Science Friday

Many people think of the ocean as a quiet and serene place: Take a dip underwater and the cacophony of the world melts away. But the ocean is quite noisy , full of whale songs and echolocation, which whales and dolphins use to communicate. Cephalopods can make and hear sounds too, even without ears. Then, there’s human-made noise, including the giant ships that crisscross the globe. The effects of...

Plants called “hyperaccumulators” have evolved to absorb high levels of metals. Scientists want to harness them for greener metal mining. And, a little fern from New Caledonia is just a few inches tall, but its genome has 160.45 billion base pairs—50 times more DNA than a human. How Metal-Absorbing Plants Could Make Mining GreenerScientists are exploring a somewhat unusual green energy solution :...

When you think about connections between science and war, the obvious links are in technology—advanced radar, spy satellites, more powerful explosives—and in medical innovations that seek to heal the wounds caused by conflict. But in a new book, Stories are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind , author Annalee Newitz says that stories and narrative can be weapons too, used in battl...

DNA has long been studied and understood as the genetic blueprint for life on Earth. And related scientific endeavors, like the Human Genome Project, have received enormous attention. But DNA’s lesser-known counterpart, RNA , which translates the instructions from those blueprints into proteins in our cells, has received far less focus. But a lot’s changed in the last few years. The success of the...

A Week Of Milestones For SpaceflightThis has been a week of milestones for human spaceflight. After years of delays, Boeing’s Starliner capsule, carrying astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, successfully launched Wednesday on the United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket. On Thursday, it docked with the International Space Station. Also on Thursday, SpaceX’s Starship rocket made its first suc...

Scientists are studying birds’ unique vocal organ, the syrinx, to better understand its evolutionary history. Also, the eerie calls of the common loon have been heard in songs by Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga, Lana Del Rey, and more. The Organ That Gives Birds Their VoicesHave you ever wondered how a bird sings? Or made some of their less melodic vocalizations, like squawks, trills, or chirps? It all...

You might’ve heard this phrase before: data equals power . Because when you have data, you can decide how they’re used and who gets to use them. The history of research on Indigenous communities in the United States is full of stories of exploitation, power imbalances, and stolen knowledge. Be it through the iodine experiments of the 1950s in Alaska, the racist and pseudoscientific conclusions dra...

Are plants intelligent? Until recently, botanists were hesitant to ask that question, at least publicly. But that’s changing. In recent years researchers have learned more about how plants communicate with each other, respond to touch, store memories, and deceive animals for their own benefit: All bits of evidence that suggest plants possess a unique form of intelligence that humans have been over...

If you have a problem with your phone, like a bad battery or a cracked screen, you might decide to just buy a new one. That’s partly because we don’t have a lot of options to repair our devices: Manufacturers can make it extraordinarily difficult—or expensive—to do so. But for years now, the right-to-repair movement in the US has been pushing for legislation that forces companies to provide consum...

The much-delayed crewed test flight is back on the calendar, despite a helium leak. Also, researchers used data from the crowd-sourcing nature observation app iNaturalist to rank animals’ tolerance of urban environments. Starliner Crewed Test Flight Rescheduled For This WeekendA long-delayed test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is back on the calendar for Saturday, June 1, carrying astrona...

Aging often looks very different on different people. There are some 70-year-olds that exercise regularly, have no trouble going for a walk around the block, and remain mentally sharp. Others really struggle at 70, and aren’t able to maintain a quality of life they’ve had in the past. There’s a growing field of medicine dedicated to better understanding how we age. And this field is looking less a...

While the US was known for its railroads in the 1800s, we’ve fallen behind places like Japan, China, and Europe, which have invested in trains that go upwards of 200 miles per hour. There are economic, environmental, and practical benefits of electrified high-speed rail. But for generations, the US decreased passenger rail service and invested instead in highways and car-centric infrastructure. Bu...

Cannabis is legal in some form or another in over half of US states. But federally, it’s illegal and has no accepted medical use. However, the Biden administration is moving to reclassify cannabis as a less dangerous drug under the Controlled Substances Act. Studying strictly controlled drugs like cannabis is a major challenge for scientists, because they have to meet specific registration and sou...

For the first time, scientists have recorded how salps form chains and swim in corkscrews to reach the ocean’s surface each night. Also, a wind utility company in Wyoming is trying to make wind turbines more visible to birds by painting just one blade black. The Small Jelly Creatures That Link Up And Swim in CorkscrewsSalps are small, transparent barrel-shaped jelly creatures . They are sometimes...