It has its directive: seek and destroy. And the underwater drone RangerBot is ready to put its lethal skills to work on Australia’s horrifically threatened Great Barrier Reef. But it’s not the coral that’s the target of its deadly focus. RangerBot is more like a bodyguard, trying to protect the reef from one of its
Month: August 2018
Past experiments using CERN’s super-sized particle-smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), hinted at something unexpected. A particle called a beauty meson was breaking down in ways that just weren’t line up with predictions. That means one of two things – our predictions are wrong, or the numbers are out. And a new approach makes it
First, New Zealand declared war on dirty-clawed predators – stoats, rats, weasels – and there was little to be missed. But as the fight comes to the kitties, some owners are paws-sitively outraged. New Zealand’s efforts to protect its most rarefied creatures are turning to a measure that has rattled many cat owners: banning feline
Social media went nuts on Wednesday night over a line of bright lights that appeared briefly in the sky over San Diego before vanishing. Reports came from far and wide, with shaky footage uploaded to Youtube and blurry pics shared across Twitter giving us plenty of images, but little information to go on. What are
In July of 2015, NASA’s New Horizons mission made history when it became the first spacecraft to conduct a flyby of Pluto. Since that time, the spacecraft’s mission was extended so it could make its way farther into the outer Solar System and become the first spacecraft to explore some Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs). It’s
The small, tropical fish known as a cleaner wrasse has just joined the ranks of various mammals and birds that have passed a classic test for determining self-awareness. An international team of researchers have found the finger-sized wrasse are capable of recognising their reflection, suggesting some part of their brain must be aware of its
Saturn has been out there getting up to its old tricks again: looking really spectacular and being super interesting. This time, it’s in a series of photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, showing the planet’s breathtaking auroras. Over a period of seven months in 2017, the space-based telescope used its Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph
It started with a late-night cough. “He was otherwise fine, but … something was weird and different,” said Verai Ramsammy, who was worried about her miniature schnauzer, Louie. She was a meticulous dog person, the kind who bought special food for her pets. She made a veterinary appointment just to be safe. Within months, Ramsammy’s
The International Space Station (ISS) is amazing. Floating 408 kilometres (254 miles) above us, astronauts get to do science experiments, and take great photos of Earth spinning beneath them. But it’s also tiny, a terrible place to poop, and occationally it springs leaks. On Wednesday at 23:00 UTC (19:00 EDT), flight controllers began to notice
For the first time, scientists have figured out how to accelerate electrons using protons passing through plasma. That’s a big deal, because it could lead to much smaller and cheaper particle accelerators than the ones we currently rely on. Right now, if you want to install a Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator in your
Black holes are famous for tearing apart and devouring stars. But new simulations suggest that, in the very final moments, black holes can actually bring stars back to life. But only certain stars, in certain conditions – and the perfect storm involved could help solve a perplexing black hole mystery. So, how is this possible?
The Arctic is not in a good way. Its oldest, thickest sea ice is breaking. Strange lakes punctuate its landscape. The very chemistry of its water is changing. Things could be about to get worse. New research has uncovered evidence of a vast reservoir of heated water building up underneath the Arctic Ocean and penetrating
Archaeologists in Mexico have unearthed a rare treasure. A life-sized stucco mask recovered from the Palenque Palace is thought to represent one of Mesoamerica’s most important and beloved kings, K’inich Janaab’ Pakal. Also known as Pakal the Great, his reign is the longest in the history of the Americas. He ascended the throne at age
What’s up with the Sun? As we’ve said previous, what the Sun isn’t doing is the big news of 2018 in solar astronomy. Now, the Sun sent us another curveball this past weekend, with the strange tale of growing sunspot AR 2720. We’re currently headed towards a solar minimum, forecasted to arrive in 2019 as
Goats can tell the difference between our human facial expressions – and they would rather interact with happy, smiling people, a new study suggests. For people who own and love goats, this probably isn’t a huge surprise, but it’s the first scientific evidence of how goats read human emotional expressions, demonstrating that it’s not just
People eager to spend the waning days of summer frolicking in the waters near a coastal town in northwest France might want to rethink their plans. It isn’t safe, according to local officials, who recently banned swimming and diving in the area. But the danger threatening visitors to the beaches of Landevennec isn’t a vicious
