Betelgeuse's Brightening Raises Hopes for a Supernova Spectacle

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May 19, 2023

Astronomy Betelgeuse's Brightening Raises Hopes for a Supernova Spectacle Betelgeuse, the red star at the shoulder of the constellation Orion, has been acting strange, raising hopes for the spectacle of a lifetime By Meghan Bartels

Evolution The Closest Living Relative of the First Animal Has Finally Been Found A debate has been settled over the earliest animal ancestor—a free-swimming creature with a well-developed nervous system By Viviane Callier

Climate Change We're About to See a Rare and Record-Setting May Heat Wave A potentially record-setting heat wave is headed for the Pacific Northwest and western Canada, a sign of the shift to hotter—and earlier—summers By Andrea Thompson

Epidemiology What Is Causing So Much Pink Eye? The newest SARS-CoV-2 strain may cause red, watery eyes. But the symptom can have other causes, too By Emily Sohn

Sponsor Content Provided by BioHarvest Sciences Harnessing nature’s health-promoting compounds at industrial scale While plant nutrients have enormous potential for aiding human health and wellness, accessing those ingredients can be difficult. We need to create sustainable solutions at an industrial scale to meet the growing demand for premium clean and consistent phytochemicals.

Psychology People in the U.S. Think They Are Better Than They Actually Are. People in Asia Don't Western individualism may promote a “better than you actually are” mindset By Shinobu Kitayama

Archaeology Stone Engravings of Mysterious Ancient Megastructures May Be World's Oldest 'Blueprints' Stone engravings of ancient megastructures called desert kites may be the earliest “blueprints” ever discovered By Tom Metcalfe

Anthropology The First Kiss in Recorded History Dates Back Nearly 5,000 Years Kissing probably predates Homo sapiens as a species, but the first texts documenting the beso go back to the early Bronze Age By Stephanie Pappas

Geology Strange Tremors Rattle Danish Island--But it Wasn't an Earthquake Dozens of people reported tremors, but seismologists say there was no earthquake By Meghan Bartels

Climate Change Hawaii Has Permafrost, and Scientists Are Racing to Study It before It's Gone Permafrost can—incongruously—be found in Hawaii, but surveys show it has been shrinking over time, in part because of climate change By Chelsea Harvey,E&E News

Quantum Physics Physicists Create Biggest-Ever Schrödinger's Cat Physicists have put the largest-ever object into a quantum superposition By Lars Fischer,Daisy Yuhas

Food Science Shows Why Traditional Kimchi Making Works So Well A new study reveals why handmade fermentation vessels called onggi stand the test of time By Rachel Crowell

BRING SCIENCE HOME Exploring the Depths--of Vision! Now you see it... How well can you catch a ball with just one eye open? Put your depth perception to the test and see how you do!  Credit: George Retseck Did you know that there is a type of giant clam that has thousands of small eyes covering its body? It's called Tridacna gigas, and it lives in the South Pacific Ocean. Although it has a lot of them, T. gigas's eyes are fairly primitive compared with ours. (So don’t be too jealous that you don’t have thousands of eyes, too!) All vertebrate animals (including humans) have two eyes these days. Humans have developed an amazingly complex visual processing system that allows us to collect and process a tremendous amount of information—in the blink of an eye! Our visual system is so good at processing information for us that we usually don’t even notice what it’s doing. In this activity we’re going to explore some of the amazing abilities of that system. So get ready to say, “thanks, eyes!”

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