Aboriginal DNA points to an earlier human exodus from Africa and other top stories.

• Aboriginal DNA points to an earlier human exodus from Africa

  

  Australian Aboriginal performers participate in a "Corroboree"showcasing traditional dance during National Reconciliation Week on Sydney's Coogee Beach in 2015. (David Gray/Reuters) Humanity was born in Africa. But at some point, many of our ancestors left. The question of when and how they bid farewell to the continent remains a subject of some debate: A mass exodus occurred roughly 60,000 years ago, according to DNA and fossil evidence, but signs point to some back-and-forth migration much..

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• Paris Climate Agreement on the Brink of Full Ratification

  

  This story was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk Collaboration.The Paris climate agreement is on the brink of coming into force after 31 nations officially joined the landmark accord, with the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, predicting it will be fully ratified by the end of the year.On Wednesday, 31 countries formally signed up to the Paris deal at the UN general assembly in New York. They include Brazil, the world’s seventh l..

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• Scientists solve singing fish mystery

  

  Media captionWatch and listen: Scientists bring the singing fish into their lab When California houseboat residents heard their low, submarine hum in the 1980s, they thought it might be coming from noisy sewage pumps, military experiments or even extraterrestrials. But this was the nocturnal hum of the midshipman fish; a courtship call, and the source of a biological secret scientists have now solved. Researchers brought the fish into their lab to work out why they sang at night. The US tea..

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• Scientists finally figured out the source of this bizarre, glowing space 'blob'

  

  This video from the European Southern Observatory zooms in through space to one of the largest known objects in the universe, the Lyman-alpha blob LAB1. (European Southern Observatory) The blob is one of the biggest and most mysterious objects in our universe. Discovered 16 years ago by researchers at Cal Tech's Palomar Observatory, the gargantuan object glows 10 times bigger than the Milky Way. At first, the scientists thought the blob in their data was a fluke. Then they identified mor..

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• Studies on the perils of polyester underwear and the personality of rocks win Ig Nobel Prizes

  

  Not every scientific study can be about weighty topics, like gravity waves or gene editing. Sometimes you can gain a true scientific insight by discovering that mammals of vastly different sizes require roughly the same amount of time to empty their bladders, or by noticing that people who speak 10 disparate languages all came up with a version of the word “huh.” That’s why we celebrate the Ig Nobel Prizes. These awards are bestowed every fall by the editors of the Annals of Improbable Researc..

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• Satellite Radar May Help Predict Human-Caused Earthquakes

  

  Scientists have a new tool that could help them predict earthquakes induced by the effects of pumping wastewater from oil and gas operations deep underground—and it’s in orbit. A team of geophysicists analyzed more than three years of radar data from the Japanese Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) and found they could see the land deform above wastewater disposal wells near Timpson, Texas. Two years later, in 2012, a magnitude 4.8 earthquake rocked the area. ALOS’s interferometric syntheti..

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• Bumblebee skilled at 'buzz pollination' may soon join the endangered species list

  

  A type of bumblebee native to North America may soon be named to the endangered species list. It would be the first bee species to be considered endangered in the United States.The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Thursday formally proposed that the Bombus affinis, or rusty patched bumblebee, be listed as endangered under the guidelines of the Endangered Species Act. "As pollinators, rusty patched bumblebees contribute to our food security and the healthy functioning of our ecosystems," the F..

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