People in the continental United States will witness a partial or total solar eclipse next month, but you’ll need to take precautions to avoid damaging your eyes. On April 8, the Moon will pass between the Earth and the Sun, temporarily blocking the Sun’s light. During the celestial alignment, the afternoon sky will briefly darken… Read More »
Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news about fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Genetic analysis sheds light on long-standing mystery surrounding President’s fate george washington‘s younger brother Samuel and his relatives. Two of Samuel’s descendants and their mother were recently identified from skeletal remains found in unmarked graves… Read More »
Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news about fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Ancient DNA recovered from the remains of a sixth-century Chinese emperor who ruled during the country’s Dark Ages has shed light on what the leader may have looked like. Emperor Wu He ruled China from… Read More »
NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will head to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa in October 2024, will carry a laser-etched message celebrating humanity’s connection to water. The message pays homage to past NASA missions that carried similar messages. As president of Extraterrestrial Messaging Intelligence, or METI International, I helped design the messaging in Clipper along with… Read More »
The cargo ship collision that destroyed Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26, 2024, raises questions about how much engineers can do to prevent such disasters from occurring in the future. Here, Michael J. Chajes, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Delaware, discusses how bridge design rules have changed over… Read More »
A crack in an ice sheet in the Antarctic ice sheet caused by climate change. Humanity is rapidly waking up to the fact that time is running out to take action to reduce the effects of climate change. Ironically, climate change itself, caused by greenhouse gas emissions through the burning of fossil fuels, may help… Read More »
Scientists have discovered a rare stardust particle resulting from the explosive supernova death of a distant star. This spot appears to be locked inside an ancient meteorite. The dust grain, however small, can help tell the story of the life, death and rebirth of stars that spans almost the entire 13.8 billion-year history of the… Read More »
The changing rotation of the Earth threatens to tinker with our perception of time, clocks and computerized society in unprecedented ways – but only for a second. For the first time in history, world timekeepers may have to consider removing a second from our clocks in a few years because the planet is spinning a… Read More »
Australia’s grassland earless dragon is no bigger than a pinky finger when it emerges from its shell, but the tiny lizard faces a huge challenge in the coming years: avoiding extinction. As recently as 2019, scientists in Canberra counted hundreds of grassland earless dragons in the wild. This year they found 11. In other parts… Read More »
A hiccuping supermassive black hole has alerted astronomers to an entirely new kind of black hole behavior. In 2020, at the heart of a galaxy about 800 million light-years from Earth, a black hole with a mass equivalent to 50 million suns suddenly exploded, illuminating the material around it by a factor of 1,000. A… Read More »