Science

11-year-old Touren Pope finds 48-million-year-old turtle fossil in WyomingPhoto credit: Craig Thomas, BLM Rock Springs Field Office What began as a routine family rock-hounding trip in southwest Wyoming turned into a paleontological headline when 11-year-old Touren Pope noticed something unusual poking out of the ground. What he’d spotted was the fossilized shell of a softshell…

Mountain yellow-legged frog. Image Credit: US Fish & Wildlife Service More than 3,000 endangered mountain yellow-legged frogs and tadpoles have been released into California’s mountain ranges in 2026, giving a once widespread amphibian another chance to survive in the wild. The reintroduction, carried out by the ‘San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance’ and its partners, is…

When humans leave Earth, even something as basic as knowing which way is up can become confusing. That made fish surprisingly useful subjects for space research. In 1973, Nasa sent two mummichogs and 50 eggs aboard Skylab 3, giving scientists a chance to watch both adult fish and young that developed entirely in orbit. Soon…

A replica of the world’s first liquid propellant rocket, PC: Wikimedia Commons On March 16, 1926, on a snowy farm in Auburn, Massachusetts, physicist Robert H. Goddard set up a slim, 10-foot rocket he had nicknamed Nell on a launch frame in an open field. Fueled by gasoline and liquid oxygen, the rocket climbed just…

The technology could also potentially be used in places such as submarines and future human settlements on the Moon or Mars (American chemical society photo) Researchers at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIU Carbondale) are working on a technology that turns plastic waste from a water bottle into part of a cookie. For this, they programmed…

Representative Image (AI-generated) For more than three decades, a collection of animal bones from Ireland’s Ferriter’s Cove was considered some of the earliest evidence that farming had reached the island. But new research has now overturned that interpretation. According to University College Dublin (UCD), bones once identified as cattle have instead been identified as belonging…

India also wants to build a new reusable rocket (representative image) For decades, launching a rocket into space followed a remarkably simple pattern: build it, launch it, use it once and throw most of it away.That model worked, but it was expensive.Now, the world’s space industry is trying to change the equation. Instead of watching…

Subsea fibre-optic cables. Image Credit: AI Generated Fibre-optic cables spread across the seafloor have long carried internet traffic between countries, but researchers are discovering another surprising use for this global network; detecting whales. A 2022 study in ‘Frontiers in Marine Science’ showed that existing submarine fibre-optic cables could be turned into vast underwater sensors capable…

In 1929, local homesteader and photographer Benjamin Loomis and his wife, Estella, formally gave 40 acres of valuable mountain land to the United States government. The donation included a hand-built museum and a working seismograph station beside Manzanita Lake. The deal was the first known case in American history of a privately built museum being…

PC: New Zealand’s Forest and Bird In 1965, Geoff Harrow walked into the Kaikōura mountains following a story about an unusual seabird nesting somewhere high above the valleys. He did not find the colony on his first attempt. The next morning, on a steep deer track, a decomposing bird provided the clue he needed. It…