Phys.org

Composing some 85% of the universe

This summer, millions of people across the country have been digging out sunscreen to protect themselves from a record-breaking series of heat waves.

Boston College scientists have determined that a newly discovered meteorite from Mars is 1.27 billion years old and derived from a previously unsampled, pristine source on the Red Planet. The study is published in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.

Archaeologists have discovered two giant rock scallop beads that push back the clock on the first appearance of these high-status ornaments. The discovery shows that these prized marine beads were traded hundreds of miles from the California coast thousands of years earlier than previously thought.

Chipmakers and operating system developers have spent years building defenses. A new study from MIT

Rice University engineers have developed a new strategy for controlling how therapeutic peptides are released from gelatin-based materials, a step that could make the small but powerful molecules more useful in tissue engineering and drug delivery.

What shape is an asteroid? For (44) Nysa, the honest answer until now has been that nobody knew. It is one of the brightest and largest E-type asteroids in the main belt, a class with a surface rich in enstatite, and its oddness has made it a favorite target for well over a hundred years. Successive observations hinted that it was elongated, perhaps even two lumps stuck together, but the picture stayed frustratingly blurred.

The dodo has been extinct for more than 300 years, wiped out within decades of humans arriving on its home island of Mauritius, but it lives on in the public imagination.