For the first time, scientists have successfully demonstrated a ‘gene drive’ in mammals, using genome editing techniques to affect the way genetic traits are inherited in a population of mice. Gene drives have been developed before in previous animal experiments, but so far their use has only been demonstrated on insects. By showing the
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The idea came to him in a dream, he later claimed, a vision delivered by supernatural forces. It was 1941, and Rudolf Hess – the Deputy Führer and second-in-line to Hitler himself – embarked upon a perilous solo flight to Britain in a wild bid to broker peace with Germany’s bitter enemy. Or did he?
On the Draupner oil platform off the coast of Norway, workers would expect big waves to shake things up from time to time. But at 3 pm on New Year’s Day in 1995, a monster struck. It made history. Topping out at nearly 26 metres (about 84 feet), it was the kind of wave you
A ‘super blood Moon’ eclipse might sound cool enough, but the total lunar eclipse of January 2019 has now gone down in history. For the first time, astronomers and eclipse-watchers around the globe caught sight of a piece of space debris – most likely a meteoroid – slamming into the surface of the Moon as it passed
With another year on the horizon, millions of people on social media are partaking in a viral new craze. It’s called the #10YearChallenge, and the dare is simple: share two photos of yourself taken a decade apart and laugh at the contrast. It was all fun and games – until we involved the environment.
Archaeologists investigating a stone circle thought to be thousands of years old in Aberdeenshire, Scotland have been a wee bit chagrined by an unexpected revelation. After reports of the circle’s discovery hit the news, a farmer revealed he actually built the monument just decades ago. The “recumbent stone circle” found on the farm in
In the water, it’s getting harder to breathe. Suffocating dead zones with little or no oxygen are pervading the world’s oceans, rivers, and streams. This phenomenon – which has exploded in recent decades – poses an extinction-level nightmare for marine populations already beset by a complex interaction of human-made menace. When it comes to
Scientists may have just taken a step towards experimentally proving the existence of Hawking radiation. Using an optical fibre analogue of an event horizon – a lab-created model of black hole physics – researchers from Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel report that they have created stimulated Hawking radiation. Under general relativity, a
If you look back far enough into Earth’s hazy, long-forgotten prehistory, things get weird. Like the battered face of the Moon, our own planet is covered in craters: a scarred legacy of millions of years of brutal, unforgiving asteroid impacts. What’s weird, though, is once you look back about 300 million years, the evidence of
Dogs may have stolen the Internet from cats, but cat memes endure – and many center on one theme: Cats are aloof jerks. The primary ambassador of this notion, naturally, is Grumpy Cat. But cats of all sorts, these memes tell us, desire to be left alone with their coffee, or demand darkness, or prefer
Lake Mercer, a subglacial lake deep below the Antarctic Ice, sat untouched by humans for millennia – until now. Scientists accidentally discovered the lake in 2007, when they were examining satellite imagery of Antarctica’s ice sheet. Then on December 26, 2018, they finally reached it. To explore the 50-foot-deep subglacial lake, researchers from a project
Technology companies have been pummelled by revelations about how poorly they protect their customers’ personal information, including an in-depth New York Times report detailing the ability of smartphone apps to track users’ locations. Some companies, most notably Apple, have begun promoting the fact that they sell products and services that safeguard consumer privacy. Smartphone
Black holes are great at sucking up matter. So great, in fact, that not even light can escape their grasp (hence the name). But given their talent for consumption, why don’t black holes just keep expanding and expanding and simply swallow the Universe? Now, one of the world’s top physicists has come up with an
A series of new animations by a NASA scientist show just how zippy – and also how torturously slow – the speed of light can be. Light speed is the fastest that any material object can travel through space. That is, of course, barring the existence of theoretical shortcuts in the fabric of space called wormholes (and
Looks like it’s time to change your passwords, again: security experts have flagged up a monster data breach made up of some 773 million email addresses and 21 million passwords. They’re calling it Collection #1, and more collections are reportedly on the way. First made public by security consultant Troy Hunt, the data dump
It’s amazing what you can find when you do a good clear-out. Just ask chemistry researcher Alan Aitken. The scientist, from Scotland’s University of St Andrews, was rummaging through a storage area under a chemistry lecture room back in 2014 when he stumbled upon a unique relic of scientific history. Stashed amidst chemicals and
