On a wind-brushed Sunday in Northern California, a routine beach cleanup yielded a breathtaking surprise: one of the planet’s rarest marine animals lay still on the sand. The discovery, made by novelist and Sonoma State University professor Stefan Kiesbye at Bodega Bay’s Doran Regional Park, turned a quiet morning into scientific intrigue. What he found
In March 2011, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Japan, triggering a tsunami that killed nearly 20,000 people and caused more than $200 billion in damage. Scientists have long understood the scale of the catastrophe. What puzzled researchers was how the rupture propagated so near to the ocean floor, amplifying the tsunami’s
The blind spot, first discovered in the 17th century, is a natural feature of the eye. It appears where the optic nerve enters the eye, and it exists in nearly every animal, with the exception of squids and octopuses. But instead of experiencing a gap in our visual field, the brain compensates, filling in the
Earthquakes that jiggle Earth’s middle layer may be more widespread than scientists thought. A new map of these mysterious deep earthquakes shows that they occur all around the world and that they may have a variety of causes. That’s interesting, said study senior author Simon Klemperer, a geophysicist at Stanford University, because mantle earthquakes were
In this image from video provided by NASA, a SpaceX Dragon capsule carrying Americans Meir and Jack Hathaway, France’s Sophie Adenot and Russia’s Andrei Fedyaev, approaches the International Space Station for docking on Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026. NASA/AP hide caption toggle caption NASA/AP The four members of NASA’S SpaceX Crew-12 mission docked at the International
Karwai Tang/Getty Images Lauded astrophysicist Stephen Hawking was outspoken about the existential threats facing humanity. Known for his work on the mysteries of general relatively and black holes, Hawking used his platform as the world’s most famous scientist to deliver several harsh warnings regarding man’s uncertain future, ranging
Four years ago, astronomers spotted a distant supermassive black hole swallowing an entire star. The star had wandered too close to the SMBH, and the black hole’s powerful gravity prevented its escape. It was a tidal disruption event (TDE), and now, four years later, the energy output from the TDE is still rising. The TDE
The universe was supposed to take its time building the largest structures in existence. Galaxy clusters, containing hundreds or thousands of individual galaxies bound together by gravity and immersed in enormous pools of superheated gas, should require billions of years to assemble. Standard models predict these monsters couldn’t possibly form in the universe’s early childhood.
This week in science: Mysterious molecules on Mars are tricky to explain without life; a compound that cuts cholesterol as a daily oral pill; an experimental new treatment for sleep apnea has a 93 percent success rate; and much more! Memory Loss in Alzheimer’s Linked to Problems With The Brain’s ‘Replay Mode’ (Sean Gladwell/Getty Images/vasabii/Canva)
Scientists have used the loudest gravitational wave signal ever recorded to put Albert Einstein’s century-old theory of general relativity to its toughest test yet. This extraordinary signal, known as GW250114, emanated from the merger of two black holes approximately 1.3 billion light-years away from Earth. The clarity of the signal, roughly three times clearer than