Cody Cottier

Jackson

Writer at Freelance

Local and state politics reporter @JacksonHoleNews

Articles

‘Technofossils’ Will Define Humanity until the Sun Consumes Us All

1 week ago | scientificamerican.com | Cody Cottier

We all wonder about our legacy—what will remain of us when we’re gone? Two paleontologists set out to answer that question for the whole of humankind in a new book that explores how the material abundance of modern life will be preserved in Earth’s geological strata. This Anthropocene rock layer will catch the eye of anyone digging around millions of years from now, according to Sarah Gabbott and Jan Zalasiewicz, both professors at the University of Leicester in England.
In the Deep Ocean, Dark Oxygen May Mysteriously Emanate from the Bottom

1 week ago | discovermagazine.com | Cody Cottier

A new study published in Nature Geoscience in July 2024 suggests it's unclear what causes dark oxygen, but a possible source could be polymetallic nodules. This discovery could rewrite our understanding of how aerobic (oxygen-respiring) life evolved on Earth. And it could even point to new possibilities for extraterrestrial life, perhaps on Saturn's watery moons. The traditional story of Earth's oxygen is simple: There was none until the first photosynthesizers evolved 3.4 billion years ago.
A Fossil Has Been Confirmed as Denisovan, Showing These Enigmatic Human Cousins Lived from Siberia to the Subtropics

2 weeks ago | scientificamerican.com | Cody Cottier

A fossilized jawbone found off the coast of Taiwan nearly two decades ago belonged to a male Denisovan, scientists have found, confirming that this enigmatic group of archaic humans thrived across a vast geographic range, from Siberian snowfields to subtropical jungles. Unlike their cousins the Neandertals, however, Denisovans left behind few physical clues: this is only the third location to yield verifiable remains since their discovery 15 years ago.
Bonobos’ Complex Calls Share an Extraordinary Trait with Human Language

3 weeks ago | scientificamerican.com | Cody Cottier

We humans concoct never-before-heard sentences with ease, embedding phrases within phrases to express the wildest ideas we can dream up (“the purple pangolin that waltzed across the ballroom had a flaming pineapple on its nose”). Such abilities seem unrivaled in the animal world, but a new study suggests they’re not entirely absent: bonobos, our closest living relatives, create combinations of calls that seem to share key aspects of human language.
The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment Could Answer Profound Cosmic Questions

4 weeks ago | discovermagazine.com | Cody Cottier

Neutrinos are the most ubiquitous particles - a hundred billion zip through your fingertip each second - yet they have no charge, almost no mass, and they barely interact with other matter. A century ago, when the Italian physicist Wolfgang Pauli predicted their existence, it wasn't even clear how to look for them. "I have done a terrible thing," he famously said. "I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected." Fortunately, he spoke too soon.
Birds-of-Paradise Use Biofluorescence to Attract Mates

1 month ago | discovermagazine.com | Cody Cottier

Birds-of-paradise are among the most resplendent creatures on Earth, with long, elaborate feathers in eye-popping shades of yellow, blue, and red. Naturalists have admired them for centuries. Yet it turns out they didn't know the half of it. Biofluorescence by itself isn't big news; it shows up in plenty of animals, including humans (our teeth fluoresce under UV light). But almost always it either has no discernible function, or it's used for camouflage.
Life on Earth May Have Been Jump-Started by ‘Microlightning’

1 month ago | scientificamerican.com | Cody Cottier

Earth, in its infancy, swirled with all the gases needed to construct life. But they couldn’t just assemble themselves into the building blocks of biology. That process, called “prebiotic synthesis,” required a jolt from the outside. Lightning was an obvious suspect. So in 1952 a young chemist named Stanley Miller filled a flask halfway with water, topped it with methane, ammonia and hydrogen to mimic the planet’s early atmosphere and then flung a miniature lightning bolt into that fertile soup.
How Antarctica's Only Native Insect Survives the Extreme Cold

1 month ago | discovermagazine.com | Cody Cottier

Across the South Pole's frozen expanse, there lives only one purely terrestrial animal: a tiny insect called the Antarctic midge. This flightless creature, just 0.2 inches long, has eked out an existence in one of the world's most unforgiving climates for some 30 million years, since its home continent split off from South America . Researchers have studied these midges for decades, documenting their impressive resistance to extreme conditions.
Haunting Ghosts Could Actually Just be Lights Coming From Earthquakes

2 months ago | discovermagazine.com | Cody Cottier

Susan Hough, a seismologist at the United States Geological Survey (USGS), was scouring archives for information about a 7.3-magnitude earthquake that struck Charleston, South Carolina, in 1886. Her search brought her to a bookstore where she encountered Haunted Summerville , a collection of eerie tales from a small town just north of Charleston. "It was the sort of thing you stash in the back of your mind," Hough says. At first, she didn't give it much thought.
How Does Earth's Magnetic Field Work?

2 months ago | discovermagazine.com | Cody Cottier

One of the many unseen forces to which you owe your existence is magnetism. If it weren't for the magnetic field that surrounds our planet, blocking cosmic radiation and solar wind, Earth would likely have little atmosphere to speak of. Life (at least of the human variety) would be impossible. Since the magnetic field is sustained by geological activity deep within our planet, let's start with an overview of its structure.