Popular Science

At the height of its power, the Roman Empire extended as far away as Britain. Rome didn’t view the region as remote or unimportant to its audacious goals, however. Based on a new trove of archaeological artifacts discovered in northeast England, Britain hosted critical sites that supplied the empire’s vast military complex.

Over six months in 2025, researchers from the United Kingdom’s Durham University excavated the new evidence on the banks of the River Wear not far from Newcastle, England. There, experts located over 800 whetstones—traditional tools used to hone blades and weaponry—the largest deposit of its kind in northwest Europe. Archaeologists then utilized Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) to date the items. OSL is particularly helpful for dating quartz and other minerals that amass miniscule amounts of energy from sunlight. 

After focusing heat or light on the material in a controlled environment, scientists can determine how long an item has remained buried in sediment. While the soil below the whetstones dated to 42–184 CE, samples taken from the tools trace back to 104–238 CE, when Romans occupied the island.

Additional nearby clues support the theory that the area functioned as a military manufacturing hub. Researchers noted a sandstone formation on the other side of the river—a likely sign Romans selected the location to quarry materials for their whetstones. Apart from the small tools, the team also excavated five stone anchors. These, coupled with another six anchors discovered along a neighboring location in 2022, suggest the waterway hosted vessels that carried sandstone across the river.

Why so many whetstones? The answer likely can be found in their overall condition. All of the artifacts displayed some form of damage, meaning artisans likely tossed them aside because they didn’t meet the Roman army’s required whetstone length requirements. According to Durham University, the military “was particular about the uniformity of its equipment.”

The archaeological discoveries here didn’t only date to ancient Roman occupation. Other finds within the sediment layers included both a stone and wooden jetty, chisels, a Tudor-era leather shoe, and even cannonballs and ammunition from the English Civil Wars of 1642 to 1651.

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About 445 million years ago, our planet completely changed. Massive glaciers formed over the supercontinent Gondwana, sucking up sea water like an icy sponge. Now called the Late Ordovician mass extinction (LOME), Earth’s first major mass extinction wiped out about 85 percent of all marine species as the ocean chemistry radically changed and Earth’s climate turned bitter cold. 

However, with great biological havoc also comes opportunity. During all of this upheaval, one group evolved to dominate all others—jawed vertebrates. This ultimately put life on a forward path that can be traced up to today, according to a study published today in the journal Science Advances.

“We have demonstrated that jawed fishes only became dominant because this event happened,” Lauren Sallan, a study co-author and evolutionary biologist at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan, said in a statement. “And fundamentally, we have nuanced our understanding of evolution by drawing a line between the fossil record, ecology, and biogeography.”

Earth’s first mass extinction

During the Ordovician period (roughly 486 to 443 million years ago) Earth looked very different than it does now. A southern supercontinent called Gondwana, dominated the planet and was surrounded by vast, shallow seas. There was no ice on the North or South Pole and the water was warm due to a greenhouse climate. Small plants and many-legged arthropods began to thrive on the coasts, and the water surrounding them were teeming with lifeforms that looked like something from a science fiction. Large-eyed, lamprey-like conodonts looped around sea sponges. Tiny trilobites scuttled among shelled mollusks. Sea scorpions as big as humans and nautiloids with 16-foot-tall shells scoured the water in search of prey. 

In between these creatures were the ancestors of gnathostomes, or jawed vertebrates. Gnathostomes would eventually dominate animal life on Earth.

“While we don’t know the ultimate causes of LOME, we do know that there was a clear before and after the event. The fossil record shows it,” explained Sallan. 

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The extinction came in two stages. First, the planet rapidly switched from a warmer greenhouse to a much colder icehouse climate. Most of Gondwana was covered with thick ice, drying out shallow ocean habitats. A few million years later, biodiversity began to recover, but the climate flipped again. The cold-adapted marine life drowned in warm, sulfuric, and oxygen-depleted water as the ice caps melted.

During these waves of mass extinction, most vertebrate survivors were confined to refugia, or  isolated biodiversity hotspots separated by large areas of deep ocean. In these zones, surviving jawed vertebrates evidently had an advantage. 

In the new study, the team pulled years of paleontological data about the Ordovician and early Silurian paleontology to build a new database of the fossil record during this dramatic period in Earth’s history.

“That helped us reconstruct the ecosystems of the refugia,” added study co-author and Ph.D. student Wahei Hagiwara. “From this, we could quantify the genus-level diversity of the period, showing how LOME led directly to a gradual, but dramatic increase in gnathostome biodiversity. And the trend is clear – the mass extinction pulses led directly to increased speciation after several millions of years.”

Of fish and finches

With this new database, the team linked the rising jawed vertebrate biodiversity to not only this first mass extinction, but also location. They could trace the movement of species around the world and pinpoint specific refugia that played a role in helping vertebrates diversify. 

“For example, in what is now South China, we see the first full-body fossils of jawed fishes that are directly related to modern sharks,” explained Hagiwara. “They were concentrated in these stable refugia for millions of years until they had evolved the ability to cross the open ocean to other ecosystems.”

A Promissum conodont, which range from about 2 to 20 inches (5 to 50 centimeters) in length and named after unusual, cone-like teeth fossils, and which are hypothesized to be the ancestors of modern lampreys and hagfishes. Very few conodont species survived the Late Ordovician Extinction Event. Image: Nobu Tamura

Merging the fossil record with biogeography, morphology, and ecology, can help us better understand the course of evolution. 

“Did jaws evolve in order to create a new ecological niche, or did our ancestors fill an existing niche first, and then diversify?” asks Sallan. “Our study points to the latter. In being confined to geographically small areas with lots of open slots in the ecosystem left by the dead jawless vertebrates and other animals, gnathostomes could suddenly inhabit a wide range of different niches.” 

A similar trend is seen in Darwin’s finches on the Galápagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador. These birds took advantage of new opportunities to diversify their diet to survive. Over time, their beaks evolved into different shapes to better suit their needs.

The diversity reset cycle

While jawed fishes were trapped in South China, their jawless relatives continued to evolve in parallel elsewhere. The jawless fish ruled the wider sea for the next 40 million years, diversifying into different types of reef fish. Why jawed fishes—among all other survivors—came to dominate once they spread out from the refugia remains a mystery.

According to the team, instead of wiping Earth’s ecological slate clean, the Late Ordovician mass extinction triggered a reset. Early vertebrate species stepped into the niches left behind by extinct conodonts and arthropods, rebuilding the same ecological structure, just with new animals. This pattern also repeats across the Paleozoic following other extinction events driven by similar environmental conditions. The team calls this a recurring “diversity-reset cycle,” where evolution restores ecosystems by converging on the same designs.

“This work helps explain why jaws evolved, why jawed vertebrates ultimately prevailed, and why modern marine life traces back to these survivors rather than to earlier forms like conodonts and trilobites,” said Sallan. “Revealing these long-term patterns and their underlying processes is one of the exciting aspects of evolutionary biology.”

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It’s easy to forget how much we still don’t know about our planet’s ecosystems. Every year, researchers identify thousands of plant and fungi species that were previously unknown to science. While it can be tough to highlight the most striking examples, an international team of scientists led by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (RBG Kew) in London, have offered their personal picks for 2025. The selection of spider-infecting zombie parasites, stone-camouflaged plants, and a “fire demon flower” is certainly worth a closer look.

In Brazil, botanists described Purpureocillium atlanticum for the first time. This deadly fungus targets the region’s trapdoor spiders that reside in burrows on the rainforest floor. Once infected, P. atlanticum kills the arachnid after covering almost its entire body in fine threads of white root-like structures called mycelium. The fungus then grows a nearly 0.8 inch fruiting body through the trapdoor burrow entry. This extension eventually releases its own spores into a world of unsuspected spiders.

The entomopathogenic fungus Purpureocillium atlanticum emerges from a spider host in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, its cotton‑white mycelium exposed. Credit: Joao Paulo Machado De Araujo

Other year-end selections are much larger than a zombie mushroom. In Peru, researchers described an acanth shrub that reaches upwards of 10-feet-tall. These plants feature fiery red, yellow, and orange flowers that reminded scientists of Calcifer, the fire demon in acclaimed animator Hayao Miyazaki’s 2004 classic, Howl’s Moving Castle. With that in mind, Aphelandra calciferi is an ode to the character—one with “great potential as a conservatory ornamental plant,” according to Kew.

A detailed view of the fiery flowers of Aphelandra calciferi, a newly described Peruvian shrub species. Credit: Rodolfo Vasquez

Not all species are recognizably plants or fungus, however. Namibia’s woodland savannahs feature a newly described subspecies of lithop (Lithops gracilidelineata subsp. mopane) also known as a “living stone.” The moniker is well-earned, too. Each succulent looks more like a tiny pebble than a plant, and grows a single pair of leaves that collect sunlight through filter-like screens. Unlike other lithops, the mopane is more grayish-white in coloration than other relatives with more brown-pink or cream hues.

Continuing to scour the world for unknown species is a critical role for today’s botanists, according to Martin Cheek, RBG Kew’s senior research leader for African species.

“It is difficult to protect what we do not know, understand and have a scientific name for,” Cheek said in a statement. “Each identification of a new species to science helps us better understand ecosystems. Without this foundational knowledge, species conservation efforts fail.” 

A new subspecies of ‘living stone’, Lithops gracilidelineata subsp. mopane, blends with its savannah woodland surroundings. Credit: Sebastian Hatt / RBG Kew

RBG Kew estimates botanists add around 2,500 plants and even more fungi to taxonomic registers every year. Experts believe as many as 100,000 plant species and up to 3 million fungi remain undescribed. It’s a race against time to classify and conserve them—in a 2023 report, RBG Kew calculated as many as 75 percent of all undescribed plants face extinction threats.

“Wherever we look, human activities are eroding nature to the point of extinction, and we simply cannot keep up with the pace of destruction,” said Cheek. “If we fail to invest in taxonomy, conservation and public awareness of the issues now, we risk dismantling the very systems that sustain our life on Earth.”

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Scientists are  one step closer to pinpointing fragments of Leonardo da Vinci’s elusive DNA. 

A team of researchers from the Leonardo da Vinci DNA Project analyzed samples swabbed from a red chalk drawing possibly attributed to the famed polymath, as well as letters written by one of his known cousins. Buried within that jumble of genetic material were human Y-chromosome sequences that belong to the same genetic grouping, sharing a common ancestry in Tuscany, the region where da Vinci was born. Specifically, they belong to the broad E1b1b lineage on the Y chromosome, which is passed from father to son.

The findings, presented this week in a preprint paper on the BioRxiv server, suggest that the DNA on the painting may belong to the storied Italian Renaissance man. If so, it would mark the first time scientists have identified his DNA. 

