Hungry Fruit Flies Are Extreme Ultramarathon Fliers – Can Travel Six Million Times Their Body Length
In search of food, a fly can travel six million times its body length. In 2005, an ultramarathon runner ran continuously 560 kilometers (350 miles)…
California Institute of Technology
A Software Swiss Army Knife for Genomic Data
A good way to find out what a cell is doing—whether it is growing out of control as in cancers, or is under the control…
Seeing Quadruple: Artificial Intelligence Leads to Discovery That Can Help Solve Cosmological Puzzles
Machine-Learning Methods Lead to Discovery of Rare “Quadruply Imaged Quasars” That Can Help Solve Cosmological Puzzles With the help of machine-learning techniques, a team of…
Radioactive Molecules May Help Solve Cosmic Mystery of Missing Antimatter
Stars, galaxies, and everything in the universe, including our own bodies, are comprised of so-called regular matter. Regular matter includes atoms and molecules, which are…
Encased in an Icy Shell, the Ocean on Saturn’s Moon Enceladus Appears to Be Churning
Buried beneath 20 kilometers of ice, the subsurface ocean of Enceladus—one of Saturn’s moons—appears to be churning with currents akin to those on Earth. The…
Reading Minds With Ultrasound: Caltech’s New Brain–Machine Interface
A Less-Invasive Technique to Decode the Brain’s Intentions What is happening in your brain as you are scrolling through this page? In other words, which…
Up to 99% of Mars’ Water May Still Be Trapped in Planet’s Crust – Not Lost to Space As Long Theorized
New data challenges the long-held theory that all of Mars’ water escaped into space. Billions of years ago, the Red Planet was far more blue;…
“Friends and Strangers” Theorem – Math Professor Makes Breakthrough in Ramsey Numbers
How many people would you need at a party to guarantee that at least three individuals know each other, or that at least three do…
Using Underwater Telecommunication Cables to Detect Earthquakes
Seismologists at Caltech working with optics experts at Google have developed a method to use existing underwater telecommunication cables to detect earthquakes. The technique could…
Engineers Place Thousands of Nanoscale Molecular Devices in Precise Orientation
Proof-of-concept project paves the way for the integration of molecules with computer chips. Engineers have developed a technique that allows them to precisely place microscopic…
Neuroscientists Find Thin Line Between Love and Hate in the Mouse Brain
Mounting behavior, that awkward thrusting motion dogs sometimes do against your leg, is usually associated with sexual arousal in animals, but this is not always…
Studying Chaos Phenomena With One of the World’s Fastest Cameras
There are things in life that can be predicted reasonably well. The tides rise and fall. The moon waxes and wanes. A billiard ball bounces…
A Tale of Planetary Resurrection in a Triple-Star System With a Skewed Configuration
Years after its detection, astronomers have learned that a planet called KOI-5Ab orbits in a triple-star system with a skewed configuration. Shortly after NASA’s Kepler…
New COVID-19 Vaccine: Nanoparticle Immunization Technology Could Protect Against Many Strains of Coronaviruses
Method presents the immune system with several different coronaviruses at once. The SARS-CoV-2 virus that is causing the COVID-19 pandemic is just one of many…
Newton’s Principia: A Story of Lost and Stolen Books and Scrupulous Detective Work Across Continents
Hundreds of Copies of Newton’s Principia Found in New Census In a story of lost and stolen books and scrupulous detective work across continents, a…
Caltech’s AI-Driven COVID-19 Model Dramatically Outperforms Other Models
Researchers hope the model can inform public health decision-making amid the pandemic. A new model for predicting COVID-19’s impact using artificial intelligence (AI) dramatically outperforms…
Neuroscientists Discover How Aggression Leads to More Aggression
Like a champion fighter gaining confidence after each win, a male mouse that prevails in several successive aggressive encounters against other male mice will become…
Andrea Ghez Awarded 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for Supermassive Black Hole Discovery
Andrea Ghez (Caltech MS ’89, PhD ’92), the Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics at UCLA, has won the 2020 Nobel…