When you beam intense pulses of light into a thin circle, strange things will happen, according to new research based on the optical equivalent of a whispering gallery. Inside tiny loops of transparent fibre, waves of light can be forced to break step and change the orientation of their wiggle in odd ways, bending the
Unless you live in the tropical rainforests of South or Central America, most of the sloths you’ll encounter will be two-toed sloths (Choloepus sp.). This is because they are able to eat quite a varied diet and are therefore relatively easy to keep in captivity. Their relatives, the three-toed sloths (Bradypus sp.), on the
There really isn’t a whole lot you can do to avoid being eaten when you’re trapped inside an egg and your parents are nowhere to be found. Still, the embryo of the pharaoh cuttlefish (Sepia pharaonis) gives it everything it’s got. Researchers have found that when faced with a common predator, the unborn cephalopod does
Are you sick of nature? Always doing beautiful things at inconvenient times? Well, a Japanese satellite may be just the thing for you. Rather than forcing you to wait for one of Earth’s 22 or so natural annual meteor showers, it discharges an artificial one, on command. Well, in theory, anyway. But we’re about to
In just a few days, the Moon will turn a shade of rust and loom larger in the sky than usual in a relatively rare astronomical event. For the half of the planet fortunate enough to see it, it’s a chance to see two fascinating spectacles combined in what’s known as a ‘super blood moon’
The future of coffee production is looking darker than the contents of your morning cup of joe. A deadly combination of climate change, disease and deforestation is gradually pushing a multi-billion-dollar industry right to the edge. Researchers at UK’s Kew Gardens have calculated that out of the 124 coffee species known to science, nearly
The flowers are listening, according to new research – well, in a sense, at least. Scientists have found evidence that plants can actually hear the buzz of passing bees and produce sweeter nectar in response to entice the flying insects in. And flowers are technically their ‘ears’. Based on observations of evening primroses (Oenothera drummondii),
We’ve had chances. Lots of chances. But humanity has a history of squandering chances, despite everything we know about climate change. Despite everything riding on us addressing it. As it happens, the odds may still be in our favour. A new study estimates there’s a 64 percent chance that peak global average temperature rise
Will there be no end to people trying to muck up the night sky? Around this time last year it was a disco ball sent into low-Earth orbit. Now a Russian startup has had the colossally dense idea of sticking beaming billboards up there, to shine advertising back down to Earth. Putting aside the
It’s been compared to crop circles, or the strange handiwork of aliens. Others say it looks like the Moon, if it somehow materialised in the chilly waters of the Presumpscot River. But this massive churning formation in the city of Westbrook, Maine isn’t evidence of something from outer space, but rather a bizarre and
Every year, ocean waves are getting stronger and more destructive – and according to new research, it’s only going to get worse. A new study has found a correlation between warming oceans and wave size and strength, suggesting that the more things heat up, the more destructive our oceans will become. Ocean waves are built by
Some of the Universe’s deepest secrets are locked up so tight, a whole new kind of subatomic cataclysm is needed to tear them free. To unleash those kinds of forces, European physicists want to build a particle accelerator to rival anything we’ve seen, one that will make the famous 27 kilometre (16.7 mile) Large Hadron
In 2009, supermodel Kate Moss caused a stir when she categorically stated that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”. As jaw-dropping as the sentiment might have seemed to many, Moss’ pithy comment encapsulates a modern Western zeitgeist. From an evolutionary perspective, however, Moss’ statement is ludicrous, if not preposterous. Such a statement could
A frog by the name of Romeo, thought to be the last of his species, is no longer fortune’s fool. Defying the stars, this lonely amphibious bachelor has at last found his Juliet. Known as the world’s loneliest frog, for ten years Romeo has burned, he has pined, but he has not perished. His
It was promising to be an uncharacteristically warm winter day in Boston. The temperature on 15 January 1919, had soared to 40 degrees Fahrenheit from 2 degrees (4 degrees Celsius from -16) earlier in the week, prompting many downtown workers to head outdoors. Shortly after noon in the city’s bustling North End, as Model
Australia is sweltering through an intense heatwave this week that’s scorching the country from coast to coast with temperatures as high as 49.3 degrees Celsius (120.7 degrees Fahrenheit). In numerous locations, temperature records have already been broken, with minimum overnight temperatures in three towns of 33°C (91°F) showing even the night offers no escape
