All Stories by Emily Conover
- Chemistry
Diamonds and more suggest unusual origins for asteroids
Inside a meteorite, scientists found sulfur and iron wrapped in tiny diamonds. Those gems hint the rock formed inside a long-lost planet.
- Health & Medicine
Scientists offer new explanation for knuckle-cracking
That annoying pop may come from the partial collapse of bubbles in the joint fluid.
- Physics
Meet STEVE, the northern lights in mauve
STEVE is a nontraditional aurora. It might be a visible version of usually invisible charged particles drifting through Earth’s upper atmosphere.
- Science & Society
Legendary physicist Stephen Hawking dies at 76
Theoretical research by Stephen Hawking helped shape how scientists and the public alike would come to understand black holes and other facets of astrophysics.
- Physics
Major gravity experiment recreated aboard a satellite
A spacecraft was used to “drop” two objects and test their rate of fall. The new, super-precise findings confirm objects will fall at the same rate (in the absence of air resistance) — and that when it comes defining the effects of gravity, Einstein got it right.
- Physics
You can peel permanent marker, intact, off of glass
The surface tension of water can essentially scrape a thin film of some water-repellent material — such as permanent ink — off of glass.
- Physics
Astronomers finally find the cosmic source of gold and silver
After a collision between neutron stars is caught rippling spacetime, telescopes home in on where the ripples came from. The afterglow of light they found provided interesting new science.
- Physics
Trio wins physics Nobel for detecting gravity waves
The 2017 Nobel Prize in physics went to three physicists for helping figure out how to search for ripples in spacetime — which launched a new field of astronomy.
- Physics
The Milky Way galaxy houses 100 million black holes
Astronomers are estimating the number of black holes in galaxies of all sizes.
- Space
Newfound stars rank as farthest and one of the smallest
Astronomers have found two stars for the record books — the most distant ever observed and one of the tiniest now known.
- Physics
Gravitational waves detected yet again
For the third time in 16 months, scientists have announced detection of gravitational waves washing over the spacetime environment in which Earth resides. This seems to show that such waves may not be rare.
- Physics
Single atoms become teensy data storage devices
Most people consider a thumb drive to be an amazingly small device for storing data. But this new system uses a ten-thousandth the number of atoms of today’s data-storage devices.
