SALT LAKE CITY— A literal moonshot just might reveal the thickness of Europa’s icy crust. A new plan to launch an SUV-sized rocket canister at Jupiter’s famous, frigid moon could shake the surface so much that the tremors would be visible from space, said mechanical engineer T.J. Campbell of the Catholic University of America in […]

In April, headlines proclaimed that the tiger population was finally showing signs of recovery; a new report from the World Wildlife Fund had found that numbers of the cats had grown from 3,200 in 2010 to 3,890 in the organization’s recent census. After a century of tiger numbers dropping due to poaching and habitat loss, […]

SALT LAKE CITY — In the Indian Ocean off the coast of Sri Lanka, pygmy blue whales are changing their tune — and they might be doing it on purpose. From 2002 to 2012, the frequency of one part of the whales’ calls steadily fell, marine bioacoustician Jennifer Miksis-Olds reported May 25 at a meeting […]

Gut microbes cause obesity by sending messages via the vagus nerve to pack on pounds, new research in rodents suggests. Bacteria in the intestines produce a molecule called acetate, which works through the brain and nervous system to make rats and mice fat, researchers report in the June 9 Nature. If the results hold up […]