Science News for Students

Carbon dioxide emissions will hit a record high globally in 2018

a photo of a stream flowing through some woods taken from just above water level

Freshwater makes up just a tiny percent of the water on Earth. Yet we depend on it for everything from growing food to manufacturing to everyday uses at home. The averge American uses 340 liters (90 gallons) per day.

Valery Bocman/iStockphoto

A wave of change is coming to our planet’s water resources

a photo of heavy rain falling on a colorful umbrella outside

Rain is just one part of the planet’s water cycle.

RomoloTavani/iStockphoto

Explainer: Earth’s water is all connected in one vast cycle

A photo of Levi Draheim on a sunny day standing in front of a beach. His green shirt says "Climate Change is Real"

Twenty-one young people — including Levi Draheim, 11, from Satellite Beach, Fla. — have sued the U.S. government for actions that they say contributed to climate change.

Robin Loznak/Our Children’s Trust

Teens and tweens sue United States over climate change

a mailbox is almost underwater in front of a house during a flood from Harvey

Hurricane Harvey caused flooding in many areas around Houston, Texas, in 2017. Scientists now know that climate change made the storm wetter.

Revolution Messaging/Flickr (PUBLIC DOMAIN MARK 1.0)

The odd ways that weather can unfold in a warming world

Top Story

Living Mysteries: This complex beast lurks on lobster whiskers

The pandora’s tiny body is a lean and mean marvel of evolution

Pollution

Car tires and brakes spew harmful microplastics

This synthetic rubber and other materials can pollute waterways and damage fragile ecosystems

Carbon dioxide emissions will hit a record high globally in 2018

Releases due to fossil-fuel use rose 2.7 percent, the latest tally shows

Physics

Much of a proton’s mass comes from the energy of the particles inside it

This nuclear heavyweight gets its heft from far more than just the mass of its quark building blocks

Astronomy

Catch a ‘shooting star’ this month — and most others

Rice-sized grains of space rock produce these meteor showers

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Editor's Picks

No frostbite for dogs

Tall structures, such as skyscrapers, radio towers and wind turbines, may create conditions that greatly up the chance of cloud-to-ground lightning during windy snowstorms.

palinchakjr/iStockphoto

Explainer: What is thundersnow?

Earth

The quake that shook up geology

Trending

Valery Bocman/iStockphoto

A wave of change is coming to our planet’s water resources

Toxicology

Concerns explode over new health risks of vaping

an photo of an elephant holding its trunk to its mouth to eat some food

With their long, flexible noses, elephants can eat whole tree branches like they were stems of broccoli. But they use a newfound tactic to pick up tiny bits of food, scientists have just shown.

johan63/iStockPhoto

How do elephants eat cereal? With a pinch

A nightime photo of a wildfire engulfing a forest across a lake. Everything is tinged bright red and orange from the flames.

Extreme wildfires are becoming more common in many parts of the world.

Pinderphoto/iStockphoto

Environment

Is climate change fanning megafires?

an image of a smoke detector on the ceiling and smoke wafting below it

New smoke alarm tests a mother’s touch

Traditional alarms wake only half of sleeping kids, leaving many vulnerable to smoke and flames

Electro-tweezers let scientists safely probe cells

They allow repeated sampling of materials from the same living cell over time

a photo of a wombat facing towards the viewer

How wombats make their unique cube-shaped poop

The elasticity of the their intestines helps to shape those fecal cubes

Ecology

Scientists Say: Symbiosis

This is a relationship between two species that live better by helping each other

How do elephants eat cereal? With a pinch

Learning how elephant trunks pick up snacks could help engineers design flexible robots

Blogs

This is a maroon anemonefish — otherwise known as a clownfish — with its anemone. The two have a symbiotic relationship.

Barry Peters/Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-2.0)

Scientists Say: Symbiosis

Sriram Bhimaraju invented a device and app to help archers practice their sport. His is just one of the sports-related inventions developed this year by Broadcom MASTERS finalists.

S. Bhimaraju

Eureka! Lab

These young researchers take aim at sports

Bars on graphs may look different. But are they just an accident? Scientists call differences that probably didn’t occur by chance “statistically significant.”

WDnet/istockphoto

Scientists Say: Statistical significance

This is the International Space Station, which orbits around the Earth.

NASA/Public Domain

Scientists Say: Orbit

Body & Brain

a composite photo showing the progress Dadiv Mzee has made towards walking

David Mzee, 28, was paralyzed in 2010. He had five months of therapy that included electrical pulses to his spinal cord. With some help supporting his weight, Mzee (seen above in this composite image) now can walk for an hour at a time.

Zaps to spinal cord help paralyzed people walk

Paying teens and young adults to stop using marijuana led to memory improvements after just one week, a new study finds.

Yarygin/iStockphoto

Young people’s memory improves after stopping marijuana use

The brain tangles up senses of smell and direction, a new study suggests.

E. Otwell

People may be literally led by their noses

a person holding a bug up to their mouth to take a bite

Billions of people around the world regularly eat bugs. Why do so many Westerners find the idea disgusting?

MauMyHaT/istockphoto

Culture

Why can’t bugs be grub?

