The Geminids meteor shower peaks on the mornings of December 13 and 14, 2018 – but if you look up any time there’s a clear night sky up until December 17, you might just catch a glimpse of a Geminid meteor. The Geminids shower is unusual as it is one of two meteor showers
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Even the tiniest organisms can make it to the big leagues. The number one fastest animal movement in the world now belongs to an ant no bigger than the tip of your finger. Ominously named the Dracula ant (Mystrium camillae), this minuscule species is shy and elusive, a subterranean predator that enjoys sucking the blood
You probably don’t stop to think about this often, but right after the birth of the Universe, matter was not in the form we recognise today. Instead, scientists think it was very much in a state of soup, ‘quark soup’ to be precise – a state also known as quark-gluon plasma. Now, researchers say they’ve
Last year, uptake of home DNA tests sailed into the stratosphere, giving millions of people around the world a whole new level of insight into the ways their genes work, and helping predict their genetic risk for disease. But knowledge is a dangerous thing. New research suggests this kind of genetic knowledge isn’t just
Earth is not the home you think it is. Far below the scant surface spaces we inhabit, the planet is teeming with an incredibly vast and deep ‘dark biosphere‘ of subterranean lifeforms that scientists are only just beginning to comprehend. Hidden throughout this subsurface realm, some of the world’s deepest and oldest organisms thrive
A lone spacecraft is hovering 12 miles above the surface of a tiny asteroid millions of miles away, closely examining its surface. And it just sent back its first readings. As part of NASA’s Origins Program, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft traveled to an asteroid called Bennu some 100 million miles (160 million kilometers) from the Sun,
On January 2, 2018, Kirstin Blaise Lobato, who was charged and convicted of murder, walked free from a Nevada prison due entirely to forensic entomology. Forensic entomologists study the insects colonizing a dead body to estimate how long they have been active on the body and infer time of death. What was so unusual in
Around 252 million years ago, Earth experienced catastrophic devastation – an extinction event so severe that it wiped out almost all of the life on Earth. Up to 70 percent of all land vertebrate species were killed off, and a massive 96 percent of all marine species, including the famous trilobite that had previously survived
Human activity has shifted the chemical composition of our waterways. Now, it’s beginning to corrode our freshwater supply. A new study has confirmed that in the last 25 years, at least a third of the rivers and streams in the United States have gotten saltier. If nothing is done to curb this trend, the results suggest
A drought scorched the Great Plains, causing wildfires and US$2.5 billion in agriculture losses. Catastrophic floods submerged more than a third of Bangladesh. Record-shattering heat waves killed scores of people in Europe and China. These were among 15 extreme weather events in 2017 that were made more likely by human-cased climate change, according to
About 11 billion miles from Earth, a NASA probe has broken another record for humanity. The space agency separately launched its twin Voyager spacecraft in 1977 with a mission to explore the outer Solar System. The car-size Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes exploited a rare alignment of the planets (and their gravitational fields)
Being in space can have weird and sometimes harmful effects on the human body, and we’ll have to work through those issues if we’re to make it out to Mars and beyond, and stay healthy. But it looks like we have finally found one feature of the human body that’s untroubled by microgravity –
Every 5.4 years, the comet 46P/Wirtanen orbits the Sun, swinging through Earth’s skies on its way. This year, its visit is in December, and we’re going to be able to see it – in fact, it’s visible in the sky now if you have binoculars or a telescope. Usually, 46P/Wirtanen is too far away
The island nation of Mauritius has little in the way of natural resources – historically, it’s depended on imported petroleum to generate electricity. But increasingly, according to Phys.org, leadership on the island is preparing for an energy-scarce future. They’re investing in solar, wind and hydropower, but also leveraging a key crop on the island:
It’s the most populous city in Western Asia, and it’s sinking into the ground at an alarming rate. Tehran, the capital of Iran and home to some 15 million people in total across its greater urban footprint, is a victim of dramatic subsidence, new research reveals, which is causing the region to sink by more
When it comes to prodding the very boundaries of the Solar System we all reside in, astronomers have had a notoriously tricky time of figuring out where those edges truly lie. For example, it took a whole year to officially confirm that Voyager 1 had reached the interstellar medium of space – the first spacecraft
