Astronomers have been able to get their closest, most detailed look yet at the first stages of a dying star – a supernova known as SN 2018oh – using a combination of super-powerful telescopes out in space and based here on Earth. This unprecedented look at the death throes of SN 2018oh (also labelled ASASSN-18bt), around
Month: November 2018
East Africa is famously the birthplace of humankind and the location where our ancient hominin ancestors first invented sophisticated stone tools. This technology, dating back to 2.6 million years ago, is then thought to have spread around Africa and the rest of the Old World later on. But new research, published in Science, has uncovered
A year ago today, Tesla’s big battery in South Australia began dispatching power to the state’s grid, one day ahead of schedule. By most accounts, the world’s largest lithium-ion battery has been a remarkable success. But there are some concerns that have so far escaped scrutiny. The big battery (or the Hornsdale Power Reserve, to
We know that even a grain of dust or tiny droplet can damage a tough metal surface if the particle gathers up a high-enough speed when it smashes into it. But until now there’s been a problem figuring out how or why that damage happens. That’s because the speed has to be really freaking high,
The Woolsey and Paradise wildfires brought widespread devastation to California in November, killing more than 90 people and torching 250,000 acres of land. With the fires now fully contained, residents have returned home to find nothing but scorched foundations. Officials are still on the hunt for hundreds of missing people – a process made more
Jumping spiders are already among the most adorable members of the arachnid order, but we’re ready to give them the prize, officially. A species of ant-mimicking jumping spider has just been found suckling its babies on milk. You know what else does that? Kitties. Doggos. Mousies. But Toxeus magnus is much more diligent than mouse
If classic monster movies and old science experiments are to be believed, life begins with a spark. Not everybody is convinced by this kind of origin story, so the search continues for sources of energy capable of transforming a prebiotic soup into a life-generating dish. Maybe the secret ingredient isn’t anything more shocking than a
We need to talk about the dark ages. No, not those dark ages after the fall of the western Roman Empire. The cosmological dark ages. The time in our Universe, billions of years ago, before the formation of the first stars. And we need to talk about the cosmic dawn: the birth of those first
NASA’s next lunar science experiments will arrive at the Moon via a spacecraft built by one of nine private companies – a first for one of the agency’s science missions. In an announcement Thursday, the space agency named the organizations that are now eligible to bid on delivering science and technology payloads to the lunar
Bill Gates sees nuclear energy as a potential solution to lowering carbon-dioxide emissions around the world, and he has spent the past decade funding new ways to produce the energy in a safe, affordable way. About 10 years ago, Gates cofounded a company called TerraPower to build new kinds of nuclear reactors. TerraPower is developing
Have you ever stopped to wonder exactly how much light has been produced by all the stars in the Universe, over all the time that has passed? Well, now you can wonder no more. An international team of astronomers has actually calculated the amount of starlight in the cosmos. And it’s teaching us new things
Scientists are at a loss to explain a strange seismic event that shook the planet on November 11 and was picked up by earthquake sensors stationed across the globe. While the cause of this mysterious disturbance remains unknown, it’s somehow linked to an ongoing seismic swarm that’s been rumbling the archipelago of Mayotte in the
Much like Egypt’s pharaohs, the emperors of China’s Western Han dynasty had a thing for being buried inside pyramids – although less recognisable than the iconic ones we know from places like Giza. Scattered along the outskirts of Xi’an along the banks of China’s Wei River, the sides of these burial mounds align with the
Atomic clocks, based on the minute oscillations of atoms, are the most precise timekeeping devices humans have created. Every year, scientists make adjustments that improve the precision of these devices. Now, they’ve achieved new performance records, making two atomic clocks so precise they could detect gravitational waves, those faint ripples in the fabric of space-time.
