The new volcanic fissures are more otherworldly than they first appear.
The zoo of spontaneously emerging particlelike entities known as quasiparticles has grown quickly and become more and more exotic. Here are a few of the most curious and potentially useful examples.
A supernova-like explosion dubbed the Camel appears to be the result of a newborn black hole eating a star from the inside out.
An overlooked but powerful driver of cloud formation could accelerate the loss of polar sea ice.
One black hole is nice, but astrophysicists can do a lot more science with 50 of them.
Unusual proteins that can quickly fold into different shapes provide cells with a novel regulatory mechanism.
Small black holes were nowhere to be found, leading astronomers to wonder if they didn’t exist at all. Now a series of findings, including a “unicorn” black hole, has raised hopes of solving the decade-long mystery.
Since they can’t prod actual universes as they inflate and bump into each other in the hypothetical multiverse, physicists are studying digital and physical analogs of the process.
Three-dimensional supernova simulations have solved the mystery of why they explode at all.
In grafted plants, shrunken chloroplasts can jump between species by slipping through unexpected gateways in cells walls.
A glass sponge found deep in the Pacific shows a remarkable ability to withstand compression and bending, on top of the sponge’s other unusual properties.
For decades, astronomers debated whether a particular smudge was close-by and small, or distant and huge. A new X-ray map supports the massive option.
Two teams found different ways for quantum computers to process nonlinear systems by first disguising them as linear ones.
Mistletoes have all but shut down the powerhouses of their cells. Scientists are still trying to understand the plants’ unorthodox survival strategy.
We don’t know why the universe appears to be expanding faster than it should. New ultra-precise distance measurements have only intensified the problem.
The goal of the “busy beaver” game is to find the longest-running computer program. Its pursuit has surprising connections to some of the most profound questions and concepts in mathematics.