When Karl Martin of Derbyshire, England picked up a pair of pots for £4 (US$5) at a car boot sale, all he wanted was a nice jar to put his toothbrush in. And for five years, that’s precisely what he had. Imagine his surprise when that toothbrush jar, decorated with a painted antelope, turned
NASA scientists released audio Friday of rumbles captured by its InSight lander on the surface of Mars. The sound recorded with InSight’s sensors on December 1 comes from vibrations caused by wind that NASA estimates was blowing at about 10 to 15 mph (16 to 24 km/h). InSight, which is an acronym for “Interior
When your computer stores data, it has to pause while the information moves from one piece of hardware to another. But that may soon stop being the case, as scientists from MIT and the Singapore University of Technology and Design uncovered a new manufacturing trick that should let them build computers that don’t have those
A retired professor from the UK says he might have pinpointed the location of Camelot, the legendary castle where stories claim that King Arthur held court some 1,400 years ago – if he actually existed. According to Arthurian literature expert Peter Field, Camelot used to stand at the site of an ancient Roman fort called Camulodunum
Some of the world’s most important science is conducted in one of its most inhospitable, hostile places. But not without a cost, new research reveals. A new long-term analysis of researchers stationed in Antarctica sheds new light on a psychological phenomenon very few of us ever have to experience: a unique coping mechanism, triggered when
The name says it all, really. With the exception of some orange hairs in the rear, the black mantled howler monkey (Alouatta palliata) is predominantly covered in – you guessed it – pitch black fur. This is true for all the black howler monkeys in the forests of Central America and the north of
When you know a particular topic really well, you might say you know it like the back of your hand. But how well do you really know that hand? Or the rest of your body, for that matter? People have a tendency to share misinformation that, over time, can be misconstrued as fact. The human
As someone who has clocked an unseemly amount of hours on an MMO, I’m no stranger to the guilt that can come from habitual gaming. But the good news is there’s mounting evidence that the hobby can have a range of beneficial effects on your brain, including improved cognitive control, emotional regulation, spatial resolution of
What internet users Down Under say online will no longer be kept on the down low. On Thursday, Australia’s Parliament passed the Assistance and Access Bill. The legislation will force tech companies to help Australian authorities decrypt users’ online communications — and it could represent a major blow to data privacy elsewhere in the world.
A relaxed-looking juvenile Hawaiian monk seal lounges near a sandy white beach on some green foliage. Its eyes are half-closed, and it has a serene expression on its face. But the seal’s calm demeanor is surprising. Why? Well, there’s a long, black-and-white eel dangling from its right nostril. “It’s just so shocking,” Claire Simeone,
Japan’s home prices may be rising, but the country still has more than 8 million unoccupied properties, so many that owners have started giving them away for free. In some cases, local governments are even offering subsidies for people willing to tear down homes and build new ones, according to The Japan Times. Though
It’s official. At 2:23 am in southern China, a rocket carrying unique payload successfully launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. On board is a lander which, if all goes smoothly, will soon make history by touching down on the far side of the Moon. Liftoff for the Chang’e-4 lunar far side landing mission
One of the best-known fossils in paleontology, a virtually complete skeleton nicknamed “Little Foot”, could actually represent an entirely new species of early human, scientists have announced. The fossil was first discovered more than 20 years ago, and after decades of careful extraction and research, an analysis of the age, skull and limbs has
The promise of quantum computing brings with it some mind-blowing potential, but it also carries a new set of risks, scientists are warning. Specifically, the enormous power of the tech could be used to crack the best cyber security we currently have in place. A new report on the “progress and prospects” of quantum
In our never-ending quest to understand what happens to us after we die, humans have long seen the rare phenomenon of near-death experiences as providing some hints. People who’ve had a brush with death often report seeing and experiencing life-altering events on “the other side,” like a bright white light at the end of a
She squeaks in ultrasound, “I love you”. He chirrups back “Right back at ya’, sweetheart”. It’s all in the dulcet tones of California mice, but the meaning is clear. Then one of them spends time with another mouse spouse. Later, partners reunited, there’s tension. Somebody barks. A high pitched roar. They’ll make up later, but
