The Martian atmosphere, in its current state, is not Earthling-friendly at all. It’s extremely thin, over 100 times less dense than Earth’s, and is made up mostly of carbon dioxide. Any humans attempting to breathe it would soon find themselves not breathing at all. But on that dusty, dry, alien world, a small instrument, a
Month: August 2022
A new method for entwining the fates of fragments of light has overcome some serious obstacles on the road to photon-based quantum computing. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany have successfully entangled 14 photons into a state considered optimal for qubits, more than doubling previous attempts – while also improving
Hydrogen fuel promises to be a clean and abundant source of energy in the future – as long as scientists can figure out ways to produce it practically and cheaply, and without fossil fuels. A new study provides us with another promising step in that direction. Scientists have described a relatively simple method involving aluminum
A crime scene can present itself in any form and size. In recent weeks, an Aotearoa New Zealand family who’d purchased abandoned goods from a storage locker made the harrowing discovery of two sets of human remains hidden inside two suitcases. Sadly, this is not a unique case – bodies of murder victims are found
Well, it had to happen eventually, and now it has. Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have this week released images of the same object. The result is a set of images that reveal the magnificently complementary abilities of the two telescopes, and some fascinating insights into one of the most spectacular galaxies
They found his body in a hammock, adorned by feathers, the last remaining member of his tribe. For 26 years, nearly 9,500 days and nights, the man with no known name had neither spoken to nor touched a single other human. He was known to the wider world as the “Man of the Hole” for
The Perseverance rover is enjoying a bit of a winning streak lately! For the past year and a half, the rover has been exploring the Jezero Crater on Mars to learn more about the planet’s past. As part of this mission, Perseverance is obtaining samples of Martian rock and soil that it will set aside
A mysterious ancient writing system called Linear Elamite, used between about 2300 BCE and 1800 BCE in what is now southern Iran, might have finally been deciphered, although some experts are skeptical about the findings. What’s more, it’s unclear whether all the artifacts used to decipher the writings were legally acquired. Only about 40 known
A new study has discovered a ‘frat-boy culture’ in dolphin society to rival our own. Beyond humans, researchers say dolphins are the only species known to form such complex, cooperative ‘bromances’. Other animals, like chimpanzees, show fierce male rivalry in their bid to mate with females. Their interactions don’t end in cooperation but in violence.
Seeing the famed pyramids of Giza as they stand today – immovable, impenetrable fortresses surrounded by windswept sands and a sprawling metropolis – it’s hard to imagine the day they were built. These stone labyrinths, constructed to honor the dead and carry them into the afterlife, were erected around 4,500 years ago without modern technology
The Universe, truly, is full of wonders, and the James Webb Space Telescope has just given us our best views of one of them yet. The object in question is a star around 5,600 light-years away, and Webb’s infrared eye has picked out an extraordinary detail: it’s surrounded by what appear to be concentric rings
It’s a common misconception that the Moon has a “dark” side. Like a rotisserie chicken, the Moon’s rotation ensures a nice, even sunbathe around its equator. But there are pockets that never receive any rays: deep craters and pocks at high latitudes, in the Moon’s polar regions, with high walls that protect the crater floor
For over a century, astronomers have known that the Universe has been expanding since the Big Bang. For the first 8 billion years, the expansion rate was relatively consistent since it was held back by the force of gravitation. However, thanks to missions like the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have since learned that roughly 5
Paleontologists in Portugal have unearthed the fossilized skeleton of what could be the largest dinosaur ever found in Europe. The remains are thought to be those of a sauropod, a herbivorous dinosaur 12 meters (39 feet) tall and 25 meters long that roamed the Earth around 150 million years ago. “It’s one of the biggest
Second only to Antarctica’s frozen cap in size, Greenland’s ice sheet is several million cubic kilometers of fresh water held in check by a combination of rock and sub-zero temperatures. Until the late 20th century, odds were the amount of ice lost to the sea would be replaced by a dusting of precipitation. Today there’s
On Monday morning, NASA scrubbed its first attempt to launch its historic Artemis 1 mission due to an engine bleed that’s still being investigated. In case you somehow missed the news, humans are finally planning to return to the Moon. We’re still a way off the first modern crewed mission to our planet’s satellite. But
The weird behavior of a galaxy around a billion light-years away suggests that it might contain one of the most highly anticipated events in modern astronomy. Fluctuations in light from the center of the galaxy SDSS J1430+2303 look suspiciously like a pair of supermassive black holes with a combined mass of around 200 million Suns
Crops including cucumbers, potatoes and lettuce can have yields up to four times as high when they’re grown in urban rather than rural areas, new research reveals – and that’s an important finding for the future of farming. Right now, it’s thought that 15–20 percent of global food is grown in cities, including 5–10 percent