Though the researchers caution that they can’t link the DNA to da Vinci with absolute certainty, the investigative process they describe shows how recent advances in modern genetics could reshape the way the art world thinks about authenticating works. A process currently accomplished by painstakingly poring over brushstrokes and making educated guesses could become more precise by looking for biological signatures like fingerprints left behind by an artist. On a more personal level, the findings mean researchers involved in this work are a step closer to finally identifying da Vinci’s DNA—a journey that began nearly a decade ago.

“Together, these data demonstrate the feasibility as well as limitations of combining metagenomics and human DNA marker analysis for cultural heritage science, providing a baseline workflow for future conservation science studies and hypothesis-driven investigations of provenance, authentication and handling history,” the team writes in their paper.

This table depicts “Holy Child,” a letter from da Vinci’s descendants, and two other non-da Vinci art pieces from a similar period that were all swabbed for genetic material. Image: Leonardo da Vinci DNA Project at the J. Craig Venter Institute

Paper lead author and University of Maryland and microbiologist Norberto Gonzalez-Juarbe, who has worked with the da Vinci DNA project for years, tells Popular Science that he initially started looking for the presence of microbes in art pieces and cultural artifacts for conservation purposes. Successful findings there led him and his colleagues to hypothesize that human biological signatures might also be embedded in those artifacts. 

“Thus, we aimed to present a platform that could be used to study the multi-kingdom DNA present,” Gonzalez-Juarbe says. 

Da Vinci’s lost DNA 

Despite being one of the most widely known figures of the European Renaissance, da Vinci’s genetic history is shrouded in mystery. Researchers in Italy claim to have identified 14 living descendants of his direct relatives, but as far as historians can tell, da Vinci didn’t father any children of his own. Analyzing his own remains also isn’t possible because the church he was buried in fell into ruin following the French Revolution. Researchers have also thus far been denied access to his presumed tomb at The Château d’Amboise in Amboise, France.

The supposed tomb of Leonardo da Vinci in Saint-Hubert Chapel in Amboise, France. Image: Claudev8 CC by 3.0.

That left science sleuths to search for trace signs of genetic material the painter may have left on his works. In this case, researchers turned to the chalk drawing titled “Holy Child,” which had been in the private collection of the late art dealer Fred Kline for the past 20 years. Gonzalez-Juarbe says he and his colleagues reached out to Kline about studying drawing before he died. 

After some initial testing to determine the right extraction protocols, Gonzalez-Juarbe gently swabbed the drawing’s surface in April 2024 using  a “minimally invasive” technique meant to collect biological signatures without damaging the work. That small swab, similar to the type so many people stick their nostrils for a COVID-19 test, collected hints of half millennia worth of history 

Sorting through genomic history 

Since paper is porous, it absorbs even faint traces of sweat and skin, both of which can carry whispers of DNA. But paper doesn’t discriminate among DNA sources. That’s why researchers can’t simply look for signs of da Vinci’s genetic material on the “Mona Lisa” or “The Last Supper.” In both cases, countless human hands have made contact with these works over the past 500 years, leaving behind a jumble of genetic signatures.

One of those human hands belonged to Kline. Luckily his wife remembered that he had previously sent a vial of his saliva to the personal genetics company 23andMe. Gonzalez-Juarbe and his colleagues were able to obtain that DNA sequence and effectively eliminate it from the list of possibilities. But that was just a drop in the genetic ocean. In reality, the vast majority of the DNA recovered from “Holy Child” wasn’t of human origin at all: around 99 percent came from bacteria, fungi, and plants.

Some of that nonhuman DNA proved useful. The researchers discovered that one of the sequences belonged to sweet orange trees (Citrus sinensis), which were known to be cultivated in Medici gardens in central Italy during da Vinci’s era. That clue told the geneticists that they were on the right track. The team also found signs of Plasmodium DNA. The single-celled parasite was endemic to the same region of Italy and was responsible for the death of several Medici family members. DNA fragments from plants and animals known to have been used in art shops at the time were also found. 

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“There were non-human sequences that mapped to animals, plants and other microbes that match the type of environment of Tuscany at the time of Leonardo,” Gonzalez-Juarbe says. “For example, the presence of plants such as sweet oranges, known to be a symbol of power to the Medici family and present in their palaces and gardens.”

However, to narrow down the remaining human DNA, they needed a point of comparison. That’s where his relatives’ correspondence came into play.

Since researchers knew the corresponding letters had shifted hands between several da Vinci descendants (and was sealed shut with a thumb), they could have confidence that the Y chromosome segments were in his lineages. Y chromosomes are passed down from father to son and remain essentially unchanged through many generations. 

da Vinci’s anatomical study of the arm (c. 1510). Image: Public Domain.

In this case, the Y chromosome samples in both the drawing and the letters were traced back to a haplogroup labeled E1b1b, which is traced back to Tuscany. This suggests the DNA sequence found in the drawing and in the letters are from the same family lines.

“The [human] samples had composite profiles that show more than one person handled the piece and having more than one artifact from two different locations showing a similar Y chromosome marker was the interesting observation,” Gonzalez-Juarbe says. “However, this needs to be further validated by additional sampling. We cannot confirm at this stage that the result is the lineage of Leonardo just yet.” 

So we might have Leonardo’s DNA. Now what?

It is worth noting that all of this is only possible thanks to rapid advances in modern genetics, which allow scientists to read tiny DNA fragments and determine their source. This simply wasn’t feasible until the late 20th century. 

Shotgun genome sequencing, the technique used in this study, lets scientists sequence all the genetic material in a sample at once, rather than targeting one gene at a time. Over the past several decades, researchers have also compiled vast genomic databases, enabling them to quickly cross-reference their results.

Presumed self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci (c. 1510). Royal Library of Oxfordshire. Image: Public Domain.

Sequencing da Vinci’s genome could open up numerous possibilities. Most obviously it could shed light on physical features like the inventor’s eye and hair color, as well as height. But could also poetically help answer one theory surrounding his abilities. Some art historians believe da Vinci may have had an innate ability to “see” more frames per second than the average person. If that’s true, analyzing his genome could provide insight into whether there’s a genetic trait linked to that ability. 

And the possibilities don’t stop with da Vinci alone. If geneticists can sequence his genome, researchers could theoretically look for that same biological signature in other works of questionable origin to see if they were truly touched by his hands. There’s no reason the same principle couldn’t be applied to other artists as well. That ability to authenticate artworks could make a real dent in the estimated $4 to 5 billion in art fraud reported each year.

Moving forward, Gonzalez-Juarbe says he’s hopeful this report will increase their odds of getting access to analyzing additional da Vinci drawings and letters. The end goal of all of that, he says, is to piece together a fuller picture of individuals who left an outsized mark on history.

”We would like to learn more about his story, about his lineage and about him as a visionary,”  Gonzalez-Juarbe adds.

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When a whale dies in the ocean, an ecosystem grows around its sunken carcass. It’s an epic burial at sea, something researchers call a whale fall. The body is a literal smorgasbord on which deep sea creatures and bacteria feast for years at a time before what’s left transforms into a reef festooned with anemones and sponges.

A whale that dies stranded on land is something different, a stinking mass of rotting flesh and draining fluids. While scavenging birds might struggle to bust through the corpse’s leathery skin, insects go to town. Little by little, they break the body down as its nutrients ooze into the sand and nearby vegetation. 

It takes about two years for everything but the whale’s skeleton to disappear. But with the unholy stench of a dead, 45-foot-long sperm whale turning stomachs across town after beaching on November 9, 1970, officials in Florence, Oregon couldn’t wait that long. They needed the eight ton carcass gone as soon as possible.

The State Highway Division, which managed Oregon’s coastline in those days, treated the problem as if it were a giant boulder blocking a lane of traffic. They blew it up with dynamite, igniting “a blubber snowstorm,” as one observer described it. A geyser of blood and muscle shot a hundred feet into the air, falling on spectators stationed a quarter mile away. The reek reportedly lingered on their skin and in their hair for days.

The explosion

Ridding a beach of such a colossal problem with dynamite wouldn’t have seemed so unusual in the mid-20th century. There are many “wonderful new uses for dynamite,” a Popular Science article explained back in 1927—and not just on land, but at sea, where shark-leather operations used it to kill a dozen of the predators at once. The sad shark carcasses would bubble up to the surface for easy collection. Even whalers were, at the time, embedding small explosives in the tips of their “killing lances.”

This whaling station in northwestern Norway captured about 180 whales a year before closing in 1920. The whale carcasses were used to produce cooking oil and fat. Image: Public Domain

The method did sort of work, says James Heiss, associate professor of environmental, Earth, and atmospheric sciences at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, just “not in the way anyone hoped.” 

On a Monday, shifting tides pushed the bloated whale carcass into the mouth of the Siuslaw River and onto the sand dunes on the southwestern side of Florence, a small town on Oregon’s central coast.

By Thursday morning, as workmen spent nearly two hours excavating holes under the body to fit 20 50-pound cases of explosives, its fetid reek had become almost unbearable—though that hadn’t stopped a local opportunist from sawing off the whale’s lower jaw for a souvenir sometime over the preceding days.

Assistant district highway engineer George Thornton’s plan was to strategically place the explosives to blast the whale’s chunks into the river where they’d be gently carried back to the ocean by the tide. Instead, the dynamite’s enormous eruption flung the rotting beast every which way, a three-foot long piece caving in the roof of a car in the beach’s parking lot.

When the foul rain stopped falling, all that was left at the site of the explosion was a large hole and the whale’s severed tail. “It went exactly right,” Thornton told the press, apparently oblivious to the sheen of blood and bits now covering the beach and everyone on it. 

The stench was reportedly only slightly less offensive than it had been in the first place. A bulldozer moved in to bury the largest hunks left by the dynamite. Seagulls, Thornton expected, would take care of most of whatever was left. 

In 1970, officials exploded a 45-foot-long sperm whale carcass that had washed up along the Oregon Coast in the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. Image: Dougtone / CC BY-SA 2.0 Ditching the dynamite

Today, “leaving a [beached] whale in place is the cheapest, easiest, and safest option,” says Heiss. “It also returns nutrients to the food web by serving as a food source for birds, crustaceans, and microbial decomposers.” 

Remote beaches are fewer and farther between than they were 55 years ago. Meanwhile, an increase in whale strandings due to malnutrition, boat collisions, and entanglement in fishing gear sometimes makes it impossible just to leave the carcass be. In those cases, Heiss explains, the standard practice isn’t blowing it up but “bury[ing] it in the beach above the high tide line.”  

