Since the 1980s scientists have spotted a link between naval sonar systems and beaked whales seemingly killing themselves – by deliberately getting stranded on beaches. Now, researchers might have revealed the horrifying reason why. In short, the sound pulses appear to scare the whales to death, acting like a shot of adrenaline might in a
Month: January 2019
Artificial intelligence can play chess, drive a car and diagnose medical issues. Examples include Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo, Tesla’s self-driving vehicles, and IBM’s Watson. This type of artificial intelligence is referred to as Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) – non-human systems that can perform a specific task. We encounter this type on a daily basis, and its
We know that some modern human genomes contain fragments of DNA from an ancient population of humans called Denisovans, the remains of which have been found at only one site, a cave in what is now Siberia. Two papers published in Nature today give us a firmer understanding of when these little-known archaic humans (hominins)
Those of us who pay even a little bit of attention to the news would probably agree that today, the world is intensely polarised. Yet despite the feeling that global conflict is all that rolls across our newsfeeds, this collective despair is a gross misreading of the situation, and it could even be perpetuating our
Antarctica is not in a good place. In the space of only decades, the continent has lost trillions of tonnes of ice at alarming rates we can’t keep up with, even in places we once thought were safe. Now, a stunning new void has been revealed amidst this massive vanishing act, and it’s a big
The photo above is not depicting some ten-legged mutant bird as some of our Instagram commenters have suggested. It’s also not one of those hilarious birds with arms memes. He’s just one brave daddy bird hauling his four chicklings to safety. Comb-crested Jacanas (Irediparra gallinacea) are also known as lillytrotters or Jesus-birds for their ability to
When a black hole is actively feeding, something strange can be observed: enormously powerful jets of plasma shoot from its poles, at velocities approaching light speed. Given the intense gravitational interactions at play, exactly how those jets form is a mystery. But now, using computer simulations, a team of physicists has hit upon an answer
Since its discovery in 1938, the drug LSD — that’s lysergic acid diethylamide — has puzzled researchers. They knew the drug had a profound effect on people, causing hallucinations and an altered state of consciousness, but they couldn’t figure out why. Now that could be changing. A research team from the University Hospital of Psychiatry Zurich thinks it’s figured out
Long after your flesh is dust and your stories forgotten, your bones will whisper secrets about your life. Future archaeologists will wring out truths about your health, your past, and your place in society. Many of these clues can vanish if our remains are split and warped by the heat of cremation, but a new
The fact of the matter is I don’t know exactly how cold it got at my house today. The mercury thermometer on our porch only goes down to -30 degrees Fahrenheit (-34.4 Celsius). The digital thermometer in our backyard weather station bottoms out at -40 Fahrenheit (-40 Celsius). For roughly two hours on Wednesday this
What was once thought to be a scattering of ancient stone huts on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa, has turned out to be the remnants of a thriving city, lost to history for 200 years. Beneath the dense vegetation, there isn’t much to see with the naked eye. And after three decades of careful
New Yorkers looking out the window this afternoon were met with a windy wall of snow. That was a “snow squall” – a sudden onset of heavy snowfall accompanied by wind gusts. The National Weather Service (NWS) issued a snow-squall warning for residents of parts of New York and New England, advising them to limit travel and stay
In the first experiment of its kind, scientists have been able to translate brain signals directly into intelligible speech. It may sound like wild science fiction at first, but this feat could actually help some people with speech issues. And yes, we could also get some futuristic computer interfaces out of this. Key to the
One of them is a little green gnome-like figure. The other is half-human, half-Vulcan. Both have pointy ears and considerable wisdom. But which is ultimately wiser? It’s a reasonable thing to wonder, perhaps even logical. After all, Yoda from Star Wars and Spock from Star Trek have come to represent the quintessential archetypes of sage
Few national parks have been hit harder by the government shutdown than Joshua Tree National Park, a nearly 800,000-acre protected area in Southern California known for its rocky landscape and stunning throng of centuries-old trees. The number of people visiting the park has climbed continuously over the past several years. In 2017, it attracted about
Every spring in the Netherlands, the resident great tits (Parus major) build their nests in tree cavities, hatch their young, and send a new generation of fluffy little black-and-gold featherballs into the sky. Then along comes the pied flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca), migrating from Africa for the summer, and taking up the abandoned nests to raise
