Strange & Offbeat News
April 30, 2025
Top Headlines
Apr. 29, 2025 — Imagine a crocodile built like a greyhound -- that's a sebecid. Standing tall, with some species reaching 20 feet in length, they dominated South American landscapes after the extinction of dinosaurs until about 11 million years ago. Or at least, ...
Apr. 28, 2025 — Even under today's climatic conditions, the long-extinct straight-tusked elephant could still live in Europe. This is the conclusion of a recent study. For this finding, the research group combined fossil finds with reconstructions of past ...
Apr. 28, 2025 — Crystals -- from sugar and table salt to snowflakes and diamonds -- don't always grow in a straightforward way. Researchers have now captured this journey from amorphous blob to orderly structures. In exploring how crystals form, the researchers ...
Apr. 28, 2025 — The NASA New Horizons spacecraft's extensive observations of Lyman-alpha emissions have resulted in the first-ever map from the galaxy at this important ultraviolet wavelength, providing a new look ...
Latest Headlines
updated 6:57pm EDT
Apr. 28, 2025 — Scientists have collaborated to analyze the inner workings of Bolivia's 'zombie' volcano, Uturuncu. By combining seismology, physics models and ...
Apr. 28, 2025 — Astrophysicists have discovered a potentially star-forming cloud that is one of the largest single structures in the sky and among the closest to the sun and Earth ever to be detected. The scientists ...
Apr. 28, 2025 — Forget fleeting friendships the social secrets of the long-tailed tit has revealed an extraordinary level of family commitment even during migratory journeys. Birds that babysit: scientists reveal ...
Apr. 28, 2025 — Researchers have created a light-powered soft robot that can carry loads through the air along established tracks, similar to cable cars or aerial trams. The soft robot operates autonomously, can ...
Apr. 28, 2025 — A technique to cool the planet, in which particles are added to the atmosphere to reflect sunlight, would not require developing special aircraft but could be achieved using existing large planes, ...
Apr. 28, 2025 — For decades, scientists believed Vesta, one of the largest objects in our solar system's asteroid belt, wasn't just an asteroid and eventually concluded it was more like a planet with a crust, mantle ...
Apr. 28, 2025 — Through intensive breeding, humans have pushed breeds such as pug dogs and Persian cats to evolve with very similar skulls and 'smushed' faces, so they're more similar to each other than they are to ...
Apr. 23, 2025 — When a seismologist visited the site of the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquakes two days after the event, he noticed something strange. Pebble- to boulder-sized rocks clearly had been moved by the ...
Apr. 23, 2025 — Addressing the challenges of fragrance design, researchers have developed an AI model that can automate the creation of new fragrances based on user-defined scent descriptors. The model uses mass ...
Apr. 18, 2025 — Researchers use the sophisticated technology on NASA's Perseverance rover to analyze volcanic rocks in Mars' Jezero Crater. Their findings show that some of the same volcanic processes that led to ...
Earlier Headlines
Apr. 25, 2025 — A recent study provides evidence that some results of behavioral experiments with insects cannot be fully reproduced. So far, possible reproducibility problems have been little discussed in this ...
Apr. 25, 2025 — Astronomers have discovered that super-Earth exoplanets are more common across the universe than previously thought. While it can be relatively easy to locate worlds that orbit close to their star, ...
Apr. 25, 2025 — A recent study has unraveled some of the secrets concealed within the entangled web of quantum ...
Apr. 24, 2025 — Researchers have long recognized that quantum communication systems would transmit quantum information more faithfully and be impervious to certain forms of error if nonlinear optical processes were ...
Apr. 24, 2025 — Carbon-containing meteorites look like they had less severe impacts than those without carbon because the evidence was blasted into space by gases produced during the impact. The discovery not only ...
Apr. 24, 2025 — An international team has explored how in future aerial robots could process construction materials precisely in the air -- an approach with great potential for difficult-to-access locations or work ...
Apr. 24, 2025 — An international team of malacologists discovered a new snail species, Anauchen picasso, in Southeast Asia that exhibits a highly complex and rectangularly angled shell shape, resembling a ...
Apr. 24, 2025 — Female bonobos team up to suppress male aggression against them -- the first evidence of animals deploying this strategy. In 85% of observed coalitions, females collectively targeted males, forcing ...
Apr. 24, 2025 — Mind blanking is a common experience with a wide variety of definitions ranging from feeling 'drowsy' to 'a complete absence of conscious awareness.' Neuroscientists and ...
Apr. 24, 2025 — A 113-million-year-old hell ant that once lived in northeastern Brazil is now the oldest ant specimen known to science, finds a new report. The hell ant, which was preserved in limestone, is a member ...
Apr. 24, 2025 — Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scientists analyzed far-away bodies -- known as Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) -- and found varying traces of methanol. The discoveries are helping them ...