There’s some controversy to the approach, including concerns over whether decomposing whales attract sharks and whether chemicals leaching from the body negatively impact water quality. While the answer to the shark question remains uncertain, the results of a study published by Heiss in 2020—a first step towards building a more comprehensive model—did show that buried whales leach chemicals that “are transported seaward in the beach by flowing groundwater and discharged to the ocean near the low tide line.” One compound he examined turned out to be 26 times higher in surf zones with a buried whale than without one—though the concentration could be decreased by interring the body closer to the water line where there’s “less opportunity for chemical reactions to occur.”

Still, on beaches near human communities, the choice between dynamiting a dead whale into a million stinking pieces or burying those stinking pieces intact, under the sand, is no contest. Florence, Oregon, at least, has a sense of humor about the incident. In 2019, they renamed the notorious stretch of sand Exploding Whale Memorial Park in the whale’s honor.

In That Time When, Popular Science tells the weirdest, surprising, and little-known stories that shaped science, engineering, and innovation.

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Iceberg A-23A is looking a little blue these days. In late December 2025, NASA and NOAA’s Terra satellite spotted the massive iceberg covered with blue meltwater. A-23A is one of the largest and longest-lived bergs ever tracked by scientists, but is at risk of completely disintegrating as it drifts through warm Southern Atlantic waters.

The satellite image of iceberg A-23A taken on December 26, 2025. Image: NASA.

In 1986, the flat-topped iceberg broke away from Antarctica’s Filchner Ice Shelf. Back then, it was over 15,000 square miles—almost twice the size of the state of Rhode Island. Today, the United States National Ice Center estimates the iceberg’s area is around 456 square miles. While that is much smaller than its original size, it still makes it bigger than New York City. In July, August, and September of 2025 iceberg A-23A saw some sizable breakups as it moved into the Southern Hemisphere’s relatively warm summer conditions by December.

The MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on the Terra satellite captured this image of what remained on December 26, 2025. An astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) then captured a photograph showing a closer view of the iceberg one day later, with an even bigger melt pool.

A satellite image of the iceberg taken on December 27, 2025. Image: NASA.

The extensive pools of “blue mush” on the iceberg’s surface are likely the result of ongoing disintegration events.

“You have the weight of the water sitting inside cracks in the ice and forcing them open,” he said. “Note also the thin white line around the outer edge of the iceberg seemingly holding in blue meltwater—a ‘rampart-moat’ pattern caused by an upward bending of the iceberg plate as its edges melt at the waterline,” University of Colorado Boulder senior research scientist Ted Scambos explained in a statement. 

The blue and white striped patterns are likely due to striations that were put into the ice hundreds of years ago, when the ice was dragged across Antarctic bedrock.

“It’s impressive that these striations still show up after so much time has passed, massive amounts of snow have fallen, and a great deal of melting has occurred from below,” added retired University of Maryland Baltimore County scientist Chris Shuman.

The ailing iceberg may have also sprung a leak. The white area to its left could be the result of what Shuman described as a “blowout.” This occurs when the weight of the water pooling at the top of the iceberg creates enough pressure at the edges to punch through. 

These signs indicate that the iceberg could be just days or weeks from disintegrating completely.

“I certainly don’t expect A-23A to last through the austral summer,” said Shuman.

The clearer skies and warmer air and water temperatures during summer in the Southern Hemisphere accelerate the disintegration process in an area known among ice experts as a “graveyard” for icebergs. Climate change is only speeding up this process, as air and water temperatures continue to smash records. 

Even as A-23A fades, more enormous icebergs are parked or drifting along the Antarctic shoreline. A-81, B22A, and D15A, are each larger than 500 square miles and could also begin their journey north.

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Just like with toddlers, it’s often better to spell out certain words when a dog is nearby. Saying words “park” or “walk” can make the family pet excited the way that the mere mention of a “cookie” will for a young child. By the age of one-and-a-half, toddlers learn new words by listening to other people. And, it turns out, some dogs can also learn by eavesdropping. According to a small study published today in the journal Science, Gifted Word Learner (GWL) dogs can learn the names for various objects by listening to their owners’ interactions, 

Learning words

GWL is a fairly new distinction by scientists for dogs that are considered uniquely gifted for their ability to learn the names of various objects. Previous studies have found that these smart canines can categorize objects by function and understand how similar types of toys work, even if the toys don’t look alike. Being a GWL dog is not unique to any particular breed, but border collies and border collie mixes retained a decent amount of words in a 2023 study.

Toddlers learn new words in many ways, including passively listening to interactions between adults. To do this, they must follow the speakers’ gaze and attention, spot communicative cues, and pick out the target words from a continuous stream of speech. Until now, it was not known if GWL dogs could also learn new object labels when not directly addressed.

Addressing vs. eavesdropping

To learn more, a team from Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary’s Genius Dog Challenge research project tested 10 gifted dogs in two situations. 

The first situation was called an addressed condition, where owners introduced two new toys and repeatedly labeled them while interacting directly with the dog. 

The second was an overheard condition, where the dogs sat nearby as their owners spoke with another person about the toys and did not address the dogs.

During each condition, the dogs heard the name of the new toys for a total of eight minutes over several short exposure sessions. To see if the dogs had learned the new labels, the toys were then placed in a different room. The owners asked the dogs to retrieve each toy by name. For example, an owner would ask a dog “Can you bring Teddy?” and the dog’s actions were recorded.

In both conditions, seven out of the 10 dogs learned the new labels. The dog’s performance was  also very accurate. During the addressed condition, the choices were correct 80 percent of the time. During the overhearing condition (when the dogs were not directly addressed) they were correct 100 percent of the time. Overall, the GWL dogs performed just as well when learning from speech they overheard as when they were directly taught.

“Our findings show that the socio-cognitive processes enabling word learning from overheard speech are not uniquely human,” Dr. Shany Dror, a study co-author and cognitive researcher and animal trainer, said in a statement. “Under the right conditions, some dogs present behaviors strikingly similar to those of young children.”

Matters of time

During a second experiment, the team also found that GWL dogs can overcome one of the key challenges in learning labels. In the experiment called a discontinuity condition, dog owners first showed the dogs the toys and then put the objects inside of a bucket. They only named the toys when they were out of the dogs’ sight. For the dogs, this created a time delay between actually seeing the object and then hearing its name. Despite this, most of the dogs successfully learned the new labels.

“These findings suggest that GWL dogs can flexibly use a variety of different mechanisms to learn new object labels,” added study co-author and ethnologist Dr. Claudia Fugazza.

According to the team, these findings suggest a dog’s ability to learn from overheard speech may rely on brain mechanisms shared across species, instead of being tied to human language. However, since GWL dogs are extremely rare, their abilities likely reflect a combination of nature and nurture. 

“These dogs provide an exceptional model for exploring some of the cognitive abilities that enabled humans to develop language,” Dror concluded. “But we do not suggest that all dogs learn in this way—far from it.”

If you suspect that your dog knows multiple toy names and could be a GWL dog, researchers from the Genius Dog Challenge research project encourage dog owners to contact them by email (geniusdogchallenge.offcial@gmail.com), Facebook, or Instagram. 

The post Super smart dogs learn by eavesdropping appeared first on Popular Science.

Astronomers have spotted an asteroid the size of nearly eight football fields, with the help of the largest digital camera in the world and a new space observatory. Asteroid 2025 MN45 measures about a half mile in diameter and is the fastest spinning asteroid of its size ever recorded. The team from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and United States Department of Energy (DOE) presented their findings in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Spin speed matters

To spot this asteroid, the team used the cutting-edge Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Located on a mountaintop in Chile, the observatory will repeatedly scan the sky for 10 years using the 3,200 megapixel LSST Camera to create an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition time-lapse record of our universe. With this camera, Rubin can take an image every 40 seconds. 

“NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory will find things that no one even knew to look for,” Luca Rizzi, an NSF program director for research infrastructure, said in a statement. “When Rubin’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time begins, this huge spinning asteroid will be joined by an avalanche of new information about our Universe, captured nightly.”

While the observatory is expected to be fully up and running this year, preliminary observations taken in June 2025 revealed 1,900 asteroids never seen before. 

As these asteroids orbit the sun, they rotate at a wide range of speeds. For scientists, these spin rates offer clues about how they formed billions of years ago and can tell us more about their composition. An asteroid spinning quickly—like 2025 MN45—may have sped up because of a past collision with another asteroid. This means it could be a fragment of an originally larger object. 

Fast rotation also requires a space rock to have enough internal strength to avoid fragmentation—when it flies apart into smaller pieces. Most asteroids are considered “rubble piles,” made of many smaller pieces of rock that are held together by gravity. Without this more solid core, they have speed limits as to how fast they can spin without coming apart. 

Objects in the main asteroid belt—located between Mars and Jupiter—must rotate completely in 2.2 hours to avoid fragmentation. Anything spinning faster must be structurally strong to remain intact. If an asteroid is spinning above this limit and is fairly large, then it must be made of stronger cosmic material. 

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Enter the super rotators

The new study uses data collected over the course of about 10 hours across seven nights during Rubin Observatory’s early commissioning phase in April and May 2025. The astronomers found 76 asteroids with reliable rotation periods. This includes 16 super-fast rotators with rotation periods between about 13 minutes and 2.2 hours. Three are considered ultra-fast rotators that complete a full spin in less than five minutes.

The 19 newly identified fast-rotators are about 100 yards–about the size of a football field (minus those important end zones). 2025 MN45 is about half a mile in diameter and completes a full rotation every 1.88 minutes. This combination of size and speed makes it the fastest-spinning asteroid with a diameter over 500 meters (1,640 feet) that astronomers have found.

The lightcurve of 2025 MN45 — the fastest-rotating asteroid with a diameter over 500 meters that scientists have ever found. The y-axis shows the asteroid’s brightness, and the x-axis shows its phase, or where it is in its rotation. When plotted, the resulting curve shows the asteroid’s fluctuating brightness as it spins. Lightcurves can help scientists determine an asteroid’s rotation period (the total time it takes to complete one rotation), size, shape, and surface properties. Image: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA/J. PollardAcknowledgement: PI: Sarah Greenstreet (NSF NOIRLab/Rubin Observatory).

“Clearly, this asteroid must be made of material that has very high strength in order to keep it in one piece as it spins so rapidly,” added lead author Sarah Greenstreet, NSF NOIRLab assistant astronomer and lead of Rubin Observatory’s Solar System Science Collaboration’s Near-Earth Objects.“We calculate that it would need a cohesive strength similar to that of solid rock. This is somewhat surprising since most asteroids are believed to be what we call ‘rubble pile’ asteroids, which means they are made of many, many small pieces of rock and debris that coalesced under gravity during Solar System formation or subsequent collisions.”

