An international team of astrophysicists has found evidence that the universe recycles black holes, merging them to form even larger ones. Gravitational waves recorded in recent years show that some of the heaviest black holes within star clusters exhibit clear signs of being…
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.
For the past few decades, researchers have understood that quantum computers should eventually be able to crack the widely used codes that secure much of the digital world. To protect against this fate, they’ve spent years…
Nature abhors a vacuum, so the saying goes, but nobody told the universe. Space is filled with cosmic voids—vast regions mostly free of matter that have opened between dense threads of material that make up a cosmic web.
Far from being vacant backwaters with little to study, these voids may…
This species can reach 30 centimeters in diameter and live between 1,600 and 4,000 meters deep. Its biology baffles specialists because it does not quite fit the rules that define anemones and corals. Since its discovery, scientists have struggled to classify it, and its evolutionary origin…
For more than three decades, experts have been trying to solve the mystery of why a certain kind of underwater fault triggers earthquakes way more predictably than others.
These quakes can happen almost like clockwork, and nearly always the same size.
A new study offers a possible answer.
These…
A prehistoric predator to rival the most fearsome giant of them all has just been discovered lurking half-forgotten in a museum collection.
No name is associated with Cretaceous terror as much as Tyrannosaurus rex; now, paleontologists have found a mosasaur that would have been its equal in…
It may sound too bizarre to be true, but the Amazon molly (Poecilia formosa), a fish that inhabits rivers, lakes, and swamps in Mexico and Texas, exists over much of its range in populations that are 100% female.
In 1932, the Amazon molly became the first known vertebrate to reproduce by…
