Science News

The small earthquakes that periodically rattle the central U.S. may be aftershocks from a giant seismic event that hit the region two centuries ago, says a new study. The New Madrid Earthquakes, which convulsed the area for nearly three months starting in December 1811, were powerful enough to make the Mississippi River run backward.

The idea of a space elevator -- once popularized by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke -- might be moving one step closer to reality as three teams test out the concept in a NASA-funded contest out in the Mojave Desert.

Great white sharks tend to stick to their own neighborhood while hunting for food, a new study finds. While the creatures can travel thousands of miles, they often patrol very specific routes, and return to their familiar haunts. "They're not swimming around aimlessly," says one scholar. "They are very selective predators."

Legendary French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, who reshaped the intellectual consensus about primitive societies, dies at 100. Strauss was considered the father of modern anthropology and structuralist thought. His works include "The Raw and the Cooked" and "The Savage Mind."