When you’re high above the clouds at cruising altitude in a giant passenger jet, probably the last thing on your mind is the threat of a mid-air collision with a drone. But at take-off and landing, that danger isn’t so distant. Last year, a drone did in fact collide with an in-flight US Army Black
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It is extremely rare that soft tissues survive millions of years the way bones and shells do, so this new discovery is a doozy: palaeontologists have discovered what they think are the fossilised lungs of an ancient bird that lived 120 million years ago, in the Early Cretaceous. It’s a find that could help
An oil spill that has been quietly leaking millions of barrels into the Gulf of Mexico has gone unplugged for so long that it now verges on becoming one of the worst offshore disasters in US history. Between 300 and 700 barrels of oil per day have been spewing from a site 12 miles
Nature is messy. It’s often geometric, but also riotous and irregular and asymmetrical. Rarely will you see straight edges or 90-degree angles – so when these things show up in a natural environment, it looks really, really weird. Take this iceberg NASA photographed in Antarctica last week as part of Operation IceBridge. Sitting amid
Humans are a scared bunch. Everything from spiders, to blood and guts can set us off, as Halloween every year reminds us. But in 2018 what are Americans most afraid of? Well, move over spiders and snakes – a new survey suggests we’re way more scared of the bigger picture issues like government corruption, the
A deep-sea swimming sea cucumber, Enypniastes eximia, also known as a headless chicken monster, has been filmed for the first time in Southern Ocean waters off East Antarctica using underwater camera technology developed by Australian researchers. The creature, which has only been filmed before in the Gulf of Mexico, was discovered in 3 kilometres
Earth’s core is solid and we were totally wrong about the date of the Pompeii disaster. Those are just two of the breakthroughs scientists made this past week – confirming once again that a lot can change in just seven days. After all, that’s the reason we love science so much. To keep you
Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking passed away earlier this year, but his final book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, only came out this week. In it, Hawking makes a number of bold claims about the future of gene editing, artificial intelligence, and even religion. Here’s how experts evaluate his predictions. Superhuman Overlords Hawking raised eyebrows when he
We’ve all been guilty of ripping our USB Drive out of our computers instead of ejecting them properly, only to receive the judgemental pop up telling us we really shouldn’t have done that. But when everything on the USB works fine next time you plug it in, you can’t help but wonder: does it actually
The US Mega Millions lottery jackpot swelled to US$1.6 billion after the 24 drawings held since the end of July failed to yield a winner. And there’s been no sign yet of a winner of the latest drawing, held Oct. 19. This princely sum is drawing such attention that more people have been buying tickets,
An extensive and rigorous study of the Arctic seafloor has improved our understanding of life at the deepest, darkest depths. The floor of the Central Arctic is one of the least studied ocean areas in the world. Still, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing down there of interest. While many people would assume that not
Knowing which side of the road people drive on is important for anyone who’s thinking about using a vehicle in a foreign country. There are 163 countries and territories that drive on the right side of the road, while 76 of them drive on the left. Many of the countries that drive on the
On a clear night, you might be able to point out a few constellations — maybe the Big Dipper, Orion’s Belt, and your Zodiac sign. But to see the Hulk and Albert Einstein, you’re going to need help from a powerful space telescope. On June 11, 2008, NASA launched the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Every
The European Space Agency (ESA) will launch its BepiColombo mission to the planet Mercury from its spaceport near the equator in Kourou, French Guyana, on October 20. My involvement in the mission means that I will be anxiously following the journey as the spacecraft carries out a series of tricky manoeuvres, culminating in its final
Tourists on a whale-watching cruise were met with the unexpected sight of two great white sharks, one of which was 6-metres (18-foot) long, eating a dead whale. One hundred and sixty passengers were on the tour in Cape Cod, Massachusetts in the US, on Sunday when they saw the two sharks consuming the fin whale’s
Female chimpanzees may not hold the power in their patriarchal societies, but they do know how to protect themselves and their offspring. Watching from the sidelines, female chimps (Pan troglodytes) are highly sensitive to social changes that may put their babies at risk, new research suggests. And, to keep their young safe, they have learned
Deep in western Russia, if you know where to look, you’ll find a small collection of ragged scrap metal and crumbled concrete. Which isn’t that exciting. But if you rifle through the rubble, you will find a large, metal disc bolted to the ground. This isn’t just any old disc – it’s the welded-shut cap of
When you think of a time capsule you might think of something buried for decades or even a hundred years, but just stepping back as far as the mid-1990s can offer up a surprising peek into the past – as students at Shenandoah University in Virginia just found out. Maybe you weren’t born in
For the first time, geologists have confirmed that our planet’s inner core is indeed solid – although not quite as firm as previous models have suggested. Thanks to a new method for detecting soft whispers of seismic waves, analysis of an elusive type of earthquake ripple has revealed key properties of our planet’s deepest layer.