Apr. 24, 2025 — Researchers developed a more efficient way to control the outputs of a large language model, guiding it to generate text that adheres to a certain structure, like a programming language, and remains ...
Apr. 23, 2025 — Scientists have created a new platform called 'Oz' that uses laser light to control up to 1,000 photoreceptors in the eye at once. Using Oz, the researchers showed people images, videos and ...
Apr. 23, 2025 — Researchers discovered tiny features on sculpins' fins which may enable them to cling firmly in harsh underwater ...
Apr. 23, 2025 — Bite marks found on a skeleton discovered in a Roman cemetery in York have revealed the first archaeological evidence of gladiatorial combat between a human and a ...
Apr. 23, 2025 — Inspired by the movements of a tiny parasitic worm, engineers have created a 5-inch soft robot that can jump as high as a basketball hoop. Their device, a silicone rod with a carbon-fiber spine, can ...
Apr. 23, 2025 — After uncovering a unifying algorithm that links more than 20 common machine-learning approaches, researchers organized them into a 'periodic table of machine learning' that can help ...
Apr. 23, 2025 — Most people generally are more concerned about the immediate risks of artificial intelligence than they are about a theoretical future in which AI threatens humanity. A new study reveals that ...
Apr. 23, 2025 — If you haven't heard of a tardigrade before, prepare to be wowed. These clumsy, eight-legged creatures, nicknamed water bears, are about half a millimeter long and can survive practically ...
Apr. 23, 2025 — Engineers developed a technique to grow and peel ultrathin 'skins' of electronic material that could be used in applications such as night-vision eyewear and autonomous driving in foggy ...
Friday, April 25, 2025
- Study on the Reproducibility of Behavioral Experiments With Insects Now Published
- Astronomers Find Earth-Like Exoplanets Common Across the Cosmos
- Physicists Uncover Hidden Order in the Quantum World Through Deconfined Quantum Critical Points
Thursday, April 24, 2025
- Nanophotonic Platform Boosts Efficiency of Nonlinear-Optical Quantum Teleportation
- Evidence Blasted Into Space: Mystery Why Some Meteorites Look Less Shocked Solved
- Flying Robots Unlock New Horizons in Construction
- Tiny New Species of Snail Named After Picasso
- Female Bonobos Keep Males in Check -- Not With Strength, but With Solidarity
- What Happens in the Brain When Your Mind Blanks
- The Oldest Ant Ever Discovered Found Fossilized in Brazil
- Scientists Use James Webb Space Telescope to Better Understand Solar System's Origins
- Making AI-Generated Code More Accurate in Any Language
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
- Scientists Trick the Eye Into Seeing New Color 'olo'
- New and Surprising Traction Trait in Sculpin Fish
- Skeletal Evidence of Roman Gladiator Bitten by Lion in Combat
- Engineering a Robot That Can Jump 10 Feet High -- Without Legs
- 'Periodic Table of Machine Learning' Could Fuel AI Discovery
- Current AI Risks More Alarming Than Apocalyptic Future Scenarios
- Scientists Have Found a Way to 'tattoo' Tardigrades
- New Electronic 'skin' Could Enable Lightweight Night-Vision Glasses
- Material? Robot? It's a Metabot
- Innovative Approaches Advance Search for Ice on the Moon
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
- Light Fields With Extraordinary Structure: Plasmonic Skyrmion Bags
- Robot See, Robot Do: System Learns After Watching How-to Videos
- New Species of Electricity-Conducting Organism, Name It After Tribe
- Transformable Flat-to-Shape Objects Created Using Sewing Technology
- Astronomers Discover a Planet That's Rapidly Disintegrating, Producing a Comet-Like Tail
- Better Feed, Fewer Burps: Scientists Target Dairy Gas Emissions
- Using ChatGPT, Students Might Pass a Course, but With a Cost
Monday, April 21, 2025
- More Americans Are Using Psilocybin -- Especially Those With Mental Health Conditions, Study Shows
- How Activity in Earth's Mantle Led the Ancient Ancestors of Elephants, Giraffes, and Humans Into Asia and Africa
- What If Mother Earth Could Sue for Mistreatment?
- Did It Rain or Snow on Ancient Mars? New Study Suggests It Did
- Wild Chimps Filmed Sharing 'boozy' Fruit
- It's a Quantum Zoo out There, and Scientists Just Found a Dozen New 'species'
Friday, April 18, 2025
- Turning Down Starlight to Spot New Exoplanets
- How Thoughts Influence What the Eyes See
- Scientists Probe the Mystery of Titan's Missing Deltas
- Soft Brainstem Implant Delivers High-Resolution Hearing
Thursday, April 17, 2025
- Extreme Drought Contributed to Barbarian Invasion of Late Roman Britain, Tree-Ring Study Reveals
- Curiosity Rover Finds Large Carbon Deposits on Mars
Wednesday, April 16, 2025
- Strongest Hints Yet of Biological Activity Outside the Solar System
- Ever Wonder Why Some Meteor Showers Are So Unpredictable?
