Science News for Students | News and feature articles from all fields of science

Climate Change Chronicles

Cars in traffic

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

egdigital/iStockphoto

Science & Society
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

Weather & Climate
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

Weather & Climate
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

Science & Society
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)

Weather & Climate
The odd ways that weather can unfold in a warming world
pandora lobster
Top Story
Living Mysteries: This complex beast lurks on lobster whiskers
The pandora’s tiny body is a lean and mean marvel of evolution
robo-jellyfish
Robotics
 
This robotic jellyfish is a climate spy
Squishy tentacles let this gadget monitor coral reefs without disturbing them
A microscopic image showing Naegleria fowleri, also known as brain-eating amoebas
Health
 
Silver nanoparticles help fight brain-eating amoebas
Novel treatment boosts how well drugs work
sleepless woman
Brain
 
Sleepless nights can leave brains feeling anxious
Staying up all night alters brain activity in regions linked to anxiety
rime ice
Weather & Climate
 
Scientists Say
Scientists Say: Rime ice
This is a coating of tiny ice crystals that gather when water freezes rapidly on a surface

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dog running in snow
Animals
No frostbite for dogs
Manhattan snowstorm

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

Weather & Climate
Explainer: What is thundersnow?
Anchorage, Alaska after 1964 quake
Earth
The quake that shook up geology
Trending
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

Weather & Climate
A wave of change is coming to our planet’s water resources
Cars in traffic

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

egdigital/iStockphoto

Science & Society
Carbon dioxide emissions will hit a record high globally in 2018
exploding atomizer
Toxicology
Concerns explode over new health risks of vaping
a photo of a wombat facing towards the viewer

Wombats are stout marsupials native to Australia. They use their cubelike droppings to mark their territory.

mlharing/iStockphoto

Animals
How wombats make their unique cube-shaped poop
car driving
Pollution
 
Car tires and brakes spew harmful microplastics
This synthetic rubber and other materials can pollute waterways and damage fragile ecosystems
Cars in traffic
Science & Society
 
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
an illustration of an atomic model
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
meteor shower over mountains
Astronomy
 
Catch a ‘shooting star’ this month — and most others
Rice-sized grains of space rock produce these meteor showers
an image of a smoke detector on the ceiling and smoke wafting below it
Science & Society
 
New smoke alarm tests a mother’s touch
Traditional alarms wake only half of sleeping kids, leaving many vulnerable to smoke and flames
Blogs
rime ice

This tree has a coating of rime ice.

Richardfabi/Wikimedia Commons

Scientists Say
Scientists Say: Rime ice
clownfish

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
Scientists Say: Symbiosis
a photo of Sriram Bhimaraju holding a bow and pulling a notched arrow back

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
graphs

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
Scientists Say: Statistical significance
Body & Brain
A microscopic image showing Naegleria fowleri, also known as brain-eating amoebas

Parasites belonging to the species Naegleria fowleri, sometimes known as brain-eating amoebas, can destroy brain tissue — and kill human victims within a week.

Govinda S. Visvesvara/CDC

Health
Silver nanoparticles help fight brain-eating amoebas
sleepless woman

People woke up feeling more anxious after a sleepless night. Brain scans showed why.

Wavebreakmedia/iStockPhoto

Brain
Sleepless nights can leave brains feeling anxious
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.

 © JAMANI CAILLET/EPFL

Brain
Zaps to spinal cord help paralyzed people walk
an illustration of marijuana leaves

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

Yarygin/iStockphoto

Brain
Young people’s memory improves after stopping marijuana use
cell-tweezers
Technology
 
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
Animals
 
How wombats make their unique cube-shaped poop
The elasticity of the their intestines helps to shape those fecal cubes
clownfish
Ecology
 
Scientists Say
Scientists Say: Symbiosis
This is a relationship between two species that live better by helping each other
an photo of an elephant holding its trunk to its mouth to eat some food
Animals
 
How do elephants eat cereal? With a pinch
Learning how elephant trunks pick up snacks could help engineers design flexible robots
a photo of a stream flowing through some woods taken from just above water level
Weather & Climate
 
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
Space
meteor shower over mountains

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

Space
Quake-scouting lander safely touches down on Mars
an illustration of the Kepler space telescope in space

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

Space
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

Space
Only a small fraction of space has been searched for aliens
Invention & Innovation
robo-jellyfish

A soft and squishy robo-jellyfish pumps its way gently through the ocean, providing little or no disturbance to local sea life.

Jennifer Frame, Nick Lopez, Oscar Curet and Erik D. Engeberg/IOP Publishing

Robotics
This robotic jellyfish is a climate spy
A microscopic image showing Naegleria fowleri, also known as brain-eating amoebas

Parasites belonging to the species Naegleria fowleri, sometimes known as brain-eating amoebas, can destroy brain tissue — and kill human victims within a week.

Govinda S. Visvesvara/CDC

Health
Silver nanoparticles help fight brain-eating amoebas
an image of a smoke detector on the ceiling and smoke wafting below it

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

nikkytok/iStockphoto

Science & Society
New smoke alarm tests a mother’s touch
cell-tweezers

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

Technology
Electro-tweezers let scientists safely probe cells
a photo of heavy rain falling on a colorful umbrella outside
Weather & Climate
 
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
a photo of Sriram Bhimaraju holding a bow and pulling a notched arrow back
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
Animals
 
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
graphs
Mathematics
 
Scientists Say
Scientists Say: Statistical significance
Scientists use this phrase when they think they have a result that is too different to have happened by accident
Latest Headlines
robo-jellyfish

A soft and squishy robo-jellyfish pumps its way gently through the ocean, providing little or no disturbance to local sea life.

Jennifer Frame, Nick Lopez, Oscar Curet and Erik D. Engeberg/IOP Publishing

Robotics
This robotic jellyfish is a climate spy
A microscopic image showing Naegleria fowleri, also known as brain-eating amoebas

Parasites belonging to the species Naegleria fowleri, sometimes known as brain-eating amoebas, can destroy brain tissue — and kill human victims within a week.

Govinda S. Visvesvara/CDC

Health
Silver nanoparticles help fight brain-eating amoebas
sleepless woman

People woke up feeling more anxious after a sleepless night. Brain scans showed why.

Wavebreakmedia/iStockPhoto

Brain
Sleepless nights can leave brains feeling anxious
rime ice

This tree has a coating of rime ice.

Richardfabi/Wikimedia Commons

Scientists Say
Weather & Climate
Scientists Say: Rime ice
Math & Technology
robo-jellyfish

A soft and squishy robo-jellyfish pumps its way gently through the ocean, providing little or no disturbance to local sea life.

Jennifer Frame, Nick Lopez, Oscar Curet and Erik D. Engeberg/IOP Publishing

Robotics
This robotic jellyfish is a climate spy
car driving

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

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

nikkytok/iStockphoto

Science & Society
New smoke alarm tests a mother’s touch
cell-tweezers

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

Technology
Electro-tweezers let scientists safely probe cells