An unusual whale feeding technique only recorded for the first time in 2011 may have been around for at least two thousand years, according to researchers from Flinders University in Australia. Though whales have been seen feeding, breathing, and breaching the ocean surface for as long as humans have gazed at the sea, their depictions
Month: February 2023
Dinosaur fossils featuring arms with a suspect bend at the elbow and wrist could hint at the presence of an unpreserved tendon that underpins all modern avian flight. If researchers at the University of Tokyo are right, that posture could provide clues on the pathway Earth’s flying vertebrates followed to take to the skies. The
For decades, astronomers have watched a mysterious blob named X7 drift around the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, wondering where it came from. By analyzing 20 years’ worth of observations, a team of scientists led by University of California Los Angeles astrophysicist Anna Ciurlo has uncovered dramatic transformation in the
Antarctic sea ice likely shrunk to a record low last week, US researchers said Monday, its lowest extent in the 45 years of satellite record-keeping. The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado Boulder said that Antarctica’s sea ice fell to 1.79 million square kilometers (691,000 million square miles) on
The Standard Model of particle physics is our current best-guess on what the blue-prints for matter looks like. Of all of its predictions, none are as precise as the magnetic moment of the electron. Not only is it precisely predicted, it’s among the most accurately measured of any particle’s properties. And while these two values
To call Venus a real oddball of a planet would be slightly understating the issue. It is so very similar to Earth – and yet at the same time as unlike Earth as one might expect an Earth-like planet to be. One of those differences is the Venusian lithosphere – the planet’s hard, outer shell.
In HBO’s post-apocalyptic drama The Last of Us, human civilization has fallen in the face of a fungal takeover triggered by climate change. The show’s opening credits and creature designs are inspired by the slime mold Physarum polycephalum. But while the show’s “infected” (i.e. zombies) are meant to be victims of a fungal pandemic, slime
Prehistoric stone tools found in a cave in Poland 50 years ago were recentlyidentified as some of the oldest ever discovered in the region. The tools from the Tunel Wielki cave in Małopolska are between 450,000 and 550,000 years old. This dating may allow scientists to learn more about the humans who made them, and
High up on the Colorado Plateau, in what is today the state of New Mexico, sit the remains of what was once a city of epic proportions. From the 9th to the 12th century CE, the tens of thousands of ancestral Puebloan people who lived in Chaco Canyon occupied massive buildings stretching up to four
Quantum mechanics deals with the behavior of the Universe at the super-small scale: atoms and subatomic particles that operate in ways that classical physics can’t explain. In order to explore this tension between the quantum and the classical, scientists are constantly attempting to get larger and larger objects to behave in a quantum-like way. Back
The demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea is currently no place for people – which is exactly why, 70 years after the Korean War armistice, rare flora and fauna have flourished on the untouched strip of land. To mark the 70th anniversary of the end of active hostilities between North and South Korea,
Even if we manage to stabilize Earth’s temperatures by peaking at 2 °C, Greenland’s and Antarctica’s vast ice sheets are on track for irreversible melting, a new study warns. “If we miss this emission goal, the ice sheets will disintegrate and melt at an accelerated pace, according to our calculations,” explains climate physicist Axel Timmermann
Cheaper to produce and better at absorbing higher energy forms of light, perovskite materials have the potential to replace silicon in solar panel technology. Unfortunately scientists are still figuring out how to make these perovskites more stable and longer-lasting. In a new study, scientists have been able to significantly improve the efficiency of a particular
Of the roughly three billion base pairs making up the human genome, only around 2 percent encodes proteins, leaving the remaining 98 percent with less obvious functions. Dismissed by some as useless ‘junk DNA‘, its origins, effects, and potential purpose in the evolution of life has attracted the attention of biologists ever since it was
The Universe is filled with magnetic fields. Although the Universe is electrically neutral, atoms can be ionized into positively charged nuclei and negatively charged electrons. When those charges are accelerated, they create magnetic fields. One of the most common sources of magnetic fields on large scales comes from the collisions between and within interstellar plasma.
