Mysterious magnetic fossils offer past climate clues

There are fossils, found in ancient marine sediments and made up of no more than a few magnetic nanoparticles, that can tell us a whole lot about the climate of the past, especially episodes of abrupt global warming. Now, ...

Your hair knows what you eat and how much your haircut costs

Millimeter by millimeter, your hair is building a record of your diet. As hair strands are built from amino acids that come from your food, they preserve the chemical traces of the protein in that food. It's a strong enough ...

Rising temps put desert shrubs in high-efficiency mode

Death Valley doesn't seem like the most ideal place to ride out rising temperatures amid a changing climate. But for the desert plants that live there, it's home—and they face the choice to adapt or die.

Discovery points to origin of mysterious ultraviolet radiation

Billions of lightyears away, gigantic clouds of hydrogen gas produce a special kind of radiation, a type of ultraviolet light known as Lyman-alpha emissions. The enormous clouds emitting the light are Lyman-alpha blobs (LABs). ...

Going super small to get super strong metals

You can't see them, but most of the metals around you—coins, silverware, even the steel beams holding up buildings and overpasses—are made up of tiny metal grains. Under a powerful enough microscope, you can see interlocking ...

Forests face climate change tug of war

In a world of rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, plants should be happy, right? Experiments have shown that, yes, increased carbon dioxide does allow plants to photosynthesize more and use less water.

Scientists probe the limits of ice

How small is the smallest possible particle of ice? It's not a snowflake, measuring at a whopping fraction of an inch. According to new research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the smallest nanodroplet ...

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