White dwarf atmospheres might contain the pulverized crusts of their dead planets

Astronomers have developed a new technique to search for exoplanets—by looking for their crushed up bones in the atmospheres of white dwarfs. And it's working. The search for planets outside the solar system, known as exoplanets, has one significant limitation: We can only find exoplanets that exist right now. But our universe has been hanging around for over 13 billion years, and many generations of planetary systems have come and gone in that vast expanse of cosmic time.

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Medieval Cambridge skeletons reveal injuries to manual labourers

X-rays of 300 skeletons from a city's graveyards show the "bone-crushing" work of labourers.

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Year-to-date, solar and wind electricity grew faster than natural gas in the U.S.

Notwithstanding the COVID-19 pandemic, electrical generation by the nation’s utility-scale wind and solar plants continues to set new records. In fact, it was 35.1% greater in November 2020 than it was in the same month a year earlier, according to a SUN DAY Campaign analysis of new data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

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Obesity may exacerbate the effects of Alzheimer’s disease, new study shows

New research from the University of Sheffield has found being overweight is an additional burden on brain health and it may exacerbate Alzheimer’s disease.

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Cannabis use both helps and hurts entrepreneurial creativity

When entrepreneurs dream up ideas for new businesses, cannabis use might help, and hinder, their creativity, according to a new study in the Journal of Business Venturing by Washington State University researchers. The study found that cannabis-using entrepreneurs generated new business ideas such as a weightless, gravity-free virtual reality workout, that were more original, but less feasible, compared to those who do not use cannabis.

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A vanished empire: Major new discovery exposes long-lost medieval kingdom

David Keys tells the story of how archaeologists are uncovering the remains of the Medieval Chinese Nanzhao Empire and the grave of its ruler

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Lab-grown wood could let us grow furniture in a lab instead of in a forest

Why cut down trees when you can grow wood in the exact shape you need?

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