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THE BEST OF NAT GEO SCIENCE DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX. Enjoy surprising and informative stories that will give you a deeper appreciation of our immense universe and our fragile planet, plus...
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In an interview with National Geographic, the club president...
- Auroras Really Are Happening More Often Now. Here's Why
In contrast, green photons are discharged in less than a...
- What is The Multiverse—And is There Any Evidence It Really Exists
This image shows the cosmic microwave background—the oldest...
- Should You Drink Chocolate Milk After a Workout
“It’s not so much that it’s better than every other recovery...
- What We Know From Decades of Ufo Government Investigations
Mysterious flying objects. Claims of crashed alien...
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- Overview
- Spectacular fossils reveal a prehistoric rainforest
- Perseverance rover explores the Martian landscape
- Legendary Spanish shipwreck discovered on Oregon coast
- Resurrecting dying organs
- Tonga volcano erupts with surprising intensity
- New snail species are the world's smallest
- UN report reveals climate change’s toll on our health
- A bobcat eating python eggs shows 'Everglades fighting back'
- A new space telescope achieves the deepest view of the universe
New clues from the day the dinosaurs died. A mysterious ancient human tooth. Primordial galaxies. See how the past year expanded our knowledge of the cosmos and our own backyard.
Yale researchers brought pig brain cells to a state of “barely alive” hours after death. A member of the research team holds a pig brain next to a bag of supersaturated hemoglobin and a bag of a blue solution called OrganEx that helped slow cell death.
Each year, researchers around the world contribute to humanity’s accumulation of knowledge. Paleontologists and archaeologists uncover traces of the past, revealing ecosystems and civilizations lost to time. Astronomers seek to explain the mysteries of other worlds, while biologists and Earth scientists unravel the workings of our own planet and the life it harbors. And medical researchers study the intricacies of the human body and the diseases that threaten it, developing new tools to safeguard our species.
The revelations that come from our ceaseless exploration and experimentation are often unexpected and extraordinary. Here are some of the year’s most remarkable discoveries.
In January 2022, researchers unveiled a site in southeastern Australia where the rocks contain an astonishing record of life in an ancient rainforest. The fossils at McGraths Flat are between 11 million and 16 million years old, representing some of the only known rainforest ecosystems dating back to the Miocene epoch. Small, soft-bodied creatures ...
NASA's newest Mars rover continued its hunt for signs of ancient life this year in Jezero crater—a 28-mile-wide impact basin that was likely once filled with water. The rover spotted a few surprising features as it trekked across the crater’s floor, such as thin purple coatings on some rocks that are reminiscent of a kind of rock varnish formed on ...
Remains from a 17th-century Spanish galleon were identified on Oregon’s northern coast. They likely belong to Santo Cristo de Burgos, a ship that was sailing from the Philippines to Mexico in 1693 when it veered off course and vanished.
Known as the “Beeswax Wreck” for the blocks of beeswax carried by the vessel that still occasionally wash up on shore, the lost galleon has been a part of local lore for centuries. Remnants of the ship’s hull, however, remained unidentified until researchers analyzed timbers found in a sea cave near Astoria and revealed that they were crafted from a type of hardwood used to build ships in Asia during the 17th century: a perfect match for the missing Santo Cristo de Burgos.
In a medical first, scientists at Yale University preserved the function of multiple pig organs including the brain, heart, liver, and kidneys a full hour after the animals had died. The research could one day help extend the viability of human organs intended for life-saving transplants, thousands of which are discarded annually because they aren’t immediately preserved.
Normally organs must be harvested right after the heart stops pumping blood for them to be viable. But a sapphire-blue solution called OrganEx developed by neuroscientist Nenad Sestan and his team allowed them to restore basic organ functions well after the tissues had last received fresh blood. The researchers induced cardiac arrest in pigs and left the dead bodies at room temperature for an hour before infusing their blood with OrganEx, which contains amino acids, vitamins, metabolites, and 13 additional compounds. Using a machine, they circulated the mix for six hours and noticed signs of revival in the dying organs—heart cells began beating, liver cells absorbed glucose from blood, and DNA repair resumed.
In January, a submarine volcano in the Kingdom of Tonga, known as Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai, unleashed an eruption unlike any seen in recent decades. The blast sent a pressure wave around the globe multiple times and caused towering tsunami waves to crash on shores near and far. Even before the volcanic dust settled, scientists were racing to gather data about the eruption's oddities with the hope of better understanding the mechanism behind this surprisingly powerful blast and cascade of effects. "Everything so far about this eruption is off-the-scale weird," says volcanologist Janine Krippner, who was with the Smithsonian's Global Volcanism Program when the event occurred.
The eruption excavated some 2.3 cubic miles of rock from the seafloor, making it the largest volcanic blast in a century. The explosion also unleashed avalanches of hot ash and volcanic rubble known as pyroclastic flows that raced along the seafloor for at least 50 miles.
While searching for animals in the soil in two spots in Southeast Asia, scientists discovered a handful of new snail species, two of them smaller than any seen before. They dubbed one Angustopila psammion, a fitting name, as “psammion” derives from the ancient Greek word for “grain of sand.” This species lives within the walls of Vietnamese caves and measures only 0.6 millimeters in diameter. Many hundreds could fit on a single U.S. quarter.
The other snail is ever-so-slightly larger and was unearthed in a Laotian limestone gorge. It has a shell with pointy projections adorned with mud-like beads, which are likely fecal pellets, hence its name, A. coprologos, from the Greek for “dung gatherer.”
For decades, scientists have warned of the coming risks of climate change. But some of the dangers we face are already here, including a direct impact on human health, according to a landmark report released by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. By 2100, three-quarters of all humans on Earth could regularly suffer extreme heat stre...
Burmese pythons have been overrunning the Florida Everglades for decades. These invasive animals are so ecologically destructive in part because they have no native predators—or so scientists thought.
For the first time, biologists have observed a native species, a bobcat, raiding a python nest and eating its eggs. Later, when the bobcat returned to find the snake guarding its nest, the cat took a swipe at the reptile. “When you get interactions like this and see the native wildlife fighting back, it’s like a ray of sunshine for us,” says Ian Bartoszek, an ecologist with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. “In 10 years of tracking snakes, I can count on one hand the number of observations” of native animals standing up to the reptiles. The confrontation could represent a step toward restoring ecological balance in the python-troubled Everglades.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the giant infrared instrument now parked a million miles from Earth, spent half of 2022 getting ready to take its first images. In July, those images were finally presented, revealing an unprecedentedly detailed view of the cosmos. One image of distant galaxies magnified by the gravity of other galaxies in the for...
Cell biology is the study of cells, their physiology, structure, and life cycle. A cell is the smallest unit that is typically considered alive and is a fundamental unit of life. All living organisms are composed of cells, from just one (unicellular) to many trillions (multicellular).
Mar 17, 2021 · A ground-breaking scientific study from 26 international experts offering the most comprehensive assessment to date of where to ramp up strict ocean protection to increase seafood security, curb biodiversity loss, and provide a cost effective solution to climate change, as well as economic benefits.
Apr 25, 2018 · On April 25, 1953, the journal Nature published a picture that sparked a revolution: the first drawing of the structure of the DNA molecule. That landmark discovery, made possible by the x-ray ...
Dec 3, 2020 · 2020 IN REVIEW. 10 awesome science discoveries you may have missed in 2020. From the discovery of stardust older than the sun to the first tyrannosaur embryos, here are some fascinating findings...
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Biotechnology is the use of living systems and organisms to create new technologies. On the simpler end of the spectrum, baking bread with yeast is an example of this interdisciplinary science.
