Don't Stare into a Laser Pointer Beam. You Could Burn a Hole in Your Eye.

 Posted on October 11, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  387 words  |  Patria Henriques

Laser pointers may jazz up your PowerPoint presentation, but they can pose serious hazards to your eyes if you use them the wrong way. Case in point: A boy in Greece burned a hole in his retina after repeatedly staring into a laser-pointer beam, according to a new report. The 9-year-old boy's parents brought him to the eye doctor because he was having vision problems in his left eye, according to the report, published yesterday (June 20) in The New England Journal of Medicine. [Read More]

Eerie 'Fire Cloud' Floats Like Alien Structure Over Washington

 Posted on October 11, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  494 words  |  Patria Henriques

It looks like a sci-fi vision of another world, but it's actually the blazing heart of a fire cloud floating above our own planet. The image, shared online by NASA Earth Observatory (NEO), was snapped in skies over eastern Washington state at an altitude of about 30,000 feet (9 kilometers) as a NASA pilot flew into a so-called fire cloud. This phenomenon, also known as a pyrocumulonimbus or PyroCb cloud, occurs when heat and moisture from wildfires rise up into the atmosphere and form smoke-filled thunderclouds atop the fire's plumes, NEO reported. [Read More]

Evolution Shrinks Mammals Quickly, But They're Slow to Grow

 Posted on October 11, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  689 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Within as little as 24 million generations, mammals can evolve from the size of a mouse to the size of an elephant, a new study estimates. This calculation is based on the most rapid increase in size seen in the fossil record after a mass extinction wiped out their much larger competitors, the dinosaurs. They also found animals can shrink more than 10 times as fast as they can grow to giant sizes. [Read More]

Florida releasing genetically modified mosquitoes to prevent diseases like Zika

 Posted on October 11, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  718 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Hundreds of millions of genetically modified mosquitoes will soon be released in the Florida Keys island chain to wipe out local populations of disease-carrying mosquitoes, according to news reports.  The big questions are, will it work and will it have unintended effects on the environment?  The Florida Keys Mosquito Control District currently budgets about $1 million a year to combat the invasive Aedes aegypti mosquito, which can carry diseases like Zika virus and dengue fever and pass them on to humans, according to Gizmodo. [Read More]

Forget the Flashlight: New Ninja Shark Species Lights up the Sea

 Posted on October 11, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  710 words  |  Fernande Dalal

The ocean can be a deep and dark place, but the so-called ninja shark can light up its surroundings with a dimly glowing head, according to a new report.  The newly identified species isn't the only glowing shark in the ocean. It joins a group of nearly 40 other species commonly called lanternsharks, which are marine predators with the ability to glow that live in oceans around the world, including the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific oceans, said Vicky Vásquez, lead author of the new report and a graduate student in marine science at the Pacific Shark Research Center in California. [Read More]

Humanity's Grassroots: How Grazing Animals Shaped Evolution

 Posted on October 11, 2022  |  5 minutes  |  980 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Secrets regarding the spread of the world's grasslands — which proved vital to countless species of grazing animals and may have influenced humanity's evolution — have now been uncovered in fossil teeth, scientists reveal. These new findings show when the ancestors of elephants, rhinos, hippos, cattle, pigs and other lineages of herbivores began grazing on grasses, helping create the landscape wherein our own species developed. Since such grasses thrive in warmer climates, the researchers say the findings could be a peek at what's to come in a warming world. [Read More]

Near-Death Experiences are Lucid Dreams, Experiment Finds

 Posted on October 11, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  632 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

In a new exercise by a California organization that studies lucid dreaming, volunteers have been conditioned to dream near-death experiences, including the classic scenario of flying toward a light at the end of a tunnel. The researchers say their experiment demonstrates that these heavenly visions must be products of the human mind rather than supernatural phenomena. In the sleep experiment at the Out-Of-Body Experience Research Center in Los Angeles, four groups of 10 to 20 volunteers were trained to perform a series of mental steps upon awakening during the night that might lead them to have out-of-body experiences. [Read More]

People have long claimed to hear the northern lights. Are the reports true?

 Posted on October 11, 2022  |  6 minutes  |  1098 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

(opens in new tab)It's a question that has puzzled observers for centuries: do the fantastic green and crimson light displays of the aurora borealis produce any discernible sound? Conjured by the interaction of solar particles with gas molecules in Earth's atmosphere, the aurora generally occurs near Earth's poles, where the magnetic field is strongest. Reports of the aurora making a noise, however, are rare — and were historically dismissed by scientists. [Read More]

Researchers Crack the Code of 'Flying Doughnuts'

 Posted on October 11, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  492 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Scientists have figured out how to make doughnut-shaped pulses of light. And, no, you can't eat them — but this is a big deal for at least three other reasons: "Doughnut-shaped pulses of light" is a fun phrase to write and think about.The doughnut-shaped pulses could help scientists probe strange, doughnut-shaped magnetic formations in certain kinds of matter.For the first time, scientists might be able to create waves with what physicists call " [Read More]

These worker ants drag their queens to far-off bachelor pads to mate

 Posted on October 11, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  802 words  |  Trudie Dory

Worker ants are known to take on many different job roles, from trash collectors to nurses that dress the wounds of injured comrades, to babysitters that care for their leader's young. But one Mediterranean ant species takes royal work to the extreme: The worker ants use their mandibles to haul their young queen to faraway nests so she can mate, according to new research. Despite their miniscule size — around 0. [Read More]