In Australia, snakes sometimes slither into suburban backyards and homes. When the weather gets warm, they lounge in the sun. When it gets hot, they seek cool places: a wall crevice, under a refrigerator, under a barbecue grill, behind an air-conditioning unit. When it gets too hot and dry, they seek places with moisture, as
For the first time, astronomers have used supermassive black holes from just after the Big Bang to measure the expansion rate of the Universe. Now, we have a bigger mystery on our hands than the answer this effort provided. It turns out the Universe is growing faster than expected. This could mean that the dark
A record-breaking cold wave is sending literal shivers down the spines of millions of Americans. Temperatures across the upper Midwest are forecast to fall an astonishing 50 degrees Fahrenheit (28 degrees Celsius) below normal this week – as low as 35°F below zero. Pile a gusty wind on top, and the air will feel like
Apple disabled its Group FaceTime feature in iPhones after multiple reports that users could initiate a FaceTime call and begin listening in on a recipient’s audio without them picking up the call or knowing they were being monitored. The bug occurred after a user initiated a FaceTime video call with another iPhone or device running
We can probably all agree that charging cables are just the worst, and that we’d love to have fewer of them in our lives. Now, a new invention might give us just that: engineers have developed a flexible device that harvests energy from Wi-Fi signals. And not just harvest. It can then convert it into
Normally, after running a five-year experiment, scientists might pat each other on the back in earnest recognition of having finally made it to the end of an epic, demanding research effort. But if, after five long years, you’re still less than 1 percent of the way through your actual experiment, the back-patting and champagne will have
Today, art and science are often seen as two wildly different pursuits. Historically, the pair are not always so easily distinguished. Ever since the Folkton Drums were first discovered 130 years ago, the three chalk cylinders have been praised for their remarkable and intricate decorations, carved more than 4,000 years ago in Britain. Now, a
For over 70 years, scientists have been predicting the existence of a certain kind of object in the outer Solar System. Small in size, these potential bodies are thought to constitute an important early step in the planet formation process. Since these hypothetical objects are only between 1 and 10 kilometres in radius (0.6 to
He Jiankui, the Chinese researcher who drew wide criticism when it emerged that he gene-edited several human babies, told an influential adviser about the work many months before it became public. Though Nobel Prize winner and University of Massachusetts professor Craig Mello admonished He that the work was unethical, according to emails obtained by the
Climate change is pulling back the curtain and exposing an Arctic landscape not seen by the Sun in 40,000 years or more. Baffin Island is a rocky, frozen wonderland, located in the Arctic circle between Greenland and the northern coast of Canada. With its deep fjords and ancient glaciers, it’s the perfect place to study
The most severe outbreak of frigid arctic air in years is set to surge over the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes by the middle of next week. A large lobe of the polar vortex, the zone of frigid air winding around the North Pole, is breaking off, and temperatures will plunge as much as 40
Quite a bit of news dropped on Friday, so you may have missed a hedgehog-related alert that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued early that afternoon. Those tiny, prickly, adorable mammals — which have jumped in popularity as household pets in recent years — may be carrying salmonella germs and spreading them to nearby humans, according to the
Arthur Ashkin, the world’s oldest Nobel Prize winner, favours comfort over style. When I met him in his New Jersey home, he was sporting a fleece-lined zip-up, corduroy pants, and fuzz-lined Crocs. The outfit makes sense for someone who spends a lot of time tinkering with new inventions in the basement. Ashkin, who’s 96 years
One of the biggest cultural shifts in recent years is the rise of fake news – where claims with no evidence behind them (e.g. the world is flat) get shared as fact alongside evidence-based, peer-reviewed findings (e.g. climate change is happening). Researchers have coined this trend the ‘anti-enlightenment movement‘, and there’s been a lot of
Martin Rees, a well-respected British cosmologist, made pretty bold statement late last year when it comes to particle accelerators: there’s a small, but real possibility of disaster. Particle accelerators, like the Large Hadron Collider, shoot particles at incredibly high speeds, smash them together, and observe the fallout. These high speed collisions have helped us discover
The name is not appetising: it’s called the groundcherry. It’s possible you haven’t heard of this fruit, but with some genetic tweaks, it could become a supermarket staple sooner than you think. That’s because scientists have used the groundcherry as an experimental test case to illustrate just how quickly CRISPR genome editing can speed up
