Bees, chimps, clownfish and hyenas all live in groups with a leader or dominant individual. So do many other animals. How does power shift from one animal to another? The transfer of power is sometimes not that simple. As the United States inaugurates a new president on Wednesday, here’s a look at the different ways…

Bioluminescent insects have long fascinated scientists, but little is known about how these animals got their light abilities. A 99-million-year-old beetle recently discovered by researchers, however, unlocks a piece of the evolutionary puzzle, according to a study published in The Royal Society journal. The beetle, known by its Latin name Cretophengodes, was found fossilized in…

The recent attack on the US Capitol served as a sobering wake-up call: Not only have the Trump years left America deeply divided, they’ve also transformed it into a theater of political violence. President Donald Trump’s impact on the world at large has been much the same. As he hands power to Joe Biden on…

Mars is about to be a very busy place when three separate missions arrive at the red planet in February. One of those missions includes NASA’s Perseverance rover. When it lands, we’ll be able to hear the sounds of Mars for the first time, thanks to microphones riding on the rover. A new interactive experience…

Our Milky Way galaxy is filled with streams of stars, but one of them appears to be a family that includes nearly 500 relatives, according to a new study. Astronomers have discovered 8,292 stellar streams in our galaxy. Rather than clusters of stars, streams form linear patterns. Each stream is named Theia for the Greek…

Children across the globe have seen their schools closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. According to the World Bank, 1.6 billion students were out of school during the first peak of the pandemic in April 2020, and almost 700 million remained out as 2020 drew to a close. It may take years for the full…

The most distant quasar and the earliest known supermassive black hole have been discovered, shedding light on how massive galaxies formed in the early universe. This discovery was revealed Tuesday at the 237th meeting of The American Astronomical Society, happening virtually due to the pandemic. The study has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical…

A SpaceX Dragon capsule started its journey back to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS) Tuesday with an unusual cargo: 12 bottles of wine and 320 grapevines. They were taken into space in November 2019 and March 2020, respectively, as part of an experiment organized by European startup Space Cargo Unlimited (SCU), it said…