Category: Shorts

Fly Ranch Geyser: The Explosion of Geothermal Water This article first appeared in Issue 12 of our digital magazine CURIOUS. Geology and biology collide at Fly Ranch Geyser, a geyser in Nevada, United States. It is one of the extreme regions of the world with temperatures as high as 93°C (199°F). A group of extremophile…

Pacific Lamprey: The Evolution of Life An eel-like parasite with no jaw, no bones, and a thirst for blood has been wriggling its way through the waterways of the world for thousands of years. We’re talking about the Pacific lamprey, Entosphenus tridentatus. This parasite is even older than trees, even, and yet has endured to…

JWST-ER1: The Einstein Ring Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers discovered an incredible cosmic object in the data from JWST, and they stumbled upon it without a particularly systematic search . The object is a gravitational lens, which magnifies a distant galaxy. In fact, it’s so far away that its light has taken 103 billion…

Antimatter and Regular Matter Are Gravitational Attraction Antimatter is the mirror image of matter that makes us, but with the opposite charge. Would they fall down in a gravitational field? After much work, scientists from the CERN/ ALPHA collaboration at CERN finally know for sure that antimatter and regular matter are gravitationally attracted to each…

Thonis-Heracleion More ancient treasures have been recovered from the sunken port city of Thonis-Heracleion off the coast of Egypt. They include precious items such as gold, jewelry, and perfume bottles. A European Institute for Underwater Archaeology (IEASM) team led by Franck Goddio has carried out a joint mission with Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.…

The Devil’s Tooth Fungus This article first appeared in Issue 12 of IFLScience’s free digital magazine CURIOUS. The devil’s tooth fungus appears to bleed as it grows, releasing a type of sap. This bleeding part of the mushroom is called the pore juice, and it gives the white, beige, pink, and sometimes blue mushroom its…

Space Shuttle Bennu: Beyond the Moon On Sunday, the OSIRIS-REx capsule landed on Earth. The capsule carried about 250 grams of pristine material from asteroid Bennu. This good news means things are looking up. Earlier in the day, the science team opened the capsule’s glovebox to ensure no contamination. Inside, they found black dust and…

Language Attrition (L1 Learning) This chapter opens with a reminder: how much of your high school French do you remember? Maybe enough to order a drink or ask where the library is? For most people, studying a language at school doesn’t allow them to achieve true fluency. But what about your native language? Is it…