Earth’s landmasses are holding onto a lot less water than they used to — and this loss is not just due to melting ice sheets. Terrestrial water storage, which includes water in underground aquifers, lakes, rivers and the tiny pore spaces within soil, declined by trillions of metric tons in the early 21st century, researchers…
Autism is more common than ever before, a new report suggests. As of 2022, about 1 in 31 children in the United States were diagnosed with autism by the time they were 8 years old, researchers reported online April 15 in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Previous studies…
Beneath the great, white expanse of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, a mysterious realm of streams and lakes lies out of sight. Much about this hidden water world remains poorly understood. But a new study suggests that if scientists continue to overlook it, they might greatly underestimate global sea level rise. Factoring this subglacial water into…
A potential dark galaxy — one made primarily of dark matter — may have been spotted in the local universe. Dark galaxies are theoretical, starless systems whose discovery could help astronomers better understand galaxy formation. The new candidate was found within a large, fast-moving cloud of gas first seen in the 1960s. High-resolution observations of…
Soot from forest fires in the Amazon might play a role in the melting of faraway ice in Antarctica. For decades, scientists have known that black carbon from burning fossil fuels or forests accelerates ice melt in different parts of the world. According to remote sensing researcher Sudip Chakraborty, the slash-and-burn practices encouraged by Brazil’s…
On a bright, late-summer day in north-central Europe around 300,000 years ago, a team of perhaps a couple dozen hunters got into their assigned positions for a big kill. Little did they know that remnants of this lethal event would someday contribute to a scientific rethink about the social and intellectual complexity of Stone Age…