Some of the other notable asteroid discoveries include 2025 MJ71 (1.9-minute rotation period), 2025 MK41 (3.8-minute rotation period), 2025 MV71 (13-minute rotation period), and 2025 MG56 (16-minute rotation period). 

Scientists expect to uncover more fast rotators when Rubin begins its 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). These regular observations will gradually take in data and aim to provide pivotal information about the strengths, compositions, and histories of these primitive cosmic bodies.

The post World’s largest digital camera spots massive asteroid appeared first on Popular Science.

Every Christmas, my family follows the same script: a stack of board games hits the table, and a spirited debate breaks out over what we should play. But as the holidays draw closer and my work brain powers down, I started wondering whether games could be more than a way to pass the time. Is it possible to find a game that’s genuinely fun and gives my sluggish brain a workout? 

To find out, I asked experts which games do the most to sharpen your mind.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” says Dr. Fernand Gobet, cognitive scientist and author of Moves in Mind: The Psychology of Board Games, “but the answer is none.” 

“Not even chess?” I ask. “There is a moderate correlation between chess skill and different kinds of intelligence,” says Gobet, “but this seems to be explained by the fact that more intelligent individuals tend to be more attracted to activities such as chess.”

That doesn’t mean games are useless for the brain. Rather, Gobet explains, most games teach “domain-specific skills,” or specialized knowledge. For example, if you want to boost your mathematical or business knowledge, choose Monopoly.

Many classic games—chess, Go, checkers—encourage players to think before acting, says Gobet. This is a core component of executive function, the mental skills that help us solve problems, make decisions, and navigate complex situations.

And games also foster social intelligence, such as respecting opponents and losing gracefully, he adds.

Video games might do more for your brain

A recent study suggests that while playing games in general is good for your brain, video games may have a stronger effect than board games. One reason may be that video games require players to process multiple streams of information at once and adapt strategies in real time.

While video game addiction can be a real problem, the games also provide many benefits, such as improved vision. Image: DepositPhotos

“Constantly getting new challenges and having to figure out even entirely new systems is good for the brain,” says Dr. Kurt Dean Squire, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, whose research focuses on game-based learning. “You are having to think laterally about ideas, exploring problems from new angles.” 

“Different games help build different types of intelligence,” says Dr. Nathan Carroll, a board-certified psychiatrist and author of Internet Gaming Disorder. 

Games that emphasize cooperation, such as Animal Crossing, Minecraft, and many MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games), benefit social intelligence—provided they’re played collaboratively, Carroll says. 

Role-playing games, which let you control characters in fictional worlds and tend to feature dense, descriptive text, can enhance linguistic intelligence. “In fact, I personally learned to read while playing RPGs on the Sega Master System in the 1980s,” Carroll says. “To engage with them, I needed to learn the words on the screen.”

Games where the goal is to construct and manage some form of base or empire, like Minecraft, Valheim, and 4X games, encourage logical and spatial intelligence, Carroll says. 

“Augmented- and virtual-reality games offer many opportunities to develop kinesthetic (bodily/movement) intelligence,” says Carroll. “Great games for this include Beat Saber and Fruit Ninja.”

Never too old—or too young—to play

For children, games can be a powerful teaching tool. “Children in particular might be more motivated to learn if they engage in activities that are fun,” says Gobet. 

A large study involving more than 500 primary-school students found that children who played modern board games in class got better at “updating”—the brain’s ability to swap out old information for new, useful facts—and they also had better reading and math skills compared to students taught using regular classes.

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The cognitive benefits of games aren’t limited to children. Among older adults, “trying new things, solving problems, any sort of mental stimulation has shown to lead to big gains in staving off cognitive decline,” says Squire. “Games that are social are even better.” 

Multiple studies have shown that older adults who regularly played games like Go and Ska (a traditional board game in Thailand) experienced improvements in attention, memory, and executive function (the mental skills used to plan, solve problems, and adapt to new situations).

Age appropriateness matters, Gobet cautions. Games that are too easy bore older players, while overly complex games can frustrate younger ones. “This being said, children can learn complex games such as chess at a surprisingly young age,” says Gobet. “For example, an Indian child was recently in the news for having acquired a chess rating of nearly 1600 Elo—the rating of an average amateur level—at the age of 3.”

Bottom line

Games don’t make you smarter, but they can support your brain, regardless of your age. Different games sharpen different skills—and video games may have an edge over traditional board games by demanding faster, more flexible thinking.

Perhaps it’s time to update our Christmas game stash with a video game or two. 

In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

The post Chess or video games—which actually makes you smarter? The answer may surprise you. appeared first on Popular Science.

There is nearly 16,700 cubic feet of habitable area aboard the International Space Station (ISS). That makes it larger than a six-bedroom, two-bathroom house,but still small enough for a grand tour that takes less than 15 minutes. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing worth seeing. Far from it, actually.

Earlier this month, NASA released a high-definition video showcase of the ISS, its facilities, and its crew recorded during the Crew-4 and Crew-5 missions in October 2022. The guided tour begins in the Columbus Laboratory Module—the European Space Agency’s (ESA) contribution to the station that includes equipment for studying fluid physics, materials sciences, and the effects of microgravity. From there, Commander Nicole Mann moves into Kibo, Japan’s experiment module focused on tasks like satellite deployments and features an external robotic arm.

Along the way, viewers get fascinating looks at life in space, including what it’s like to eat in zero gravity and how difficult it is to navigate through all the controlled chaos. Orbiting around 250 miles above Earth puts supply runs at a premium, so nearly every inch of the ISS is relegated for storage, research station, wiring, or many other vital components.

Humans have lived continuously aboard the ISS for over 25 years, but the historic endeavor is fast approaching its retirement. According to the current schedule, NASA will initiate its deorbital procedures in 2031. After that, the station will fall back towards Earth and burn up safely during atmospheric re-entry.

The post Tour the International Space Station in new NASA walkthrough appeared first on Popular Science.

Every fall, squirrels stash thousands of nuts and other snacks in preparation for winter. For our fluffy-tailed friends, survival depends on being able to locate these food stores months later. So, how do they do it? In this episode of Ask Us Anything, we talk about the skills squirrels use to find their food and debunk a common misconception about how many nuts they lose.

Ask Us Anything answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions—from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. So, yes, there’s a reason we have two nostrils instead of one big nose hole and no, snakes don’t just slither. If you have a question for us, send us a note. Nothing is too silly or simple.

This episode is based on the Popular Science article “How squirrels actually find all their buried nuts.” You can also read about Tommy Tucker, a dress-wearing squirrel that sold war bonds during World War II.

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Full Episode Transcript

Sarah Durn: Well, we’re fully in December, so we all know what that means. It’s Nutcracker time.

[“Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” plays]

No, I’m not talking about that kind of nutcracker. I’m talking about our delightful, furry neighbors: squirrels.

[Squirrel chattering]

That’s right, every year as the weather starts to turn, squirrels get busy collecting and stealing as many nuts as they can for winter. But how are these adorable creatures able to find all their buried loot?

Welcome to Ask Us Anything from the editors of Popular Science, where we answer your questions about our weird world. From “are cats really afraid of cucumbers?” to “why are most people right-handed?” No question is too outlandish or mundane. I’m Sarah Durn, an editor at Popular Science.

Annie Colbert: And I’m Annie Colbert, editor-in-chief at Popular Science.

SD: Here at Popular Science, we’re always pondering oddball questions. Curiosity is basically our office air supply. 

AC: And this week our curiosity has led us to how squirrels find all their buried nuts in winter, something Sarah just edited a piece on. So, Sarah, how are squirrels able to find all these nuts?

SD: Yeah, well, the short answer is that they rely on a long list of special squirrel skills. Squirrels use a whole toolkit: smell, sight, memory, and they’ll even steal from one another to recover food stores. Spatial memory does a lot of the heavy lifting here, and field studies find they recover a surprisingly high fraction of what they cache.

In other words, despite the jokes, these bushy tailed hoarders are really good at finding their buried loot. 

AC: I love that. So right away we are correcting that very famous Sarah Silverman joke.

SD: Oh yeah. The one about how squirrels forget where they put their nuts and how that’s how trees are planted. 

AC: Yes, exactly. I’ve seen it on TikTok many times. 

SD: Yeah. No shade to Silverman, but squirrels aren’t planting trees.

AC: I mean, I never really thought comedians were a good source for squirrel facts. And of course, I never doubted our squirrel friends and their abilities to hide nuts.

SD: I know they’re too adorable not to be very good at their jobs.

AC: Exactly. Now, before we dive deep into the nut hoard, we wanna know what questions are keeping you curious. If there’s something you’ve always wanted to know, submit your questions through popsci.com/ask. Again, that’s popsci.com/ask. 

SD: We can’t wait to hear your questions.

AC: We’ll be back with all of the nutty details of how squirrels are able to find their winter food stores after this short break.

Welcome back. So let’s get into it. 

SD: Let’s do it.

AC: Okay. For starters, I had wrongly assumed that all squirrels stashed their nuts in the same way.

SD: Tell me more.

AC: So Eastern gray squirrels, which are common across the Northeast and Midwest, are what scientists call scatter hoarders. They stash hundreds of nuts across a wide area rather than keeping them all in one place.

Other species, like red squirrels, which are common in Europe and across Russia, basically stockpile their food in a single defended pantry of sorts. Scientists call this technique larder hoarding.

SD: Oh, now I’m imagining them in like little kitchens.

AC: Oh, Food Network, but it’s all squirrels. Oh, okay, sorry, I got distracted. But an important note is that they won’t stockpile their food near their nests.

SD: Oh, really?

AC: Yeah. I’m not sure if scientists know exactly why. Maybe it’s safer to keep the food out of the nest so other squirrels aren’t lurking around or other animals.

SD: But all squirrels do have nest, right?

AC: Yes. So tree squirrels build their nests out of twigs and leaves and moss and whatever else they might find while scrounging around. These nests are called dreys, and I actually had a squirrel build a nest right outside the window of my apartment and I will say it didn’t end well on a very windy day, but we’ll save that story for another day. 

SD: Oh no! 

AC: But ground squirrels, so ground squirrels like the California ground squirrel they live in, burrows in the ground.

SD: Uh huh, I really wish I could visit a squirrel home.

AC: Ooh, squirrel HGTV! 

SD: A whole squirrel network.

AC: Yeah, the whole cable network, just squirrels! All right, Sarah, so when the weather gets cooler, what exactly are these squirrels storing? Is it all nuts? 

SD: Nuts are probably one of the most common things that they’re storing because you know, they can last a while. But squirrels eat all sorts of things: leaf buds, wild fruits, bird eggs, tree bark. So they store whatever, you know, they can get their little paws on. They’ll even dry out things like mushrooms to store.

