The strange connection between falling balls and quantum weirdness
A ball tossed into the air follows a path that classical physics can track with confidence. Shrink that…
DNA evidence points to a massive stone age population collapse
A stone tomb near Paris held generations of dead, but the people buried there did not all belong…
Ancient teeth unlock million-year-old secrets of where early humans evolved
Teeth are like tiny biological time capsules. They tell stories about ancient diets and environments long after their owners…
250-million-year-old fossil proves that mammal ancestors laid eggs
The little skeleton was curled so tightly it looked as if it had never really entered the world.…
Sperm whale clicks contain vowel-like patterns similar to human speech
The sound is sharp, spare and strange, a burst of clicks cutting through seawater. For years, researchers treated…
Historic discovery shows atoms can exist in two places at once
A cloud of helium atoms split, scattered and fell under gravity, yet still behaved as if its parts…
Physicists achieve most accurate measurement yet of the W boson
For a few years, one of particle physics’ most unsettling numbers seemed to be pointing somewhere strange. The…
A smiley face can hurt your credibility at work, study finds
A cheerful emoji can brighten a group chat. In a workplace message, it may do something else entirely.…
Physicists use pulses of light in 37 dimensions to prove quantum paradox
A puzzle with only three moves may sound simple. In quantum physics, it can still break classical logic.…
Bite mechanics of ancient marine predators yields surprising results
The Western Interior Seaway, which existed roughly 80 million years ago, split North America into North and South.…
Scientists are rethinking what loneliness does to the body
Two people can sit at the same dinner table, share the same number of conversations in a week,…
Scientists can now detect early signs of Alzheimer’s through the nose
A thin brush reaches deep into the upper nose, where smell begins. The motion takes only minutes. What…