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And then there were two—maybe. Astronomers say they have found a second plausible candidate for a moon beyond our solar system, an exomoon, orbiting a world nearly 6,000 light-years from Earth. Called Kepler-1708 b-i, the moon appears to be a gas-dominated object, slightly smaller than Neptune, orbiting a Jupiter-sized planet around a sunlike star—an unusual but not wholly unprecedented planet-moon configuration. The findings appear in Nature Astronomy. Confirming or refuting the result may not be immediately possible, but given the expected abundance of moons in our galaxy and beyond, it could further herald the tentative beginnings of an exciting new era of extrasolar astronomy—one focused not on alien planets but on the natural satellites that orbit them and the possibilities of life therein....

In 1972, long before conversations about diversity, equity and inclusion became commonplace, the Geological Society of America (GSA) held its first National Conference on Minority Participation in Earth Sciences and Mineral Engineering, where the first formal conversation about the lack of gender, racial and ethnic diversity in geosciences took place. Geoscience was, and continues to be, predominantly white and male: in 2016, 85 percent of geoscience Ph.D.s were awarded to white non-Hispanic candidates, and 55 percent were male....

A handful of iPhone 6 owners were dismayed this past fall to find that their new gadgets bent ever so slightly. Apple responded by stating that the issue was extremely rare and that the products met high endurance standards. Still, some technology companies do want electronics that can bend—on purpose. Materials scientists have been working on components that can flex and roll for years. In a paper published in September in the journal APL Materials, researchers at Seoul National University describe a recent success for displays: flexible LEDs that could help replace shatter-prone screens....

A whopper of an asteroid will make a close approach to Earth on April 19. There’s no need to panic, though; NASA says it won’t collide with our planet. But it will get extremely close for an asteroid of that size. Named 2014 JO25, this giant space rock measures approximately 2,000 feet (650 meters) across—about the height of the Shanghai Tower, China’s tallest building and the second-tallest building in the world....

Earth’s river deltas have long been home to vital ports and wetlands. Despite sea-level rise, these economic and ecological hotspots have expanded on the whole in recent decades, scientists have found—but this trend is unlikely to last. Geoscientist Jaap Nienhuis of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and his colleagues have pinpointed almost 11,000 river deltas in data from satellites and worldwide field studies. Using computer simulations, they estimated how tides, waves and human activity upstream affected each delta’s size and shape from 1985 through 2015....

XILINHOT, China – By many measures, this northern Chinese city is an ideal candidate for being China’s Wyoming. It has more brown coal reserves than any other Chinese region, and it is only 600 kilometers away from power-hungry Beijing. The sparsely populated landscape here provides enough space for new coal mines and downstream businesses. There’s just one problem: The coal industry consumes huge amounts of water, while this land is one of China’s driest....

From Quanta Magazine (find original story here). “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” That witticism—I’ll call it “Einstein Insanity”—is usually attributed to Albert Einstein. Though the Matthew effect may be operating here, it is undeniably the sort of clever, memorable one-liner that Einstein often tossed off. And I’m happy to give him the credit, because doing so takes us in interesting directions. First of all, note that what Einstein describes as insanity is, according to quantum theory, the way the world actually works....

The European Space Agency (ESA) is set to launch a first-of-its-kind exoplanet telescope, which will perform detailed studies of hundreds of known worlds beyond the Solar System. The mission heralds a shift from missions designed to discover such planets—some 4,000 of which have now been found—to those intended to learn about them in detail, say astronomers. Called CHEOPS (Characterising Exoplanet Satellite), the 300-kilogram, €50-million (US$55-million) spacecraft is scheduled for launch on a Soyuz rocket from Europe’s Kourou spaceport in French Guiana on 17 December....

You may like that Google Maps is free, but a French court says it’s actually anticompetitive. A Paris court earlier this week ordered Google France and its parent company Google to pay plaintiff Bottin Cartographes 500,000 euros (about $660,000) for providing its free mapping services to businesses across the country. The court also required Google to pay a 15,000 euro fine for its practice. “We proved the illegality of (Google’s) strategy to remove its competitors,” Jean-David Scemmama, attorney for Bottin Cartographes, a company that provides mapping services to businesses, told the AFP in an interview earlier this week....

