk over time — a proposition that some have, in turns, glumly or gleefully interpreted as predicting the demise of men. So is the Y chromosome really dying … Read more

NATURE: This Vampire Parasite Eats Tongues

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tongue-eating louse

When scientists recently X-rayed a fish’s head, they found a gruesome stowaway: A “vampire” crustacean had devoured, then replaced, its host’s tongue. The buglike isopod, also called a tongue biter or tongue-eating louse, keeps sucking its blood meals from a fish’s tongue until the entire structure withers away. Then the true horror begins, as the parasite assumes the organ’s place in the still-living fish’s mouth. Biologist Kory Evans, an assistant professor in the Department of BioSciences at Rice University in Houston, Texas, discovered the tongue biter while digitizing X-rays of fish skeletons. He shared images of the surprising and horrifying … Read more

SCIENCE: Turns Out Sperm Don’t “Swim” Like We Thought

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sperm swimming

Under a microscope, human sperm seem to swim like wiggling eels, tails gyrating to and fro as they seek an egg to fertilize.  But now, new 3D microscopy and high-speed video reveal that sperm don’t swim in this simple, symmetrical motion at all. Instead, they move with a rollicking spin that compensates for the fact that their tails actually beat only to one side.  “It’s almost like if you’re a swimmer, but you could only wiggle your leg to one side,” said study author Hermes Gadêlha, a mathematician at the University of Bristol in the U.K. “If you did this … Read more

They Came From the Deep

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Microbes

Microbes found themselves buried in the dirt 101.5 million years ago, back before even Tyrannosaurus rex when Earth’s biggest meat-eating dinosaur, called Spinosaurus roamed the planet. Time passed, continents shifted, oceans rose and fell, great apes emerged, and eventually human beings evolved with the curiosity and skills to dig up those ancient cells. And now, in a Japanese lab, researchers have brought the single-celled organisms back to life. Researchers aboard the drill ship JOIDES Resolution collected sediment samples from the bottom of the ocean 10 years ago. The samples came from 328 feet (100 meters) below the 20,000-foot-deep (6,000 m) … Read more

Scientists Make “Super Space Sunblock”

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Mars - NASA

For astronauts preparing to spend a long summer vacation on Mars, hats and umbrellas might not be enough to protect them from the sun’s harsh rays. And just like beachgoers slathering on sunscreen, explorers on the moon or Mars may one day shield themselves using creams containing a new bioengineered material called selenomelanin, created by enriching the natural pigment melanin with the metal selenium. Outside the Earth’s protective magnetic field, humans are exposed to many types of dangerous radiation, according to NASA. This includes damaging ultraviolet radiation, X-rays and gamma rays from the sun, as well as superfast subatomic particles … Read more

SCIENCE: What is Consciousness?

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writer brain - pixabay

Humans once assumed our planet was the physical center of the solar system, so it’s no surprise that we also think highly of consciousness, the apparently unique quality that allows our species to contemplate such matters. But what is consciousness? The topic has been extraordinarily controversial in the scientific and philosophical traditions. Thinkers have spent an immense amount of time and ink trying to unravel mysteries, such as how consciousness works and where it resides. The short answer isn’t very satisfying. Scientists and philosophers still can’t agree on a vague idea of what consciousness is, much less a strict definition. … Read more

Can You Suck Energy OUT of a Black Hole?

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black hole - pixabay

A rotating black hole is such an extreme force of nature that it drags surrounding time and space around with it. So it is only natural to ask whether black holes could be used as some sort of energy source. In 1969, mathematical physicist Roger Penrose proposed a method to do just this, now known as the “Penrose Process.” The method could be used by sophisticated civilizations (aliens or future humans) to harvest energy by making “black hole bombs.” Some of the physics required to do so, however, had never been experimentally verified — until now. Our study confirming the … Read more

Is There a Mirror Universe? And Does My Hair Look Better There?

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Mirror universe - pixabay

A series of viral articles claimed that NASA had discovered particles from another parallel universe in which time runs backward. These claims were incorrect. The true story is far more exciting and strange, involving a journey into the Big Bang and out the other side. The sensational headlines had muddled the findings of an obscure 2018 paper, never published in a peer-reviewed journal, which argued that our universe might have a mirror reflection across time, a partner universe that stretches beyond the Big Bang. If that’s the case, and a series of other extremely unlikely and outlandish hypotheses turn out … Read more

What Color is the Sunset on Alien Worlds?

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Alien Sunset - Deposit Photos

Fiery rose and peach sunset skies are a unique perk of our home on Earth. But what colors appear when the sun sets on other planets in the solar system? The answer depends on the planet. On Mars, the sun comes and goes with a blue glow. On Uranus, the sunset sky transitions from blue to turquoise, according to NASA. And on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, the sky turns from yellow to orange to brown as the sun dips beneath the horizon. Sunset colors aren’t uniform because, in large part, these hues are a product of each planet’s atmosphere … Read more

Non-Binary Astronomers? Of Course There Are, And We Need to Treat Them Better

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observatory - pixabay

Gender equality in astronomy doesn’t end with the male/female gender binary. In a study led by nonbinary astrophysicist Kaitlin Rasmussen, researchers took a look at gender equity in astronomy and what practices could address outstanding issues that leave out or have a negative impact on researchers who do not fit into binary male or female gender identities. This study, released in 2019, was inspired by surveys that were done by astronomers who looked at gender equity in astronomy. They and others in the field, as they point out in this study, noticed that a lot of the papers that have … Read more