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These Tiny Birds Get By With A Little Help From Their Friends

Individual superb fairy-wrens help their families and friends before helping strangers, suggesting these songbirds recognize which social tier individual birds belong to © Copyright by GrrlScientist | hosted by Forbes What do people and fairy-wrens have in common? We live in groups. But what are the advantages of group living? In the case of superb fairy-wrens, there’s safety in numbers. Well, probably. A recent...

Researcher Calls 1st Marburg Virus Outbreak A ‘Lab Leak,’ Here’s Why Experts Pushed Back

A researcher tweeted what he called a “fun fact” about the Marburg Virus that’s currently spreading and threatening lives in Tanzania and Equatorial Guinea. But various experts around the world didn’t seem to find what he had posted on Twitter to be too “fun” or provide all of the relevant facts. The Marburg virus itself is certainly not fun. It belong to the same...

No Atmosphere Found At Faraway Earth-Sized World, Study Says

This illustration provided by the European Space Agency depicts what the exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 b could look like. On Monday, March 27, 2023, scientists said the Webb Space Telescope has found no evidence of an atmosphere at this innermost of the seven rocky, Earth-sized planets orbiting the nearby star, named Trappist. (NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Olmsted (STScI), T. P. Greene (NASA Ames), T. Bell (BAERI),...

What Is the Grandfather Paradox of Time Travel?

If you went back in time and accidentally killed one of your ancestors, what would happen to you? When it comes to hypotheticals about time travel, this is one of the most popular and compelling questions of all, well, time. And it isn’t just a plot device that science fiction writers and filmmakers use to drive a story. The so-called Grandfather Paradox has been...

What Science Says About Sanpaku Eyes

“Look in a mirror,” begins You Are All Sanpaku, a health book from 1965 written by macrobiotic advocate and anti-war protestor George Ohsawa. There you see the whites of your eyes and, if you have sanpaku, a space between the iris and lower lid. This white crescent indicates “a grave state of physical and spiritual illness […] and an extraordinary susceptibility to disease, accidents...

NASA’s Webb Telescope Just Took A Big Step Forward In The Search For Another Earth

Astronomers using the most advanced observatory in NASA’s arsenal of space-gazing toys reported a big first on Monday: the James Webb Space Telescope was able to detect the light from a small, rocky exoplanet similar to our own but orbiting another star some 40 light years away. To be clear, this is far from the first time our observatories have led to the discovery...

The First Criminal Conviction Based on Fingerprint Evidence

In the early morning hours of Sept. 19, 1910, Mary Hiller awoke inside the Chicago home she shared with her husband and four children. The gas light at the head of their stairway, which she always left running overnight, was out — so she sent her husband to investigate. Upon inspection, Clarence Hiller found an intruder: a recently paroled man named Thomas Jennings. The...

Noise Colors: Which One Is Best for Sleep?

I frequently toss and turn at night. If a breeze whispers through the curtains, I’m up; if a car backfires, I’m wide awake. And, apparently, I’m not alone. According to a 2022 survey conducted by Gallup and the mattress retailer Casper, a third of U.S. adults reported their sleep the previous night as either fair or poor — versus good, very good or excellent....