The tough, toothy skin of sharks may be no match for the acidified oceans of the future. After nine weeks of exposure to seawater doctored to mimic projected acidic levels in 2300, corrosion had frayed the edges of many denticles — the toothlike protrusions that make up sharkskin — on three puffadder shysharks, researchers report […] More
Like Schrödinger’s cat, a 2019 claim of quantum supremacy seems to be simultaneously alive and dead. Thanks to the rules of quantum mechanics, the fabled feline occupies two contradictory states at once, and the same applies to this year’s most prominent quantum advance. In October, researchers from Google claimed to have achieved a milestone known […] More
SAN FRANCISCO — Maybe the trigger for the rise of oxygen on Earth was nothing special. Maybe that oxidation didn’t need large tectonic shifts or the evolution of land plants. Instead, the circulation of carbon dioxide, oxygen and phosphorus between Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, rocks and the simplest of photosynthesizing life forms is sufficient to produce […] More
For the first time, scientists have measured the heat transferred by the quantum effervescence of empty space. Two tiny, vibrating membranes reached the same temperature despite being separated by a vacuum, physicists report in the Dec. 12 Nature. The result is the first experimental demonstration of a predicted but elusive type of heat transfer. Normally, […] More
SAN FRANCISCO — Polar bears have long been the poster children for the woes of Arctic warming. But climate change isn’t just a danger to wildlife. It threatens the safety and livelihoods of people across the Arctic. To put a human face to this problem, an annual report by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric […] More
Perhaps the hardiest assemblage of lichens and other fungi and algae yet found has been hiding in plain sight in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert. This newly discovered “grit-crust,” as ecologists have named it, coats tiny stones and draws moisture from daily pulses of coastal fog that roll across the world’s driest nonpolar desert. These communities […] More
Moving slowly and stealthily through the Pacific Ocean, a robotic glider with a microphone captured a cacophony of sounds from ships, whales and underwater explosions. The glider’s journey, across 458 kilometers off the Washington and Oregon coast and down to 650 meters, demonstrates that gliders could be effective tools to help map ocean noise levels, […] More
A newly proposed type of time crystal could stand alone. Time crystals are structures that repeat regularly in time, just as a standard crystal is composed of atoms arranged in a regularly repeating pattern in space. Scientists first created time crystals in 2016 (SN: 10/26/16). But those crystals require periodic blasts from a laser to […] More
