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For the first time ever, astronomers have found strong evidence of water clouds on a body outside the solar system. New observations of a frigid object called WISE 0855, which lies 7.2 light-years from Earth, suggest that the “failed star” has clouds of water, or water ice, in its atmosphere, the researchers said. “We would expect an object that cold to have water clouds, and this is the best evidence that it does,” study lead author Andrew Skemer, an assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in a statement released by the university....

Joe Biden was on the campaign trail in New Hampshire last year when he made one the flashiest pledges of his presidential run. “And, by the way, no more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period,” he told voters in February before the election. Fulfilling the pledge has been a challenge. A federal judge in Louisiana blocked the administration’s pause on new oil and gas leases on federal land over the summer....

The reconciliation bill working its way through Congress could cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by nearly a gigaton by 2030, according to a new report. The analysis, released today by the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm, offers a first look at how the sprawling suite of climate policies Democrats are considering as part of their $3.5 trillion package could overhaul energy and contribute to President Biden’s Paris Agreement emissions-cutting pledge....

“If we wish to learn more about cancer, we must now concentrate on the cellular genome.” Nobel laureate Renato Dulbecco penned those words more than 20 years ago in one of the earliest public calls for what would become the Human Genome Project. “We are at a turning point,” Dulbecco, a pioneering cancer researcher, declared in 1986 in the journal Science. Discoveries in preceding years had made clear that much of the deranged behavior of cancer cells stemmed from damage to their genes and alterations in their functioning....

As United Nations delegates end their mercury treaty talks today, scientists warn that ongoing emissions are more of a threat to food webs than the mercury already in the environment. At the same time, climate change is likely to alter food webs and patterns of mercury transport in places such as the Arctic, which will further complicate efforts to keep the contaminant out of people and their food. University of Wisconsin researchers recently found that mercury added to a lake reached top predators faster than the mercury that already existed in their environment....

Call it a ‘gut print’. The collective DNA of the microbes that colonize a human body can uniquely identify someone, researchers have found, raising privacy issues. The finding, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on May 11, suggests that it might be possible to identify a participant in an anonymous study of the body’s microbial denizens—its microbiome—and to reveal details about that person’s health, diet or ethnicity. A publicly available trove of microbiome DNA maintained by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), meanwhile, already contains potentially identifiable human DNA, according to a study published in Genome Research on April 29....

In the search for new physics, experiments based on high-energy collisions inside massive atom smashers are coming up empty-handed. So physicists are putting their faith in more-precise methods: less crash-and-grab and more watching-ways-of-wobbling. Next month, researchers in the United States will turn on one such experiment. It will make a super-accurate measurement of the way that muons, heavy cousins of electrons, behave in a magnetic field. And it could provide evidence of the existence of entirely new particles....

LONDON (Reuters) - A new test designed to rapidly diagnose Ebola virus infection is to be tried out at a treatment center for the disease in Guinea, international health charity The Wellcome Trust said on Friday. Researchers developing the 15-minute Ebola test say it is six times faster than similar ones currently in use and, if it proves successful, could help medical staff identify and isolate confirmed Ebola patients faster and start treating them sooner....

The oceans were once a relatively quiet place. Yet in recent decades, anthropogenic ocean noise levels have risen markedly—doubling every decade for the past 50 years, according to research by scientists at Scripps Whale Acoustic Lab. Today, due to the volume of shipping as well as offshore oil and gas drilling and exploration, the din underwater—where sounds can travel long distances—is constant. In fact, some scientists say virtually no marine environment is now without noise pollution....

From Nature magazine South Korea’s government has urged textbook publishers to ignore calls to remove two examples of evolution from high-school textbooks. The move follows a campaign earlier this year by the Society for Textbook Revise (STR), which argued that details about the evolution of the horse and of the avian ancestor Archaeopteryx should be removed from the books (see ‘South Korea surrenders to creationist demands’). The STR, an offshoot of the Korea Association for Creation Research, says that students should learn “various” theories about the development of life on Earth....

