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Worms Use Their Bodies to Build Towers as a Wild Survival Strategy

16 hours ago | sciencealert.com | Mike McRae

Under the clinical sterility of glassware, life can do some rather curious things. Whether such behaviors are exclusive to laboratory environments or represent a common survival strategy is often a topic for heated debate. One bizarre activity glimpsed in past lab experiments has now been recorded under natural conditions, proving once and for all that some worm species will construct towers from their own squirming bodies to catch a ride out of town when the going gets tough.
A Giant Mouth Has Opened on The Sun And Even It Looks Surprised

1 day ago | sciencealert.com | Michelle Starr

A giant mouth-like hole in the Sun about as wide as five Jupiters is blasting hot Sun breath in Earth's general direction. It's not an actual hole in the Sun, but what is known as a coronal hole: a region where the Sun's magnetic field opens up, allowing the wind of solar particles constantly blowing from our Sun to escape more readily, sending a gust of material blasting through the Solar System.
A Super-Tiny Star Gave Birth to a Giant Planet And We Don't Know How

1 day ago | sciencealert.com | Michelle Starr

A giant conundrum has been found orbiting a teeny tiny red dwarf star just a fifth of the size of the Sun. Such small stars were thought to be incapable of producing giant planets. But there, in its orbit, appears to be unmistakable evidence of an absolute unit: a gas giant around the size of Saturn. TOI-6894b, as the exoplanet is named, has 86 percent of the radius of Jupiter.
Night Owls May Be at Higher Risk of Cognitive Decline. Here's Why.

2 days ago | sciencealert.com | David Nield

We all have our own chronotype – a tendency to sleep at certain times, with early birds and night owls at opposite ends of the scale. A new study suggests this chronotype has some relationship to cognitive decline in those who have completed higher education. Led by a team from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, the study dug into the data on 23,798 individuals aged 40 and over in a public health research database.
Cannabis Compound Could Protect Us From Deadly Fungal Disease

2 days ago | sciencealert.com | Michelle Starr

A dangerous fungal pathogen has proven no match for what may be one of the most useful plants in nature. Scientists studying the chemical properties of cannabis have found it kills one of the most dangerous fungal pathogens in the world – in a laboratory setting, at least. Cryptococcus neoformans, a species of fungus behind cryptococcosis and cryptococcal meningitis, appears to be vulnerable to topical treatment with cannabidiol and cannabidivarin, compounds found in the plant Cannabis sativa.
Experimental Drug Helped Cancer Patients Live 40% Longer in Clinical Trial

2 days ago | sciencealert.com | David Nield

An innovative new treatment for tackling some of the toughest stomach cancers has shown promise in a phase 2 clinical trial, leading to noticeable improvements in tumor shrinkage and survival rates. The treatment is a form of CAR T cell immunotherapy, where the body's own immune cells are sampled and then trained to better target cancer cells, before being reintroduced into the blood.
Water Discovered Around a Young, Sun-Like Star For First Time

3 days ago | sciencealert.com | Matt Williams

For decades it was thought that water was prevalent in the outer reaches of the Solar System early in its history, with comets and asteroids delivering moisture to Earth and the inner planets during the Late Heavy Bombardment period around 4 billion years ago. An abundance of ice in places like the Kuiper Belt – the ring of 'iceteroids' in the outer Solar System – supports the idea.
Leprosy Was Lurking in The Americas Long Before Colonization, Study Finds

3 days ago | sciencealert.com | David Nield

Historians have for a long time believed that leprosy was introduced to the Americas by European settlers, but the latest research offers strong evidence to the contrary – suggesting that Indigenous Americans had already been dying of the disease for centuries. The primary cause of leprosy is a bacterium called Mycobacterium leprae, and the researchers still think this was introduced to America by Europeans. However, it seems a lesser-known culprit was already established by that time.
Astronauts Reveal The Shocking Beauty of Lightning From Space

3 days ago | sciencealert.com | Michelle Starr

If you live on this planet Earth, odds are good that you've experienced a lightning storm in your life: a wild, crashing affair, with forks of light that split the sky, accompanied by the bone-rattling roar of thunder. Although lightning is common here on Earth, there is still a lot we don't know about this extreme phenomenon. Scientists have set up all sorts of apparatus to find out, and have made great strides in teasing out some of the split-second processes that go into a bolt of lightning.
The Milky Way Might Not Crash Into The Andromeda Galaxy After All

3 days ago | sciencealert.com | Michelle Starr

"As it stands, proclamations of the impending demise of our Galaxy seem greatly exaggerated."That's the conclusion scientists have reached after revisiting the possibility of what we thought was a foregone conclusion: the eventual clash of giants, a collision between the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxies.