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From the editors at The Conversation, an independent news organization based in Boston that publishes articles written by academic … Read More

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Does the full moon make us sleepless? A neurologist explains the science behind sleep, mood and lunar myths

Folklore suggests that a full moon has a strong effect on sleep. But the reality is more complex, and lifestyle habits like screen use before bedtime are likely to have a larger effect.

The ancestors of ostriches and emus were long-distance fliers – here’s how we worked this out

A 56 million-year-old fossil bone helps explain how this (mostly) flightless family of birds spread to so many different continents.

50 years ago, NASA sent 2 spacecraft to search for life on Mars – the Viking missions’ findings are still discussed today

The Viking missions paved the way for future Mars missions and helped researchers understand the red planet’s climate and geology.

How is paint made?

Different paint recipes work for different uses. Two art conservators explain how analyzing paints from the past can reveal how they were made – and how best to preserve them.

Where does your glass come from?

Glass seems simple − it’s just sand and a few more ingredients. Yet mining and production are rarely local, raising questions … Read More

Supernova theory links an exploding star to global cooling and human evolution

Global cooling associated with the impact of supernova remnants may have affected plants and animals, including species related to … Read More

The first stars may not have been as uniformly massive as astronomers thought

Two new studies challenge scientists’ previous theories on how the very first stars in the universe formed. Read More

NASA wants to put a nuclear reactor on the Moon by 2030 – choosing where is tricky

If you try to launch or land a spacecraft anywhere close to another object on the lunar surface, that object will get sandblasted with … Read More

Top 5 summer sports that surprisingly dominate betting

OLBG reports that summer sports betting thrives with increased wagers on horse racing, baseball, cricket, tennis, and golf, surprising … Read More

Education, income and demographics shape our views of the unseen world, a survey found.

Angels, witches, crystals and black cats: How supernatural beliefs vary across different groups in the US

Sociologists who measured supernatural beliefs in the US found that higher education and higher income are associated with lower levels.

Weird space weather seems to have influenced human behavior on Earth 41,000 years ago – our unusual scientific collaboration explores how

Two geophysicists and an archaeologist teamed up to connect space weather 41,000 years ago to human behaviors that might have been in … Read More

Why are we so obsessed with bringing back the woolly mammoth?

Rebecca Woods, University of Toronto In just the last several months, de-extinction — bringing back extinct species by recreating … Read More

Why is space so dark even though the universe is filled with stars?

An astronomer explains why space looks so dark despite containing 200 billion trillion stars. Read More

Humans and animals can both think logically − but testing what kind of logic they’re using is tricky

How researchers measure the logical reasoning of monkeys, pigeons, rats, fish and wasps shapes how they understand mental processes in … Read More

Pop, soda or coke? The fizzy history behind America’s favorite linguistic debate

An expert in American dialects explains how a ‘health drink’ from the early 1800s spawned so many names and variations. Read More