The US and Turkey announced a five-day break in fighting in Northern Syria today. Referred to as a “ceasefire” by the US and as a “pause” by Turkey, the agreement is unclear about how it would be implemented in one of the most complex battlefields on Earth. Here’s what you need to know. The significance…

NASA’s stationary InSight lander is slowly but surely getting to know Mars on a deeper level. Since landing on Mars in November 2018, InSight has been taking selfies, providing daily Martian weather reports, detecting quakes on Mars and hearing strange sounds. But its heat probe experiment was struggling to burrow beneath the surface of the…

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been keeping an eye on its namesake planet since 2006. It’s searched for evidence of water, identified intriguing objects on the surface and acted as a communication link for surface missions. It also has been using its fantastic camera, called HiRISE, to capture stunning views of the Red Planet. Some…

Scientists have recorded the speed of the world’s fastest ant, which lives in the Sahara and is able to travel 108 times its own body length per second. Harald Wolf, a professor at the University of Ulm, Germany, and his colleagues found that the Saharan silver ant, Cataglyphis bombycina, can reach speeds of 0.855 meters…

Vladimir Putin is doing so much winning, he must be getting tired of winning — to borrow a phrase from President Donald Trump. Russia’s President has swept into the vacuum left by the US in northeast Syria. In just days, he has presided over a deal between US-allied- Kurds and his own ally Syrian leader…

It seems stashing your leftovers from dinner is hardly a new concept. Humans have been storing food for 200,000 to 400,000 years, new research suggests. A bit like we would store our food in a Tupperware container, early humans stored marrow-rich deer bones for several weeks. Once the bones, skin and tendons had had time…

Astronomers spied three spots around a star that could indicate baby planets are forming and growing there, according to a new study. This is the first time astronomers using the ALMA radio telescope have seen 3D motions of gas in a disk around a star where planets form. The study published Wednesday in the journal…

President Donald Trump’s ears must have been burning as Democrats met in Ohio at the most crowded presidential debate in US history on Tuesday. The 12 candidates at the CNN/New York Times debate conjured up visions of a vastly different America should they evict him from the White House in 2020. They’d reverse Trump’s erratic,…

The crisis in northern Syria is only getting worse. Hundreds of thousands of people are trying to escape the fighting as colder weather sets in. Syria is already facing the largest displacement crisis in the world, according to the United Nations. More than a dozen aid agencies have signed a joint letter to UN Security…

About 3,300 years ago, a terrible battle raged in Germany’s Tollense Valley. The Bronze Age site has been excavated since its discovery in 2008 and every bone and artifact adds to the tragic narrative of what unfolded on the battlefield. To date, more than 12,000 human bones have been found and identified as belonging to…