Near the Markha River in Arctic Siberia, the earth ripples in ways that scientists don’t fully understand. Earlier this week, NASA researchers posted a series of satellite images of the peculiar wrinkled landscape to the agency’s Earth Observatory website. Taken with the Landsat 8 satellite over several years, the photos show the land on both sides of the
Month: February 2021
The coronavirus pandemic has had the world fixated on viruses like no time in living memory, but new evidence reveals humans never even notice the vast extent of viral existence – even when it’s inside us. A new database project compiled by scientists has identified over 140,000 viral species that dwell in the human gut
Scientists are using a radar-like weather system to watch as a storm of pathogens brew inside living tissue. The strategy is entirely novel, according to the authors, and relies on a technique very similar to Doppler radars, which can detect the motion of precipitation and predict upcoming weather patterns. Doppler ultrasounds, which use sound waves
Beyond Earth, the general scientific consensus is that the best place to search for evidence of extraterrestrial life is Mars. However, it is by no means the only place. Aside from the many extrasolar planets that have been designated as “potentially-habitable,” there are plenty of other candidates right here in our Solar System. These include the
An ornate Roman chariot has been discovered “almost intact” near Italy’s buried city of Pompeii, the archaeological park announced on Saturday, calling it a discovery with “no parallel” in the country. The four-wheeled processional carriage was found in the portico to stables where the remains of three horses were unearthed in 2018, including one still
If you’re in the right place at the right time, and you turn your eyes to the sky, you just might catch sight of something eerily beautiful: Wisps of cloud, high in the sky, glowing softly even though the Sun has already slipped below the horizon. These are noctilucent, or night-shining, clouds, appearing at twilight
Having dominated the planet’s surface for hundreds of millions of years, dinosaur diversity came to a dramatic conclusion some 66 million years ago at the hot end of an asteroid impact with what is today Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. It’s a theory so swollen with data that it’s hard to imagine any room for doubt remains that this
A giant iceberg, more than 20 times the size of Manhattan, just split off from Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf. This dramatic breakup comes after a major crack formed on the shelf in November 2020 and continued to grow until the ‘berg finally broke off Friday morning (Feb. 26). The so-called “North Rift” crack is the
Throughout the world and across various different cultures, it’s often assumed atheists are untrustworthy and lack the same guiding principles as those who believe in a god of some kind. In 2020, an international survey spanning six continents found 45 percent of people think it’s necessary to believe in a god to be moral and
Although its main mission is staring at the Sun, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will take any opportunity to send data back home to Earth. The planet Venus represents just such an opportunity, or rather, seven of them. Seven times during its mission, the probe will swing around Venus for a gravity assist, using the planet’s
Like the Universe’s tiniest matryoshka dolls, atoms are typically modelled as particles within particles – a nuclei built of protons and neutrons, which in turn contain trios of fundamental particles called quarks. As convenient as this simple metaphor might be, the quantum engine operating within these subatomic particles is an incomprehensible ledger of quantum economics:
In a stormy Hawaiian sky in July 2017, streaks of red and blue lightning seemed to meet above a bed of white light. Cameras on the Gemini North telescope at the Gemini Observatory in Mauna Kea snapped a stunning picture of the multi-colored light show. The National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab) released the photo
Pollen grains from flowering plants were meant to fly, sometimes travelling hundreds of kilometres on the wind. Now it appears that the climate crisis has accelerated that travel, making allergy season in some areas of the world start earlier, last longer, and get more severe each year. In the past three decades, warmer temperatures from
For the first time, physicists have captured an enigmatic state of matter on video. Using a scanning transmission X-ray microscope, the research team has recorded the oscillations of a time crystal made out of magnons at room temperature. This, they said, is a significant breakthrough in the study of time crystals. “We were able to
