Nine flamingo chicks at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo are revealing one of bird parenting’s strangest sacrifices: both mothers and fathers produce nutrient-rich red “crop milk” that can drain so much pigment from their bodies that the famously pink adults temporarily fade to nearly white
Nine fluffy chicks are offering a behind-the-scenes look at one of flamingo parenting’s strangest trade-offs. At the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, feeding babies means producing…..
Nearly 5,000 solar panels were installed on a Swiss dam 8,200 feet above sea level, and despite deep snow and freezing temperatures the Alpine plant produced 3.8 times more winter electricity per unit of capacity than a lowland installation during its first measured year
Mobility
China has tested a flying wing built to carry more than 800 passengers with an 85-meter span wider than an A380, and the real obstacle is not the aircraft but the airports that would have to park it
Chinese researchers have tested a small wind-tunnel model representing an aircraft concept that could carry…..
Germany built a “flying train” above a crowded river valley in 1901 because there was barely any room left on the ground, and 125 years later the eight-mile suspended railway still carries more than 80,000 passengers every day
Germany’s “flying train” is not a futuristic proposal waiting for approval. Wuppertal’s Schwebebahn opened to…..
One unpermitted truck load hit six Oklahoma bridges in a single trip, and the mistake cost nearly half a million dollars
An unpermitted truck hit six Oklahoma bridges in one trip, costing $491,700 and exposing gaps in route planning.
A 46-foot robot boat found a distress beacon off Plymouth, and its steady hull may matter more to navies than hydrogen
Built to test hydrogen power, ACUA’s Pioneer vessel runs on diesel instead, since hydrogen lasts 18 days at sea versus 50 on diesel.
Houston built a 26-lane freeway to beat traffic, but the cars came back and exposed the trap behind wider roads
Houston spent nearly $3 billion widening a freeway to 26 lanes, but induced demand brought traffic back within years.
Union Pacific’s Big Boy crossed America at 1.2 million pounds, and the diesels behind it were not secretly doing the work
Union Pacific’s 1.2-million-pound Big Boy crossed America in 2026, with trailing diesels only assisting, never driving it.
Energy
Wind turbine blades are notoriously difficult to recycle, but Carbon Rivers demonstrated recovered glass fiber with 99.9% purity that could return to manufacturing, while recent cleanup concerns in Tennessee show that successful recycling depends on safely processing and actually selling the recovered material, not simply shredding old blades
An old wind turbine blade is not necessarily finished when it stops turning. In 2022, the U.S……
Nearly 5,000 solar panels were installed on a Swiss dam 8,200 feet above sea level, and despite deep snow and freezing temperatures the Alpine plant produced 3.8 times more winter electricity per unit of capacity than a lowland installation during its first measured year
Economy
Technology
Science
Carl Sagan imagined an ecosystem floating in Jupiter’s clouds with microscopic “sinkers,” kilometer-scale balloon-like “floaters” and roaming “hunters,” but nearly 50 years later scientists have found only that some atmospheric layers could meet limited conditions for life, not evidence that anything actually lives there
Could an ecosystem survive without ever touching the ground? In December 1976, Carl Sagan and…..
Scientists sampled 120 surfaces inside caves in Portugal and Spain and recovered ancient human DNA from just five, including a red-pigment crust at Escoural, revealing that even apparently blank cave walls can preserve genetic traces of people who passed through thousands of years ago
Scientists have recovered ancient human DNA from a pigment-bearing mineral crust in a Portuguese cave,…..
Researchers in Hungary recorded the brain waves of 14 dogs told to wait beside a treat and found a frontal rhythm that resembles the signal linked to self-control in humans
A dog that waits patiently beside a tempting treat may be doing more mental work…..
NASA flew New Horizons within 2,200 miles of Arrokoth, a strange two-lobed world about 4 billion miles from the Sun, and its remarkably intact shape suggests two ancient planetary building blocks may have joined at barely 11 mph more than 4.5 billion years ago
What can two ancient bodies touching in deep space tell us about how planets began?…..
Scientists recovered DNA from humans, crops, domestic animals, microbes and even Mediterranean red coral from 1978 samples of the Shroud of Turin, but nearly 50 years later the genetic “guest book” still cannot reveal when the cloth was made or prove its authenticity
Nearly 50 years after samples were collected from the Shroud of Turin, scientists have recovered…..
A camera towed over the Weddell Sea floor kept finding the same circular nest again and again, until researchers realized they had stumbled onto 60 million icefish nests spread across 93 square miles of Antarctic seabed
When researchers lowered a camera system into Antarctica’s Weddell Sea, circular fish nests kept appearing…..
Environment
Nine flamingo chicks at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo are revealing one of bird parenting’s strangest sacrifices: both mothers and fathers produce nutrient-rich red “crop milk” that can drain so much pigment from their bodies that the famously pink adults temporarily fade to nearly white
Nine fluffy chicks are offering a behind-the-scenes look at one of flamingo parenting’s strangest trade-offs. At the…..
Trending
A passerby spotted movement inside an abandoned shopping cart in Los Angeles and discovered three 8-week-old puppies, beginning a rescue that took Wynken, Blynken and Nod from the street to veterinary care and foster homes, with two of them later finding permanent families