AC: Oh, that’s so cool, little variety. 

SD: I know.

AC: I mean, the squirrels in Brooklyn are super bold. I once helplessly watched a squirrel steal an entire baguette out of the bottom of my stroller a few years ago. He just grabbed it and scampered off for like a little bread feast with his friends.

SD: Yeah. I mean, New York squirrels are so intense.

AC: All right, Sarah, so it’s time for the all important question. How exactly are squirrels able to find all this food they’re storing? 

SD: I mean, honestly, they’re geniuses. Most squirrels have a home range that spans six to eight acres, roughly the size of four football fields. And that area can include several nests. And across those four football fields of dense forest or whatever habitat a squirrel lives in, a single squirrel can hide up to 3000 nuts.

AC: What?

SD: I know, so if they’re burying nuts primarily between mid-August and the end of November, which is when most tree nuts mature, they’re basically burying 30 nuts a day.

AC: I mean, that’s a lot. So where are they actually burying all these nuts?

SD: Well, in cold places, squirrels don’t always actually bury their nuts in the ground. They’ll stash food in tree hollows or branches so they don’t have to dig through ice and snow.

AC: Oh, very smart. What about in warmer places?

SD: Yeah, so I live in New Orleans where it’s pretty warm year round and it’s probably easier for squirrels to actually bury their nuts and other food in the ground here.

AC: Okay, so another potentially silly question. They still need to bury the nuts in warmer places, right? Like there aren’t nuts or food year-round. 

SD: Yeah, I was actually wondering that too. But basically, yes, trees will still lose their nuts and fall even in New Orleans. So squirrels still need to stockpile food for winter. But I would think southern squirrels maybe have an easier time than squirrels in say Canada.

AC: Totally. So squirrels, regardless of climate, all get busy hiding thousands of nuts every fall.

SD: Yeah.

AC: Hmm. So how do they actually find these nuts months later?

SD: Okay, so that’s an excellent question. So let’s start with the basics. Squirrels really don’t rely on a single trick. They use smell, sight, and memory, plus social cues from other squirrels. One of the sources from this story, Dr. Noah Perlut, a professor at the University of New England, who leads gray squirrel research on campus, says they “use the whole toolkit.” Spatial memory, remembering places and how those places relate to landmarks, is especially important for when they dig their food back up. 

AC: Okay, but when you say spatial memory, do you mean they remember the exact spot or more like kind of general areas? 

SD: Typically they’re returning to the exact spot, even months later. In one experiment, scientists tried to fool squirrels with fake stashes that looked identical to the real ones. And they even swapped the grass patches, so the imposter stashes carried the real scent of the original places, but the squirrels didn’t fall for it. They ignored the imposters and dug up their actual caches. That tells us that their memory for where they buried things is accurate enough to beat a scent trick.

AC: That’s wild. So smell isn’t enough to trick them. They’re actually remembering where things are buried?

SD: Right. Smell helps, especially under snow, but it’s not the whole story. Field work also shows squirrels use visual landmarks. Another layer to this is that many squirrels actually steal nuts from other squirrels.

AC: Nice drama.

SD: Yeah, so they’ll watch each other hide their winter food stores and often steal from one another.

So squirrels aren’t only keeping track of “where did I put my food?” But also “where did that other squirrel put theirs?” Scientists call this pilfering. 

AC: Hmm. That’s nice. I guess it’s a little less mean sounding.

SD: Yeah, right. Perlut thinks that squirrels actually try to pilfer AKA steal another squirrel stash first, and then if that fails, they go for their own stashes

AC: Wow. It’s a real squirrel-eat-squirrel world out there. 

SD: Yeah. At least when it comes to their nuts. To avoid getting pilfered, squirrels will even pretend to bury nuts in one place and then actually bury them in another place ultimately. And it’s all a way to confuse the other squirrels who may be spying on them.

AC: So there’s a whole social game going on. Do we know how well they do overall? Like how many hidden nuts do squirrels actually recover? 

SD: Yeah, so one urban study estimated gray squirrels retrieve about 85 percent of their cached nuts, or, you know, whatever else they’re burying. A more recent 2023 study reported that red squirrels in an urban park quickly found the majority of the nuts they cached, even with competition.

AC: Wow. They’re much better than I am when I lose my wallet or keys or everything else I lose.

SD: I know. I mean, we should all have like little squirrels help us find things we lose around the house.

AC: Honestly, that would be a dream. Welcome the squirrels to my home.

SD: I know, that would be amazing. Perlut also notes that squirrels can remember things for up to two months.

AC: Wow.

SD: And they’re really, really smart about the timing of how they eat things too. They’ll eat certain nuts sooner, for example. So acorns from a white oak sprout quickly, so squirrels often eat those first, while red oak acorns germinate more slowly, and they can be stored for longer.

AC: So wise, our little friends.

SD: I know. One thing Perlut said really struck me. He noted that gray squirrels, for instance, spend a lot of time not foraging. They rest, watch, socialize. So that’s in a way, evidence of how effective their stashing system is. They’re not busy all day hiding nuts. I love that.

AC: They work smart, but not nonstop. I feel like those are icons for all of us.

SD: So to recap, squirrels use a combination of spatial memory, smell, visual landmarks, social observation, and even watching what other squirrels are up to, plus all that fake bearing drama to throw off furry thieves to protect and recover their caches. All in all squirrels are really good at finding what they hide.

Different species go about it in different ways, whether that’s scatter hoarding all over the place or keeping one big pantry stash, AKA larder hoarding. 

AC: And they’re really pros.

SD: They really are.

AC: I’ve learned so much today. With that, we’ll be right back to wrap up this episode with the story of Tommy Tucker, a squirrel who was adopted by the Bullis family in 1944.

SD: A squirrel who wore little outfits to help raise money for war bonds and other philanthropic causes.

AC: A squirrel who even did radio spots with FDR!

SD: Clearly we’re excited.

AC: Yes, that’s coming up next after this short break.

Okay, Sarah, as promised, let’s talk Tommy Tucker, someone we’re very excited about when we discovered this story and America’s most glamorous wartime squirrel. And I really, when we found this out, I couldn’t believe that this guy actually existed.

SD: I know he is iconic, so yes, Tommy Tucker was an Eastern gray squirrel, who became a full blown home front celebrity during World War II.

AC: So how did he go from random baby squirrel to icon? 

SD: It’s an excellent question. He literally fell out of a hickory tree in Washington, DC. A little girl found him on her walk to school, fed him warm milk, and made him a tiny bed in a red wool hat. Then her family had to move and she gave Tommy Tucker to her neighbor, Zadie Bullis, and that’s when his life really took off.

AC: I am so obsessed with this.

SD: So Zadie basically turned Tommy into a tiny, furry fashion icon. He had more than a hundred handmade outfits. Everything from a silk pleated dress for company to a Red Cross nurse dress for visiting the hospital.

AC: Uh, and famously all dresses because pants don’t really work with a squirrel tail.

SD: Exactly. Life Magazine even joked about it at the time.

AC: Okay, so. How does a squirrel and a dress become a war hero?

SD: Yeah, so Bullis started taking him around DC to the bakery, the grocery store, the children’s hospital, and people really started to fall in love with him.

AC: Of course.

SD: Eventually the US Treasury built him a custom booth so he could sell war bonds. He’d show up in red, white, and blue satin, and he even had a fan club with something like. 30,000 members.

AC: Okay. That is more than a lot of influencers.

SD: And Air Force bomber crews literally carried his picture with them on missions. Soldiers wrote to him from the front lines saying he gave them confidence. During the war he traveled the country by train, making a radio appearances with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

AC: Ugh, what a furry hero.

SD: And then after the war ended, he road tripped with the Bullis’s until he died on a sightseeing trip to the Grand Canyon in 1949.

AC: Oh no, Tommy.

SD: I know!

AC: But you can still see him today, right?

SD: You can. He and all his wardrobes are preserved at the Smithsonian Archives. You just have to make an appointment.

AC: Oh, a national treasure and a style icon.

SD: Truly, may we all leave behind such an impeccable wardrobe.

AC: Absolutely a hero for all time.

And that’s it for this episode, but don’t worry, we have more awesome Ask Us Anythings live in our feed right now. Follow or subscribe to Ask Us Anything by Popular Science, wherever you enjoy your podcasts. And if you like our show, please leave a rating and review.

SD: We really care what you think. Our theme music is from Kenneth Michael Reagan, and our producer is Alan Haburchak. This week’s episode was based on our article written for Popular Science by Jennifer Byrne.

AC: Thank you team, and thanks to everyone listening.

SD: And one more time, if you wanna have something you’ve always wondered about explained on a future episode, go to popsci.com/ask. Until next time. Keep the questions coming.

AC: Yeah, don’t hold your questions. Like our furry friends for their food.

SD: Obviously.

AC: I’ve been waiting this whole episode to make a squirrel noise too, so

[Annie makes squirrel noises]

SD: I know they have really cute little hands.

The post Squirrels can find 85% of the nuts they hide appeared first on Popular Science.

The presents are unwrapped, the cookies are crumbs, and that real Christmas tree will become a fire hazard soon enough. Most of us haul it out to the curb for our local sanitation departments to take care of, but some lucky trees make it into the paws of animals living in zoos. 

Since 1978, the Cape May County Park & Zoo in Middle Township, New Jersey, has solicited donations of undecorated Christmas trees from the community and unsold trees from nearby businesses. The trees are then given to the more than 550 animals that call the South Jersey zoo home. 

“Not everyone can donate money to the zoo, and that’s totally fair. We’re a free zoo so that everybody can come here. But if you want to donate a Christmas tree, I think that makes people feel really good that they were able to help somehow,” senior animal keeper and enrichment coordinator Kim Simpkins tells Popular Science.

Why Christmas trees?

Fir, spruce, and pine trees provide the animals with enrichment and an important extra shelter from the cold winter air. While the Jersey Shore is mostly associated with the warm summer days, average low temperatures at the zoo can reach the low 20s in January. The donated Christmas tree can act as wind blocks to protect the animal enclosures.

A wallaby using the Christmas trees as a windbreak. Image: Zookeeper Steph.

“To block the doors that go into their huts, we use freezer flaps. But it’s nice to have an extra layer of protection, so we’ll use Christmas trees,” says Simpkins. “We’ll do this for the wallabies.”

The nearby kangaroos will often make little enclosures out of stacked Christmas trees so that they have another warm place to go. 

The Christmas trees also provide the animals with enrichment. For any animal in human care, whether it is the family dog or a lion at a zoo, enrichment gives them a creative outlet for physical activity, mental stimulation, and a way to choose how they spend their time. 

