discoveries

Read the latest news stories about recent scientific discoveries on Newser.com

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What a Gas: 5 Most Incredible Discoveries of the Week

Including a first-of-its-kind centipede

(Newser) - A new supply of a critical element and scary news about Beijing were among the notable discoveries of the week:
  • 'Game Changer': Giant Helium Field Found : What scientists are calling a "game changer" for society has been discovered deep in Tanzania's Rift Valley: a helium field so
...

Girl's 'Appendicitis' Turns Out to Be Worms

Doctors got quite the surprise during her appendectomy

(Newser) - A teenager in the UK who showed up at a hospital's pediatric unit complaining of stomach pain ended up getting an appendectomy—but it was something else entirely that had caused her distress, per an article in BMJ Case Reports . Doctors weren't 100% sure that the 15-year-old had...

Explorers Find Schooner That Sank in 1868 in Lake Ontario

The Royal Albert was carrying 285 tons of railroad iron when it went down

(Newser) - A retired engineer and two buddies took his boat out on Lake Ontario a few weeks ago, with a high-res side-scan sonar to see if they could find any shipwrecks. What they stumbled across, 400 feet below the surface: the remains of the Royal Albert schooner, which sank nearly 150...

This Might Be the First Shark Caught Napping

The female shark floats through water, jaw slack, in an apparent nap

(Newser) - A Shark Week team with Discovery has just posted a YouTube video of what the channel calls "the first-ever footage of a great white shark napping." The narrator doesn't put it quite so definitively, but he does note that as the team observes the female shark's...

Lab-Grown Bones Were Just Successfully Implanted

It's a scientific first

(Newser) - For the first time, scientists have successfully implanted living bone grown in a laboratory, Live Science reports. And while those implants were in miniature pigs, not humans, it's pretty impressive nonetheless. Scientists removed part of the jaw bones of 14 pigs, carved cow thighbones into the right shape, removed...

Scientists Find Amphibious Centipede—and It's Horrible

At least it keeps to Southeast Asia

(Newser) - It's eight inches long with a painful bite, long legs, and "a horrible dark, greenish-black color." It's also bound to make you avoid all lakes and streams for the near future. Gregory Edgecombe of London's Natural History Museum says he's discovered a new species...

Guys, Smoking May Damage Your Sperm
 Guys, Smoking 
 May Damage 
 Your Sperm 
NEW STUDY
Jun 29, 2016 9:44 AM CDT

Guys, Smoking May Damage Your Sperm

When fathers are smokers, odds of fertilization go down and genetic abnormalities go up

(Newser) - Need another reason to keep your distance from cigarettes? For men, smoking appears to damage their sperm and potentially their offspring, too. Reporting in the journal BJU International , researchers say that men who smoke have a higher percentage of damage to sperm DNA; they had partially and sometimes totally inactive...

Tunnel Hand-Dug by Jews to Flee Nazis Found in Lithuania

It's been the stuff of legend for more than 70 years

(Newser) - A 100-foot escape tunnel dug by Jewish prisoners using only their hands and spoons has been unearthed in Lithuania, a research team announced Wednesday. From 1941 to 1944, about 100,000 people (70,000 of them Jews from nearby Vilnius) were slaughtered by the Nazis, then dumped into burial pits...

'Game Changer': Giant Helium Field Found

A 'globally significant' find that could boost world supply of precious gas

(Newser) - What scientists are calling a "game changer" for society has been discovered deep in Tanzania's Rift Valley: a massive helium gas field with enough of the precious commodity to fill more than 1.2 million MRI scanners, Phys.org reports. Besides the sheer amount of gas, the discovery...

Odd New Tool in Study of Wildfires: Rattlesnakes

Researcher will track snakes near Washington burn site

(Newser) - Animals flee fire—but what happens when the flames are extinguished? That's exactly what Joey Chase of Central Washington University is trying to find out. Over the next year, he plans to track two male Northern Pacific rattlesnakes, each about 10 years old, found near the site of a...

Scientists: 'Holy Grail' of Stopping Breast Cancer May Be Here

Australian team makes a possible breakthrough

(Newser) - A new study could bring hope to thousands of women who are susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer, the Telegraph reports. Analyzing breast tissue prone to cancer, Australian scientists found that a protein that fuels pre-cancerous cells also causes osteoporisis—and can be stymied by a common osteoporosis drug. "...

Shipwreck Oddity: 5 Most Incredible Discoveries of the Week

Including an imperfection at one of the world's great wonders

(Newser) - An intriguing discovery about sperm whales and another about the most famous pyramid of all make the list:
  • Among Antikythera Shipwreck Finds, an Odd Item : The Antikythera shipwreck is a gift that keeps on giving. The ancient shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera in the Aegean Sea has yielded
...

Uh-Oh: Seagulls Carrying Drug-Resistant Superbug

'The good news is we found it; the bad news is, it's here'

(Newser) - As if the news surrounding the continued emergence of drug-resistant superbugs isn't already dire enough, scientists are now reporting in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy that seagulls, which thanks to their enormous migratory reach are great vehicles for carrying resistant bacteria to new places, are carrying a dangerous superbug....

Old Reel on eBay Yields 2 New Nirvana Recordings

One might feature Kurt Cobain on drums

(Newser) - A Nirvana fan has unearthed a previously unreleased seven-track recording on eBay from 1993, just before the band recorded its third and final studio album, In Utero. The label on the reel includes the date and "Pachyderm Studios," where it was recorded, reports Alternative Nation , which notes that...

Scientist Finds Tallest Mountain in US Arctic— and a Surprise

Mount Isto is tallest, followed by Mount Hubley

(Newser) - It's been the subject of a half-century-long debate. But thanks to a new mapping technique, mountain experts have identified the tallest mountain in the US Arctic and uncovered a bit of a surprise as well. Using fodar , a technique he invented to map terrain using airborne photography, glaciologist Matt...

Land Is Rising, Falling on San Andreas Fault

GPS data reveals land is 'doing the wave'

(Newser) - Scientists have detected previously unknown movement along the San Andreas Fault, although the discovery doesn't change the two most important facts: There will be a major quake along the California fault at some point, and nobody knows just when it will happen. The analysis of GPS data found that...

Why Chopping Onions Makes You Cry

Slicing into one is the equivalent of attacking it, and they want us to stop

(Newser) - Onions are notorious for making us weep, but why? Scientists say they now have a pretty good understanding of what's going on, reports NPR in an interview with chemist and author Eric Block. It turns out the vegetable has "evolved a chemical defense system" in an attempt to...

Today's Sperm Whales Descended From One 'Eve'

An ancient whale appears to be the mother of all modern sperm whales

(Newser) - While investigating samples of toxic levels of heavy metals found in sperm whales, researchers stumbled upon a surprising discovery: All of today's sperm whales appear to have descended from the same female, reports Hakai magazine. They've named her Eve and say she lived between 10,000 and 80,...

2 Women Go Blind, in One Eye, After Using Their Phones

Both were looking at their phones in the dark while lying on their sides

(Newser) - Doctors have identified a new smartphone hazard , albeit an ultimately benign one. They report in the New England Journal of Medicine on the first known cases of "transient smartphone blindness," temporary vision loss that appears to be harmless. For the two UK women identified as suffering from it,...

Among Antikythera Shipwreck Finds, an Odd Item

But no new remnants of the famed Mechanism

(Newser) - The Antikythera shipwreck is a gift that keeps on giving. First discovered in 1900 by sponge divers and dating to about 65BC, it has been explored multiple times in the decades since, including in 1976 when Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his crew surfaced with almost 300 objects, including human remains. Now...

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