No matter how abundant or renewable, solar power has a thorn in its side. There is still no cheap and efficient long-term storage for the energy that it generates. The solar industry has been snagged on this branch for a while, but in the past year alone, a series of four papers has ushered in
Weeks after NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft made the farthest-ever visit to an object, located more than 4 billion miles from Earth, the probe beamed home an unprecedented photo. The image (below) is devoid of colour and looks somewhat fuzzy, but it represents the most detailed look yet at the object. Researchers say there are more
The first time he saw them, on a freezing morning last January, George Howard thought the odd-shaped humps protruding from his iced-over swamp were tree stumps. But somehow that didn’t seem right. He strained his eyes. They were tree stumps with teeth? Howard panicked. He is, after all, the manager of the Swamp Park, which features an
A few years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope did something amazing: over the course of 841 orbits and hundreds of exposures, it imaged a tiny region of space in the constellation of Fornax, peeling back the layers of time by 13 billion years, to just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. It’s
Feeding a global population of 10 billion – the overwhelming number we’re predicted to hit by 2050 – will be extremely difficult, but scientists say it is not impossible. A radical new diet has the potential to improve public health, save countless lives, and protect our planet for future generations, according to a huge group of researchers.
The notion that fake news exists in its own universe turns out to be doubly true: One universe is the realm outside truth. The other is its own seedy pocket of social media. In a new study published Thursday in the journal Science, political scientists surveyed the inhabitants of this Internet pocket around the time
Birds see a very different world to the one we’re familiar with, and now we can get a hint of what that looks like thanks to a specially designed camera that simulates birdo-vision. Apart from being fascinating, the resulting images also explain why birds can navigate so accurately through dense foliage. Behavioural biologist Cynthia Tedore
A team of theoretical physicists has a mind-bending new explanation for why our Universe is the way it is, and how it emerged in all its strangeness. According to a recent paper, space-time itself – the very fabric that makes up our Universe – is nothing more than a product of quantum mechanics. And distortions in
Is devolution possible? Two verified experts answered this question on independent fact-checking platform Metafact.io. Both answered ‘yes’. You can read one answer below. The short answer is “yes,” but that needs to be explained, because the concept of “devolution” is very misleading and makes assumptions about evolution that simply aren’t true (it’s not a term that
Earth’s oldest known rock may have been found, in the last place anyone would have thought to look for it: in samples of rock from the Moon, brought back home to Earth by Apollo 14 astronauts in 1971. We’re not talking about a “Moon was once part of Earth” rock (that’s just one hypothesis for
There are few monuments in the world that are as iconic as the Pyramids of Giza, a necropolis that dates back nearly 5,000 years. The Great Pyramid of Giza is the only one of the ancient seven wonders of the world still standing and, in 2007, 100 million people voted to select it as one
Football fans in the US can be divided into three camps – those who think the Patriots victory against the Colts in the 2014/15 playoffs were given a helping hand by slightly under inflated footballs, those who don’t, and those who ask ‘OMG can’t we just get on with football?!’ Over the past few years,
When you play a game of thrones, there are only two outcomes: you either win or you die. The question is, who amongst us has the iron dice stacked in their favour? If you are a male of low birth with a penchant for unwavering loyalty and an insistence on living, you will probably have your
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is keeping the Doomsday Clock set at two minutes to midnight – a metaphor for the end of the world – calling the threats against humankind “a new abnormal”. The scientists announced Thursday that the clock is stuck at 11:58, citing nuclear weapons and climate change as two existential
The fact we’re living in a world where surveillance is becoming more common is unlikely to be a surprise to you. But even when you’re out of sight, you might not be safely hidden: researchers have developed a computer program that lets cameras see around corners. The technique is called computational periscopy, and it works
New technology being developed by the MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory uses laser light to excite moisture in the air surrounding a target’s ear, causing it to quietly whisper a personal message from several metres away. “Our system can be used from some distance away to beam information directly to someone’s ear,” says MIT team leader and
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