Your eyes may be more sensitive than you ever thought possible. Researchers reported that our warm, wet, multicellular eyes have evolved such a high level of sensitivity that they can, on occasion, detect a single photon aimed at the retina. Even the most sophisticated man-made devices require a cool, temperature-controlled environment to achieve the same feat. A single photon is the smallest particle that light is made of. Alipasha Vaziri, a quantum physicist at Rockefeller University, said, "It's more a feeling of seeing something rather than really seeing it." He described it as being "at the threshold of imagination."

Desert ants switch gaits for heavy hauls

Sahara desert ants move fast across the broiling desert sands in what is called a tripod gait: The hind and rear legs on one side move in concert with the middle leg on the other. But researchers in Germany wanted to find out how the ants moved when confronted with a carcass — or, in the laboratory, a crumb — too big to carry. As it turns out, the ants change their gait, moving one leg at a time rather than three and not in any predictable pattern, as they drag the prize home.

Continents split at two distinct speeds

Moving just millimeters at a time, the ancient supercontinent Pangea took hundreds of millions of years to break apart into today's landmasses. But the journey wasn't always a leisurely drive. After analyzing seismic data, researchers in Australia and Germany discovered that tectonic plates moved in two distinct phases. During the slow phase, the continental crusts, which can be more than 20 miles thick, are stretched out little by little. But then suddenly, one or both of the continents accelerated to speeds 20 times faster than before. The increase is a result of the thinning of the crust, the scientists concluded.

Mysterious lake dons leopard print

Every summer, as the sun beats down on the dry Okanagan and Similkameen Valleys in British Columbia, anyone passing by can witness a lake that appears to don a seasonal leopard print — made not minerals, which materialize in colorful spotted pools. The kidney-shaped lake is known to Canada's Okanagan First Nations people as Kliluk. More recent arrivals call it Spotted Lake or Polkadot Lake. Little life survives in the supersalty water, which is partly why it has been described as a terrestrial analog to ancient Martian lakes. But in some pools, a salt-loving alga somehow thrives, said Kevin Cannon, a doctoral student at Brown University: "There's still life there."

Tug of sun, moon can trigger earthquakes

The gravitational tug between the sun and moon is not just a dance of high and low tides: It can also trigger a special kind of earthquake on the San Andreas Fault. Like sea levels, the surface of the Earth also goes up and down with the tides, flexing the crust and stressing the faults inside. Study found that during certain phases of the tidal cycle, small tremors deep underground were more likely to occur.

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