- Cosmic Twist: The Universe Could Be Spinning
- RoboBee Comes in for a Landing
- Sunscreen, Clothes and Caves May Have Helped Homo Sapiens Survive 41,000 Years Ago
- 'Big Surprise': Astronomers Find Planet in Perpendicular Orbit Around Pair of Stars
- Crystal Clues on Mars Point to Watery and Possibly Life-Supporting Past
- New Giant Virus Isolated
- The Most Distant Twin of the Milky Way Ever Observed
- Our DNA Is at Risk of Hacking, Warn Scientists
- Holiday Flights Could Carry Fewer Passengers as World Warms
- A Step Toward Harnessing Clean Energy from Falling Rainwater
- Living Fungus-Based Building Material Repairs Itself for Over a Month
- Bite-Sized Chunks of Chicken With the Texture of Whole Meat Can Be Grown in the Lab
- 'Cosmic Radio' Could Find Dark Matter in 15 Years
- First Confirmed Footage of a Colossal Squid -- And It's a Baby!
- Scientists Find Evidence That Overturns Theories of the Origin of Water on Earth
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
- On Jupiter, It's Mushballs All the Way Down
- AI Finds New Ways to Observe the Most Extreme Events in the Universe
- An Elegant Method for the Detection of Single Spins Using Photovoltage
- Molten Martian Core Could Explain Red Planet's Magnetic Quirks
- Studying How Seals Adapt to Extreme Environments Could Lead to Benefits in Human Reproductive Health
- Mysterious Atmosphere of 'Rosetta Stone' Exoplanet
- A Bowling Revolution: Modeling the Perfect Conditions for a Strike
- Simulate Sound in 3D at a Finer Scale Than Humans Can Perceive
Monday, April 14, 2025
- Photonic Computing Needs More Nonlinearity: Acoustics Can Help
- Scientists May Have Solved a Puzzling Space Rock Mystery
- Footprints of Tail-Clubbed Armored Dinosaurs Found for the First Time
Friday, April 11, 2025
- Maximal Entanglement Sheds New Light on Particle Creation
- Scientists Observe Exotic Quantum Phase Once Thought Impossible
- A Fluid Battery That Can Take Any Shape
- Light That Spirals Like a Nautilus Shell
- From Boring to Bursting: Giant Black Hole Awakens
Thursday, April 10, 2025
- Our Closest Neighboring Galaxy May Be Being Torn Apart
- Man's Best Friend May Be Nature's Worst Enemy, Study on Pet Dogs Suggests
Wednesday, April 9, 2025
- AI Models of the Brain Could Serve as 'digital Twins' In Research
- Sink or Swim: The Fate of Sinking Tectonic Plates Depends on Their Ancient Tectonic Histories
- Prehistoric Rhinos Lived in Super-Herds
- Do 'optimistic' Versus 'pessimistic' Medical Detection Dogs Perform Differently?
- Hopping Gives This Tiny Robot a Leg Up
- With New Database Researchers May Be Able to Predict Rare Milky Seas Bioluminescent, Glowing Event
- Scientists Complete Largest Wiring Diagram and Functional Map of the Brain to Date
- Mediterranean Hunter Gatherers Navigated Long-Distance Sea Journeys Well Before the First Farmers
- Mammoth Genetic Diversity Throughout the Last Million Years
- 8 Million Years of 'Green Arabia'
- Scientists Discover That Fruit Fly Larvae Can Sense Electric Fields
- 3D-Printed Open-Source Robot Offers Accessible Solution for Materials Synthesis
Tuesday, April 8, 2025
- Life Recovered Rapidly at Site of Dino-Killing Asteroid: A Hydrothermal System May Have Helped
- New Research Finds Fluorescence in Feathers of Long-Eared Owls
- Do 'completely Dark' Dark Matter Halos Exist?
- In Guatemala, Painted Altar Found at Tikal Adds New Context to Mysterious Maya History
- Tiny, Soft Robot Flexes Its Potential as a Life Saver
- Dinosaurs' Apparent Decline Prior to Asteroid May Be Due to Poor Fossil Record
Monday, April 7, 2025
- Researchers Demonstrate the UK's First Long-Distance Ultra-Secure Communication Over a Quantum Network
- Scientists Discover Microbes in Earth's Deep Soil
- Clockwork, Just for Antibiotic Resistance?
- Chatbot Opens Computational Chemistry to Nonexperts
- Rare Crystal Shape Found to Increase the Strength of 3D-Printed Metal
- Saturn's Moon Titan Could Harbor Life, but Only a Tiny Amount, Study Finds