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EartherClimate ChangeRising Temperatures Are Driving Hundreds of Species to the North and South Poles
As global temperatures rise, many animal species are edging toward the poles and even climbing mountains to stay within their preferred temperature ranges. The result is a slow but noticeable shift in the world’s ecosystems, both on land and at sea. Under the Sea Ocean surface temperatures on April 6, 2015. Image: NOAA. The mass … Continued
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EartherClimate Change
This Is How the Ocean Makes Earth Livable
Seventy percent of Earth’s surface is ocean, and without it, the other 30 percent would barely be inhabitable. The ocean absorbs and distributes heat around the globe, and it acts as a planet-sized CO2 scrubber, saving us all from a runaway greenhouse effect like the one that turned Venus into a hell-world. But the ocean, … Continued
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Tech News
This is What Will Happen to Antarctica in 100 Years
In more temperate parts of the world, ice is just ice, but in Antarctica, ice is everything. It defines Antarctica: Earth’s southern polar ice cap, a 5.4-million square mile ice sheet, covers 98% of the continent. But within the next hundred years, Antarctica stands to lose much of that ice, especially in its western half. … Continued
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Tech News
Princesses, Slaves, and Explosives: The Scandalous Origin of Vaccines
The history of inoculation may sound a little dry, but it’s really an epic tale of human trafficking, semi-illicit experimentation, and high explosives. It’s a globe-hopping story that stars harem girls, noblewomen, prisoners, princesses, slaves, and even a witch hunter. In the Shadow of Smallpox Smallpox has troubled humanity for thousands of years. Wherever we’ve … Continued
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Tech News
This New Hadrosaur Species Is A Classic Missing Link
A new dinosaur species sheds some light on how duck-billed dinosaurs got their crests. Paleontologists say Probrachylophosaurus bergei is a missing link between two other species, and it fills in vital pieces of the story of how crests evolved. Probrachylophosaurus bergei is a hadrosaur, one of the large crested herbivores that roamed the Earth – … Continued
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Tech News
Doctors Say Morcellation Can Leave Women Vulnerable to Cancer
Welcome to this week’s Reading List, your Sunday guide to some of the most interesting science and technology stories on the internet this week. This week, we’ll examine a potentially deadly medical procedure, ponder the inner workings of social networks, and more. Morcellation is a less invasive way to remove fibroids and other growths through … Continued
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Tech News
Science Finally Explains Slackers
There’s a neurological reason for apathy and laziness, according to new research. Inefficient connections between certain areas of the brain may make it harder for some people to decide to act. Although inefficient neural connections don’t explain away everyone’s laziness, new research could shed some light on the kind of pathological, extreme apathy that sometimes … Continued
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EartherClimate ChangeBiologists Saved Wyoming Toads From Extinction
The only Wyoming toads in the world live in Mortenson Lake National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Wyoming, where they were common until the 1970s, hopping around at the edges of creeks, ponds, and small lakes. Then they started to disappear. They fell prey to the chytrid fungus, like nearly a third of the world’s amphibian … Continued
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ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
These Mineral Veins Trace the Flow of Water on Ancient Mars
The mineral veins that crisscross through the rock around this ridge tell an important story about Mars’ ancient past. So of course the Curiosity rover shot them with a laser. Scientists have named this scenic spot on the lower slope of Mount Sharp “Garden City.” (Sometimes scientists have a sense of humor.) To give you … Continued
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ScienceHealth
Should Doctors Be Allowed to Listen to Music During Surgery?
If you’ve had surgery under anesthesia in the last couple of decades, your doctor was probably listening to her favorite music while operating. There’s growing debate in the medical field about whether music in the operating room really helps surgeons focus or creates a potentially dangerous distraction. Imagine you’re in a busy restaurant. People chatter, … Continued
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Tech News
Scientists Have Found Fossilized Brains
Conventional wisdom says that brains don’t fossilize, but these seven fossilized brains beg to differ. An arthropod called Fuxianhuia protensa, which lived on the ocean floor about 520 million years ago, would have looked much like today’s shrimp, say paleontologists. Thanks to fossilized remains, we now know that its brain was also similar to those … Continued
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Tech News
This Former Soviet Observatory Just Keeps Going and Going
Welcome to this week’s Reading List, our weekly collection of great science and technology stories from around the internet. This week, we’ll tour a former Soviet observatory that’s still watching the skies, meet the archaeologists studying history while it’s still alive and kicking, and more. Hidden away high in the remote mountains of Georgia, the … Continued
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ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
Astronomers Found the Ghost of a Rare Giant Radio Galaxy
Astronomers in India have discovered a very unusual galaxy, and it’s dying. By now, in fact, it’s probably already dead. The new galaxy, known as J021659-044920, is 9 billion light years away from Earth. That means it’s really old in cosmic terms (but not quite as old as the oldest object astronomers have ever found, … Continued
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Tech News
Complex Skeletons Might Be Older Than Anyone Thought
It’s easy to get excited about new fossil discoveries, but sometimes a second look at an old find can reveal something just as surprising. For example, geoscientist Rachel Wood of the University of Edinburgh and her colleagues recently re-examined specimens of a tiny, 550 million-year-old marine organism called Namacalathus hermanastes, and they found that complex … Continued
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ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
Tour the Orion Nebula in This Gorgeous Image
The Orion Nebula has taught astronomers a great deal about how stars are born and how planetary systems form. Officially called M42, and also known (with a bit more pomp) as the Great Nebula in Orion, it’s a busy area of star formation, where huge clouds of interstellar gas are condensing and igniting into brilliant … Continued
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Tech News
Why Are We So Fascinated by the Locations of Death and Violence?
Welcome to this week’s edition of Reading List, Gizmodo’s weekly gathering of fascinating science and technology stories from around the internet. This week, we’ll attend an Indonesian funeral, explore the darker side of tourism, and join an expedition to the unforgiving Greenland ice sheet. What motivates people to visit sites of tragedy and atrocity? Whether … Continued
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Tech News
These Are the Best Cities for Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse
Everyone knows you’re better off avoiding large cities in the event of a zombie pandemic. But if you’re going to take the risk of living in a city anyway, which one has the best chance of making it through the apocalypse? Job-hunting site CareerBuilder and Economic Modelling Specialists International (which CareerBuilder owns) tried to predict … Continued
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Tech News
The Best Creepypasta Stories to Give You Nightmares Forever
This story is completely true. It happened right here on the internet, on a night just like this. The True Tale of Creepypasta Not too long ago, people shared jokes, stories, and lame inspirational messages by copy/pasting text into message board posts or email. On the message board 4chan, users started calling these text memes … Continued
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ScienceSpace & SpaceflightThere Actually Is Sound in Outer Space
You’ve heard it before: In space, no one can hear you scream. That’s because sound doesn’t move through a vacuum, and everyone knows that space is a vacuum. The thing is, that’s not completely true. Space isn’t uniform nothingness. It’s full of stuff. In between the stars, there are clouds of gas and dust. These … Continued
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Tech News
The Controversy over Homo Naledi Is Actually A Good Thing
Homo naledi, the newly discovered species of early hominin announced last month, is drawing a lot of fire from paleoanthropologists. For one thing, there’s still debate over whether Homo naledi is actually a new species at all. Some anthropologists, like Jeffrey Schwarz, say the specimens look more like an early human ancestor from a whole … Continued
Kiona Smith-Strickland
Kiona Smith-Strickland's posts