“Enrichment is when we provide to the animal novel that is going to bring out some kind of natural behavior for the animal,” says Simpkins. “We have an enrichment plan for each of the animals at the zoo with their natural history, and then what kind of behaviors we feel like they need to exhibit here at the zoo that they might not need to because they’re not in the wild.”

Since animals in the zoo do not have to work very hard for food, the team will work in enrichment activities as a way to encourage them to use their natural foraging behaviors. For the primates, the keepers will sometimes hide bits of food within the donated Christmas trees for them to find. 

“Many might think of enrichment as simply providing food puzzle toys, but enrichment is much more than that,” Cornell University veterinarian Dr. Kate Anderson, tells Popular Science. “Enrichment is ensuring that all of an animal’s needs are met and providing appropriate outlets for emotional, physical, and mental stimulation. Their needs should include safety, predictability, hygiene, nutrition, and much more.”

Cavy is a small rodent called a Patagonian mara. Image: Zoo Education Keeper Bridget.

Simpkins adds that the zoo designs their enrichment, “ based on their natural history, the individual’s [animal’s] needs, and on our habitats.”

For the zoo, the Christmas trees also provide a free way of getting their animals these important enrichment items. According to Simpkins, durable plastic balls for lions and other enrichment items can cost $300 to $500 and do not always last that long thanks to sharp teeth and claws, so the donated items allow keepers to keep the animals entertained on a budget. 

“There are infinite ways to provide enrichment, limited only by time, funding, and imagination,” says Dr. Anderson. “I think more than providing something ‘unique,’ it’s better to be holistic in approaching enrichment.”

Play with your trees

The zoo is home to over 550 animals representing 250 species. Each animal has their own way of racing to a new Christmas tree in and around their habitat.

“The lions really like to just carry around the Christmas trees,” laughs Simpkins. “They like the smell of them.” The lions will also pee on the trees and mark their territory as they would in the wild. When they mark the tree with their urine, it is a way to make it smell like them.

Lex the lion guarding his tree. Lions particularly like the new smells a tree brings. Image: Zookeeper Jen

According to Dr. Anderson, enrichment also helps their welfare by giving the animals agency and choice. “Enrichment for animals is akin to “self-care” for humans,” she says. “Animals that are underenriched might be more excitable, hyperactive, vocalize more, play excessively or roughly, be aggressive or not sleep well. They also might display unwanted behaviors such as scratching, destructive chewing, digging, or raiding the garbage.”

The zoo’s bison also love to smell the Christmas trees, but their reaction to a new plant in their habitat can be considered a form of play. For biologists, play is considered something that an animal does just for fun, and not to look for food, shelter, or something else for survival. The zoo’s bison will head butt the trees around their yard, and also use them as wind blocks.

The monkeys and other primates will also climb on the trees and treat them a bit like a new piece of furniture. However, it is mostly all about food since the keepers are putting food in the trees for them to find. 

The bison are smelling the Christmas trees, snacking on them, and playing with them through their headbutts. Image: Zookeeper Pete.

“It depends on the species, but most of ours are frugivores, so we’ll put fruit in the tree and they’ll have to dig through the Christmas tree to find it,” explains Simpkins. “This is more similar to how they get fruit in the wild compared to a bowl. It’s great when the keepers are really creative, combining different toys to make foraging more complex or more interesting, or different.”

According to Dr. Anderson, enrichment can even be as simple as giving animals a choice and space to rest. “It’s extremely important to be mindful of an animal’s sensory experience (all animals hear, smell, and see the world differently than people),” she says. 

Interested donors can contact the zoo directly with any questions and are encouraged read all of the instructions before donating. The zoo can’t take every tree, so donors are encouraged to call soon. You can also look for local mulching events, where your tree will be turned into wood chips that nourish trees and plants. Goats also love Christmas trees, so reach out to local farms and see if they are taking donations as well. If you live along the coast, check with your town about donating your tree, since they can help reinforce protective sand dunes.

The post Donated Christmas trees get a second life at the zoo appeared first on Popular Science.

Researchers in Germany recently accomplished a truly audacious feat of cartography. Using a diverse array of datasets, a team at the Technical University of Munich released GlobalBuildingAtlas, the first high-resolution mapping model featuring every structure in the world at a given point in time. 

However, the open-source project isn’t about bragging rights. With over 2.75 billion buildings detailed in the map, the endeavor will help create accurate analyses of urban structures, volume calculations, and infrastructure planning around the planet.

“3D building information provides a much more accurate picture of urbanization and poverty than traditional 2D maps,” research lead Xiaoxiang Zhu said in a statement. “With 3D models, we see not only the footprint but also the volume of each building, enabling far more precise insights into living conditions.”

Zhu’s team also created a new measurement tool to accompany the atlas: building volume per capita. This translates to an area’s total building mass relative to its population, and helps measure social and economic disparities as they relate to housing and infrastructure.

“This indicator supports sustainable urban development and helps cities become more inclusive and resilient,” added Zhu.

GlobalBuildingAtlas is also unprecedented in its level of detail. An estimated 97 percent of the map’s 3D structures are classified Level of Detail 1, or LoD 1. Although high LoDs do exist, the rating still means the rough shape and height of these buildings are accurate enough to incorporate into various computer modeling projects. With a resolution of 9.8 by 9.8 feet, the atlas is also 30 times more detailed than comparable projects.

GlobalBuildingAtlas was compiled using data available as of 2019. However, given its open-access format, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes even more up-to-date and helpful. Apart from anything else, it’s also just a very cool tool to explore.

The post Browse a 3D map of the world’s 2.75 billion buildings appeared first on Popular Science.

Founding father Benjamin Franklin secured the alliance with France that led to victory in the Revolutionary War, negotiated the Treaty of Paris ending said war, signed the Declaration of Independence and the U.S Constitution, discovered that lightning was electrical, invented bifocal glasses, wrote the famous Poor Richard’s Almanac, and ran newspapers. 

He also had some thoughts on farting. 

In 1781, Franklin wrote a satirical letter to the Royal Academy of Brussels on the subject of flatulence, and what, perhaps, science could do about it. Because, as he wrote, “It is universally well known, that in digesting our common food, there is created or produced in the bowels of human creatures, a great quantity of wind. That the permitting this air to escape and mix with the atmosphere, is usually offensive to the company, from the fetid smell that accompanies it.”

Franklin was concerned with how to make farts more pleasant smelling so that they wouldn’t disrupt civilized company. But a far simpler and healthier solution eluded even this legendary thinker: The Fart Walk. 

Not only does this practice allow you to release gas in less confined space, but it has also proven health benefits like improved digestion and even weight loss. Although the smirk-worthy term “Fart Walk” only started gaining viral popularity in the past year or so (it’s generally credited to cookbook author Mairlyn Smith), the concept is far from new–in fact, there is an old Chinese proverb that goes, “if you take 100 steps after eating, you’ll live to 99.” 

Here are some ways that working Fart Walks into your daily routine can change the way you approach the expulsion of gas. 

It gets your digestive system moving

Getting up and moving around right after you’ve eaten starts a process called peristalsis, which is a rippled effect that helps force gas and food through your gastrointestinal tract. It essentially stirs up your bowels and alerts them that they have work to do. 

It might help weight loss

In 2011, researchers from the Toyodo Hijikata Clinic in Osaka, Japan, published a study that showed walking immediately after a meal–as opposed to, say, waiting an hour–actually promoted positive weight loss benefits. As the study stated, “For people who do not experience abdominal pain, fatigue, or other discomfort when walking just after a meal, walking at a brisk speed for 30 minutes as soon as possible just after lunch and dinner leads to more weight loss than does walking for 30 minutes beginning one hour after a meal has been consumed.”

[Related: Which animals can and can’t fart?]

It makes it easier to fart and burp

Gas can develop from certain types of foods, such as fiber-rich cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and Brussel sprouts, or from the intake of air as you eat. Either way, getting up and kickstarting peristalsis not only gets your digestion going but it also frees up this trapped gas and makes it easier to escape from the north or the south. Allowing the gas to be expelled reduces bloating and generally improves gastrointestinal health. 

It has far-reaching benefits

Working a “Fart Walk” into your daily routine won’t just have your gut feeling tip-top, it may guard against dementia and generally improve your mental as well as your physical health. A 2025 study published in Age and Ageing by Audrey Collins, PhD and Dr. Maddison Mellow found that people who engaged in just five minutes of daily exercise like walking had better brain health. Another study by the American Psychological Association found that daily walks lowered the risk of depression among adults by 25 percent. 

So get out there and let it rip! 

The post You should start taking “Fart Walks” appeared first on Popular Science.

They’re sugary, sweet, and not just peppermint-flavored anymore. Candy canes are a holiday staple with roots dating back to the 1600s. The story suggests that in 1670, a choirmaster in Cologne, Germany, gave children these sugary sticks shaped like a shepherd’s staff for the long nativity church service. 

While the confection has come a long way in the centuries since, the candy canes made by Hammond’s Candies in Denver, Colorado, still share one thing with that 17th century German candy maker. Their current roster of 26 different flavors of candy cane are handmade.

“Everything is done by hand,” Hammond’s head cook Victor Ortiz tells Popular Science. “Each batch takes about five to six people one hour and 30 minutes. That gives us 600 candy canes.”

Some popular new candy cane flavors include eggnog, root beer, sugar plum, birthday cake, and strawberry. Image: Hammond’s Candies. Kelsie Wonderly

Ortiz (whose favorite flavor is strawberry) first began working part time in Hammond’s packaging department 24 years ago, working his way up to head cook. The 105-year-old company makes everything from traditional ribbon candy and lollipops to gourmet chocolates to their colorful candy canes. To keep up with the candy cane demand, they must work about a year ahead. 

Here’s how that sweet treat takes shape.

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Liquid candy and gooey centers

Hammond’s uses four main ingredients in their candy canes—sugar, corn syrup, water, and a little cooking oil to keep it from over boiling. The ingredients are mixed together in a copper pot until they reach a balmy 300 to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. 

The mixture is then placed onto a stainless steel cooling table that has hot and cold water running through it. That hot water keeps it from cooling down too quickly, while the cold water helps the liquid solidify, so that the cooks can cut and separate the colors that make up the candy cane.

The liquified candy is cooked in a copper bowl, just like candymakers would have done 100 years ago.  Image: Victor Ortiz / Hammond’s Candies.

“The candy is all liquidy on the table,” explains Ortiz. “That table is going to be where we add the color and the jacket, or the outside of the candy cane.”

