A Predator's Genes Jumped Into Its Prey Mid-Kill
A predatory bacterium kills its prey, then its own genes jump into the corpse. Evolution using a murder scene as a delivery vehicle was not in the model.
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Latest Stories
Forgotten Plague. Secret Romance. Baby Universe.
In this episode of the Gotta Be Kidding Me podcast, host Tammy Coron covers four stories where the conventional explanation completely falls apart: a vanished pandemic, loyally romantic sharks, a mislabeled fossil, and a star that might be seeding a new universe.
Japan's Underwater Supervolcano Is Reloading
A supervolcano that blew 7,300 years ago is reloading with fresh magma from below. What it's building toward, no one can say yet.
A 248-Year-Old Notebook Sat Misfiled in Paris. It Turned Out to Be New Mozart.
A curator sorting through a pile of unlabeled manuscripts noticed the handwriting looked familiar. It should have.
Tissue Frozen at Age 10 Woke Up 16 Years Later and Made Sperm
A boy's testicle was frozen in 2008 and forgotten for over a decade. Then doctors put it back.
100 Million Years Ago, Mites Were Already Better at Group Travel Than Most Hiking Parties
They were only 200 micrometers long, marching in a single-file line, tethered together by silk they made themselves. What amber just preserved should not be possible to know.
Something Keeps Stealing Dark Matter From the Same Neighborhood
Three neighboring dwarf galaxies, all missing the invisible mass that's supposed to hold them together. That's not a one-off. That's a pattern with no suspect yet.
The Captain Died at Dinner. By Dawn, 137 Passengers Were Gone.
The captain died. The acting captain never inspected the fire. The lifeboats were painted shut. Ninety years later, arson is the leading theory, and no one was ever charged.
Nerve Fibers the Body Wrote Off Are Growing Back
A genetic "off switch" inside your neurons decides, somewhere around month five of fetal development, that nerve fiber regrowth is done. What if it could be flipped back?
Learning Rule Has Held Since 1898. Pigeons Ignore It.
They found the reward. They kept looking anyway. Pigeons may be dismantling one of psychology's oldest assumptions about how any animal learns.
They Said 'Nothing to See Here.' But They Couldn't Stop Looking Themselves.
The public dismissal and the active investigation ran concurrently for 73 years. One of them just became a matter of public record.
Yellowstone's Supervolcano Has Stranger Plumbing Than We Thought
Decades of textbook explanation, overturned by a 3D model of rock flow miles beneath the American West.
The Same Shells, 20,000 Years Apart
Neither species needed these to survive. Both collected them anyway, in the same cave, thousands of years apart. What passed between them is still an open question.
A Poop Transplant Gave Old Mice Their Young Brains Back
Lazy eye treatment only works on brains still able to rewire themselves. So how did a gut microbiome switch that ability back on in animals long past it?
The Colony Didn't Just Feed Its Queen. It Engineered Her.
The colony didn't just feed its future queen. It built her a precision-engineered wax chamber, staffed it, and raised the temperature.
Astronomers May Have Caught a Little Red Dot Being Born
More than 300 mysterious objects have shown up in the universe's first billion years, then disappeared without explanation. One newly spotted example might still be assembling itself.
A 6-Month-Old Neanderthal Already Had the Body of a Toddler
Neanderthal bones grew on one schedule and their teeth on another. Scientists have a guess as to why.
A $20 Fish Tank Helped Grow the First Human Lung Outside a Body
A donor organ, washed of all its cells, reduced to a ghostly scaffold. Then rebuilt from scratch using the patient's own biology.