After a year on the job, astronaut in training Robb Kulin has resigned from NASA’s two year program - a decision that has only been made once before in the space agency’s history. Last summer, Kulin was ecstatic to find out that he was one of just 12 astronauts picked for the historic program – an incredible feat
We now have direct proof that ancient insects were also prey to horrifying parasitoids. Scientists painstakingly studyied 1,510 fossilised fly pupae from the Palaeogene, and discovered tiny fossilised wasp larvae inside 55 of them. Together, they include four new species that were previously unknown to science. Endoparasitoid wasps, conceptually, are some of the creatures that are
Astronauts may be exceptionally brave, intelligent, and accomplished, but they’re not superhuman: they still have to poop and pee when they leave Earth. But as NASA was working to get the first humans into space in the early 60s, the agency didn’t focus much on how astronauts would empty their bladders and evacuate their bowels
Six years after the strange, elusive Higgs boson particle was discovered, scientists working with the world’s largest particle accelerator have finally observed its mysterious, yet most common, decaying process. Using data from the Large Hadron Collider, physicists caught the boson decaying into two smaller particles – a bottom quark and its antimatter equivalent, an antibottom
Humans have been regularly traversing the Atlantic Ocean for going on six centuries, establishing the most efficient trade routes to haul people and goods, sharing details of the best places to pick up the speediest winds, occasionally using radar and satellites to thread a plane through a Category 5 hurricane. But for all our knowledge
During the peak of the last glacial period, some 25,000 years ago, the population of prehistoric cave bears (Ursus spelaeus complex) dwindled to a trickle. And then, there were none. But while the once-flourishing species no longer roams the high alpines of Europe and Asia, a new study has found their DNA continues to live
On August 21 last year, the US came to a standstill to watch the incredibly rare alignment of the Moon sliding in front of the Sun, completely blocking its rays. But for a team of scientists, the anticipation of this total solar eclipse was perhaps even more intense as they waited to see the shapes
Working as an au pair is often considered a great way to earn money and travel the world. The pay is crap, sure, but you can take comfort in the fact you’re not a naked mole rat. It turns out their queens literally feed their workers faeces dosed with hormones to encourage them to look
Most people with ovaries go through menopause. But most animals do not, and their reproductive organs last about as long as they do. We are an outlier. So are whales. Beluga whales and narwhals are the latest known addition to the ranks of menopausal mammals, a group of scientists reported Monday in the journal Scientific
It was July 1969 when Neil Armstrong’s boot first landed on the rocky surface of the Moon. “One small step for man,” Armstrong declared. “One giant leap for mankind”. The crackling message, which journeyed from the lunar surface all the way back to ground control in Houston, is one of the most famous and well-travelled
Daniel, Jack and Matthew Aplin were driving along the south coast of Wellington, New Zealand, last weekend when they got a little bit distracted. The three brothers were supposed to be on the lookout for the perfect diving and spearfishing spot, with plenty of paua and butterfish to collect, when suddenly, their attention was caught
It was the early 1970s and the future of human civilisation had never looked brighter. There was only one problem. A mathematical model developed by a pioneering computer engineer at MIT had predicted something terrifying. Something so terrifying, in fact, that it basically signalled the end of human civilisation on Earth. The model, based on
Around 252 million years ago, the Earth changed drastically and catastrophically. Massive, ongoing volcanic activity in Siberia wrapped the planet in a thick shroud of ash for almost a million years, killing off most of the life that was around at the time. This event, called the Great Dying, is the most severe extinction event
The desire for a larger bottom is becoming more popular, with the number of so-called Brazilian butt lifts more than doubling in the last five years. However, a recent high-profile case involving a doctor in Miami who was banned from operating after the death of a patient during surgery, highlights the risks associated with having
An attempt to replicate the findings of 21 social science experiments published in two high-profile science journals has thrown up a red flag for reliability in research. The question of just how much trust we should put into one-off studies isn’t new. But there’s a silver lining to the so-called Reproducibility Crisis we need to
As Europe wilts in the sweltering, record-breaking harshness of summer 2018, strange things are happening. Mysterious outlines of ancient societies have revealed themselves across the seared landscape, but it’s not just traces of ghostly architecture resurfacing. So too are grim words of warning. Inscribed boulders known as ‘hunger stones’ are reappearing in Czechia after a
