Scientific Inquirer

Switzerland had not reached a World Cup quarterfinal since 1954. On July 7, in Vancouver, they got there the hard way: 120 scoreless minutes against Colombia, then a shootout in which Davinson Sánchez rattled the crossbar, goalkeeper Gregor Kobel parried a low effort from Cucho Hernández, and substitute Rubén Vargas calmly rolled home the winner. Switzerland won 4-3 on penalt...

Stars like our Sun are formed from the collapse of stellar objects called prestellar cores, cold and dense concentrations of gas and dust held together by gravity. While many questions remain on the exact mechanisms of star formation, thanks to advanced radio telescopes, researchers have been able to garner new insights into the inner workings of infant stars.

Now, ...

A smartwatch can tell us the level of oxygen in our blood, when our sleep is restless, or the number of steps we take in a day. Now imagine that kind of tracking ability for plants.

By the time farmers see curling leaves or stunted growth in their fields, their crops may already have spent days under stress. A new innovation in plant “wearable” sensors aims to catch...

Loons, gulls, puffins, and petrels are some of the 100 species of birds that can both fly and swim. These diving birds can plunge in water to swim after prey, and leap back into the air to fly away.

Inspired by these naturally aquatic aviators, engineers at MIT and EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, have designed a robot that can swim underwater, then flap out of the w...

Walk any beach today and the shells in the sand almost all belong to the same handful of groups: clams, snails, the occasional sea urchin spine. Go back 252 million years, and the seafloor would have looked almost unrecognizable, carpeted instead with brachiopods and crinoids, or “sea lilies,” anchored in place and filtering the water for food. Then, in a geological instant, ...