The Most Interesting Science News Articles

Jail to an Infamous Figure

The bloodthirsty Vlad the Impaler may have been imprisoned in this Transylvanian castle. Original Image

Credit: Shutterstock

A historic Transylvanian castle that may have once imprisoned Vlad the Impaler — likely inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula — still stands today. But what lies beneath it? [Read more about the castle]

Recording Meteoric Impact

Since there aren't any images of the Greenland fireball, here's an illustration of a space rock burning up as it enters Earth's atmosphere. Original Image

Credit: Vadim Sadovski/Shutterstock

When a blazing fireball from space exploded over Earth on July 25, scientists captured the first-ever seismic recordings of a meteor impact on ice in Greenland.

Seismographic equipment, which had been installed near Qaanaaq just a few months earlier to monitor how ground shaking affected the ice, also recorded the fiery meteor blast. The Qaanaaq fireball provided scientists with the first evidence of how an icy environment — and, possibly, a distant ice-covered world — could respond to a meteor impact. [Read more about the fireball.]

Expanding our Knowledge

In a recent study, scientists compared the skull of Little Foot (shown here) with that of other hominins. Original Image

Credit: Photo courtesy of the University of the Witwatersrand

Following an epic 20-year-long excavation in South Africa, researchers have finally recovered and cleaned the nearly complete skeleton of an ancient human relative: an approximately 3.67-million-year-old hominin nicknamed Little Foot. [Read more about our cousin.]

Secrets and Science

In the 1940s, Navy scientists were forbidden from sharing key oceanographic data, such as bathymetric measurements, with scientists who lacked a security clearance. Here, the bathymetry of Mona Passage from the U.S. Geological Survey. Original Image

Credit: USGS

Military secrecy in the U.S. Navy after the end of World War II severely limited scientists' access to data about the ocean floor and subsequently delayed the development of an important scientific theory — plate tectonics — according to research presented Dec. 11 here at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting. [Read more about the progress.]

An Extinction Event?

What caused the Pliocene marine megafauna extinction that wiped out a third of large sea creatures roughly 2.6 million years ago? One possibility is a supernova that rained radioactive particles on Earth, a new paper suggests. Original Image

Credit: Shutterstock

For tens of millions of years, Earth's oceans were crowded with 5,000-lb. (2,200 kilograms) turtles, whale-size sea cows and sharks as large as school buses. Then, about 2.6 million years ago, they started dying in droves. [Read more about the explosion.]

A Surprise Find

This aerial image taken from a quadcopter reveals an Adélie penguin breeding colony on Heroina Island, Danger Islands, Antarctica. Original Image

Credit: Thomas Sayre McChord, Hanumant Singh, Northeastern University, © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

This year, scientists announced an incredible discovery by looking at poop stains in satellite images — 1.5 million Adélie penguins were living and thriving on a little patch in Antarctica surrounded by treacherous sea ice called the Danger Islands. [Read more about the group.]

Answer a Century-Old Question

Sonar scans revealed a detailed view of the USS San Diego, including the hull where the explosion occurred at 11:23 a.m. on July 19, 1918. Original Image

Credit: Arthur Trembanis and Alexis Catsambis

The only major U.S. warship lost in World War I was brought down by a German mine, new research confirms. [Read more about the ship.]

Known by Our Trash

Are chickens taking over the world? Original Image

Credit: Shutterstock

Long-lost cultures are sometimes known by the goods they leave behind. The Neolithic Corded Ware people of Europe, for example, got their name from the distinctive decorated pottery they made. If today's humans ever get a similar moniker, we might be known as the Chicken People. [Read more about the nickname.]

A New Phase of Exploration

This NASA graphic shows the locations of NASA's Voyager spacecraft in interstellar space. NASA announced the arrival of Voyager 2 in interstellar space on Dec. 10, 2018. Voyager 1 reached the milestone in 2012. Original Image

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

It's time to say goodbye to one of the most storied explorers of our age: Voyager 2 has entered interstellar space, NASA announced Dec. 10.

Scientists have been watching for Voyager 2's grand departure since late August, when data beamed back by the probe suggested it was nearing what scientists call the heliopause, a bubble created by the solar wind of charged particles flowing out from our sun and influencing the environment within our solar system. [Read more about the ring.]

Secrets of the Deep

A nematode (eukaryote) in a biofilm of microorganisms. This deep-dwelling creature (Poikilolaimus sp.) was discovered in the Kopanang gold mine in South Africa, and was found 0.86 miles (1.4 km) below the surface. Original Image

Credit: Gaetan Borgonie (Extreme Life Isyensya, Belgium)

Life on Earth takes billions of shapes, but to see most of them you'll have to dig deep below the planet's surface.

Indeed, studying Earth's deep microbial life has already pushed the understanding of the conditions under which life can thrive. Researchers have drilled miles into the seafloor and sampled the microbiomes from mines and boreholes at hundreds of sites around the world. [Read more about the undiscovered.]