It is also where they add the flavored and softer center of each candy cane. To do this, the candymakers use broken pieces from the previous batch of the same flavor. The broken candy is then heated up to 325 degrees where it can become a slightly gooey center of the candy cane. 

The center of the candy cane is primarily made with bits of broken pieces from the previous batch. Image: Victor Ortiz / Hammond’s Candies. 
Cut and color

Once the candy hits the right temperature, it is transferred to the building table where it’s time for the candymakers to make some cuts. If they’re making a traditional peppermint candy cane, they’ll divide the candy jacket into two different pieces—red and white. For something a bit more unique like root beer, it’s shades of brown.

The color and flavor are added to the candy with the help from a good old-fashioned candy pull. The globs of pliable sugar are placed on an early 20th century puller, just like the cooks would have done in 1920. The puller adds air to the mix and distributes the color and flavor to the candy cane’s outer jacket and softer center. The candymakers then continue to pull the candy by hand to stretch it out even further. 

The separate blobs give candy canes their colorful stripes. Image: Victor Ortiz / Hammond’s Candies. 

“When we have the center and the jacket together, we actually bring it to the center, and then put it in the middle of the jacket, and wrap the jacket around the center,” says Ortiz.

All of the extra smaller stripes on the candy cane are added to the jacket here by pulling them to various thicknesses. If the stripes are not exactly right, they will be broken up and be used for the center of the next batch. And not all candy cane flavors are the same.

“There’s a candy cane that we make called birthday cake, and it has five different colors, six with the white,” says Ortiz. “Putting all those colors together takes a long time. It may take about 15 minutes to put together the jacket for the peppermint candy cane, but when you’re making the birthday cake one, it takes about 25 minutes to 30 minutes because there’s a lot of pieces.”

The birthday cake candy canes include six different colors, including white. Image Hammond’s Candies. 
Getting hooked

After that colorful striped jacket is wrapped around the softer candy cane center, it is placed on a batch roller. On the roller, more heat is added so that the candy can be more pliable again. After about 10 minutes, a huge striped cylinder of candy is ready to be cut down into sticks about a half inch in diameter 

A giant hunk of root beer candy cane is placed into the batch roller. Image: Victor Ortiz / Hammond’s Candies. 

“They kind of eyeball the hook and shape it by hand. We don’t have any molds or anything like that,” Ortiz explains. “We train cooks to just put their hand on the piece of candy and make the hook by grabbing one end and turning it.”

If the cooks are making a lollipop, the candy making process is almost exactly the same. However, instead of shaping the hook one cook will mold the lollipop into its circular shape, while another is ready with the stick. They can also make 1,000 lollipops per batch, compared to 600 candy canes. 

After they get their signature hook, the candy canes are packaged, shipped, sold, and perhaps placed in a lucky person’s stocking. 

“A lot of companies are trying to move on with automation,” says Ortiz. “We’re still making the candy canes the old-fashioned way, which I think separates us. We put a lot of effort into whatever we are making.”

The post The magic of making candy canes by hand appeared first on Popular Science.

Camera traps in Thailand have captured adorable passersby with significant implication for the country’s conservation efforts. While these furry creatures might look like your average house cat, they’re actually wild flat-headed cats (Prionailurus planiceps). These extremely rare wild felines weigh less than half an average pet cat, and they’ve been detected in Thailand for the first time since 1995.

The happy news was confirmed by a survey from Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife, and Plant Conservation, and Panthera Thailand, a global wild cat conservation organization, according to a statement emailed to Popular Science. 

“Even species thought to be lost can be rebuilt if we invest in protecting the habitats they depend on,” said Wai Ming Wong, Panthera Small Cat Conservation Science Director. “Flat-headed cats’ persistence in Thailand suggests that these ecosystems still hold remarkable biodiversity but also underscores how urgently we must conserve and restore them before they vanish entirely.” 

Flat-headed cats are named for their particular flat forehead and extended skull. They are Southeast Asia’s smallest wild cat, and have short bodies, slim legs, webbed toes, and stubby tails. They’re also difficult to study. Besides their limited population numbers, they’re small, nocturnal, and favor hard-to-access environments—tropical rainforests, swampy and peat-swamp forests, marshes, lakes, streams, and riverine forests. 

Flat-headed cats are the smallest wild cat in Southeast Asia. Image: DNP/Panthera Thailand

Researchers believe them to be close relatives of leopard cats and fishing cats, and estimate a total population size of 2,500 adults. Flat-headed cats are one of the most threatened wild cats—the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifies them as Endangered, and “possibly extinct” within Thailand. 

Nevertheless, remote camera trap images confirmed the wild cat’s reappearance.The traps picked up 13 detections in 2024 and 16 in southern Thailand’s Princess Sirindhorn Wildlife Sanctuary in 2025, within the context of the species’ largest survey. Notably, a mother and her cub were also spotted, verifying the species’ active reproduction in the area. It’s an important find, since flat-headed cat mothers usually have just one kitten  at a time. 

A rare image of a Flat-headed Cat (Prionailurus planiceps) at night, Kinabatangan River, Sabah, Borneo, Malaysia. Image: Sebastian Kennerknecht/Panthera.

The flat-headed cat is currently threatened by human-driven habitat loss from land conversion, fishing, agricultural encroachment, hunting, waterway pollution, and domestic animals transmitting diseases. Competition for space further decreases its range, limiting the wild cat to mostly far-flung, untouched environments whose protection is thus crucial. 

“With this new finding, which we plan to submit to the IUCN Red List Committee, we hope the species’ status can be updated to something other than ‘Possibly Extinct,’” Rattapan Pattanarangsan, Conservation Program Manager for Panthera Thailand, tells Popular Science, while adding that the Committee might need more data they don’t possess yet. “Generating this level of evidence will likely require several years of further study before the species’ status can be fully reassessed.”

The announcement comes in time for National Wildlife Protection Day on December 26. The  flat-headed cat detection will lay the groundwork for DNP and Panthera Thailand’s conservation planning regarding the species. 

The post Tiny wild cat spotted in Thailand for first time in 30 years appeared first on Popular Science.

Amid the 872-day siege of Leningrad in the early 1940s, nine people died protecting a library. This library was not for books, but for seeds collected from around the globe. The nine who died were food scientists, starving to death alongside 700,000 of their neighbors. The library they were protecting was the world’s first seedbank, an ancestor to current-day genebanks worldwide.

Genebanks are biorepositories used to store genetic material, like seeds and cells. Their origins came from a wanderlusting Russian plant-lover named Nikolai Vavilov who dreamed of a one-stop shop for seeds from all over the world for researchers, scientists, and breeders to learn from and use to fight famine. Vavilov made 115 expeditions to 64 countries, collecting 380,000 samples for the seedbank in Leningrad, growing it into an agricultural bounty so diverse and valuable, even the Germans caught wind of it. After the Nazi siege and Vavilov’s death in the Gulag, his idea turned into something even more monumental: an answer to humanity’s questions as to how to maintain food’s genetic diversity and feed the global population amid disaster, war, and climate change.

Now, there are hundreds of genebanks around the world. “Almost every country has its own national genebank,” Stefan Schmitz, executive director of the Crop Trust, tells Popular Science. And there are countless beyond those. At the Crop Trust, Schmitz and his colleagues work to support genebanks and seedbanks (like genebanks, but focused on seeds) through funding, management, trainings, and technology.  

Coming up on a century in existence, genebanks have become vital to the future of humanity. In the event of a massive emergency, these would be our Noah’s Ark.

Genebanks help protect important plant varieties, such as the West African Bambara groundnut shown here. Image: Crop Trust / Michael Major Genetic diversity and food security

Genebanks are troves of genetic diversity, an essential safeguard against famine. Think of the Irish Potato Famine: If all farmers plant the same variety of potato, a single threat in the form of a fungus, virus, or insect can wipe out an entire nation of crops.

The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) oversees two genebanks in Morocco and Lebanon. Not only do these genebanks house incredibly diverse collections, but they are also windows into plant and human history. “We collect the crop wild relatives from this region, the first domesticated forms, the primitive forms, and we have our [locally adapted forms],” Athanasios Tsivelikas, ICARDA’s Morocco genebank manager, tells Popular Science. Some of ICARDA’s plant varieties date back to the dawn of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent. Other, wilder varieties go back even further.

ICARDA’s collection shows us how seeds adapt to challenging climates over centuries. Seeds evolve to better withstand their environments from generation to generation. Many of ICARDA’s seeds evolved in some of the most extreme conditions on Earth and may hold the answer to humanity’s survival on a warming globe. “We are talking about climate resilience. We are also talking about this kind of adaptation to this extreme heat, salinity, and drought conditions,” Tsivelikas says.

The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) cultivates many unique, traditional plant varieties, like barley (shown here). Image: ICARDA Research and safekeeping

Among their many purposes, genebanks continue to serve as the genetic libraries Vavilov dreamed of, facilitating agricultural research, plant breeding, and farming. Anyone who needs samples can request them from a genebank. 

Plant breeders and researchers may find valuable traits for nutrition or climate resilience in a collection faraway. For example, if someone is trying to create a more nutritious variety of wheat, they may find something that will help them in a roster of seeds from a genebank in a different country. They could then reach out to that genebank with their request and, if their request is approved, the genebank will send them samples of the variety they want to study. 

You can also think of genebanks as agricultural safety nets. In regions that experience natural disaster or war, “they provide emergency support for farmers,” Schmitz says. “Genebanks have been in a position to provide old, adapted seeds to farmers so they could then multiply them again.”

They can be important insurance policies for other genebanks as well. Genebanks send duplicates of their collections to fellow genebanks to ensure an even higher level of safety, should anything happen to their own collection. Among genebanks, there is something called the black box system, where you can send seed duplicates to another genebank for safekeeping only, not for research or anything else. Those duplicates remain yours and yours alone, housed faraway in the event of a disaster.

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A backup for the backup

The vulnerability of genebanks makes this extra assurance essential. Power outages, war, and imperfect infrastructure can compromise a genebank overnight. Just one power outage can be a crisis for a facility that needs to keep temperatures at zero degrees Fahrenheit (-18 degrees Celsius). 

So, in 2008, experts came up with the ultimate backup plan.

They put a massive global facility in the North Pole, in a part of Norway called Svalbard. There, the farthest north you can go on a commercial airline, the frigid permafrost ensures that even if the power went out, the seeds inside the vault would still be safe. Now, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault houses 1,378,238 seed samples from almost every country globally, with room for millions more. 

“Svalbard is nothing else but a huge backup facility,” says Schmitz. “So that in case one of the 800+ genebanks loses their collection due to [a] thunderstorm, fire, earthquake, or war, you can make sure you have this security backup.” 

