In the Gulf of California, an innocent, once-flourishing animal is on the verge of disappearing from the world forever: a victim of nets, and the humans who lay them. The vaquita, the world’s smallest and most endangered cetacean, is almost gone. Last week, scientists announced only about 10 of these porpoises are left in the
admin
A shock discovery is in from Bennu. The NASA spacecraft analysing the asteroid has observed it shooting out plumes of dust that surround it in a dusty haze – a phenomenon we’ve never seen in an asteroid before. In the months that OSIRIS-REx has been studying Bennu, the spacecraft has observed this ejecta no
For the first time, a woman has been awarded the prestigious Abel Prize. Karen Keskulla Uhlenbeck of the University of Texas at Austin will receive the annual prize for her tremendous contributions to the field. “The recognition of Uhlenbeck’s achievements should have been far greater, for her work has led to some of the
Nobody ever said having a brother was easy, but for girls who start life by sharing a womb with a male twin, the consequences can be drastically life-altering, scientists say. According to the largest study of its kind, women who share their mother’s womb with a twin brother end up being less likely to graduate
A chemical reaction you learned about in middle school could help solve the energy crisis. Running an electrical current through water splits it into oxygen and hydrogen, the latter of which can be used as a reliable, zero-emission fuel source. In the past, the process of purifying water beforehand was too energy intensive for
Astronomers have just found 83 quasars, powered by supermassive black holes and dating back to the infancy of the Universe, when it was less than 10 percent of its current age. This discovery reveals that such objects were more common at the dawn of time than we thought, and challenges our entire cosmological model.
Halfway between the east coast of Africa and Madagascar lies the remote island of Anjouan – a volcanic landmass born in ancient eruptions some four million years ago. Because of Anjouan’s fiery origins, the entire island should be uniformly composed of volcanic basalt: a dark-coloured, lava-derived rock. Should be. But isn’t. For over a
Do human beings have a magnetic sense? Biologists know other animals do. They think it helps creatures including bees, turtles and birds navigate through the world. Scientists have tried to investigate whether humans belong on the list of magnetically sensitive organisms. For decades, there’s been a back-and-forth between positive reports and failures to demonstrate the
By the time marine biologist Darrell Blatchley arrived at the fishing village Saturday, the young Cuvier’s beaked whale was already floating, dead in the water, its eyes sunken and ribs protruding through its skin. The current off the southern Philippine island of Mindanao had washed away the blood it vomited before its death. He
As the frozen Antarctic landscape at the bottom of the world adjusts to an ever hotter planet, we keep finding more mysterious phenomena beneath and within the ice. Now, there are “ice quakes” to add to that list. It wasn’t all so long ago that earthquakes were thought to not exist on this unforgiving
Jak Wilmot, the co-founder of Atlanta-based VR content studioDisrupt VR, spent 168 consecutive hours in a VR headset – that’s a full week – pent up in his apartment. “This is quite possibly the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, but welcome to a week in the future,” he said in a video about the experiment.