The outer layer of the Earth, the solid crust we walk on, is made up of broken pieces, much like the shell of a broken egg. These pieces, the tectonic plates, move around the planet at speeds of a few centimetres per year. Every so often they come together and combine into a supercontinent, which
This week, a Holstein by the name of Knickers captured the heart of the Internet by standing horns and shoulders above a herd of cattle on a farm in Australia. And there’s no arguing that the lad is large. At the shoulder, Knickers stands a mighty 6’4″ (193 centimetres), which means he’s two inches taller
In the land down under, sticking out in a crowd is rarely a good thing. Australians have a habit of cutting “tall poppies” down to size, frowning on those overachievers who are too big for their own boots. An exception has been made for Knickers the giant cow, long may he reign. Right now, Knickers is
Could nature’s smallest organisms help us to combat rising CO2 levels and even oil spills? Strange as it might seem, the answer might be yes, with research into newly discovered deep-sea microbes suggesting these tiny critters possess a keen appetite for pollutants. The microbes – collected in the Gulf of California, around 2,000 metres (6,562
Why is ‘boobs’ or ‘wriggly’ more likely to get a laugh than, say, ‘taxes’? What makes some words funnier than others? Although you might not have thought about it much before, deducing the humour factor in words is a surprisingly complex process. “Nobody has really done a good job at predicting humour in advance,” University
It happens all the time. You’re online, checking out products, maybe looking for a holiday, or researching home loans, when all of a sudden there’s a pop-up. “Live help is available! Chat now with a member of our friendly customer support team!” It’s easy to dismiss these chat dialogues, but it’s also easy to take
Just as moons orbit planets, planets orbit stars, and stars orbit galactic cores, galaxies can be orbited by other, much smaller galaxies. The Milky Way has several of these hangers-on, most notably the Large and Small Magellanic clouds, the only two of our galaxy’s satellites visible to the naked eye. Now, thanks to Gaia data
A scene painted on a cave wall more than 15,000 thousand years ago appears to tell the simple story of a hunter collapsing before a disembowelled beast. Reading between the lines, the images might describe something bigger. Maybe even astronomical. Figures depicted in the famous prehistoric paintings at Lascaux were positioned with purpose, according to
On the eve of the most important global climate meeting in years, a definitive United Nations report has found that the world is well off course on its promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions – and may have even further to go than previously thought. Seven major countries, including the United States, are well behind
The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities has been going hard on the archaeological discoveries this year, but are we tired of it? No, no we are not. Especially when they come up with spectacular finds like this one. In a tomb in the El-Assasif necropolis in the ancient city of Thebes, two wooden coffins have been
Most modern humans have a little bit of Neanderthal hiding somewhere in their genes. For years, it was assumed that this tiny dose of DNA came from a brief encounter between our ancestors and their Neanderthal neighbours thousands of years ago. But what started as a one night stand now looks more like a frequent
Spider silk is well known as one of the strongest natural materials in existence, but now scientists have a better understanding of why – and it’s all to do with the old adage of strength in numbers. Through an atomic force microscope trained on the silk of a brown recluse spider (Loxosceles reclusa) – which essentially
At the heart of our galaxy, the core around which everything in the Milky Way orbits, lies the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. Without the gravitationally binding force of Sgr A*, the Milky Way wouldn’t exist – yet, although it’s only 25,640 light-years away, we’ve never seen it. We’ll never actually see a black hole,
Cruise liners are a surprisingly large source of greenhouse gases and pollution, but Norwegian cruise operator Hurtigruten says it’s on its way to carbon neutrality – and all thanks to dead fish. Although this sounds crazy, it does actually make a lot of sense. Norway has a large fishing industry, and leftovers and off-cuts are
Scientists have an imprecise understanding of the obscure phenomenon of mass whale strandings, when large numbers of the marine mammals suddenly beach themselves – often their final acts. There are, of course, many reasons a whale would find itself on a beach: illness or injury that leaves them at the mercy of ocean currents and
The unseen depths of the Great Australian Bight are absolutely teeming with life, a new study study has revealed. But soon enough, even these deep-sea creatures could be subject to the probing fingers of the oil industry. The Great Australian Bight is a 1,160-kilometre (720 mile) open bay that takes a sizeable chunk out of
A six-month-long journey that could shape the future of humanity reached its nail-biting conclusion today. On May 5th, NASA launched its InSight Mars lander from California’s Vanderberg Air Force Base. On Monday afternoon, following “seven minutes of terror,” the craft reached its final destination – Elysium Planitia, a flat plain near the Red Planet’s equator
