Beneath the waters off Papua New Guinea lies an extraordinary deep-sea environment where scorching hydrothermal vents and cool methane seeps coexist side by side — a pairing never before seen. This ...

If you enjoyed this article, I’d like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in ...

Our Sun is about five times less magnetically active than other sunlike stars – effectively a special case. The reason for this could reside in the planets in our solar system, say researchers at the ...

The GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences is the national research center for Earth sciences in Germany. Research at the GFZ focuses on the geosphere within the highly complex System Earth with its ...

An intriguing mouth-played instrument emerged—and won—at the 2023 Guthman Musical Instrument Contest hosted by Georgia Tech. [Keith Baxter] took notice and reproduced the idea for others to explore.

The question of what energy source powers the Sun has been around for literally centuries. During the 1800s, some thought that a constant shower of meteors onto the Sun might do the trick. Others ...

In 1862 a mustachioed German physicist, Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz, published an enormous volume on the physics and psychology of musical sound. Its enormous title: Lehre von den ...

Osteoarthritis is the leading cause of disability and chronic pain worldwide, affecting an estimated 595 million people globally. Projections suggest that this number will rise to 1 billion by 2050.

Hand clapping is ubiquitous behavior for humans across time and cultures, serving many different purposes: to signify approval with applause, for instance, or to keep time to music. Acousticians often ...

A round of applause, please: Scientists have finally figured out what’s behind the sound of clapping. The research pinpoints a mechanism called a Helmholtz resonator — the same acoustic concept that ...