On June 3, 2025, several staff members transported ICARDA seed samples into the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in northern Norway. That week alone, 14 genebanks from around the world deposited more than 11,200 seed samples, underscoring the critical role of crop diversity in future food security. Image: Xinhua News Agency / Contributor / Getty Images Xinhua News Agency

Shortly after Svalbard was established, Tsivelikas’ colleagues at an ICARDA genebank in Syria began sending the new facility copies of their seeds via the black box system. When civil war broke out in 2011, they ramped up their shipments, reaching over 100,000 duplicates under Svalbard’s roof. 

And it was lucky they did. In 2014, ICARDA’s genebank in Syria had to be evacuated. “It was the largest disaster we are aware of to genebanks,” says Schmitz.

Tsivelikas’ relief and gratitude at his colleagues’ forethought is palpable to this day. “I cannot express how wise my colleagues in Syria were,” he says. “They were thinking of every possible event that could happen.” While they couldn’t predict the specifics of this civil war, they were ready for it anyway. After the team evacuated, ICARDA established new genebanks in Morocco and Lebanon. 

When the new facilities opened, Tsivelikas was there. He went to Svalbard in 2015 to begin the process of getting the duplicated seeds back to ICARDA. “We managed, from Svalbard, to retrieve the [samples of seeds] to our new genebanks in Morocco and in Lebanon,” he says. 

ICARDA was the first genebank to retrieve its collection from Svalbard, but there have been others since. Now, Sudanese genebank workers are following in the footsteps of those in Syria, sending seeds to Svalbard amid their civil war. These seeds will be essential for rebuilding.

“There are lots of interesting examples where genebanks not only serve as a starting point for modern breeding and modern plant research, but sometimes simply to help farmers after a catastrophe or natural disaster,” Schmitz says.

In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

The post The seed vaults that could save humanity appeared first on Popular Science.

Getting that annual check-up can feel daunting for anyone. For a 140-pound leopard whiptail ray (Himantura leoparda) living at the New England Aquarium in Boston, it’s a whole other animal. At the weight of an adult human with a four-foot-three-inch wingspan, just moving the giant fish from its habitat to an exam pool is an exercise in teamwork.

“This process requires eight people on average, so we must ensure we have proper staffing to perform these exams safely from both an animal and human safety aspect,” Dr. Kathy Tuxbury, the New England Aquarium’s Senior Veterinarian, tells Popular Science.

Bringing such a large ray from its habitat into an exam pool takes at least eight people. Image: New England Aquarium.
Vanessa Kahn

Leopard whiptail rays (also called leopard whip rays) have leopard-like spots and very long, thin tails that can be two to four times the length of their bodies. These tails help them balance, steer through the water, and defend themselves against predators. Including the tail, these rays can be 13-feet-long, and are found in southeast Asian and northern Australian waters.

The New England Aquarium is home to two male leopard whiptail rays, one weighing in at 140 pounds and the other at a whopping 162 pounds. The smaller of the two has been there for 17 years and had his annual physical recently. 

During the ray’s check-up, the aquarists focus on collecting the fish from their exhibit and bringing it into the exam pool. Once the ray is anesthetized, an aquarist gets into the water with the ray to make sure that water is flowing over their gills and to keep the ray in position during his exam.

Veterinarians give the ray an ultrasound. Image: New England Aquarium.
Vanessa Kahn

“The exam is then performed by one of the New England Aquarium veterinarians in a similar manner as most other animal species taking a head-to-tail approach with examining all aspects of the ray,” says Dr. Tuxbury. “The exam also includes performing an ultrasound and collecting a blood sample for review.”

The aquarium will perform at least one physical exam per year, and others if any additional checkups if needed. As for this male ray’s recent exam, his weight, eyes, skin, and oral health is all normal. His heart, liver and gastrointestinal tract are also working as expected. The ray went back to swimming around his exhibit—and eating—only 30 minutes later. The two leopard whiptail rays eat 2.5 pounds of food every day. 

After getting a clean bill of health, the team lowers the ray back into its habitat. Image: New England Aquarium.
Vanessa Kahn

You can say hello to the rays and wish them continued good health at the Shark and Ray Touch Tank.

The post Giving a 140 pound stingray a check up requires 8 people appeared first on Popular Science.

It’s something out of a dream or TV show: a married couple takes their dog for a walk and finds a buried treasure worth $10 million. But it actually happened, back in 2013. 

The treasure is the Saddle Ridge Hoard, the largest ever stash of gold coins found in the United States. The couple, who go by John and Mary in the press, have been careful to obscure their identity and the exact place where they live to prevent would-be treasure hunters from showing up on their property. What we do know has mostly been told to the press by David McCarthy, the Senior Numismatist and Researcher at Kagin’s, who helped the couple assess and ultimately sell the hoard. 

“One day, when they were on that path, for whatever reason one of them looked down and there was this can,” McCarthy said in a 2014 interview. “They were used to finding cans and nails and bullets and other weird things from the 19th century on the property, and they were in the habit of digging stuff like that up because they love history.”

The couple tried to open the can with a stick, failed, and tried to carry it home. “They got back to the house and pried the top off and there, nested in the dirt, was a single gold coin…the edge of a single $20 gold piece poking out.” 

The Saddle Ridge Hoard of coins and can in the dirt where they were found. Images: Kagin’s Inc. via CC BY-SA 3.0

Excited, the couple went back to look for more cans—and found one. So they kept looking for more. 

“For about two weeks they kept going back to the site and finding more and more stuff,” said McCarthy. “They found eight cans after going over the area with a metal detector.” 

The total was 1,411 coins with a face value of around $28,000. The modern value was much higher, in part because of inflation but also because so many of the coins were pristine coins highly sought after by collectors. The couple, unsure what to do after finding a stash of coins this big, eventually got in touch with Kagin’s, a company that evaluates and helps sell rare coins that is also McCarthy’s employer.

Where are the coins from?

There is no definitive history of where the coins came from, but there are a few hints according to McCarthy. First, the cans are in varying states of decay, and the coins themselves were minted in years ranging from the 1860s all the way up to the 1890s. This suggests someone was burying coins in the same place at different points in time. The location, within 200 miles of the California Gold Rush, is another potential hint. 

Burying gold was common in Northern California in the 1800s, according to McCarthy, mostly because many people lived hundreds of miles from anything resembling a bank. “If you had 10, 20, 30 thousand dollars in gold that you’d acquired over time, you’re not going to leave it in your house,” he said. “If you don’t have a bank to put it in, the only logical choice is to bury it in the ground. It’s pretty typical human behavior.” 

The idea is that the person hiding the coins died before they could spend them, but also failed to tell their next of kin about the stash. The specifics, though, are odd. Many of the coins were in pristine condition, which implies they were never in circulation. And some were minted thousands of miles away in Georgia, implying their origin has little to do with the gold rush.

The truth is there’s never been a definitive explanation. We may never know who buried the coins, or why. 

Where did the coins end up?

John and Mary decided to sell the majority of the coins. Many of them were available on Amazon, the first time a major coin discovery was sold via the online retailer. The money was used to pay off debts and donated to charity. Two coins were donated to the Smithsonian. And the couple kept a few of the coins for themselves—they intend them to become family heirlooms. 

The two coins dedicated to the Smithsonian. On the left, a 10 Dollar Coin minted in 1888. On the right, a 20 dollar coin minted in 1892. Image: National Museum of American History Has anyone found buried treasure since then?

McCarthy, in 2014, speculated there could be other hoards of coins out there. “There could be dozens of other finds like this,” he said. “Someone at the right time at the right place might find one. I hope so.” 

Just such a find happened in 2023, when 700 gold coins were found in a Kentucky cornfield. The collection was dubbed “The Great Kentucky Hoard”. The oldest coin in the hoard dates to 1863, the height of the American Civil War. This implies the collection may have been buried to keep the coins from being seized by the invading Confederate army. Again, though, we may never know the exact reason the coins were buried. 

What we can see is how the coins were found. There’s a YouTube video showing the exact moment, in case you want to experience the joy of discovering treasure second hand. Who knows? Maybe you’ll discover the next stash yourself. 

The post A couple walking their dog found $10 million worth of rare coins appeared first on Popular Science.

Scientists are leaving space fans with one more tasty treat before the year comes to a close. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers captured a stunning image of the largest protoplanetary disk ever observed, which just happens to be shaped like a giant celestial sandwich. The massive formation of dust and gas, which astronomers call Dracula’s Chivito, resides about 1,000 light-years from Earth and spans roughly 400 billion miles. To put that in perspective, NASA estimates this disk is about 40 times the diameter of our own solar system.

But aside from making stomachs rumble, astronomers say more research into the vampire disk could provide new insights into the early formation of other planetary systems, possibly even our own. Researchers go on to suggest this unusually volatile disk might, “represent a scaled-up version of our early solar system.” The astronomers’ new findings were published this week in The Astrophysical Journal. 

Vampire Disk offer glimpses into dramatic planetary past 

Planetary disks, sometimes called  planet nurseries, are the building blocks of solar systems. All planetary systems initially form disks of gas and dust around young stars. Eventually, planets form as material in the disk coalesces and accumulates. This particular disk, officially designated IRAS 23077+6707, has an estimated mass that’s 10 to 30 times greater than that of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. Astronomers note it’s both the largest and one of the most unusual disks observed, with filament-like features appearing on only one of its two sides, suggesting it is being shaped by dynamic processes such as recent infalls of dust and gas. This results in a composition that is “unexpectedly chaotic and turbulent.”

“These new Hubble images show that planet nurseries can be much more active and chaotic than we expected,” Kristina Monsch, a study co-author and a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Astrophysics, a collaboration between Stanford University and the Smithsonian, said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the spooky nickname is a nod to the home regions of the astronomers involved. One is from Transylvania, (hence Dracula) and the other is from Uruguay, whose national dish is a sandwich called “chivito.” The researchers say the image of the flattened disk resembles a hamburger, though an argument could easily be made that it looks more like a hot dog. 

Related: [Hubble Space Telescope caught a second glimpse of comet 3I/ATLAS.]

Don’t count out the Hubble just yet 

The Hubble Telescope (launched back in 1990) might not have the most powerful onboard tech compared to the more recently launched James Webb Space Telescope, but it’s still regularly making major scientific contributions. Just this year, Hubble  has caught a rare glimpse of large space rocks colliding, showed a white dwarf eating an object that resembled Pluto, and created the largest photomosaic of the relatively nearby Andromeda galaxy to date. 

“Hubble has given us a front row seat to the chaotic processes that are shaping disks as they build new planets—processes that we don’t yet fully understand but can now study in a whole new way,” study co-investigator and Center for Astrophysics Joshua Bennett added. 

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