The Surprising Physics of Finger Snapping
You might not think that you can generate more body acceleration than a big-league baseball pitcher, but new research shows you can.
Stories by Karen Hopkin
Karen Hopkin is a freelance science writer in Somerville, Mass. She holds a doctorate in biochemistry and is a contributor to Scientific American's 60-Second Science podcasts.
To Better Persuade a Human, a Robot Should Use This Trick
A new study finds that, for robots, overlords are less persuasive than peers.
These Bugs Produce Smelly Defenses That Need to Be Heard to Be Believed
You read that right. Researchers have taken the chemical defenses of some insects and turned them into sounds, which, it turns out, repel people just as well.
How Can an Elephant Squeak Like a Mouse?
New research using a camera that can “see" sound” shows some elephants can produce high-pitched buzzing with their lips.
Night Flights Are No Sweat for Tropical Bees
New research uses night vision to see how nocturnal bees navigate the dark.
Dinosaurs Lived—and Made Little Dinos—in the Arctic
New research shows that the prehistoric giants were even cooler than we thought
A Car Crash Snaps the Daydreaming Mind into Focus
One researcher’s poorly timed attention lapse flipped a car—and pushed science forward.
The Incredible, Reanimated 24,000-Year-Old Rotifer
The last time this tiny wheel animalcule was moving around, woolly mammoths roamed the earth.
Moths Have an Acoustic Invisibility Cloak to Stay under Bats’ Radar
New research finds they fly around on noise-cancelling wings
Your Brain Does Something Amazing between Bouts of Intense Learning
New research shows that lightning-quick neural rehearsal can supercharge learning and memory.
Animal Kids Listen to Their Parents Even before Birth
Human children: please take note of the behavior of prebirth zebra finches
Puppies Understand You Even at a Young Age, Most Adorable Study of the Year Confirms
Researchers in the happiest lab in the world tested 375 pups and found they connected with people by eight weeks
Bats on Helium Reveal an Innate Sense of the Speed of Sound
A new experiment shows that bats are born with a fixed reference for the speed of sound—and living in lighter air can throw it off.
Male Lyrebirds Lie to Get Sex
It seems like the males will do anything, even fake nearby danger, to get females to stick around to mate.
Boston’s Pigeons Coo, ‘Wicked’; New York’s Birds Coo, ‘Fuhgeddaboudit’
The two cities’ rock doves are genetically distinct, research shows.
E-Eggs Track Turtle Traffickers
Decoy sea turtle eggs containing tracking tech are new weapons against beach poachers and traffickers.
Baby Bees Deprive Caregivers of Sleep
Bee larvae and pupae appear to secrete a chemical that does the work of a late-night cup of coffee for their nurses.
Eye Treatment Stretches Mouse Sight Beyond Visible Spectrum
Nanoparticles that attach to photoreceptors allowed mice to see infrared and near-infrared light for up to two months.
Why Some Easter Island Statues Are Where They Are
Many of the statues not along the coast are in places that featured a resource vital to the communities that lived and worked there.
In Bee Shortage, Bubbles Could Help Pollinate
Soap bubbles are sticky enough to carry a pollen payload and delicate enough to land on flowers without harm.
Can People ID Infectious Disease by Cough and Sneeze Sounds?
Individuals aren’t very good at judging whether someone coughing or sneezing has an infectious condition or is simply reacting to something benign.
3 Words Mislead Online Regional Mood Analysis
Analyzing keywords on Twitter can offer a loose measure of the subjective well-being of a community, as long as you don’t count three words: good, love and LOL.
Skinny Genes Tell Fat to Burn
A gene whose mutated form is associated with cancer in humans turns out to have a role in burning calories over a long evolutionary history.
Virus-Infected Bees Practice Social Distancing
Bees infected with a virus cut back on interactions within their hive but find it easier to get past sentries at neighboring hives.