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Science
Physics, climate, planetary science, and the research that shapes how we understand the universe and our place in it.
Life on Earth may have begun twice. A Science Advances study found that bacteria and archaea inherited one ancient genetic code but independently evolved the machinery needed to become free-living cells — leading the researchers to describe it as “one origin of the genetic code, but two origins of life.
For decades, movies taught us that quicksand slowly drags people under until they vanish, and it turns out that is close to impossible, and what actually traps someone is far stranger, and the one thing that saves them is the opposite of what instinct screams at you to do.
Scientists estimate that even with 1,000 deep-sea vehicles each visually surveying about three square kilometres of seafloor per year—the current average rate—it would take more than 100,000 years to visually observe the entire deep seafloor once. So far, humans have directly seen less than 0.001% of it.
NASA researchers now estimate the Milky Way holds 20 times more rogue planets than stars — trillions of worlds wandering alone in the dark, untethered to any sun, some potentially the size of Earth
Pando, a single quaking aspen in central Utah, is one organism made of about 47,000 genetically identical trunks sharing a root system that covers 106 acres and weighs roughly 6,000 tons, making it possibly the heaviest living thing on Earth and, at an estimated 14,000 years old, one of the oldest
The popular claim that every star you see is already dead is the opposite of true — naked-eye stars are so relatively close and live so extraordinarily long that astronomers estimate only about one dies every 10,000 years, meaning the night sky is almost entirely alive
Halley’s Comet will return to the inner solar system and reach perihelion on July 28, 2061. Its next return after that won’t come until 2134 — meaning that for many people alive today, 2061 will be their one realistic chance to see the most famous comet in history.
Earth has had eight continents all along — the one missing from every map and school textbook is nearly twice the size of India, 94 percent underwater, and has been quietly sitting beneath the South Pacific for 85 million years
There is a spot in the South Pacific Ocean, 2,688 kilometres from the nearest land in every direction, where more than 263 decommissioned spacecraft lie on the ocean floor — and the closest humans to it are usually astronauts passing 400 kilometres overhead
Everything you have ever touched — every mountain, ocean, star, and galaxy visible through any telescope — is made of the 5% of the universe that physicists can actually account for. The other 95% has no name beyond 'dark', and no confirmed identity at all.