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said there’s a “70 per cent chance” he’ll personally travel to Mars. Musk, 47, told Axios’ new program on HBO that he believes Mars exploration is more than just a fantasy dreamed up by the super-wealthy who may want to use space travel as an “escape hatch”. “Your probability of dying
The idea was once taboo, but desperate times may just call for desperate measures. If humans are able to spray millions of tons of sulfate aerosol into the sky, we could create a sort of chemical canopy that reflects heat from the Sun and takes the edge off global warming. This kind of atmosphere-hacking could be dangerous,
Six months after blasting off from Earth, NASA’s InSight lander is minutes away from touching down on the surface of Mars. This plucky little robot is about to streak into the Martian atmosphere at 19,310 km/h (12,000 mph) before making its delicate and complicated landing – known as the ‘seven minutes of terror’. But don’t
It didn’t look much like the dainty unicorns of myth and legend, but the extinct unicorn of Siberia is even more entrancing for palaeontologists. Now, for the first time, scientists have analysed its DNA – and realised everyone had been wrong about the mysterious beast. The ancient rhinoceros didn’t die off 200,000 years ago, before
It’s the mother of all conspiracy theories: the unflinching belief that the 1969 Moon landing never actually happened. Proponents of this seemingly unshakeable conviction argue that what the masses perceived as a groundbreaking scientific achievement was in fact an elaborate fake: a hoax perpetrated by NASA and the US government on the American (and international)
An uninvited guest has been caught hitching a ride on the International Space Station, and it’s a worrying one. JPL-NASA Scientists have identified strains of Enterobacter collected from the space station’s toilet and exercise area. If you’ve heard of the genus before, it’s probably in relation to hospitals. Some Enterobacter strains can infect immunocompromised patients
The price of Bitcoin has dropped by 75 percent in the past year, so anyone who invested heavily at the peak will have lost a lot of money. And now there’s more bad news for crypto-currency investors to worry about: they may not legally own the digital assets they have purchased. My colleagues and I
The federal government on Friday released a long-awaited report with an unmistakable message: The effects of climate change, including deadly wildfires, increasingly debilitating hurricanes and heat waves, are already battering the United States, and the danger of more such catastrophes is worsening. The report’s authors, who represent numerous federal agencies, say they are more certain
If you aren’t nervous for NASA’s InSight Mars probe, you probably should be. Getting a rocket ride to the red planet is the easy part. It’s touching down on Mars that aerospace engineers consider to be one of the greatest challenges in the solar system; in fact, about a third of missions successfully launched to
The deepest dive recorded by the free-diving Bajau Laut people of Southeast Asia was to an impressive 79 metres (259 feet), and the longest time spent underwater by them was just over three minutes. Although the Bajau do not dive to these depths or for this length of time during their day-to-day fishing, they spend
Keeping an eye on your water usage is a good way to save money and help the planet at the same time. Plenty of us have bad habits that could be costing us hundreds of dollars in water bills over the long run. Here are a few ways that you could be wasting water without realising it,
A lot of what we think we know about psychology might be wrong. A major research initiative, the second of its kind, tried to reconstruct 28 famous classic psychology experiments. But of those 28, only 14 of the experiments yielded the same results, according to research published Monday in the journal Advances in Methods and
Slow-motion collisions of tectonic plates under the ocean drag about three times more water down into the deep Earth than previously believed, according to a seismic study that spans the Mariana Trench. The observations from the deepest ocean trench in the world have important implications for the global water cycle, researchers say. “People knew that
Researchers have developed catalysts that can convert carbon dioxide—the main cause of global warming—into plastics, fabrics, resins, and other products. The electrocatalysts are the first materials, aside from enzymes, that can turn carbon dioxide and water into carbon building blocks containing one, two, three, or four carbon atoms with more than 99 percent efficiency. Two
NASA has made a commitment to send humans to Mars by the 2030s. This is an ambitious goal when you think that a typical round trip will anywhere between three and six months and crews will be expected to stay on the red planet for up to two years before planetary alignment allows for the
Back in the 1970s, NASA’s Mariner and Viking Missions were sent out to explore other planets in our Solar System. All three of them (there were two Viking missions) captured images of Mars’ moon Phobos during their travels. They were our first images of the tiny, potato-shaped moon, and the images held a mystery: strange
Gathering detailed information on exoplanets is extremely difficult. The light from their host star overwhelms the light from the exoplanet, making it difficult for telescopes to see them. But now a team using cutting-edge technology at the Keck Observatory has taken a big leap in exoplanet observation and has detected water in the atmosphere of a planet
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