A team of US scientists has demonstrated that the offspring of huge carnivorous dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex, who grew from the size of house cats to towering monsters, reshaped their ecosystems by outcompeting smaller rival species. Their study, published in the journal Science on Thursday, helps answer an enduring mystery about the 150-million-year rule of
In total, there are thousands of them – a giant landscape of strange, hollowed jars, carved from ancient stone. Some have lids. Most are open to the sky. These surreal cauldron-like megaliths in Laos are known as the Plain of Jars, an archaeological relics whose original purpose is still shrouded in mystery, their significance long
A tiny, ancient bone fragment found in Southeast Alaska is a lot more than meets the eye. It belonged to a dog that lived in the region 10,150 years ago, which means it’s a piece of the puzzle of dog migration into the Americas – and the humans that likely came along with it. Scientists
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) sea currents are vital in transporting heat from the tropics to the Northern Hemisphere, but new research suggests climate change might knock the AMOC out of action much sooner than we anticipated. That could have profound, large-scale impacts on the planet in terms of weather patterns, upending agricultural practices,
It should be simple. When temperatures on Earth get hotter, huge amounts of water ice trapped in giant glaciers begin to thaw, releasing water into the oceans, and causing sea levels to rise. It’s the story of our lives. By contrast, when global temperatures plummet, which happens during ice ages, sea levels proceed to drop,
SpaceX is preparing to rocket its latest Starship prototype tens of thousands of feet into the air as early as this week. The challenge is landing it back on the ground – that maneuver has ended in explosion both times the company previously attempted it. This time around, SpaceX founder Elon Musk estimated that the prototype has a 60
Artwork that had adorned the walls of an Egyptian prince’s tomb for more than four millennia has been found to contain images of a bird completely unknown to modern science – until now. Although archaeologists have been eyeing the representations of local waterfowl since the fresco’s discovery at the dig site of Meidum in 1871,
When NASA’s Perseverance rover made its daring descent to the red planet, you may have noticed that its parachute bore an unusual arrangement of red and white chevrons. That pattern, it turns out, was not random at all, but a hidden code. Within just six hours, internet sleuths had cracked it, revealing a beautifully uplifting
By the end of the year, Hayley Arceneaux will be the youngest American in space and one of the first tourists to enter orbit unaccompanied by professional astronauts. It is a feat made all the more remarkable by her battle to overcome a childhood cancer that robbed the 29-year-old of her dream of becoming an
Rock from Mars is a rare and precious resource here on Earth. So far, the only samples we have are chunks of meteorite, dislodged from the red planet and travelling through the Solar System until they smack into Earth. A small piece of this invaluable stuff has just been put to a fascinating use: Scientists
In Western Australia’s northeast Kimberley region, on Balanggarra Country, a two-metre-long painting of a kangaroo spans the sloping ceiling of a rock shelter above the Drysdale River. In a paper published today in Nature Human Behaviour, we date the artwork as being between 17,500 and 17,100 years old – making it Australia’s oldest known in-situ
Sometimes, while waiting for quantum computers to become ubiquitous, or wondering whatever happened to flying cars, it’s easy to forget just how far technology has come over the past 50 years. Sure, we can all list off a bunch of innovations that have changed the way the world works – the Internet, smartphones, radio telescopes
People with extremist views aren’t only identified by their political, religious, or social beliefs, according to new research. Those ideological convictions run deep, scientists say – so deep, in fact, that they can be recognised in a ‘psychological signature’ of cognitive traits and aptitudes that typifies the thinking patterns of the extremist mind. “There appear
Tiny, all-but-undetectable primordial black holes could be one of the mysterious sources of mass that contributes to dark matter. There are significant limits to their lifespan in open space, but in recent years, astrophysicists have asked: what if these black holes are in the core of neutron stars? Gradually, such black holes would accrete the
For the first time ever, you can watch a rover landing on Mars. And it’s epic on many levels. Human beings have been dropping machines on Mars since the 1970s: landers that parachuted to the surface, rovers that were destroyed during landing, and later rovers that survived their landings inside giant, bouncing cushions of airbags.