A sunken ship found in the Nile river may have lain undisturbed for over 2,500 years, but now it is finally ponying up its secrets. Scientists think that this ship has revealed a structure whose existence has been debated for centuries. In fragment 2.96 of Herodotus’ Histories, published around 450 BCE, the Ancient Greek historian
Tests show that dormant herpes viruses reactivate in more than half the astronauts who travel on the Space Shuttle and International Space station, according to new NASA research – a phenomenon the space agency says could pose problems for deep space missions. “During spaceflight there is a rise in secretion of stress hormones like
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, which launched in 2016, just sent back some spectacular images of the Martian surface. The orbiter is equipped to take images of the Martian surface in glorious 3D. The picture above might look like some kind of hairy structure, but it’s actually a false-colour image
By combining math with 3D printing, researchers from Boston University have created a new material that seemingly defies logic: light and air have no trouble passing through it — but sound cannot. “The idea is that we can now mathematically design an object that can block the sounds of anything,” researcher Xin Zhang said
The last three ice ages might have been triggered by tectonic collisions between Earth’s continents, according to new research, and it could give us clues as to how the planet’s climate might suddenly shift again in the future. What’s likely to have happened, the new study says, is these massive collisions pushed oceanic rocks
Facebook just had a very bad day. Facebook, including Messenger, and Instagram users across North America experienced outages for most of Wednesday, starting in the afternoon and ending late the same night. Third party outage sites suggested it affected users across the entire globe. The media reported it was perhaps the longest interruption ever
If you’ve been on social media this week, you might have noticed Californians going crazy over the sudden appearance of millions of butterflies, flying north en masse through the state. It’s pretty much the exact joyful display of nature that the world needs right now. But it’s also a beautiful and rare sight in a world where
After more than a decade of patiently waiting and watching, astronomers have seen signs that one of the rarest stars known to science is waking up from its slumber. It’s called XTE J1810–197, and it’s part of an exclusive club of weird stars – it’s one of just four highly magnetic magnetars that have been found to
Back in 2015, scientists found something amazing – a classic formula for pi hidden in the world of quantum physics. Pi is the ratio between a circle’s circumference and its diameter, and is incredibly important in pure mathematics. But this was the first time scientists had found it “lurking” in the world of physics, when
The human capacity for language divides our species from the rest of the animal kingdom. Language has not only allowed us to conquer all corners of the globe, but to devise writing, mathematics and all things thereafter. But researchers can find many of language’s basic design features in the communication systems of other animals.
Around 13.7 billion years ago, our Universe sprang into existence, but what was around before the Big Bang? In an episode of Star Talk released just a few weeks before his death in March 2018, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking sat down with host Neil deGrasse Tyson to talk about what exactly pre-dated the beginning of our
No matter what we do, the Arctic of the future is going to be poles apart from the one we know today. A new paper from the UN reveals that even if we pull the plug on all carbon emissions tomorrow, our hands are ultimately tied; the Arctic region is still going to warm by
Congratulations Italy! Scientists just discovered a new coral reef in the Adriatic Sea, near the town of Monopoli in Puglia. Not only is it the first coral reef known to be off the Italian coast (at least in modern time), it’s also a rather unusual one. Stretching for at least 2.5 kilometres (about 1.5
Waterfalls are one of the most majestic things on the planet: a beautiful, thunderous display of water and physics. But where do these cascading creations come from? The conventional wisdom has it that waterfalls are formed by external forces, such as earthquakes, landslides, or changes in sea level that vastly alter and disrupt landscapes and
We already knew China kept a close eye on its population, monitoring everything from their spending habits to their social interactions. Now we know someone in the nation is also tracking which female citizens are “breedready”, a term apparently used to signal that a woman is likely able to have children – and the disturbing
Half a century ago, NASA’s Apollo program sent a handful of people to walk around on the Moon, take a few pics, say something witty, play golf, and bring back some souvenirs. Not all of those souvenirs got handed out for analysis, but NASA had good reasons to keep a few on ice. Now nine
Death metal has a reputation. Its lyrics and imagery revel in a stomach-churning zone of ultra-violence, profanity, and torment. We’re talking crushed skulls. Slit throats. Mutilated everythings and violated etceteras. What kind of effect does this nightmarish barrage have on people who listen to the music? According to new research by psychologists from Macquarie
It’s easy to take time’s arrow for granted – but the gears of physics actually work just as smoothly in reverse. Maybe that time machine is possible after all? A recent experiment shows just how much wiggle room we can expect when it comes to distinguishing the past from the future, at least on a
When a child first does something without being asked, their parents usually celebrate. Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) are having that moment right now. The team claims to have created the first AI-controlled robotic limb that can learn how to walk without being explicitly programmed to do so. The algorithm they
