Science

Just a small rise in global temperatures could be deadly

Ancient ear-wiggling muscles kick on when people strain to hear. That auricular activity, described January 30 in Frontiers in Neuroscience, probably doesn’t do much, if anything. But these small muscles are at least present, and more active than anyone knew. You’ve probably seen a cat or dog swing their ears toward a sound, like satellite…

Nipping negative repetitive thinking in the bud has the potential to stave off numerous mental health disorders. Think Eeyore and Piglet. Cheerful Piglet is a chronic worrier, coping with anxiety; glum Eeyore mulls over everything that might go wrong, sinking into depression. But both struggle with repetitive negative thoughts. People who think this way often…

A South Carolina ghost story could have a very earthly explanation. Starting in the 1950s, folks in the Summerville, S.C., area began reporting sightings of strange balls of light floating down a remote road near some former railroad tracks. Local lore has it that the eerie illuminations, known as the Summerville Light, are the glow…

A fungus named after Sir David Attenborough zombifies cave spiders

A staccato blast of electromagnetic energy has been tracked to an old, dead galaxy for the first time. The discovery supports the idea that there are more ways to produce such flares, called fast radio bursts, than originally thought. Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are millisecond-long eruptions of intense radio waves. Astronomers have observed thousands…