Archaeologists in Romania have discovered an extraordinary cache of ancient gold rings that a 6,500-year-old woman wore in her hair. The trove in a Copper Age grave includes 169 gold rings, 800 bone beads, and an ornate spiraled copper bracelet discovered by a team from the Ţării Crişurilor museum in Oradea, Romania. The jewelry was
No animals are immune to the effects of climate change, but some are significantly more sensitive than others. They may live in a habitat undergoing severe upheaval, or they may just lack the adaptability to keep pace, even if their environment is comparatively stable. But as humans struggle to rein in climate change, we also
NASA’s Artemis 1 mission is poised to take a key step toward returning humans to the Moon after a half-century hiatus. The mission, scheduled to launch on Monday 29 August 2022 [8:33 am Eastern Time], is a shakedown cruise – sans crew – for NASA’s Space Launch System and Orion Crew Capsule. The spacecraft is
Although we’re more connected than ever, hatred and bigotry towards social groups seen as ‘Other’ remain rife in our world. To maintain a positive self-image, individuals may claim false positive beliefs toward such people. But new research reveals that patterns in their language can betray this dishonesty. “People lie for a reason, especially when the
There are two theories about where teeth originated: They either evolved from external scales (the outside-in hypothesis) or from somewhere inside the mouth (the inside-out hypothesis). Researchers studying a fossil of the Ischyrhiza mira species – an extinct sawfish that lived in North America around 65 to 100 million years ago – have found more
As we approach the end of the school holidays, parents across the country are saying the same thing: “If I had a pound for every time I heard ‘Are we nearly there yet?’, I’d be rich.” Having three young children myself, I know only too well the feeling of dread when, 30 minutes into a
Since the first James Webb Space Telescope images were released in July, our feeds have been flooded with mind-bogglingly gorgeous photos of space – from insanely detailed images of Jupiter to the most distant known star. Now, Webb has done it again, this time capturing an almost perfect Einstein ring roughly 12 billion light-years away.
Scientists have developed an ‘atomic television’ that uses lasers and atom clouds to carry a video signal that meets the traditional 480i resolution (480 horizontal lines) standard. Just don’t expect it to be installed as part of your home entertainment setup any time soon. Key to the technology is a glass container of gaseous super-sized
The relentless accuracy with which some mosquito species hunt down humans may result from their bizarrely wired olfactory system, which has an in-built backup for detecting human scents. Mosquitoes can sense CO2 or sweat wafting off humans using unique chemoreceptors in their antennae and the maxillary palp, a jointed sensory appendage of insects. A new
If we had been around and able to see into the heart of galaxy cluster Abell 980 around 260 million years ago, we may have seen something very spectacular indeed. The brightest galaxy in the cluster erupted, the result of activity from its supermassive black hole, an event that would go on to blow massive
Getting atoms to do what you want isn’t easy – but it’s at the heart of a lot of groundbreaking research in physics. Creating and controlling the behavior of new forms of matter is of particular interest and an active area of research. Our new study, published in Physical Review Letters, has uncovered a brand
Changing the number of chromosomes an animal has can take millions of generations to happen in nature through the course of evolution – and now, scientists have been able to make these same changes in lab mice in a relative blink of an eye. The new technique using stem cells and gene editing is a
“To see a world in a grain of sand”, the opening sentence of the poem by William Blake, is an oft-used phrase that also captures some of what geologists do. We observe the composition of mineral grains, smaller than the width of a human hair. Then, we extrapolate the chemical processes they suggest to ponder
Three skeletons uncovered in a rock shelter adorned with red pigment rock art reveal burial rituals of early humans who followed well-trodden paths through Indonesia’s Lesser Sunda Islands, albeit thousands of years apart. Aside from deepening our understanding of the evolution and diversification of burial practices, the finds – from Alor Island in southeast Indonesia
The animal kingdom is practically dripping in mucus. Amphibians, snails, and slugs are among the more famous masters of mucus, but even the loneliest microorganism can ooze a viscous slime from time to time. In our own species, mucus is produced in the mouth, the nose, the throat, the lungs, the gut, the cervix, and
A person’s nose could play an important role in their sex life, according to a new international study. In China, India, and the United States, researchers found young individuals who tend to sniff out the scent of others are more sexually motivated. In surveys, participants who placed more importance on their sense of smell were
When asked to write the numbers from one to ten in a sequence, how do you order them? Horizontally? Vertically? Left to right? Top to bottom? Would you place them randomly? It has been often been assumed, and taught in schools in Western countries, that the ‘correct’ ordering of numbers is from left to right
An exoplanet just 100 light-years from Earth appears to be the best candidate yet for a sloshy, water-covered ocean world. It’s called TOI-1452b, and measurements of its size and mass suggest a density profile consistent with a global liquid ocean. Scientists believe that worlds like this are possible, but they haven’t yet conclusively found one.