Viruses are the IKEA furniture of the living world. In the right kind of cell, a handful of instructions and a few molecular tools can churn out multitudes of infectious Billy bookcases. No DIY builder wants to travel all over town to gather materials – theoretically, germs shouldn’t be any different. Yet a new
Her name is Yuka: an ancient woolly mammoth that last lived some 28,000 years ago, before becoming mummified in the frozen permafrost wastelands of northern Siberia. But now that icy tomb is no longer the end of Yuka’s story. The mammoth’s well-preserved remains were discovered in 2010, and scientists in Japan have now reawakened
It’s been a year since the renowned and profoundly influential physicist Stephen Hawking passed away, and the Royal Mint has honoured his legacy in the form of a new commemorative 50 pence coin. If you’ve ever been concerned that British currency doesn’t feature enough astrophysical equations, we have good news. Although the collector’s item, sold
A new quantum physics experiment just lent evidence to a mind-boggling idea that was previously limited to the realm of theory, according to the MIT Technology Review – that under the right conditions, two people can observe the same event, see two different things happen, and both be correct. According to research shared to
Scientists just discovered evidence of a massive solar storm that happened some 2,679 years ago. Such blasts of plasma and electromagnetic radiation from the Sun have the potential to seriously impact life on Earth, so it’s important for us to understand them as much as we can. The evidence they dug up is in
When bad things happen, we don’t want to remember. We try to block, resist, ignore – but we should perhaps be doing the opposite, researchers say. A new study led by scientists in Texas suggests the act of intentionally forgetting is linked to increased cerebral engagement with the unwanted information in question. In other words,
For something that’s supposed to help save the planet, solar geoengineering sure has a lot of enemies. Critics warn that artificially reflecting sunlight to cool the planet could unleash drastic, unintended consequences – but a Harvard-led team of scientists insists that such fears are overblown. In a new study, researchers say spraying chemicals into
It was a chance encounter that neither man nor beast was fully prepared for. Wildlife photographer Rainer Schimpf was simply swimming along, filming a sardine run off the coast of South Africa, when suddenly, the sea began to churn. “I was trying to get a shot of a shark going through the bait ball,” Schimpf
Much of the United States could be gripped by significant water shortages in just five decades’ time, according to predictions made in a new study. From the year 2071 on, scientists say the combined effects of climate change and population increases are projected to present “serious challenges” in close to half of the 204 watersheds
It’s not always easy to work out percentages in your head, but a simple maths trick being shared on Twitter can make it incredibly easy to perform difficult or unwieldy mathematical calculations on the spot. Described as a “fascinating little life hack” by UK-based copywriter Ben Stephens, the trick involves doing a simple number
A California family is outraged that a doctor told their elderly relative his lungs were failing and he was going to die imminently – via a telepresence robot. “You might not make it home,” the doctor at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center told the patient, according to local television channel KTVU, which broke the story.
SpaceX has a new all-star crew member, though it’s anything but human: It’s a $US20 plush-toy planet that astronauts call “Little Earth” or “Earthy”. Last Saturday, SpaceX launched its new Crew Dragon spaceship designed for NASA astronauts toward the International Space Station (ISS), where the vehicle docked on March 3. No humans flew on the historic commercial mission, called Demo-1 – only
A few hours ago, the SpaceX Crew Dragon splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean, about 200 miles off the coast of Florida. The splashdown is the last act in what has been a successful first flight for the Crew Dragon. The flight, called Demo-1, was launched on March 2nd and spent five days at
There’s a little-known feature built into your iPhone that keeps a history of everywhere you’ve been – and how many times you’ve been there. This “Significant Locations” list can be found in your settings, but it’s rather hard to find, whether purposeful or not. Apple tracks and stores where you’ve been and how often
In the course of looking for possible signs of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (ETI), scientists have had to do some really outside-of-the-box thinking. Since it is a foregone conclusion that many ETIs would be older and more technologically advanced than humanity, those engaged in the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) have to consider what a more advanced
In November, Chinese researchers announced that the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor — an “artificial sun” designed to mimic the nuclear fusion process the real Sun uses to generate energy — had hit a milestone by achieving an electron temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius. Now, officials are saying they believe they’ll wrap
Air pollution is a major problem no matter where you live, but it can get particularly bad in Seoul, the capital of South Korea – and so the government authorities are taking drastic action to try and deal with the smog that settles over the city. The latest plan from President Moon Jae-in is
What’s in a galaxy? A lot, apparently. We now have the most accurate measurements of the size and mass of the Milky Way ever calculated, and it’s turned out to be more massive than we thought. How massive? Well, about 1.5 trillion Suns’ worth of mass (solar masses), within a radius of around 129,000
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 82
- Next Page »