discoveries

Read the latest news stories about recent scientific discoveries on Newser.com

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20-Foot Tapeworm Found Living Inside Man
 20-Foot Tapeworm 
 Found Living Inside 
 Raw-Beef-Loving Man 
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Jan 24, 2016 8:01 AM CST

20-Foot Tapeworm Found Living Inside Raw-Beef-Loving Man

He lost up to 22 pounds in three days

(Newser) - Squeamish readers be warned: The South China Morning Post reports a Chinese man was recently found to have a 20-foot tapeworm living inside his intestines. According to Live Science , the 38-year-old man went to the doctor last spring after losing up to 22 pounds over the course of three days....

By 2050, Our Oceans Will Hold More Plastic Than Fish

Plastic production set to double in next 20 years

(Newser) - Use of plastic has increased 20-fold in the past half-century; production of the ubiquitous material is expected to double again in the next 20 years (and nearly quadruple over the next 50). And, CNN Money reports, nearly a third of all plastic packaging "escapes collection systems." As for...

Study Floats New Theory on Why We Can't Find Aliens

Quick evolution may be the key to cosmic survival

(Newser) - Two astrobiologists have a new explanation for why we haven't found alien life: It didn't evolve quickly enough to keep its planet habitable. "Most early planetary environments are unstable," Aditya Chopra says in a press release . "To produce a habitable planet, life forms need to...

Distracted at Work? You Might Be a Genius
 Distracted at Work? 
 You Might Be a Genius 
study says
Jan 23, 2016 11:41 AM CST

Distracted at Work? You Might Be a Genius

All those great ideas are clogging your brain, study suggests

(Newser) - The modern world is rife with distractions, but new research suggests those who find it most difficult to focus tend to be the most intelligent. "The difficulty to withstand multiple tasks and distractions in the office affects smart people in the same way as everyone else, if not more,...

Big News for the 'Oldest Monument Known to Mankind'

Göbekli Tepe in Turkey is the oldest monument ever found

(Newser) - US archaeologists surveying the site of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey's southeastern Anatolia region in the 1960s deemed it unremarkable. Three decades later, the late German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt opted to investigate anyway. What he found beneath the earth was astounding: towering T-shape and spiked limestone pillars with animals...

Celestial Surprise: 5 Most Incredible Discoveries of the Week

Including cocaine-crazed brain cells and a potential 9th planet

(Newser) - A big astronomical claim and a century-old U-boat were among the discoveries making headlines:
  • There May Be a 9th Planet Past Pluto : Pluto remains a lowly dwarf planet, but there's another icy orb even further out in our solar system that may be deemed a planet instead. The so-called
...

Zika Virus Now Linked to Paralysis, Too

Cases of Guillain-Barré have spiked in countries hit with Zika

(Newser) - There's more bad news regarding the Zika virus wreaking havoc in South America and the Caribbean: The mosquito-borne virus—which can cause birth defects and has been linked to 46 infant deaths—may also cause Guillain-Barré syndrome, a potentially life-threatening condition that can cause weeks-long paralysis, reports the New ...

Woody Guthrie Hated 'Old Man Trump'

When Donald was a toddler, Fred was folk singer's landlord

(Newser) - Trump was a name that Woody Guthrie knew and despised when Donald Trump was a 4-year-old, professor Will Kaufman discovered to his surprise on a trip to the Guthrie archives in Tulsa, Okla. Trump's father, real estate developer Fred Trump, became the folk singer's landlord in 1950 when...

Study on Fairy Tales Proves Brothers Grimm Right

They're much older than thought

(Newser) - Many traditional fairy tales, long thought to be a somewhat recent invention, have actually been around for thousands of years, according to a new study . "Versions of Beauty and the Beast, Rumplestiltskin, and Jack and the Beanstalk have probably been around since before the existence of many modern European...

This May Be First Evidence of Hunter-Gatherer War
This May Be First Evidence
of Hunter-Gatherer War
NEW STUDY
Jan 21, 2016 12:49 PM CST

This May Be First Evidence of Hunter-Gatherer War

27 people killed in 10,000-year-old massacre in what is now Kenya

(Newser) - Scientists working on the shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya have uncovered a grisly scene : the bodies of 27 people, killed around 8,000BC. Experts say the spot, called Nataruk, may be the first to reveal evidence of a massacre—or perhaps even war—between two nomadic hunter-gatherer groups, one...