Key concepts Food science Chemistry Fat Heat Introduction Have you ever wondered how butter is made? How does that creamy spread come from something as liquid as cow’s milk? Making butter by hand can be hard work, but it can be easily made at home! In this activity you’ll not only get to find out how butter is made, but also how temperature affects the butter-making process. And then you may enjoy the fruits (or rather, toppings) of your labors!...

View slide show Humans have long been inspired by wildlife—consider the cave paintings of woolly mammoths. These rough-hewn sketches, along with fossils, are all that physically remain of mammoths, though they live on in our imagination. Given the twin threats of habitat destruction and global warming, many present-day creatures face a similar fate as these departed animals. Someday, mankind may look back at photographs of wildlife from the early 21st century and wonder about those plants and animals that were lost to human carelessness and climate change....

Successful batters often report that the baseball looked “huge” just before they hit a home run. This effect, dubbed action-specific perception, has been noted for years in all kinds of physical activities. Yet questions remain about why the illusion happens. Some experts say it is a consequence of imagining the action before you make a move. Others suspect that knowing you nailed it might conjure a larger target in your memory....

Physicists sifting through data generated by the Tevatron particle collider in Illinois have uncovered a signal that neither they nor the long-standing Standard Model of particle physics can explain. The international team of researchers work with data from CDF, one of the two Tevatron detectors where protons and their antimatter counterparts collide at nearly light speed. The wreckage of those high-energy collisions produces a variety of short-lived particles, which allows physicists a fleeting glimpse into the inner workings of the physical world....

One minute I was waving hello to the neighbors during a typical Rollerblading session with my dog, and the next I was flying down a newly paved hill at a runaway speed. Aiming for a soft landing, I steered up a driveway toward a lawn. My feet hit the grass, and I flew about 10 feet through the air before landing and rolling on the ground. I had the wind knocked out of me—a truly painful experience I hadn’t had since childhood—but I could tell I hadn’t broken any bones....

Spiders hunt in utter darkness. What they lack in visual acuity, these arachnids make up for with tiny slits in their exoskeletons—cracks that flutter in response to vibrations from their external environments. The spider’s nervous system then filters the most important vibrations from other distracting noises. It is nature’s perfect sensor. Now scientists are taking inspiration from the natural world to make their own artificial version of a spider sensor. In a paper published in the December 11 issue of Nature a team of researchers from South Korea describe their new mechanical sensor....

The idea that people can be subliminally influenced is ancient—historical evidence suggests that in the fifth century B.C., Greek thinkers attempted to employ subtle yet persuasive language to sneakily influence people. In the mid-20th century the idea famously captured popular attention, but science has only recently begun to parse the actual effects of subliminal messages. 1943: Subliminal messages were occasionally embedded in radio, film and television programs. In an animated short featuring Daffy Duck in 1943, for example, the words “BUY BONDS” appear briefly on screen....

The U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been fractious. Many citizens, spurred on by political leaders and even some health providers, have not heeded science-based recommendations from our nation’s infectious-disease experts to wear masks, adhere to physical distancing and shelter in place. Rather than coming together as a nation to slow the spread of SARS-CoV2, far too many Americans in positions of power have chosen to ignore, downplay or politicize these recommendations while supporting dangerous antiscience beliefs and behaviors....

On June 25 the Pentagon and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released their much hyped report on unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP. Space alien enthusiasts and skeptics alike awaited it with bated breath. And while the report did not rule out an extraterrestrial origin for much of the documented UAP, it was short on details or bombshells. But we already know our world is easily detectable by extrasolar observers....

Amgen will charge $6,900 a year for a new drug that can spare migraine sufferers a few headaches each month, a price that comes in well below Wall Street expectations as the company hopes to avoid the payer backlash that has hamstrung recent drug launches. In clinical trials, patients who took Amgen’s drug experienced about two fewer migraines per month compared to those who got placebo. Doctors have described the effect as modest, but the difference was enough to convince the Food and Drug Administration, which approved the treatment Thursday....