Reconstructions of a Neanderthal man and woman at the Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann, Germany AP Photo/Martin Meissner/Alamy An analysis of Neanderthal DNA has helped piece together the story of many millennia of hard times that finally led to the demise of our ancient human relatives. Faced with a cooling climate, their population shrank and they…
As part of the deal, TotalEnergies is also renouncing any further attempt to develop offshore wind in the US. The rhetoric that accompanied the announcement reads as if it were crafted by people with only a tenuous grip on reality. The world is currently experiencing price shocks for both oil and natural gas brought about…
Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. It only takes one close encounter with a lightning strike to get the full sense of its power. At around 1 gigaJoule of energy, a single electrical discharge during a thunderstorm is more than enough to rip apart a…
A college student has created a prototype polish to turn a fingernail into a touch-screen stylus, after noticing that people with long nails and calloused fingertips struggled to work their smartphones. Manasi Desai, a student at Centenary College of Louisiana with an interest in cosmetic chemistry, launched the project with her research supervisor, Joshua Lawrence,…
This animation shows how, following a massive earthquake off Russia on July 29, 2025, GUARDIAN flagged an incoming wave west of Hawaii some 32 minutes before it made landfall and was detected by tide gauges (shown in blue). Credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio A new data visualization illustrates how an experimental NASA technology can provide…
“” Nobody wins at the end of this race. Hamara / Shutterstock Nuclear arsenals remain central to global security debates, leading people to wonder: What country has the most nuclear weapons? Since the dawn of the nuclear age after World War II, countries have built nuclear weapons to deter rivals and protect national security. Today,…
DietPi is a popular operating system for Raspberry Pi boards and other low-power systems, offering improved performance and pre-made configurations for common applications and self-hosted services. DietPi v10.2 has now arrived with Immich as an optional package, along with other changes. If you’re not familiar with DietPi, it’s an “extremely lightweight Debian-based OS,” comprised of…
Physicists from the LHCb experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have discovered a new kind of heavy proton-like particle. Known as Ξcc⁺, this particle contains two charm quarks and one down quark, giving scientists a rare new way to probe the strong force that binds the building blocks of matter. An artist’s impression of…
March 23, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm There is no historical precedent for how badly out of balance the climate is now, U.N. warns The past 11 years were the 11 hottest on record amid an increasing onslaught of climate-driven disasters, the World Meteorological Organization said in a new report By…
Hunters will be banned from shooting a rare and beautiful duck under new proposals to halt the decline of six British wild birds. The new rules would restrict the shooting of species including the distinctive woodcock, and the striking pintail, goldeneye and pochard ducks, all of which are classed as under threat and have seen…