Scientific progress towards a quantum computing future has so far involved lots of different breakthroughs in lots of different (but related) fields, and there’s now a new one to report: the discovery of a crucial quantum speed limit. This latest research answers a fundamental question – how fast can a quantum process be? It’s a
A star completely torn apart when it ventured too close to a black hole has given science a rare gift. For the first time, scientists have detected a high-energy neutrino that was flung out into space during one of these violent events. The tiny particle doesn’t just get us closer to figuring out where precisely
We find ourselves at a precarious time in global health. Many people are anxiously awaiting their turn to receive a vaccine for COVID-19, yet roll-out is slow and disorganized, with many countries facing supply shortages. The conditions are ripe for opportunists to exploit the situation. Reports of unethical line-jumping by wealthy elites have started to
Researchers have discovered organic molecules trapped in incredibly ancient rock formations in Australia, revealing what they say is the first detailed evidence of early chemical ingredients that could have underpinned Earth’s primeval microbial life-forms. The discovery, made in the 3.5-billion-year-old Dresser Formation of Western Australia’s Pilbara Craton, adds to a significant body of research pointing
The image above may look like a fairly normal picture of the night sky, but what you’re looking at is a lot more special than just glittering stars. Each of those white dots is an active supermassive black hole. And each of those black holes is devouring material at the heart of a galaxy millions
Vampire squid have been lurking in the dark corners of the ocean for 30 million years, a new analysis of a long-lost fossil finds. Modern-day vampire squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis) can thrive in deep, oxygen-poor ocean water, unlike many other squid species that require shallower habitat along continental shelves. Few fossil ancestors of today’s vampire squid survive, though,
The amount of sunlight reaching Earth’s surface has been fluctuating for decades now, and a new study supports the idea that human activity is to blame. In the late 1980s, researchers first noticed a steady decline or ‘dimming’ in Earth’s brightness in various parts of the world, including a near 30 percent drop in sunlight
They contaminate the air we breathe, tea we sip, water we drink, and food we eat. They’re strewn across the deepest ocean trenches and the highest mountains. They’re in fish, insects, whales, corals, and our own poo. They’re even showing up in human placentas. Microplastics are everywhere. But we still have no idea what, if
Launch yourself from a great enough height and it won’t take long to see which would win in a battle between gravity and the forces that bind solid ground. Gravity’s relative weakness, at least compared to the strength of electromagnetism and the nuclear forces, appears to limits its power to phenomena on the vast scales
A whitetail deer was found stumbling through the streets of Farragut, Tennessee, with thick hair growing out of both of its eyeballs. The hair protruded from discs of flesh covering both the buck’s cornea — the transparent part of the eye that covers the iris and pupil. The bizarre condition, called corneal dermoids, has been documented in
NASA just landed a new rover on Mars, the culmination of a 300-million-mile journey that sent the robot into an ancient lake bed. But the landing is just the beginning of the Perseverance rover’s mission. It’s set to explore Mars’ Jezero Crater for the next two years. It will search for signs of ancient microbial
Once, holograms were just a scientific curiosity. But thanks to the rapid development of lasers, they have gradually moved centre stage, appearing on the security imagery for credit cards and bank notes, in science fiction movies – most memorably Star Wars – and even “live” on stage when long-dead rapper Tupac reincarnated for fans at
An oil rig explosion off the coast of Louisiana killed eleven workers on 20 April 2010. The world then watched helplessly as BP’s oil gushed out into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days, killing untold millions of marine animals. Dolphins that survived one of the worst environmental disasters ever, still appear to be suffering
When answering a question, your silence might say more than your words. A new psychology study has found pausing before replying, even for just a few seconds, can make you seem more insincere or dishonest. Even when listeners are told to ignore your pauses, they’re still more likely to judge a slower response as more
Dogs might not be able to recognise themselves in a mirror, but that doesn’t mean our pets don’t have some level of self-awareness. Recent research has shown dogs can recognise the unique smell of their own odour, sort of like looking in an ‘olfactory mirror’, and now a new study suggests they might also have
Most of us living on planet Earth have to make it through some amount of cold weather for at least part of the year, and new research has identified a specific genetic mutation that makes a fifth of us more resilient to cold conditions. The genetic mutation in question stops the production of the protein
Material accelerating away from the site of a stellar explosion has been discovered in a star-forming cloud. It’s only the second time molecular outflows of this kind have ever been clearly seen, but it could help astronomers understand how the most massive stars get their start in life. In the 1980s, astronomers discovered something peculiar
Creating a quantum computer requires an ability to stroke the edges of reality with the quietest of touches. Too much ‘noise’ and the delicate state of the system collapses, leaving you with a very expensive paperweight. One way to reduce the risk of this occurring is to build in checks and balances that help to
Scientists have identified a new phenomenon they describe as “interactive dreaming”, where people experiencing deep sleep and lucid dreams are able to follow instructions, answer simple yes-or-no questions, and even solve basic mathematics problems. As well as adding a whole new level of understanding to what happens to our brains when we’re dreaming, the new study
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