July 2020 - Science News

One of Earth’s largest ‘waterfalls’ is in the ocean, and we just found its main source

Victoria Falls is said to be the largest waterfall on Earth, and Angel Falls the highest, but no matter how

Strange Meteorites Found Across Earth Revealed as Fragments of The Same Baby Planet

Before our Solar System had planets, it had planetesimals. Scientists think that most of the meteorites that have struck Earth

Time travel simulation shows quantum ‘butterfly effect’ doesn’t exist

Here’s the story – our protagonist rewinds history, locates baby Hitler, and averts global war by putting him on a

SpaceX plans to bring 2 astronauts home on Sunday, but a tropical storm may interfere

NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, who made spaceflight history on May 30 by becoming the first people to

Scientists find the best place on Earth for viewing the night sky, but there’s a catch

Away from the glare of civilisation’s blinding lights, an unimpeded view of the night sky makes you feel like you’re

Scientists have ‘woken up’ microbes trapped under the seafloor for 100 million years

Researchers have successfully revived tiny microbes trapped dormant in a seemingly lifeless zone of the seabed for more than 100

Scientists start assembling the world’s largest nuclear fusion experiment

Fourteen years after receiving the official go-ahead, scientists on Tuesday began assembling a giant machine in southern France designed to

Humans are about to return a rock to the surface of Mars after 600,000 years

Humans are about to make history by sending a little piece of a Martian rock back to the surface of

AI analysed over 11,000 couples’ relationships. This is what it found

A first-of-its-kind artificial intelligence (AI) study of romantic relationships based on data from thousands of couples has identified the top

Svalbard, home of the ‘Doomsday’ vault, just recorded its highest ever temperature

Norway’s Arctic archipelago Svalbard on Saturday recorded its highest-ever temperature, the country’s meteorological institute reported. According to scientific study, global

It’s official: NASA’s next mission to Mars has been cleared for launch this Thursday

NASA on Monday gave its latest Mars rover Perseverance the all clear to launch later this week on a mission

Carbon emissions are chilling the atmosphere 90 km above Antarctica

While greenhouse gases are warming Earth’s surface, they’re also causing rapid cooling far above us, at the edge of space.

For only the second time, astronomers detect a strange flash of light during supernova

A stunning flash of ultraviolet light from an exploding white dwarf has been detected by astronomers for only the second

A ‘journey mindset’ can help us get through this pandemic. Here’s what that means

Living in the present can be a present in itself, but during a global pandemic, when the world is in

Mesmerising animation reveals our entire Solar System doesn’t exactly orbit the Sun

It’s common knowledge that the Sun is the centre of the Solar System. Around it, the planets orbit – along

Hubble just took an astonishingly detailed image of Saturn

The Hubble space telescope has spent the past 30 years orbiting 547 km (340 miles) above Earth. The ageing satellite

Engineers create strange four-winged flapping drones inspired by bird wings

We have developed four-winged bird-like robots, called ornithopters, that can take off and fly with the agility of swifts, hummingbirds

Scientists show how bad our plastic waste problem could get by 2040

During a visit to a bookstore a few weeks ago, we couldn’t help but stare at a display unit featuring

Interestingly, toddlers tend to deal with uncertainty the same way the rest of us do

Understanding what’s going on in the mind of toddlers is helpful in improving everything from education and parenting to pre-school

Experiments show bacteria grow more lethal and antibiotic-resistant in space

China has launched its Tianwen-1 mission to Mars. A rocket holding an orbiter, lander and rover took flight from the

Looking back on the first-ever photo of quantum entanglement

This stunning image captured last year by physicists at the University of Glasgow in Scotland is the first-ever photo of

Plant roots are melting permafrost and unearthing vast stores of carbon emissions

As plants begin to spread across melting permafrost, scientists are growing ever more worried their roots will stir microbes into

New research is rewriting the very timeline of how Earth was born

In the very early days of the Solar System, baby Earth may have taken a much shorter time to form

Physicists find a new way to reveal the strange, wave-like nature of massive molecules

Nearly a century after experiments confirmed that atoms, matter’s smallest building blocks, have ethereal, wave-like characteristics, physicists have just found

