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Dark matter is five times as abundant as normal matter in the universe. But it continues to be an enigma because it is invisible and nearly always passes right through normal matter. Astronomers only found out about dark matter by inferring its presence from the gravity it exerts—notably, it keeps spinning galaxies from flying apart. Rather than peering at distant galaxies to study it, though, astronomers might want to look closer to home: dark matter could be exerting measurable effects in our own solar system....

Researchers using data collected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey–a comprehensive effort to map a quarter of the sky with a dedicated telescope at Apache Point, N.M.–have identified a cooling ember of a star ringed by a rare gaseous, metal-rich disk. This discovery, according to team leader Boris Gnsicke of the University of Warwick in England, suggests that there is a planet orbiting this once massive star. It also may provide, he says, “a glimpse into the future of our solar system,” specifically how it may end....

Geologists say they’ve discovered rocks long thought vanished, the youngest remains of the oldest and biggest impact crater on Earth. In the abraded heart of South Africa’s Vredefort impact crater lurk striking green-black rocks, some of the only remnants of a magma sea that once filled the gaping crater, according to a study to be published this May in the journal Geology. Until now, geologists thought nearly all of these “impact melt” rocks were lost to time....

First program by Tim Berners-Lee that attempted to link bits of data: —Enquire, 1980, for Berners-Lee’s personal use as a software consultant at CERN; he later left and the code was lost Second program: —Tangle, 1984, when Berners-Lee returned, to help him keep track of CERN’s many scientists, projects and incompatible computers Early names for the Web: —Information Mesh, Mine of Information, The Information Mine (But Berners-Lee thought the acronym, TIM, was too egocentric!...

In 2007, parasite immunologist P’ng Loke sat down for lunch at a University of California, San Francisco, cafeteria with an inquisitive man who had called him earlier that week. Their chosen topic of conversation would deprive many people of an appetite, but the scientist and his guest shared an intellectual hunger for a stomach-churning subject: gut worms—specifically, tiny worm-like parasitic organisms called helminths that live nestled in the gastrointestinal tracts of their hosts....

By mid-December, the Northern Hemisphere is usually well into the start of its annual cold and flu season—but so far this year, even as the COVID-19 pandemic surges in dozens of countries, the levels of many common seasonal infections remain extremely low. The pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has infected at least 67 million people and killed 1.5 million worldwide. The patchwork of responses intended to fight the pandemic—from temporary lockdowns to mask wearing, social distancing, enhanced personal hygiene and reduced travel—has had a huge impact on other common respiratory illnesses, too....

Birth and death are the bookends of life, yet we welcome one and dread the other. Why is it that birth is celebrated, but death is taboo? When a friend was expecting her first child, she needed additional support through her pregnancy, so she hired a birth doula. The idea of women helping other women during childbirth is not new. Since the beginning of time, women have labored and birthed at home, attended by a midwife and their female friends and kin....

With her second child growing larger by the day, Liz is experiencing the tyranny of her pregnancy. Her belly seems impossibly huge to her. Easy sleep is a distant memory now that she must contend with tens of pounds of extra girth. With fiery heartburn following every meal, she feels as if she is subsisting on a diet of small volcanoes. But Liz is not just any late-term mother-to-be. She is also a neuroscientist studying the changes that occur in a mother’s brain—in fact, she co-authored this article....

By Jonathan Kaminsky(Reuters) - New Mexico’s attorney general sued on Thursday to block a horse slaughter plant scheduled to open next month from becoming the first facility of its kind to operate in the United States in more than five years.The move is the latest in an ongoing legal battle that has pitted animal protection groups and their allies against an industry fighting to regain a foothold in the United States....

Consumers eager to grab LG’s next Nexus smartphone can preorder the device from a seller on eBay. Promising the 32GB Nexus 5 for $650, the seller, yoshio_221, seems confident that the phone will launch and that he’ll be able to lay his hands on enough units to satisfy his buyers. As yoshio_221 phrases the offer in his listing: This is a pre-order for the brand new Nexus 5! The reason why I am doing this is because the phone will most likely not be available in most regions across the globe, so I am offering my time and effort to get the phone to you as fast as possible, so you don’t have to wait weeks or months to get it....

