If we told you not to think about a red apple, would an image of a red apple immediately pop into your mind? We’re less adept at controlling our thoughts than we might think, according to new research. Even those who are relatively good at managing what they’re thinking about on a conscious level can
Month: April 2019
Titan is a mystery as mighty as its namesake. A thick haze of atmospheric nitrogen conceals the moon’s surface from view, hiding a giant and ancient geological oddity that scientists have only just unmasked. In new research, scientists report the discovery of a massive ‘corridor’ of ice-rich bedrock that spans almost halfway around Saturn’s largest
All the way back in 1999, when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science was celebrating its 35th year of research, it gave itself an unusual birthday present: a large lead container, shaped like a paper bag, sculpted by legendary architect Frank Gehry. It was sealed away behind a cryptographic puzzle, specifically designed
Something is glowing at the heart of the Milky Way – there’s more diffuse gamma radiation than can be explained by what we can directly observe. It’s called the Galactic Center GeV Excess (GCE), and astronomers have been trying to explain it for years. One idea was that the glow is produced by the annihilation
A strange encounter between fishermen and a mysteriously geared-up white beluga whale in the Barents Sea off the coast of Norway has raised suspicions the animal might be a trained recruit from a Russian military facility. The whale (Delphinapterus leucas), which was discovered near the island of Ingøya in Arctic Norway, appeared tame and well-adapted
Extraterrestrial life, that familiar science-fiction trope, that kitschy fantasy, that CGI nightmare, has become a matter of serious discussion, a “risk factor”, a “scenario”. How has ET gone from sci-fi fairytale to a serious scientific endeavour modelled by macroeconomists, funded by fiscal conservatives and discussed by theologians? Because, following a string of remarkable discoveries over
The push away from needless plastic use is a noble and necessary one, but new research casts doubt over just how environmentally friendly some forms of biodegradable plastic actually are. Researchers found that bags labelled biodegradable and compostable were still able to carry a full load of shopping after being left to degrade in the
Within half a century, it’s possible that Facebook could be overrun by the dead, with more deceased users making up the world’s largest social network than living, active people, a new study suggests. This provocative projection comes from a pair of researchers at the University of Oxford, who ran the numbers on Facebook’s massive audience
Some 7,800 light-years away, in the constellation of Cygnus, lies a most peculiar black hole. It’s called V404 Cygni, and in 2015, telescopes around the world stared in wonder as it woke from dormancy to devour material from a star over the course of a week. That one event provided such a wealth of information
It came out of nowhere. Just a few short weeks ago – in an alternate reality otherwise identical to our own – it popped up on our screens: a giant asteroid hurtling through space, and headed straight for us. At least, maybe it is. Nobody really knows. In this hypothetical scenario, the facts on the
For as long as we’ve explored the oceans there have been tales of monsters lurking below. No doubt many sightings have been glimpses of actual marine life, but emerging sightings of long-necked serpentine beasts such as the Loch Ness Monster aren’t as easy to explain. Speculation on what could inspire changes in the old sea
In the bewildering quagmire that is the gas between the stars, the Hubble Space Telescope has identified evidence of ionised buckminsterfullerene, the carbon molecule known colloquially as “buckyballs”. Containing 60 carbon atoms arranged in a soccer ball shape, buckminsterfullerene (C60) occurs naturally here on Earth – in soot. But in 2010, it was also detected in
At the end of Avengers: Infinity War half the people (including heroes and villains) in the universe were gone in the snap of a finger from Thanos (Josh Brolin). So how can Avengers: Endgame (in cinemas from this week) try to bring them back? Well, with that tried and tested movie plot device: time travel.