A new discovery has pushed the timeline of the plague in Europe back even earlier than we had previously thought. A new strain of the Yersinia pestis bacterium has been identified in 4,900-year-old bones in a Neolithic burial site in Sweden. It’s the oldest strain ever identified, and the most basal we’ve seen –
Every few years, a story goes viral claiming that experts have finally ‘solved’ the Bermuda Triangle mystery. Maybe it’s strange hexagonal clouds acting as “air bombs”, rogue waves, or perhaps some freak whirlpools. But there’s one problem with all of these ‘solutions’ – the Bermuda Triangle doesn’t actually exist, and there is no ‘mystery’
There are a few things we should demand from a decent power supply. Not least, it shouldn’t require oven-like temperatures to function. That’s just a given. For decades, fluoride has sat on the sidelines as a potential competitor for lithium-ion batteries. If not for its need to bake at more than 150 degrees Celsius (300
A school in Buffalo, New York has filled a vending machine with books to get young students more interested in reading. Locking up a stack of books behind a wall of glass and then demanding payment for them may seem like a counterintuitive way to promote literacy, but in this case it appears to be
While we have yet to figure out how to travel by warp drive, we have found other ways for spacecraft to propel themselves at mind-boggling speeds across vast distances of outer space. Ion drives, for instance, have enabled spacecraft like the NASA’s Deep Space 1 and Dawn to travel years at a time at
An ambitious project to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has hit an unexpected snag, just three months after being launched. Developed by The Ocean Cleanup, the huge floating contraption was designed to drift with the currents, scooping up thousands of tons of plastic waste as it bobs along. The first prototype, System
Galaxies spin faster than they should. Space is spreading apart when it shouldn’t. And it’s all starting to feel like we’re forever going to be in the dark when it comes to the big questions in physics. One physicist’s solution lies in a hypothetical ‘fluid’ with negative mass. No, such a material has never
Salamanders are, by their very nature, slippery creatures. Perhaps none so slippery as the mysterious ‘leopard eel’ – an amphibian spotted intermittently in the waters of Florida over the last few decades that somehow managed to elude scientific study. Until now, that is. Ecologist Sean Graham of Sul Ross State University in Texas and
Recycling in the United States is piling up at an alarming speed and no one knows where to put it. Up until recently, that was China’s problem. For years, the US offloaded nearly 4,000 shipping containers full of recyclables on China’s shoulders every day. But China is sick of being the world’s recycling bin,
A meteor that exploded in the air near the Dead Sea 3,700 years ago may have wiped out communities, killed tens of thousands of people, and provided the kernel of truth to an old Bible story. The area is in modern-day Jordan, in a 25 kilometre (15.5 mile) wide circular plain called Middle Ghor.
Britain’s Parliament has just given the world an unprecedented look at the ruthless tactics of Facebook’s executive team. On Wednesday, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee published leaked emails from the Silicon Valley tech giant’s leadership team that had been obtained by Six4Three, an app developer that’s locked in a legal battle with Facebook
We’re now increasingly aware of the microplastic fragments polluting our oceans, but a new study shows just how quickly these tiny particles can find their way into marine life – it takes a mere six hours for billions of pieces of material to spread inside aquatic animals. The unfortunate critters involved in the research
It’s an unusual reason to delay a cargo launch planned to dock with the International Space Station: moldy food bars. Forty mice were going to hitch a ride today on board SpaceX’s latest cargo mission as part of a NASA-sponsored experiment called Rodent Research-8, which will explore mechanisms behind aging and age-related diseases. But
You only wish you could be this fabulous millions of years after you die. Precious stones recovered from the opal fields of Australia have turned out not just to be opalised fossils – but the opalised fossils of a dinosaur previously unknown to palaeontology. It’s called Weewarrasaurus pobeni – named for the Wee Warra
A cursory glance back through human history should be enough to convince anybody that our species is in love with hate. In the opinion of anthropologist R. Brian Ferguson, this doesn’t mean we have good reason to think large scale social conflict is in our genes. War isn’t in our nature, he argues. But
The weather was closing in. For a week, cryosphere scientist Luke Trusel and his team hadn’t been able to access their remote drill site in western Greenland, and if they didn’t act now, there was no telling when they’d get another chance. Spying a brief window where helicopter flight was safe, the researchers grabbed
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