When glaciers covered the Sierra Nevada mountains several times over the last million years, rivers flowing down the mountains grew more powerful, cutting channels a mile wide and 100 feet deep into what is now California’s Central Valley. When the glaciers receded, high-velocity meltwater surged down the slopes, carrying with it scoured gravel and rock. As the flow slowed along the valley below, the cobble dropped out of the water column, filling the canyons....

Your mother’s DNA may have determined your eye color, but some traits that you thought came from her may instead have come from the DNA of bacteria she passed on to you soon after birth, a new study finds. The study found that a mother mouse can pass along to her offspring a susceptibility to intestinal disorders, such as inflammatory bowel disease, by way of a gut-residing bacterium called Sutterella, the researchers reported in the journal Nature on Feb....

Do we see the world differently depending on which language we speak? In the 19th century researchers assumed that people were unable to grasp concepts if there were no words in their language to describe them. This idea was largely debunked, however, in the late 20th century, when linguists concluded that it is possible to describe any concept in any language, given enough effort and time. But as Guy Deutscher argues in his new book, our mother tongue may still shape our worldviews, not because of what its speakers are able to express but because of what its speakers are forced to express....

Throughout the COVID pandemic, what has been missing from our medical tool kit is an easy-to-take treatment that keeps people out of the hospital. Yet, within the next few weeks, we will have two new antivirals: Merck’s molnupiravir and Pfizer’s Paxlovid. As part of the unimaginable speed that has characterized the medical countermeasure response to COVID, the advent of two highly effective treatments for COVID is nothing short of game-changing. But given that nearly 30 percent of adults are not fully vaccinated against COVID, it is natural to wonder if having these highly effective oral drugs will diminish the value or role of COVID vaccines in our response....

Scientists in China, the UK and the Netherlands have engineered a polydiacetylene polymer that reversibly changes color within 1 second of being heated or cooled. Thermochromic polymers have a wide range of potential uses, from biological sensors to smart windows. However, the irregular structure and weak molecular interactions in established thermochromic polymers results in long response times, slow reversibility and a narrow working temperature range. Now, a team led by Zhengzhong Shao of Fudan University in China report that introducing peptide side chains into the polymer gives fibres that are strong and exhibit a remarkably rapid color change even at temperatures up to 200 °C....

Editor’s Note: This story is part of an In-Depth Report on the science of beauty. Read more about the series here. Scientists now know that sleep helps to keep hearts healthy and waists trim, but can it also help refresh tired skin? And what about that old ritual of cucumber slices on the eyes: ineffective or innovative? As budgets tighten and cosmetic labels boast increasingly complex chemicals, more consumers are looking to remedies that are more affordable and natural....

A near-vertical wall of water in what had been an otherwise placid sea shocked all on board the ocean liner Teutonic—including the crew—on that Sunday in February, more than a century ago. “It was about 9 o’clock, and [First Officer Bartlett], as he walked the bridge, had not the slightest premonition of the impending danger. The wave came over the bow from nobody seems to know where, and broke in all its fury,” reported The New York Times on March 1, 1901: “Many of the passengers were inclined to believe that the wave was the result of volcanic phenomena, or a tidal wave....

In the story of America’s opioid crisis a recent tripling in prescriptions of the painkillers is generally portrayed as the villain. Researchers and policy makers have paid far less attention to how social losses—including stagnating wages and fraying ties among people—can increase physical and emotional pain to help drive the current drug epidemic. But a growing body of work suggests this area needs to be explored more deeply if communities want to address the opioid problem....

By Melissa Gaskill of Nature magazineThe 1,000 kilometers of impenetrable barrier constructed along the Mexico-United States border, with the aim of stemming illegal human immigration, is also hampering the movements of animals, including several endangered species, a recent study finds.The species most at risk are those with smaller populations and specialized habitats, says Jesse Lasky, a graduate student at the University of Texas, Austin, and an author on the study, published in Diversity and Distributions....

The Oort cloud, postulated in 1950 by the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, defines the periphery of the solar system—extending out beyond 100,000 times the Earth-sun separation. It contains billions of icy rocks larger than Manhattan Island, as bricks left over from the construction process of the solar system’s planets. The Oort objects on orbits that come close to the sun appear as long-period comets when their ice evaporates by heating from sunlight....

Scientific American presents Everyday Einstein by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. If you were to take apart pretty much any electronic device in your home, mixed in with the various bits and bobs of circuitry you would find that one device appears over and over again. Capacitors come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but they all have the same job: to store up electricity....