Science

BLACKSBURG, Virgina – Researchers at Virginia Tech say man’s best friend may also be one of nature’s best defenses against an invasive pest. For the first time, a study shows that pet dogs could help stop the rapid spread of the spotted lanternfly.Spotted lanternflies feed on different plants and excrete a sugary substance called honeydew, which promotes mold growth. They are considered so destructive that some states have launched campaigns urging residents to stomp them on sight. Experts say the real solution is to wipe out their egg masses, but those can be hard to find because they often resemble dried mud and can blend in with their surroundings. That's where the dogs can come in to help with their strong sense of smell. "Dogs have one dominant sense. It's their nose. We use our e...

Gabbard on aliens: "continuing to look for the truth" Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard plays coy about government knowledge of UFO, but says she will continue to "look for the truth" in an interview with the New York Post's Miranda Devine on Aug. 6, 2025. Astronomers recently discovered a rare interstellar object passing through our solar system, and a Harvard physicist is sounding the alarm that its strange characteristics might indicate it’s more than just a typical comet."Maybe the trajectory was designed," Dr. Avi Loeb, science professor at Harvard University, told Fox News Digital. "If it had an objective to sort of to be on a reconnaissance mission, to either send mini probes to those planets or monitor them… It seems quite anomalous."The object — dubbed 3I/ATLA...

Four crew members who flew to the International Space Station (ISS) earlier this year to relieve two astronauts who were left stranded by a beleaguered space capsule returned to Earth on Saturday. NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, along with Japan’s Takuya Onishi and Russia’s Kirill Peskov, splashed down in the Pacific off the coast of Southern California on Saturday morning at 11:33 a.m. ET in a SpaceX capsule. It was the first Pacific splashdown for NASA in 50 years, and the third for SpaceX with people on board. NASA astronauts last splashed down in the Pacific in 1975, during the Apollo-Soyuz mission, the first crewed international space mission that involved Americans and Soviets. BUZZ ALDRIN COMMEMORATES APOLLO 11 MOON LANDING MILESTONE ON 56TH ANNIVERSARY WITH HEAR...

Scientists say a species of bacteria rewrites the history of when an infectious and potentially deadly disease first arrived in the Americas. And it was long before the arrival of European explorers.Researchers from the Institut Pasteur in Paris, France, with help from a U.S. university, recently announced in a news release that a second species of bacteria is also responsible for the disease known as leprosy, or Hansen's disease, in the Americas. In years past, many believed that the bacterium known as Mycobacterium leprae caused leprosy and that it was only spread in America by early European explorers and settlers.However, the revelation of a second bacterium puts that theory of blaming the settlers on its head, as an existing strain was already on the continents calling the New Wor...

Scientists say that they have formulated a way to help people in stressful and demanding work environments track their brainwaves and brain usage — an electronic tattoo device, or "e-tattoo," on the person's face.In a study posted in the science journal Device, the team of researchers wrote that they found e-tattoos to be a more cost-effective and simpler way to track one’s mental workload.Dr. Nanshu Lu, the senior author of the research from the University of Texas at Austin, wrote that mental workload is a critical factor in human-in-the-loop systems, directly influencing cognitive performance and decision-making.Lu told Fox News Digital in an email that this device was motivated by high-demand, high-stake jobs such as pilots, air traffic controllers, doctors and emergency dispatcher...

A team of scientists at the Institute for Advanced Study School of Natural Sciences in Princeton, New Jersey, might have found a new dwarf planet, potentially leading to more evidence of a theoretical super-planet.The scientists announced in a news release that they have found a trans-Neptune Object(TNO), code-named 2017OF201, located past the icy and desolate region of the Kuplier Belt.The TNO, which are described as minor planets that orbit the sun at a greater distance than Neptune, were found on the edge of our solar system.While there are plenty of other TNOs in the solar system, what makes 2017OF201 special is its large size and extreme orbit.NASA LOOKING FOR WAYS TO DESTROY ASTEROID THAT COULD STRIKE EARTH, KILL CITY A team of scientists at the Institute for Advanced Study’s Sc...

Oceans around the globe have become darker over the last two decades, leaving researchers fearful for their marine inhabitants, according to a new study.Professor Thomas Davies of the University of Plymouth said in a study published in the Global Change Biology journal there is growing concern for the marine ecosystem.Satellite data from NASA's Ocean Color Web data portal showed 21% of the planet’s oceans had darkened between 2003 and 2022.According to Davies, the majority of marine life lives in the photic zones of the ocean, which is where sufficient light penetrates to stimulate photobiological processes.RARE COLOSSAL BABY SEA CREATURE CAUGHT ON CAMERA FOR THE FIRST TIME Oceans around the world have grown darker over the last two decades, leaving researchers fearful about marine in...

An underwater volcano off the Oregon coast could erupt late this year, scientists say. The volcano, known as Axial Seamount, is more than 4,900 feet beneath the Pacific Ocean and 300 miles off the Oregon coast, but it is showing signs it will soon erupt for the first time since 2015.The volcano is formed by a hot spot, an area in the Earth’s mantle where hot plumes of molten material rise upward into the crust, the University of Washington's College of the Environment said in an April blog post. As the crust moves over the top of the mantle, the hot spot stays put, which results in long chains of volcanoes over time.VIDEO: CHAOS IN BANGKOK AS APARTMENT BUILDING COLLAPSES, SENDING PEOPLE RUNNING  The Regional Cabled Array spans the entire Juan de Fuca tectonic plate, from the Oregon co...

A Soviet-era spacecraft plunged to Earth on Saturday, more than a half-century after its failed launch to Venus.The European Union Space Surveillance and Tracking confirmed its uncontrolled reentry, based on analysis and no-shows of the spacecraft on subsequent orbits. The European Space Agency’s space debris office also indicated that the spacecraft had reentered after it failed to appear over a German radar station.It was not immediately known where the spacecraft came in or how much, if any, of the half-ton spacecraft survived the fiery descent from orbit. Experts said ahead of time that some if not all of it might come crashing down, given it was built to withstand a landing on Venus, the solar system’s hottest planet. This photo provided by researcher Jane Greaves shows the plane...

Cracking the dolphin code.Dolphins are one of the smartest animals on Earth and have been revered for thousands of years for their intelligence, emotions and social interaction with humans.Now Google is using artificial intelligence (AI) to try and understand how they communicate with one another – with the hope that one day humans could use the technology to chat with the friendly finned mammals.Google has teamed up with researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology and the Wild Dolphin Project (WDP), a Florida-based non-profit which has been studying and recording dolphin sounds for 40 years, to build the new AI model called DolphinGemma. Google is using artificial intelligence (AI) to try and understand how dolphins communicate with one another – with the hope that one day humans ...