Last December the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office began a pilot program to speed the emergence of green technology. The goal was to shave a year off the 40 months it typically took to evaluate a patent application. Yet the agency has approved only about one third of the requests it has received, disappointing inventors and even the Patent Office itself. The program’s acceptance rate is “less than I would have expected,” says Robert L....

Dreams are full of possibilities; by drifting into the world beyond our waking realities, we can visit magical lands, travel through time and interact with long-lost family and friends. The notion of communicating in real time with someone outside of our dreamscapes, however, sounds like science fiction. A recent study demonstrates that, to some extent, this seeming fantasy can be made real. Scientists already knew that one-way contact is attainable. Previous studies have demonstrated that people can process external cues, such as sounds and smells, while asleep....

By Kathryn Doyle (Reuters Health) - For U.S. college football players, head impacts that don’t cause concussion symptoms do still cause subtle and lingering changes in the eyes’ ability to focus, according to a new study. The results might provide a new tool for measuring the severity of the “sub-concussive” brain impacts that athletes and others, like soldiers, experience regularly, researchers say. “We believe that it is possible that there may be long-term effects, but we have no conclusive evidence currently,” said lead author Dianne Langford of Temple University in Philadelphia....

Earth hides its scars well; the planet has endured countless millennia of eruptions and collisions, but scientists are still stumbling upon the evidence of all that geologic drama. Now, one such team has announced that it spotted a scar hidden below Greenland’s ice, a giant crater nearly 20 miles (31 kilometers) wide. The researchers said a giant iron meteorite likely created the mark by slamming into Earth sometime in the past 3 million years....

As dramatic exits go, it’s on par with Major T. J. “King” Kong riding a falling nuclear bomb like a rodeo bull at the end of Dr. Strangelove. A NASA spacecraft has documented a comet’s demise as it plunged toward the sun at 600 kilometers per second, broke apart and vaporized inside the solar atmosphere. The comet, known as C/2011 N3 (SOHO), met its fiery fate on July 6. The object’s official name designates that it was discovered in early July 2011 by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft....

Filling an order for a lethal drug cocktail has been getting harder for quite some time. Four years ago companies in the European Union stopped shipping pharmaceuticals to the U.S. when they would be used for executions, leading to a shortage of sodium thiopental, a once-common general anesthetic. Then there were issues getting pentobarbital—a backup drug that is also a staple in many animal euthanasia mixes. The drug at the center of the U....

By Sharon Weinberger of Nature magazinePlanning a sojourn in the northeastern United States? You could soon be taking part in a novel security program that can supposedly ‘sense’ whether you are planning to commit a crime.Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST), a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program designed to spot people who are intending to commit a terrorist act, has in the past few months completed its first round of field tests at an undisclosed location in the northeast, Nature has learned....

In the animal kingdom, some creatures are smarter than others. Birds, in particular, exhibit many remarkable skills once thought to be restricted to humans: Magpies recognize their reflection in a mirror. New Caledonian crows construct tools and learn these skills from their elders. African grey parrots can count, categorize objects by color and shape, and learn to understand human words. And a sulfur-crested cockatoo named Snowball can dance to a beat....

Europeans ate their way through the island nation of Mauritius, most famously eliminating the dodo bird by 1700. Less well known was their effect on the Mauritian island now known as Ile aux Aigrettes, where they exterminated giant skinks and tortoises and logged the native ebony trees for firewood. In 1965 the largely denuded 25 hectares of the island were declared a nature reserve. But even in the absence of logging, the slow-growing ebony forests failed to thrive....

President Trump has cannonballed into California’s water politics, accusing the state’s Democratic governor—an outspoken Trump foe—of mishandling deadly wildfires. “Governor Jerry Brown must allow the Free Flow of the vast amounts of water coming from the North and foolishly being diverted into the Pacific Ocean,” Trump wrote yesterday on Twitter as blazes ravaged parts of the Golden State. “Can be used for fires, farming and everything else. Think of California with plenty of Water—Nice!...