Maria Temming

Staff Writer, Physical Sciences, Science News

Maria Temming is the staff writer for physical sciences at Science News. Maria has undergraduate degrees in physics and English from Elon University and a master's degree in science writing from MIT. She has written for Scientific American, Sky & Telescope and NOVA Next. She’s also a former Science News intern.

All Stories by Maria Temming

  1. Physics

    Why big nuts always rise to the top

    X-rays scans of a box of mixed nuts now reveal why large Brazil nuts rise to the top.

  2. Chemistry

    New recycling technologies could keep more plastic out of landfills

    Recycling plastics is really hard — especially into useful materials. But new chemical tricks could make recycling easier.

  3. Earth

    Rock rising from below the Atlantic may drive continents apart

    Molten rock rising from the deep mantle at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge may drive plate tectonics there more than had been expected.

  4. Archaeology

    Unusual mud shell covers an Egyptian mummy

    In ancient Egypt, commoners may have been mummified and then encased in mud to repair damage to the body or to imitate royal techniques used with royals.

  5. Climate

    2020 was warmest year on record for Earth’s oceans

    2020 continued the trend of record-breaking heat for the world’s oceans. The three previous warmest years on record were 2019, 2017 and 2018.

  6. Earth

    Space station sensors saw how weird ‘blue jet’ lightning forms

    A mysterious type of lightning in the upper atmosphere has been traced to a brief, bright flash of light at the top of a storm cloud.

  7. Animals

    Newfound technique allows some tree snakes to climb wide trees

    When a tree is too wide to climb, brown tree snakes use a lasso-like trick to slowly ascend up to snacks.

  8. Physics

    Physicists have clocked the shortest time span ever

    The experiment revealed how long it takes light to cross a hydrogen molecule: just a couple hundred zeptoseconds.

  9. Chemistry

    A new catalyst turns greenhouse gas into jet fuel

    The catalyst is an improvement over its predecessors. Made of cheap materials like iron, it produces jet fuel in a single step.

  10. Space

    Why Arecibo’s loss is such a big deal for astronomy

    Damage to the radio telescope in Puerto Rico has robbed scientists of a special tool for studying everything from asteroids to galaxies.

  11. Space

    Jupiter may have ‘sprites’ or ‘elves’ in its atmosphere

    This is the first time that scientists have seen hints of these weird side effects of lightning storms somewhere other than on Earth.

  12. Space

    There’s water on sunny parts of the moon, scientists confirm

    The new observations were made by a telescope on board a jet in Earth’s atmosphere. They confirm the presence of water on sunlit areas of the moon.