A wave of change is coming to our planet’s water resources

Thanks to climate change, Earth’s freshwater supplies will never be the same again

Explainer: Earth’s water is all connected in one vast cycle

Water is constantly on the move in an endless loop known as the water cycle

Computers & Electronics

Eureka! Lab

These young researchers take aim at sports

Archery apps, safety equipment and a ball-sorting robot all debut at Broadcom science competition

a zoomed in photo of a bee sitting on a fuzzy green and white plant against a black background

Bees stopped buzzing during the Great American Eclipse

A rare study of pollinators finds the insects responded to total darkness

a photo of eight tubes of small plastic, each a different color, poured onto a white surface

Materials Science

Some plastics learn to repair themselves

A self-healing material might help paints and plastics repair minor damage as it develops

Space

Commonly called ‘shooting stars,’ these streaks of light in the night sky are meteors caused by bits of space rock crashing into Earth’s atmosphere. The ones shown here are part of the annual Geminid shower.

sripfoto/iStockphoto

Astronomy

Catch a ‘shooting star’ this month — and most others

An illustration of what it might have looked like just before the InSight lander touched down on Mars. Pictured: a saucer shaped lander with three legs close the the Martian surface

This is an artist’s view of what it might have looked like when the InSight was about to touch down on Mars. The craft successfully landed November 26 on the Red Planet.

JPL-CALTECH/NASA

Quake-scouting lander safely touches down on Mars

Here’s an artist’s depiction of the Kepler space telescope at work scouting planets orbiting distant stars. Over its lifetime, this spacecraft turned up more than 2,700.

NASA

R.I.P. Kepler, the planet-hunting telescope

a photo of the Arecibo radio telescope from the air

The Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico (here) has been used for decades in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). But these efforts have searched only a very tiny portion of the skies, new calculations suggest.

Courtesy NAIC-Arecibo Observatory, an NSF facility

Only a small fraction of space has been searched for aliens

Invention & Innovation

It took over two minutes for high-pitched smoke alarms to wake kids up. It took a motherly voice just two seconds.

nikkytok/iStockphoto

New smoke alarm tests a mother’s touch

These so-called tweezers can take out single molecules or structures from individual cells — such as mitochondria from nerve cells (illustrated here).

IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON

Electro-tweezers let scientists safely probe cells

Polymers are an important ingredient in many materials, including the colorful plastics shown here. Scientists have developed a new polymer material to help repair small cracks that might develop in such polymer-based products.

XXLPhoto/iStockphoto

Materials Science

Some plastics learn to repair themselves

A computer can read aloud as someone touches different parts of a raised-dot diagram. The text can be read in braille, too.

ViewPlus Technologies, Inc

Computers & Electronics

This printer makes ‘visual’ aids for people with sight problems

This is the curved path an object takes around a planet, star or moon

Scientists Say: Orbit

People may be literally led by their noses

A new study suggests senses of smell and navigation are linked in the brain

Archaeology

Fossils hint ancient humans passed through a green Arabia

Ancient animal bones and stone tools from the now-harsh region date back 300,000 years

Culture

Why can’t bugs be grub?

Researchers are studying why some people think eating insects is gross — and how to change that

Plants

This is a sugary fluid secreted by plants to attract pollinators

Scientists Say: Nectar

Latest Headlines

Wear and tear on tires, brake pads and road surfaces leaves harmful microplastics swirling in the air, a new study finds.

birdlkportfolio/istockphoto

Pollution

Car tires and brakes spew harmful microplastics

Symbion pandora (left) is a tiny animal that lives on the mouth whiskers of lobsters. Smaller than a grain of salt, it devours leftover crumbs from its host’s meal. Pandora lives on only the Norway lobster (right). At least two other Symbion species reside on other lobsters.

From left: Reinhardt Møbjerg Kristensen; Hans Hillewaert/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Living Mysteries: This complex beast lurks on lobster whiskers

Most cars and trucks burn fossil fuels, which produce carbon dioxide and contribute to climate change.

egdigital/iStockphoto

Carbon dioxide emissions will hit a record high globally in 2018

Protons appear as some of the little balls in the tight central core of this artist’s rendering of an atom. New calculations show that most of a proton's “mass” does not come from its quark building-blocks.

ktsimage/iStockphoto

Physics

Much of a proton’s mass comes from the energy of the particles inside it

Math & Technology

Wear and tear on tires, brake pads and road surfaces leaves harmful microplastics swirling in the air, a new study finds.

birdlkportfolio/istockphoto

Pollution

Car tires and brakes spew harmful microplastics

It took over two minutes for high-pitched smoke alarms to wake kids up. It took a motherly voice just two seconds.

nikkytok/iStockphoto

New smoke alarm tests a mother’s touch

These so-called tweezers can take out single molecules or structures from individual cells — such as mitochondria from nerve cells (illustrated here).

IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON

Electro-tweezers let scientists safely probe cells

a close-up photo of water being poured into a clear glass

Researchers are testing new ways to bring affordable water treatment to smaller towns and to people who use well water.

pinkomelet/iStockphoto