Most living things have to make babies to reproduce, and let’s face it, things can get messy. But this video of over 1,000 tarantula babies hatching out of an egg sac brings the process to a whole new level. The Deadly Tarantula Girl video, hosted by Marita Lorbiecke, shows the offspring of two Brazilian red and
A 2017 expedition into the depths of the Amazon rainforest has provided a rare glimpse into the lives of a small community of people who it’s believed have no contact with the outside world. As mindblowing as it is that pockets of humanity are still isolated from global economics, technology, and communications in the 21st
Every morning, they rise to the surface of the water; every evening, they sink back down to the lakebed. Now scientists have finally figured out how these green spheres – called marimo algae – perform their dance every single day. You may have seen pictures of marimo. It’s bizarrely adorable – like little fuzzy balls
A global dust storm on Mars is threatening the future of NASA’s Opportunity rover, the longest-lived robot on that planet. The golf-cart-size vehicle launched toward Mars in June 2003, landed in January 2004, and was supposed to last three months. Today, the rover is 15 years old and has rolled more than a marathon’s worth
We all do it sometimes, even though we know it’s wrong. But here’s the problem with lying: Research shows that the more you lie, the easier it gets, and the more likely you are to do it again. “The dangerous thing about lying is people don’t understand how the act changes us,” said Dan Ariely, behavioral psychologist
We’re still figuring out what the heck antimatter even is, but scientists are already getting ready to fiddle with it. Physicists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) are one step closer to cooling antimatter using lasers, a milestone that could help us crack its many mysteries. They published their research on Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Physicists have come up with what they claim is a mathematical model of a theoretical “time machine” – a box that can move backwards and forwards through time and space. The trick, they say, is to use the curvature of space-time in the Universe to bend time into a circle for hypothetical passengers sitting in
In June, a fledgling nation elected its first parliament. With more than 250,000 citizens, the new country’s population is bigger than that of Samoa. It boasts a flag, constitution and anthem. The catch? Asgardia, the first-ever “Space Kingdom”, is not a country on Earth. It’s based on a satellite currently in low Earth orbit. Asgardia
Two years ago, 323 reindeer in southeast Norway were struck by lightning and died. Many of the animals were found on top of each other on a remote mountain plateau. Norwegian officials said they had never seen a case like it before. Authorities flew in to remove the dead reindeer’s heads for a study on diseases
A collection of mummified human remains found in northern Chile is turning into black slime due to rising humidity levels, and researchers are at a loss for how to stop it. More than 100 of these mummies – which are at least 7,000 years old – have started to turn gelatinous, and last year local
Researchers have long been fascinated by the gulf that separates procrastinators and doers. But even though several social and psychological differences have been identified, until now, no one has compared the brains of these two groups. A new study has investigated the neural basis for impulse control, and has found that the brains of procrastinators
When it comes to on-again/off-again relationships, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton take the cake. Their passionate relationship – one of the most publicized of all time – failed so often, that after their second marriage, Taylor wrote to Burton: “Dearest Hubs, How about that! You really are my husband again, and I have news for
Insects like grasshoppers and crickets may play a role in pollination, new research finds. We tend to think of these critters, called orthopterans, as agricultural pests, but their tropical relatives provide a valuable service to plants by serving as pollinators, according to the study. “When people think of pollinators, bees and butterflies are usually the
If you live with a dog you just know when it’s happy or miserable, don’t you? Of course you do. Even the scientific community, now admits that dogs have emotions – even if scientists can’t directly measure what they are experiencing. People have had a close bond with domesticated dogs for centuries. In his 1764
As you may know from scrubbing the kitchen, getting a surface well and truly clean is a real challenge – and even more so for scientists working at microscopic levels. No matter how pristine a material is engineered to be, it always ends up covered in a thin layer of molecules. Now new research has
Scientists are usually a rather cheery bunch. But every now and then, they have a habit of wondering how the Universe might cave in and destroy us in the blink of an eye. Take physicists Frans Pretorius from Princeton University and William East from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada, for instance. They’ve
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