It may soon be legal for the dead to push daisies, or any other flower, in backyard gardens across Washington state. The state legislature recently passed a bill that, if signed by the governor, allows human bodies to be composted – and used for mulch. As the nation ages, US funeral practices are changing. Rates
Pulsars are possibly the most useful object in the sky. Dead stars, rotating incredibly fast and pulsing out a beam of radiation from their poles, often on precise millisecond scales. It’s this incredibly precise beat that makes them so amazing. We use them to calculate distances, to understand the interstellar medium, to probe the curved
The U.S. Navy is working on new guidelines for its personnel to report sightings and other encounters with “unidentified aircraft,” Politico reports. It sounds like a major step toward taking UFO encounters more seriously: the Navy’s new process would create formalized guidelines for sailors and pilots alike to report and analyze each one of the
You can be thankful that we orbit a placid, main sequence, yellow dwarf star. Astronomers recently spied a massive superflare on a diminutive star, a powerful, radiation spewing event that you wouldn’t want to witness up close. The ‘star’ was ULAS J224940.13-011236.9, an L-type sub-stellar brown dwarf near the Aquarius-Pisces border. The cumbersome, phone number-style
In February of 2016, scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) announced the first-ever detection of gravitational waves (GWs). Since then, multiple events have been detected, providing insight into a cosmic phenomena that was predicted over a century ago by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. A little over a year ago, LIGO was taken
Special Relativity. It’s been the bane of space explorers, futurists and science fiction authors since Albert Einstein first proposed it in 1905. For those of us who dream of humans one-day becoming an interstellar species, this scientific fact is like a wet blanket. Luckily, there are a few theoretical concepts that have been proposed that
For the northernmost herbivores on Earth, foraging for food has never been easy. Bound to the icy tundras of an Arctic archipelago, the wild Svalbard reindeers of Norway (Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus) are accustomed to sparse vegetation. But what they are dealing with now is far beyond that. With global warming causing more rain and less snow,
The oceans hide all kinds of secrets and unknowns in the deep – like the 195,728 viruses that scientists just found lurking underwater, during the course of a pole-to-pole expedition carried out to survey marine life. The researchers say the vast majority have never been seen before. Prior to this, we only definitively knew about
The mysterious purple skyglow named STEVE was unmasked last year. Physicists proved that STEVE was not a new kind of aurora – in fact, it’s not any kind of aurora at all. But that still left one big, gaping question: What exactly is it? Now we have the answer. Unlike the charged particles of the
Pikachu, a well-loved housecat who died in January from complications following a battle with diabetes, is going to blast off. Owner Steve Munt plans to send some of Pikachu’s ashes into space, according to Space.com – a strange tribute that will make Pikachu the first cremated cat to enter orbit. Shuttling Pikachu into the cosmos
The latest measurement of the expansion rate of the Universe is in, and it has confirmed with more certainty than ever that we have a real dilly of a pickle on our hands. Once again, the result has shown that the Universe is expanding much faster than it should be based on the conditions just
Any night owls reading this will be familiar with the struggle of constantly trying to fit into a morning person’s world. And researchers might have finally identified the genetic typo that causes this social jetlag. A 2017 study revealed that many people who stay up late and struggle to wake up in the morning aren’t
For five nights, the skies above Jean Dean’s home were dark and clear. Here in her backyard, on the remote Channel Island of Guernsey, the 60-year-old grandmother and retired oceanographer was taking part in a star-gazing course. Whatever she saw up there was too beautiful not to capture. Using 13 hours of exposure, the amateur
Scientists have discovered a new species of crab that swam the seas 95 million years ago — and behold, it could be the next Pixar character. The small, pocket-size crab, named Callichimaera perplexa, was different than its modern cousins. This crab sported a tiny lobster-esque shell, with legs flattened like oars, and huge Pound Puppies-style
Thanks to the XENON1T dark matter detector lodged under the Gran Sasso mountains of Italy, scientists have recorded one of the rarest events to ever be detected: a special type of radioactive decay in xenon-124. It’s an amazing feat, because the decay of this isotope is extremely, extremely slow. In fact, xenon-124 has a half-life
Deep in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest live tiny frogs that are bright orange, toxic, and glow ultraviolet, thanks to revelations from new research. It’s the first known case of an amphibian showing “exceptional” fluorescence right through their skin. “The origin of the fluorescence lies in the dermal bone of the head and back, visible through
Earth is often in the firing line of fragments of asteroids and comets, most of which burn up tens of kilometres above our heads. But occasionally, something larger gets through. That’s what happened off Russia’s east coast on December 18 last year. A giant explosion occurred above the Bering Sea when an asteroid some ten
Going to space is serious business. How serious? Well, let this video from NASA astronaut Drew Feustel tell you. Feustel spent 197 days – so just over half a year – on board the International Space Station. That’s a pretty standard mission length. And all that time is spent in microgravity. But we humans aren’t