The Jurassic seas were a formidable place – home to sharks, crocodiles, sea monsters, and, apparently, piranha-like, flesh-eating fish. A nearly-complete fossil of a ray-finned bony fish with extra sharp teeth has scientists thinking they’ve found the piranha’s Jurassic equivalent. If they’re right, this would be the oldest evidence of a flesh-eating bony fish
Insects around the world are in a crisis, according to a small but growing number of long-term studies showing dramatic declines in invertebrate populations. A new report suggests that the problem is more widespread than scientists realized. Huge numbers of bugs have been lost in a pristine national forest in Puerto Rico, the study found,
Throughout early fall, Alaska has been oddly warm and pleasant. The cause of the freakishly nice weather has been massive high pressure anchored over and around the state. One of the strongest on record for fall, this sprawling dome of warm air has helped keep the usual transition to cold stunted. Since days are
The streets of Chengdu in western China could soon be lit up by an artificial satellite moon in the night-time, rather than the more conventional streetlights, if an ambitious plan by a private aerospace company gets the go-ahead. The thinking is to save a hefty sum in electricity costs, according to Wu Chunfeng, chairman
Yellowstone isn’t just a supervolcano. It isn’t just a national park. It’s also a science lab, even if it doesn’t really look like one. And not just any science lab, either, but the site of the “most celebrated ecological experiment in history”, according to a new study. In a broad overview of over 40
It’s called Pando, a forest of around 47,000 genetically identical quaking aspen trees that share an estimated 80,000-year-old root system. Pando’s home is in south-central Utah in the United States, and it’s one of the world’s largest – and oldest – living organisms. It’s also failing to regenerate. “People are at the centre of
In January last year, a rocket carrying a tiny chip packed with rubidium-87 atoms was launched more than 200 kilometres (124 miles) above the planet’s surface. The mission was brief, affording just six minutes of microgravity at its height. But in that time the tiny chip briefly held the record for being the coldest
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is having trouble keeping track of its trash. For the second time in the past year, rocket debris from a SpaceX launch has washed up on shore in North Carolina. The huge chunk of metal was discovered on an Outer Banks beach in the US state. The rocket component, which was
A contender for the world’s oldest fossil may be out of the running, as recent evidence suggests it could simply be a rock and not a sign of biological life after all. Holding the record for Earth’s earliest-known remnant of life is about as tough as keeping the crown in Game of Thrones. It seems
Send those history books for a reprint, sharpen your Wikipedia editing skills, and adjust your answer for the next pub trivia night. It turns out that the destruction of Pompeii probably happened sometime after 17 October 79 CE and not, as has been previously thought, on August 24. That’s based on a newly discovered
There’s a lot of stuff out there in the dark, far-flung reaches of the early Universe that we’re only just starting to discover. But this one’s a real doozy – the early formation of a huge supercluster of galaxies, located 11 billion light-years away – just 2.3 billion years after the Big Bang. It’s
The scientists liken it to ‘singing’, but to our ears the creepy dirge of Antarctic ice shelf vibrations sounds more like the sinister score of a horror movie. Researchers on Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf have recorded the slow seismic hum generated by wind forces whipping across the ice sheet’s frozen landscape. The frequency detected
The humble wormhole is a science fiction perennial, often depicted as looping tunnels beyond gaping whirlpools of light. In reality, nobody has much of an idea what these things might really look like – but now, we have a tantalising new prospect. A Russian physicist has come up with a way to estimate the
Last week, NASA astronaut Air Force Colonel Nick Hague faced death as he and his commander, Alexei Ovchinin, plummeted to Earth following an aborted Soyuz launch. Outside, the world held its breath as the spacecraft returned in what NASA called a “ballistic descent mode“. Inside the tiny capsule, according to Hague, things got pretty rough.