The world needs to rethink its plan for addressing climate change. That’s the assertion of political scientist Joshua S. Goldstein and energy engineer Staffan A. Qvist. On Friday, The Wall Street Journal published an essay in which the duo argues that we can’t address the global climate problem as quickly as needed using just renewables
Here’s a funny one: genetically modified food. Okay, so maybe it’s not all that funny. But people’s reactions to it certainly are. Despite numerous and huge scientific studies validating the safety and benefits of genetically modified foods (aka GM or GMO foods), people just refuse to be convinced. Should we be surprised? Perhaps not:
The far side of the Moon is a strange, barren, monochrome place, according to the latest images sent home from China’s Yutu 2 rover. An incredible 360-degree panorama reveals just how arid and alien it is on the back of Earth’s satellite. China made history when spacecraft Chang’e 4 landed rover Yutu 2 on
Not everything is knowable. In a world where it seems like artificial intelligence and machine learning can figure out just about anything, that might seem like heresy – but it’s true. At least, that’s the case according to a new international study by a team of mathematicians and AI researchers, who discovered that despite
Deeps in mines, at the bottom of lakes, and even in your own gut, bacteria are hard at work producing electricity in order to survive in environments low in oxygen. These potent little power producers have been used in speculative experiments and one day may power everything from batteries to “biohomes“. There are many
The acclaimed Nobel Prize-winning scientist James Watson will be forever remembered as one of the ‘fathers of DNA’. But also as something much worse. In a resurfaced controversy that further dims the shine of one of the 20th century’s most esteemed scientists, Watson – awarded the Nobel in 1962 for his role in the discovery
Dogs are said to be a human’s best friend – but they also provide an environmental conundrum to some of us. Altogether, the eating habits of our pets account for about 20 percent of the world’s meat and fish consumption, and this has an effect on a whole bunch of environmental issues, including the use
Like a brain, an ant colony operates without central control. Each is a set of interacting individuals, either neurons or ants, using simple chemical interactions that in the aggregate generate their behaviour. People use their brains to remember. Can ant colonies do that? This question leads to another question: what is memory? For people,
Worms may not have spines, but they’re doing some back-breaking sewer work in more than 4,000 toilets across India. Since 2015, a creative new type of toilet called the Tiger Toilet has been popping up outside homes and schools around the country. From the outside, this toilet looks like any other pit latrine. But
Elon Musk has published a photo of an experimental rocket meant to help him achieve his mission of conquering Mars. After teasing the spaceship earlier this month, Musk posted a picture of the vehicle – dubbed the “test hopper” – in real life on Friday from SpaceX’s facility in Boca Chica, Texas. Starship test flight
Any species reaching for the stars is bound to have its fingertips singed. Probably more than once. One of NASA’s posts on the Astronomy Picture of the Day website is an iconic reminder of the mishaps in our spacefaring history. “A flying saucer from outer space crash-landed in the Utah desert after being tracked
Nature is filled with astonishing and sometimes terrifying phenomena. Case in point: this footage of spiders seemingly raining from the sky. Filmed in Minas Gerais in southern Brazil, these spiders are Parawixia bistriata, a rare ‘social’ spider that works together to build giant, fine webs up high. And contrary to how it might look, don’t
Science fiction introduces us to elaborate, futuristic worlds that often sound like nothing more than a dream. But humanity has made incredible technological advancements over the past 100 years, and many of the ideas predicted in science fiction have now become reality. Some predictions, like self-driving cars, are still in the early stages, but
To properly navigate across the face of our planet, we need to use guidance from its magnetic field. And for that, we need to keep an accurate track of what that field is doing. With that in mind, every five years scientists refresh a standardised model of the detailed wiggles and warps of Earth’s
The year 2020 will be bringing us a new decade, an American presidential election, and a cruise for people who believe Earth is flat. Although details are currently thin on the ground, the cruise is being organised by the Flat Earth International Conference, and promises to be “the biggest, boldest, best adventure yet”. Well,
We rarely portray Neanderthals, our close relatives, as telegenic. Museum exhibits give them wild tangles of hair, and Hollywood reduces them to grunting unsophisticates. Their skulls suggest broad faces, tiny chins and jutting brows. But to mock Neanderthals is to mock ourselves: Homo sapiens had lots of sex with Homo neanderthalensis. Neanderthal genes supply
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