A bone once thought to be almost lost to evolution and rare in modern humans is making a strange comeback. Known as the fabella bone, this knee bone was once very rare in human beings, but is now three times more common in human knees than it was a hundred years ago. That’s based on
When Jean-Paul Marat’s killer, Charlotte Corday, was executed by guillotine in 1793, a man named Francois le Gros allegedly lifted her head and slapped both cheeks. Onlookers claimed that Corday’s face took on an angry expression and her cheeks became flushed. There are other reports from history of severed heads that seem to have shown
Given the fervour with which naturalists scoured Southeast Asia in the 19th century looking for new bird species, you’d think the region would be tapped out. But nature can still find ways to sneak up on us: Two previously undescribed species have only just been discovered in Indonesia. They both belong to the genus Zosterops,
SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk hinted at what could be the announcement of a brain-machine interface that could one day hook human brains up to computers on Sunday. In response to a question asking for an update on Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup he founded in 2016, Musk replied that new information would be ”coming soon”. A “direct cortical interface,” according to
The spoken word is a powerful tool, but not all of us have the ability to use it, either due to biology or circumstances. In such cases, technology can bridge the gap – and now that gap is looking shorter than ever, with a new algorithm that turns messages meant for your muscles into legible
Scientists have observed the clearest evidence yet of an incredibly rare and exotic theoretical phase of matter called a supersolid – and while it only lasted experimentally for a fleeting instant in the lab, it’s the longest we’ve ever glimpsed such paradoxical strangeness to exist at all. Supersolids were first theoretically predicted to exist a
NASA’s InSight Mars lander may have recorded its first ‘Marsquake’ – seismic tremors, faint but unmistakable deep in the belly of the red beast. Early analysis has confirmed that the tremor did originate inside the planet, as opposed to atmospheric influences such as wind. Now seismologists are hard at work to narrow down precisely what
Apes . . . well, ape. Two gorillas at Virunga National Park in Congo have taken the Internet by storm by posing – on two feet – in a photograph with park rangers. The rangers posted a selfie on Facebook late last week showing two orphaned female gorillas, Ndakazi and Ndeze, standing tall beside them in the Senkwekwe Center
We now know what it looks like when a spacecraft lobs a bomb at an asteroid. Earlier in April, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) directed its Hayabusa2 spacecraft to toss an explosive at the Ryugu asteroid from about 1,640 feet (500 meters) above its surface. Now, JAXA has released a video of the launch
Since it was first launched on 24 April 1990, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has made more than 1.4 million observations of nearly 45,000 celestial objects. For its 29th birthday, NASA has singled out just one. The Southern Crab Nebula is a tentacled monster of the Southern sky, located several thousand light-years from Earth in the constellation of
Even if death metal isn’t a perfect fit for you as far as music genres go, you have to admire the AI smarts behind Relentless Doppelganger – a non-stop, 24/7 YouTube livestream churning out heavy death metal generated completely by algorithms. And this is by no means a one-off trick by Dadabots, the neural network
In 2015, NASA revealed that Earth’s oceans are rising faster than expected, and the space agency projected that we’re now “locked in” to at least 90 cm of sea level rise in the coming decades. That in itself would be enough to displace millions of people around the world, but if this trend continues and
For the first time, engineers have demonstrated how ‘bubbles’ of lighter grains can form in sand, just as they can in other fluids – even though granular materials tend towards mixing. Although individual grains of sand are solid, when you get a lot of them, they behave surprisingly like a fluid – think of falling
California is notorious for its earthquakes, but a stunning new discovery reveals for the first time just how much we’ve underestimated its omnipresent earth-shaking potential. By the time you just about finish reading this story, in fact, Southern California will probably have experienced another quake – based off a new, unprecedented deep dive into 10
Slime mould might easily be one of the strangest life forms on our planet. They are neither plants, animals, nor fungi, but various species of complex, single-celled amoebas of the protist kingdom. Sometimes they form colonies able to grow, move, and even exhibit a strange kind of intelligence. Even without a nervous system, they are
Have you ever seen a giant red jellyfish light up the night sky for a split second? If you have, you’re not imagining things. You’ve just witnessed a lightning-like electrical discharge high in the atmosphere known as a sprite. Paul Smith captured the elusive phenomenon Wednesday night as storms raged over northwest Oklahoma and the
In the Hollywood blockbuster The Core, the planet’s core suddenly stops rotating, causing Earth’s magnetic field to collapse. Then bursts of deadly microwaves cook the Colosseum and melt the Golden Gate Bridge. While “nearly everything in the movie is wrong,” according to Justin Revenaugh, a seismologist from the University of Minnesota, it is true that
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