If you’ve managed to avoid Christmas music so far, that’s only going to get harder the closer to December we get. Prepare yourself for more stores blasting out All I Want for Christmas, and Frosty the Snowman. Christmas music is something you either love or hate. If you find the tunes pretty annoying, then
Fortnite is an unprecedented, smash hit video gaming phenomenon – where the aim is to be the last person standing after a battle royale shootout on a magical island – and now scientists are tapping into its popularity to try and teach kids about climate change. The new ClimateFortnite Twitch channel features what many
When you say “squirrel” to your canine companion, are they really picturing a bushy-tailed animal, or are they responding to the call based on cues like the tone of voice or the gestures you’re using? We’d be pretty safe to assume the latter, since language isn’t known to easily work across species. But, according
Taupo is resting now, and for that we should all be very grateful. The highly active Taupo Volcanic Zone, situated in New Zealand’s North Island, produced history’s most recent supereruption, unleashing some 530 cubic kilometres of fiery magma upon Earth’s surface. For context, what’s widely regarded as the most destructive volcanic eruption in US history
A wee baby star at the tender age of just 2 million years has revealed itself to be quite the precocious little cosmic object. Astronomers have discovered it has not one, but four planets in the protoplanetary disc of dust and gas that surrounds it – and they are all gargantuan, with the biggest coming
You’ve made it to the bank you work at, if a little bleary eyed, and it’s time for the morning staff meeting. Suddenly, a 1.5 metre (5 foot) python plops down from the ceiling literally inches from where you were standing. It sounds like a terrible dream, but that’s exactly what happened last Friday
Unassuming farmland in Østfold County, Norway, was hiding a secret for centuries – and now it’s been rumbled. Using high-resolution ground-penetrating radar, archaeologists have found an ancient Viking cemetery, complete with what appears to be a well-preserved ship burial. A popular mode of interment among the Norse Vikings, ship burials consisting of a longboat
Humans will cause so many mammal species to go extinct in the next 50 years that the planet’s evolutionary diversity won’t recover for 3 to 5 million years, a team of researchers has found. The Earth may be entering its sixth mass extinction: an era in which the planet’s environments change so much that
Drinking alcohol is dangerous at the best of times. Intoxication in the treetops really raises the stakes. This impressive albeit risky feat is just one of the many reasons why the kererū pigeon (Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae) is the “absolute unit“. In 2018, this “devourer of fruit” was named Bird Of The Year in New Zealand,
They were teenage computer geeks, bespectacled kids from Seattle who taught themselves programming from a Teletype terminal, learned the basics of business from Fortune magazine and dreamed of “a computer in every home and on every desk.” Paul Allen was the self-described “idea man,” the shy son of librarians. Bill Gates was the business-oriented
Rising global temperatures affect not only our safety but what we eat and drink as well. In recent years, scientists have uncovered a link between climate change and our consumption of popular items like wine and coffee. Now, a coming study from the University of East Anglia has found a link between extreme weather
Climate change has pulled the chair out from underneath the Arctic Ocean’s blanket of sea ice. Once a thick and resilient structure, Arctic sea ice is now thinner and more vulnerable to the seasons than ever before, according to new NASA research. Combining satellite data and submarine sonars, the study reveals that 70 percent
Books are pretty amazing – gateways to other worlds, compact parcels bursting with knowledge. And if you grow up surrounded by books, you’re going to get a bit of a boost in life compared to non-readers. At least, that’s the conclusion of a new study, which found that teens who leave school before graduating,
A video recently doing the rounds on Facebook included a segment from the BBC comedy quiz show QI. The video asks which of avocados, almonds, melon, kiwi or butternut squash are suitable for vegans. The answer, at least according to QI, is none of them. Commercial farming of those vegetables, at least in some
It’s been several months since the late Stephen Hawking passed away, but posthumous writings by the groundbreaking scientist show the great man still had much more to tell us. Just days after Hawking’s final academic paper was published online, the world-famous physicist is back in the spotlight for a different reason: a stark, controversial prediction
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