Educational Science

Stratolaunch's Monster Jet Completes First Test-Drive Down Runway

Stratolaunch's rocket-launching mothership was driven down the runway for the first time this past weekend. The double-bodied jet —which has the largest wingspan of any aircraft in the world —has been undergoing tests at Stratolaunch's facility at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The latest phase in this...

2017 Is Slated to Be in Top 3 Hottest Years of All Time

The year isn't over yet, but 2017 is already expected to be the second- or third-hottest year on record, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced today (Nov. 6) at the United Nations climate change conference in Bonn, Germany. From January to September 2017, the average global temperature was 1.98 degrees...

Bad decisions (Image credit: Shutterstock)Taking selfies near large and dangerous wildlife. Toying with snakes. Fighting bedbugs with fire. Sometimes when people interact casually with animals, their behavior is inappropriate, deliberately provocative, ill-informed or careless, and this can have catastrophic or even deadly consequences. The outcomes of such encounters — which...

10 Times Earth Revealed Its Weirdness in 2017

Astonishing Earth (Image credit: NASA)For thousands of years, people have been studying planet Earth, and yet it continues to astonish us. Apart from being our home, Earth is the only world that we know of that supports any form of life. Its atmosphere and geology are dynamic and ever-changing. It...

Bison vs. buffalo: What's the difference?

Burly, shaggy bison (Bison bison), the North American hoofed mammals that, for many people, embody the American West, are often referred to as buffalo. But even though they are in the same family group as Old World buffalo species — the Asian water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) and the African cape...

Here's How Space Travel Changes the Brain

Spending prolonged time in space can lead to striking changes in an astronaut's brain structure, a new study finds. These changes may help explain some of the unusual symptoms that astronauts can experience when returning to Earth. In the study, researchers scanned the brains of 34 astronauts before and after...

When Do Children Develop Their Gender Identity?

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Gender is generally thought of as a stable trait: we are born male or female and we stay that way as we grow from small children to adults. It...

Cellphone Guidelines Won't Harm, But They Probably Won't Help Either

There's no harm in following California's new cellphone guidelines detailing how to reduce exposure to a phone's radio-frequency (RF) energy, but know this: There's no science showing that following these guidelines will make you safer, experts said. That's because large, high-quality studies have failed to find any big, adverse health...

'Spermbot' May One Day Help Treat Cervical Cancer

A biohybrid sperm microrobot might one day deliver anti-cancer drugs to tumors in the female reproductive tract, according to a new paper from Germany. The sci-fi-sounding microbot, which was described in a December article in the journal ACS Nano, consists of sperm from a bull combined with a plastic, 3D-printed...

Moon's Supersonic Shadow Created Waves During the Solar Eclipse

When the moon's shadow zipped across the United States during the Great American Solar Eclipse this past August, the shadow traveled so fast it created waves in Earth's upper atmosphere, a new study finds. During a solar eclipse, the moon passes between the sun and Earth, casting its shadow in...