Fossil beds in New Mexico show diverse species present in the late Cretaceous. The end of the dinosaurs was clearly linked to an asteroid impact that brought the Cretaceous period to a close. But the details of their end have remained a matter of debate since the impact crater…
The NTP produced controversial studies on cellphone radiation and fluoride. The director of a federal health institute that has arguably produced two of the most controversial government studies in recent years has accepted a new federal role to advance the goals of the Make America Healthy Again movement. Meanwhile,…
Europeans weren’t the first people to collect fossils in Australia. Australia’s First Peoples may or may not have hunted the continent’s megafauna to extinction, but they definitely collected fossils. A team of archaeologists examined the fossilized leg bone of an extinct kangaroo and realized that instead of evidence of…
“All of the pieces that are required to make it viable exist.” Defense contractors are in full sales mode to win a piece of a potentially trillion-dollar pie for development of the Trump administration’s proposed Golden Dome missile shield. CEOs are touting their companies’ ability to rapidly spool up…
An approach it calls “quantum echoes” takes 13,000 times longer on a supercomputer. A few years back, Google made waves when it claimed that some of its hardware had achieved quantum supremacy, performing operations that would be effectively impossible to simulate on a classical computer. That claim didn’t hold…
Ig Nobel-winning research could one day be used to treat people with blocked airways or clogged lungs. Last year, a group of researchers won the 2024 Ig Nobel Prize in Physiology for discovering that many mammals are capable of breathing through their anus. But as with many Ig Nobel…
European wolves flee human conversation faster than dogs’ barking. In May 2025, the European Parliament changed the status of wolves in the EU from “strictly protected” to “protected,” which opened the way for its member states to allow hunting under certain conditions, such as protecting livestock. One of the…
New method extracts desirable elements from waste magnets using less energy and acid. All the world’s discarded phones, bricked laptops, and other trashed electronics are collectively a treasure trove of rare earth elements (REEs). But separating out and recovering these increasingly sought-after materials is no easy task. However, a…
Guppies are highly susceptible to the Ebbinghaus illusion. Ring doves? Not so much. Chances are you’ve encountered some version of the “Ebbinghaus illusion,” in which a central circle appears to be smaller when encircled by larger circles and seems larger when surrounded by smaller circles. It’s an example of…
Ars chats with co-authors Lindsey Fitzharris and Adrian Teal about their delightful new children’s book. In 1890, a German scientist named Robert Koch thought he’d invented a cure for tuberculosis, a substance derived from the infecting bacterium itself that he dubbed Tuberculin. His substance didn’t actually cure anyone, but…