Satellites capture a massive dust storm in Namibia streaming over the Atlantic Ocean

Landsat 8 strikes again. Landsat 8 is the United States Geological Survey’s most recently launched satellite, and it holds the

Breathtaking image reveals the colossal magnetic field of a distant spiral galaxy

Spiral galaxies look nice and tidy, with most of their stars and gas confined to a disc neatly arranged in

Chemists just worked out how to recycle some of our toughest single-use plastics

Thermosets are some of the toughest plastics around. They’re used in products that have to be particularly durable and heat-resistant

Bats can survive carrying deadly viruses, and we’re starting to figure out how

Our collective pandemic experience has made us keenly aware that bats have an uncanny ability to carry around deadly viruses,

US just unveiled its blueprint for a “virtually unhackable” quantum internet

US officials and scientists have begun laying the groundwork for a more secure “virtually unhackable” internet based on quantum computing

Male seahorse pregnancy has some eerie similarities to human childbearing

Many expecting fathers claim they’d love to take on the aching back, cramped organs, and painful contractions of their partner’s

Physicists just showed how to overcome a huge obstacle for fusion generator efficiency

Energy generated from nuclear fusion holds plenty of potential as a clean and almost limitless source of power, but many

Juno delivers first images of the north pole of Ganymede, where it rains plasma

It’s been busily orbiting and observing Jupiter and its moons for four years now, but the scientific spacecraft Juno still

US has accused Russia of firing an anti-satellite weapon in space

The United States accused Russia on Thursday of test-firing an anti-satellite weapon in space, warning that the threat against Washington’s

Sharks are now ‘functionally extinct’ in 19% of Earth’s ocean reefs

A massive survey of the world’s coral reefs has turned up a shocking decline in the populations of reef sharks.

A mutated Neanderthal gene could make some people more sensitive to pain

Scattered through the genomes of humans around the world we can find remnants of a Neanderthal ancestry. In some, this

New DNA study lays bare the horrific history of the transatlantic slave trade

A new DNA study published Thursday sheds fresh light on the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade, from the legacy

China successfully launches a Mars rover mission, joining the new space race

China launched a rover to Mars on Thursday, a journey coinciding with a similar US mission as the powers take

The entire Earth is vibrating less due to COVID-19 lockdowns, study reveals

We humans are a rowdy, disruptive bunch. Our very day-to-day living causes the planet to hum. Quite literally – driving

Ancient viral DNA from Viking Age corpses just got us closer to the origin of smallpox

As scientists scramble to figure out where exactly the coronavirus pandemic emerged, other virologists are still chasing the origins of

Warped starlight could be the signpost that points to dark matter in the Milky Way

When we peer out into intergalactic space, evidence for dark matter is everywhere. It’s in the rotation of galaxies, which

First methane leak found on Antarctic sea floor confirms researchers’ fears

Scientists have, for the first time, discovered an active leak of methane gas from the sea floor in Antarctica. It

Stunning cave discovery just changed the timeline of human presence in North America

Tools excavated from a cave in central Mexico are strong evidence that humans were living in North America at least

Analysis of 200 years of human activity in Antarctica reveals an unsettling picture

Antarctica is known for its remote and pristine wilderness, as one of the last intact expanses of land on our

Astronomers use supercomputer to model a hypernova for 300 days after explosion

The answers to many questions in astronomy are hidden behind the veil of deep time. One of those questions is

This bizarre river of black sludge in Arizona is totally real

On 15 July 2020, what looked like your typical dry waterway was engulfed by a sickening dust puffing black sludge,

A staggering 21TB of source code were just buried in the Arctic for an unknown future

If doomsday comes, know this: precautions have been taken. On an isolated Arctic archipelago, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault –

Astronomers reveal first-ever direct image of planets around a Sun-like star

Just over 300 light-years away is a star that’s a lot like a very young version of our Sun, with

Mind-boggling new study shows dogs can use Earth’s magnetic field to navigate

Dogs have an enviable sense of direction. Even in a completely unfamiliar place, our pets have an uncanny way of