Auroral displays continue to intrigue scientists, whether the bright lights shine over Earth or over another planet. The lights hold clues to the makeup of a planet's magnetic field and how that field operates.

The luminous heart of the galaxy M61 dominates this image, framed by its winding spiral arms threaded with dark tendrils of dust. As well as the usual bright bands of stars, the spiral arms of M61 are studded with ruby-red patches of light. Tell-tale signs of recent star formation, these glowing regions lead to M61's classification as a starburst galaxy.

Desperate French farmers counted the cost Friday of several nights of frost this week which threaten to decimate grape harvests in some of the country's best-known and prestigious wine-producing regions.

NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is two days away from making humanity's first attempt at powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet. If all proceeds as planned, the 4-pound (1.8-kg) rotorcraft is expected to take off from Mars' Jezero Crater Sunday, April 11, at 12:30 p.m. local Mars solar time (10:54 p.m. EDT), hovering 10 feet (3 meters) above the surface for up to 30 seconds....

The melting rate of the Antarctic ice sheet is mainly controlled by the increase of ocean temperatures surrounding Antarctica. Using a new, higher-resolution climate model simulation, scientists from Utrecht University found a much slower ocean temperature increase compared to current simulations with a coarser resolution. Consequently, the projected sea-level rise in 100 years is about 25% lower...

For the first time, researchers have been able to obtain data from underneath Thwaites Glacier, also known as the "Doomsday Glacier." They find that the supply of warm water to the glacier is larger than previously thought, triggering concerns of faster melting and accelerating ice flow.

Excessive CO2 emissions are a major cause of climate change, and hence reducing the CO2 levels in the Earth's atmosphere is key to limiting adverse environmental effects. Rather than just capture and store CO2, it would be desirable to use it as carbon feedstock for fuel production to achieve the target of "net-zero-emissions energy systems." The capture and conversion of CO2 (from fuel gas or...

A two-week old elephant has died after being rejected by her family following the birth of another elephant calf, Sweden's Boras Zoo announced Friday.

A volcano that has been dormant for decades erupted Friday on Saint Vincent, darkening skies over the northern part of the Caribbean island and forcing thousands to flee to safety.

Over the past decade, the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system has revolutionized genetic engineering, allowing scientists to make targeted changes to organisms' DNA. While the system could potentially be useful in treating a variety of diseases, CRISPR-Cas9 editing involves cutting DNA strands, leading to permanent changes to the cell's genetic material.

A team from the Department of Agronomy at the UCO has demonstrated, through field tests carried out during 8 agricultural seasons, that foliar feeding with fertilizer increases the concentration of zinc in wheat more than if it is applied to the soil

Alloying is a general and efficient strategy to boost the catalytic activity of Pt catalysts toward oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) through electronic and geometric effects. Besides, high-index surfaces (HISs) of Pt also exhibit superior ORR activity, mainly originated from low-coordinated step or kink atoms. Thus, a combination of the alloying and HISs would be a promising method to further...

Italy's Mount Etna, Europe's most active volcano, has recently been on explosive form, with 17 eruptions in less than three months. Instruments onboard three different satellites orbiting Earth have acquired imagery of the eruptions—revealing the intensity of the lava-fountaining eruptive episodes, known as paroxysms.

A new four-part HBO series, "Allen v. Farrow," documents the accusations of sexual abuse against film director Woody Allen and the aftermath. The documentary calls on the expertise of Joan S. Meier, a professor of law at George Washington University Law School. In the docuseries Meier comments on strategies of disinformation used by abusers, and references her research focusing on a particularly...

Seven years ago, a huge magnet was transported over 3,200 miles (5,150km) across land and sea, in the hope of studying a subatomic particle called a muon.

Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have discovered that bird blood produces more heat in winter, when it is colder, than in autumn. The study is published in The FASEB Journal.

Peatlands are one of the most valuable terrestrial ecosystems in our fight against climate change. These deep layers of partially decayed plants and other organic material are tens of thousands of years old.

A team of researchers from a number of institutions in the U.S. has identified a DNA methylation regulator called QSER1. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes studying the valleys of unmethylated DNA and their discovery of a new regulator. Tianpeng Gu and Margaret Goodell with the Baylor College of Medicine, have published a Perspectives piece in the same journal...

Egyptian archeologists have unearthed a 3000-year-old lost city, complete with mud brick houses, artifacts, and tools from pharaonic times.

A trio of Russian and American space travelers launched successfully and reached the International Space Station on Friday.

Throughout the last ice age, the climate changed repeatedly and rapidly during so-called Dansgaard-Oeschger events, where Greenland temperatures rose between 5 and 16 degrees Celsius in decades. When certain parts of the climate system changed, other parts of the climate system followed like a series of dominos toppling in succession. This is the conclusion from an analysis of ice-core data by a...

The properties of carbon-based nanomaterials can be altered and engineered through the deliberate introduction of certain structural "imperfections" or defects. The challenge, however, is to control the number and type of these defects. In the case of carbon nanotubes—microscopically small tubular compounds that emit light in the near-infrared—chemists and materials scientists at Heidelberg...

School closures in the last year have led to serious learning losses, with primary-age school pupils making virtually no progress studying at home, according to a new study by researchers at Oxford's Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, published in Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Learning losses were particularly pronounced in families with low levels of education.

Since 1993, 15 species of bird and mammal are thought to have gone extinct, including China's Yangtze river dolphin and the Pernambuco pygmy owl from Brazil. But these recent examples are a tiny fraction of what scientists estimate could disappear in the lifetimes of people living today. One million species spanning the full diversity of life on Earth are at risk of extinction.