Centenarians Not So Rare Anymore

Numbers spiked 44% from 2008 to 2014: CDC report

(Newser) - This should boost your hope for a long life, especially if you're a woman: The number of Americans living past 100 has spiked by 44% over the past six years. Centenarian numbers have risen from 15,000 in 1980 and 50,281 in 2000 to 72,197 in 2014,...

150 Friends on Facebook? You&#39;re Close to Only 4
150 Friends on Facebook? You're Close to Only 4
NEW STUDY
Jan 21, 2016 7:21 AM CST

150 Friends on Facebook? You're Close to Only 4

No, social media isn't helping you grow the number of your friends

(Newser) - Social media may make managing friendships logistically easier, but perhaps unsurprisingly, Facebook and the like aren't actually helping you grow your circle of true friends. So reports evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar this month in the journal Royal Society Open Science, after analyzing research conducted in April and May of...

Using Chemo to Treat MS Shows 'Remarkable' Promise

It's part of treatment that essentially resets a person's immune system

(Newser) - Chemotherapy is well-known as a cancer treatment, but it could also be a big part of the cure for many with multiple sclerosis, the Guardian reports. Over the past few years, about 20 MS patients in the US, England, Brazil, and Sweden have been given a new treatment—known as...

Scientists: There May Be a Giant 9th Planet Past Pluto

Sorry, Pluto—'Planet 9' may be more of a 'massive perturber' than you

(Newser) - Pluto is gonna be PO'd. While the dwarf planet tries to fight its way back into the good graces of Those Who Deem What Counts as a Planet, another icy orb even further out may snatch that designation first. Astronomers at the California Institute of Technology say a giant...

Here Are the 10 'Best Countries'

Germany, Canada, UK make the top three; US is fourth

(Newser) - US News ranks everything from hospitals to diets —and now also countries. In a first, the publication has come out with a list of the best 10 countries in the world, based on the perceptions of more than 16,000 people, who were asked to score countries on...

Behold the Biggest Prime Number Ever—All 22M Digits

It was discovered on a computer that went in for routine maintenance

(Newser) - The longest prime number ever found has been discovered by a computer in Missouri, and it's a doozy: 274,207,281–1 has 22,338,618 digits, the Guardian reports. The number also known as M74207281 was found by a computer tied to the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search...

Poll: 10% of Grads Think Judge Judy Is on SCOTUS

Standards are obviously slipping, education group says

(Newser) - A ridiculous proportion of American college graduates believe that daytime TV's Judge Judy is actually Justice Judy of the US Supreme Court, according to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni . The nonprofit group, which pushes for high standards in education, says a poll of 1,000 grads found...

Study: Overfishing Is Worse Than We Knew

 Overfishing 
 Is Worse Than 
 We Knew 
study says
Jan 19, 2016 6:40 PM CST

Overfishing Is Worse Than We Knew

'The world is withdrawing from a joint bank account of fish'

(Newser) - Global overfishing might be much worse than previously thought, Discovery reports. A new study finds that UN figures have vastly understated the problem and that yearly fish hauls are declining three times faster than realized. According to the study, the UN—using numbers from the Food and Agriculture Organization—stated...

Study: Pot Doesn't Make Teens Stupid

Study of twins refutes conventional wisdom

(Newser) - Smoking dope doesn't actually make you a dope. That's the takeaway from a new study on hundreds of pairs of twins—one of whom smoked pot as an adolescent and continued for over 10 years while the other abstained. Though a 2012 study linked marijuana use with a...

10 Most Popular Leaders, According to Facebook

President Obama is the easy winner, but Queen Rania is in the top 10

(Newser) - Well, it's one way to measure world leaders: The PR firm Burson-Marsteller has taken a look at the Facebook pages of global bigwigs and provided a ranking based on their number of likes. Personal pages are counted separately from institutional pages, which is why President Obama's page and...

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