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Boom, zap, pow! Who needs superheroes to move mountains, when lighting does the job just fine? Powerful explosions sparked by lightning create piles of angular, jumbled rocks atop mountain summits, a new study shows. The frequent blasts break down high peaks more quickly than frost-shattering — when freezing water wedges apart fractured rock. In Lesotho's Drakensberg mountains, a single lightning bolt can blow out 100 to 350 cubic feet (3 to 10 cubic meters) of bedrock, said Jasper Knight, lead study author and a geomorphologist at Wits University in South Africa. [Read More]

What is freedom of the press? Freedom of the Press prohibits the government from interfering with the printing and distribution of information or opinions. In a 1938 decision, the Supreme Court defined the press as, "every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion." Today, this includes everything from newspapers to blogs. Freedom of the press, like freedom of speech, is subject to some restrictions, such as defamation law and copyright law. [Read More]

There is little material record of Hemings' life beyond a few surviving recipes for desserts like "snow eggs" and a written 1796 inventory of utensils from the kitchen at Jefferson's Virginia plantation, Monticello. But archaeologists at Monticello recently uncovered the remains of the stoves where Hemings prepared dishes for the future president and his guests. "His trajectory was pretty extraordinary," Fraser Neiman, the director of archaeology at Monticello, told Live Science, adding that the discovery of the stoves is one of the " [Read More]

Many 9/11 conspiracy theories revolve around explosions that were seen and heard in the World Trade Center's Twin Towers prior to their collapse. Despite scientific investigations that have explained the processes that brought down the skyscrapers, some conspiracy theorists suggest the plane impacts were just red herrings, to distract from the fact that 9/11 was an "inside job" — that explosives had been implanted earlier in the World Trade Center buildings and were what really brought them down. [Read More]

This Research in Action article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation. It appears inhabitants of North America have been seeking a caffeine buzz for at least a thousand years. These beakers, excavated from sites at Cahokia in southeastern Illinois, were apparently used by members of the Cahokia tribal group to consume something historically called “Black Drink.” Research published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “Ritual Black Drink Consumption at Cahokia,” provides evidence that people living at and near Cahokia in southeastern Illinois were drinking liquids made with Ilex vomitoria and Ilex cassine, two forms of the holly plant that have substantial caffeine and theobromine. [Read More]

Actor Charlie Sheen's disclosure that he is HIV positive appears to have had a striking effect on sales of home HIV testing kits, a new study suggests. Researchers found that, after Sheen announced he had HIV on Nov. 17, 2015, sales of home HIV testing kits doubled in the United States — from about 3,500 kits per week before the announcement, to 7,000 kits the week of the announcement. And this boost in sales continued for several more weeks. [Read More]

He — the person is usually depicted as a "he" — turns off the alarm, stares into a bowl of soggy cereal, puts on a tired-looking suit and goes to the office for more of the same drab routine. And so it continues until one day, usually the day he realizes he is mortal (or starting to lose his hair), he goes berserk: He bangs his secretary, quits his job and buys a red convertible. [Read More]

Often overlooked in favor of cooler, sexier senses such as sight or touch, smell and taste are more complicated than many people might think and have a surprisingly sweeping impact on behavior, perception and overall health. For instance, the sense of smell might provide clues to some of the mysteries of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, while genetic differences in taste could hold the key to predicting what we eat, how well metabolism works, and even whether or not we're overweight, according to new research. [Read More]

"There's a reason we've never gone back to moon," teases the poster for the new horror sci-fi flick "Apollo 18." The movie claims to reveal decades-old footage of astronauts on a secret mission two years after Apollo 17 – the last real expedition to the Moon – flew in 1972. (Without giving away anything that isn't in the trailer, lunar aliens apparently share some blame for our 40-year absence from the Moon. [Read More]

(ISNS) -- It's that time of year -- with the Oscars and Fashion Week drawing close, stilettos that reach for the sky are marching out from the pages of magazines to the glitz of the red carpet. Every year they grow taller, their heels even more narrow, and although it seems to defy the very basic laws of physics, women still have the ability to walk in them. Which leads to the question: is there a maximum for heel height? [Read More]