Science

French swimmer Caroline Jouisse has been keeping track of her periods using her phone over the last year, collecting information for her coaches ahead of competing in the Paris Olympics this summer.

The data helps her plan the best time to work on building her muscles, which is ideally in the middle and at the end of her menstrual cycle when her testosterone levels are at their highest.

Thick clouds of dust blown in from the Sahara once again covered Greek skies Monday, especially Athens and Thessalonika, with temperatures rising as high as 31°C (88°F).

The dust storms, which had already affected Greece last week as well as regions such as Switzerland and Southern France, made breathing difficult for many people.

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Warmer temperatures are driving outbreaks of dengue worldwide, with millions of cases already reported in 2024.

Climate change is causing heat waves to slow to a crawl, exposing humans to extreme temperatures for longer than ever before, a study published in Science Advances said Friday.

While previous research has found climate change is causing heat waves to become longer, more frequent and more intense, the new paper differed by treating heat waves as distinct weather patterns that move along air currents, just as storms do.

Being within a narrow path across Mexico, the United States and eastern Canada on April 8 will give a rare chance to see the hottest thing any human ever sees: the corona surrounding the sun.

The word “corona” means “crown” — during the eclipse, it becomes visible, and streaming plasma leaving the sun appears in amazing patterns.

An astronomical telescope designed to complement the aging Hubble Space Telescope lifted off from New Zealand’s south island on April 16 2023. But as a sphere the size of a football stadium rose silently and slowly over the Tauhinukorokio mountains, calls started coming in from residents.

Local police and radio stations, however, had been briefed by Nasa that the giant helium balloon would lift the two-ton SuperBIT telescope to 40km above sea level, over the next three hours. The mission, in which we were involved, was to test whether a balloon-borne telescope could capture deep space images with high enough resolution to study the unknown substance, dubbed dark matter, that is 85% of all material in the universe.

When a rare total solar eclipse sweeps across North America on April 8, scientists will be able to gather invaluable data on everything from the Sun's atmosphere to strange animal behaviors -- and even possible effects on humans.

It comes with the Sun near the peak of its 11-year solar cycle, setting the stage for a breathtaking display: The corona will glow spectacularly from the Moon's silhouette along the path of totality, a corridor stretching from Mexico to Canada via the United States.

NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft, headed to Jupiter’s ice-covered moon Europa in October 2024, will carry a laser-etched message that celebrates humanity’s connection to water. The message pays homage to past NASA missions that carried similar messages.

As the president of Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or METI, International, I helped design the message on Clipper with two fellow members of our board of directors: linguists Sheri Wells-Jensen and Laura Buszard-Welcher. METI International is a scientific organization dedicated to transmitting powerful radio messages to extraterrestrial life.

For decades, the pursuit of quantum computing has struggled with the need for extremely low temperatures, mere fractions of a degree above absolute zero (0 Kelvin or –273.15°C). That’s because the quantum phenomena that grant quantum computers their unique computational abilities can only be harnessed by isolating them from the warmth of the familiar classical world we inhabit.

A single quantum bit or “qubit”, the equivalent of the binary “zero or one” bit at the heart of classical computing, requires a large refrigeration apparatus to function. However, in many areas where we expect quantum computers to deliver breakthroughs – such as in designing new materials or medicines – we will need large numbers of qubits or even whole quantum computers working in parallel.

When Kate Middleton, the princess of Wales, announced in March 2024 that she was receiving “preventive chemotherapy” following abdominal surgery, many wondered what that entails. Formally known as adjuvant therapy, administering chemotherapy or other treatments after surgery is a common approach to treating certain types of cancer and is not necessarily intended to prevent cancer.

Oncologist Alexander Olawaiye of the University of Pittsburgh explains what factors doctors take into account when devising a cancer treatment plan.

Australia's grassland earless dragon is no bigger than a pinkie when it emerges from its shell, but the little lizard faces an enormous challenge in the years ahead: avoiding extinction.

As recently as 2019, scientists in Canberra counted hundreds of grassland earless dragons in the wild. This year, they found 11.