Category: 7. SciTech

It was almost 100 years ago that Clyde W. Tombaugh discovered Pluto. That was the last planet found until 1992, when humans found another one. But this new planet wasn’t in our solar system—it was orbiting another star. We call this an extrasolar planet, or “exoplanet” for short.

Since…

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.

Among the myriad abilities that humans possess, which ones are uniquely human? Language has been a top candidate at least since Aristotle, who wrote that humanity was “the animal that has language.” Even as large language models…

Scientists working at a remote British research station in the Antarctic received a special delivery of a new Royal Mail post box in time for…

Sponges are some of the simplest and least dangerous animals on Earth, but a new species seems to be shooting for a cooler reputation.

A carnivorous “death-ball” sponge is among 30 new creatures found in the deep sea near Antarctica earlier this year by the Nippon Foundation–Nekton Ocean…

Biologist Jon Allen is the proud owner of the world’s oldest ribbon worm on record.

The adopted invertebrate is fondly called Baseodiscus the Eldest, and he is at least 26 years old, probably around 30, according to a new analysis.

When fully stretched out, Baseodiscus, or ‘B’ for short, is…

“This was one of the most significant safety events in US nuclear history and yet it was not significantly dangerous to the public,” said Stein. “That speaks to the robustness of these plants.”

NRC licensing requires reactor buildings to be built to withstand “tornado missiles,” or…