Science word of the day: Heliosphere

One of the most exciting things about science is that it often occurs by accident. From penicillin to Post-its, unintended discoveries have changed the world and made it easier than ever before to label our leftover casseroles. Incidental discoveries frequently materialize right under scientists’ noses, emerging from neglected museum storage bins rather than, say, from…

NASA’s Perseverance rover continues to explore the rim of the Jezero Crater, an impact basin in Mars’ northern hemisphere that once supported a lake. In so doing, the rover’s mission team continues to reveal more about the Red Planet’s past, when liquid water once flowed across its surface. In addition, the rover has made several…

The diarrhoea-causing parasite Cyclospora cayetanensis reproduces through egg-like structures called oocysts (stained orange in this microscope image).Credit: CDC/DPDx – Melanie Moser A microscopic parasite found in contaminated food products is ruining summer meals across the United States in the largest outbreak of its kind in the country’s history. And health officials have yet to identify…

In 2021, Jordan Miller, then an undergraduate student at UT San Antonio, noticed something strange — a sudden and dramatic increase in poison control center calls across the United States seemed to coincide with the FDA approval of semaglutide for weight management. In a study published in the Journal of Medical Toxicology, Miller and her…

A typhoon that floods your town is already a stressful and frightening experience. But for residents of southern China, that experience is becoming much worse, as recent floodwaters created an even more unusual hazard — hundreds of venomous snakes washed away from commercial breeding farms. As reported in The Guardian, after days of torrential rain…

Scientists have just discovered the Milky Way’s equivalent of a giant fake mustache. For four decades, astronomers have puzzled over a giant loop apparently ballooning out of the center of the Milky Way. Known as the Galactic center lobe (GCL), the structure has been blamed on everything from the aftermath of a supernova to an…