The world is heating up, and it’s threatening habitability in many regions around the equator. At this stage, even if we can limit global warming to 2 ˚C above pre-industrial levels, new estimates suggest the tropics and subtropics, including India, the Arabian peninsula and sub-Saharan Africa, will experience dangerously hot temperatures most days of the
Dogs get dementia too. But it’s often difficult to spot. Research published this week shows how common it is, especially in dogs over 10 years old. Here are some behavioral changes to watch out for in your senior dog and when to consult your veterinarian. What is doggy dementia? Doggy dementia, or canine cognitive dysfunction,
An early – and exciting – science result from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was announced today: the first unambiguous detection of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. This is the first detailed evidence for carbon dioxide ever detected in a planet outside our Solar System. The planet is named WASP-39b and
Massive swathes of wilderness and the lives of billions of animals were extinguished into ash and smoke during Australia’s Black Summer bushfires. The resulting haze suffocated major cities, triggered fatal health emergencies, and turned distant glaciers brown. Now researchers have directly traced how some of this burnt biomass contributed to the largest stratospheric warming in
The discovery of incredible fossils of a giant marine lizard reveals how this ancient extinct beast would have ruled the sea 66 million years ago. The beast is a newly discovered species of mosasaur, giant marine reptiles that hunted the oceans during the Late Cretaceous. It’s called Thalassotitan atrox, and wear on its teeth along
Close to the summit of an underwater mountain west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a jagged landscape of towers rises from the gloom. Their creamy carbonate walls and columns appear ghostly blue in the light of a remotely operated vehicle sent to explore. They range in height from tiny stacks the size of toadstools to a
The switch to walking on two legs, instead of four, is a major moment in the evolution of our species, which is why scientists are keen to pinpoint exactly when it happened – and a new study puts the adaptation as happening around 7 million years ago. That’s based on a detailed analysis of thigh
Astronomers may have detected a previously undiscovered ‘mini moon’ in the Solar System: a rocky object orbiting a small asteroid near Jupiter. If the rocky satellite, which is just a little wider than the width of Manhattan, is confirmed to be a proper moon, it would be one of the smallest moons ever spotted. The
This new image, taken of the skies above Chile’s Atacama Desert near the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) La Silla Observatory, shows bright red streaks in the sky known as red sprites. Red sprites are large-scale electrical discharges that occur high above thunderstorm clouds, usually triggered by the discharges of positive lightning between an underlying thundercloud
Time to upgrade your wallpapers, people. Two astrophotographers have just dropped what they call “the most ridiculously detailed picture” of the Moon – the result of a painstaking, neck-craning effort roughly two years and over 200,000 frames in the making. For millennia, humans have looked up and seen the same silver orb traversing the night
Lungs. We can’t live without them, nor can most animals that wear their skeletons on the inside. However, some extraordinary amphibians no longer bother with these delicate, mucus-y organs. Scientists have discovered that some lungless animals start to grow these breathing organs at first, and then their developmental process has a change of heart. These
A drought in Texas dried up a river flowing through Dinosaur Valley State Park, exposing tracks from giant reptiles that lived some 113 million years ago, an official said Tuesday. Photos posted on Facebook show three-toed footprints leading down a dry tree-lined riverbed in the southern US state. It is “one of the longest dinosaur
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