In a scientific first, researchers have recorded brain activity from living octopuses moving freely and blithely going about their octopus business. This remarkable feat was accomplished by implanting electrodes into the animals’ brains and data loggers under the skin that could record 12 hours of brain activity. What precisely the recordings mean has yet to
If a nuclear bomb were dropped in your city tomorrow, would you know where to take cover? Nuclear war is a terrifying thought, but for a team of researchers at the University of Nicosia in Cyprus, it’s top of mind. In a recent study, the researchers calculated how the blast from a nuclear explosion could
There are a lot of weird and wonderful planets outside the Solar System, but a newly discovered world is a real space oddity. Exoplanet TOI-5205b is a gas giant about the same size and mass as Jupiter, orbiting the red dwarf TOI-5205. But there’s nothing unusual about that; planets orbit stars all the time. What
A female orca appeared to have adopted or abducted a baby pilot whale in the first known case of its kind, scientists say. The orca, known as “Sædís,” was first observed swimming with the pilot whale calf in August 2021 in western Iceland. Scientists observed that Sædís was not simply accompanying the calf but was
In what once seemed like a pretty black and white case of camouflage, the explanation for the zebra’s striking pattern now seems to have more to do with keeping blood-sucking flies at bay. As scientists grow increasingly confident in why zebras are striped, they are now turning their attention to how it works. A new
A spacecraft studying the wild ways of our magnificent Sun has captured an event rarely seen from our position here on Earth’s surface. On 3 January 2023, the European Space Agency-led Solar Orbiter observed the innermost planet of the Solar System slide across the disk of the Sun; a small black dot against a background
The short answer is wind happens because the Sun heats some parts of the planet more than others, and this uneven heating starts a wind going. That means wind energy is really a kind of solar energy! All winds are made the same way Wind systems on Earth vary from the global-scale trade winds and
Every animal on Earth may house the molecular machinery to sense magnetic fields, even those organisms that don’t navigate or migrate using this mysterious ‘sixth sense’. Scientists working on fruit flies have now identified a ubiquitous molecule in all living cells that can respond to magnetic sensitivity if it is present in high enough amounts
Google scientists said Wednesday they have passed a major milestone in their quest to develop effective quantum computing, with a new study showing they reduced the rate of errors – long an obstacle for the much-hyped technology. Quantum computing has been touted as a revolutionary advance that uses our growing scientific understanding of the subatomic
An ancient three-dimensional star-shaped ‘thing’ still baffles scientists more than a century after its discovery. The undetermined whatchamacallits were found in 500-million-year-old bedrock in the southwestern United States in 1896. To the untrained eye, they look sort of like bundt cakes: circular with radial lobes spreading outwards like a starfish or the spokes of a
For the first time, astronomers have spotted evidence of a pair of dwarf galaxies featuring giant black holes on a collision course with each other. In fact, they haven’t just found just one pair – they’ve found two. The first pair of merging dwarf galaxies is in the cluster Abell 133, about 760 million light-years
Millions of conifers have been destroyed across Europe due to infestations of the Eurasian spruce bark beetle (Ips typographus), and fungi may be helping the tree-killing critters by manipulating the tree’s natural defenses. According to a new study, the tiny beetles can sniff out aromatic compounds produced by their symbiotic partners – fungi – breaking
Ghost imaging is a sophisticated and incredibly useful set of techniques that scientists deploy to photograph light-sensitive objects in surprisingly high resolution. By making use of a mix of quantum and classical phenomena to pull visual information from just one of a pair of entangled photons, the method can capture images where energetic rays of
A cave in southern France has revealed evidence of the first use of bows and arrows in Europe by modern humans some 54,000 years ago, far earlier than previously known. The research, published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, pushes back the age of archery in Europe by more than 40,000 years. The use
Dust storms are a serious hazard on Mars. While smaller storms and dust devils happen regularly, larger ones happen every year (during summer in the southern hemisphere) and can cover continent-sized areas for weeks. Once every three Martian years (about five and a half Earth years), the storms can become large enough to encompass the
More than 2,000 years ago, a young woman on the Italian island of Sardinia died for unknown reasons. Her body was buried face down in a tomb at the Monte Luna necropolis, the front of her skull pierced by something sharp. The grave, which dates to about the second or third century BCE, was uncovered
The tinder fungus (Fomes fomentarius) has some surprising properties, scientists have discovered: properties that could enable it to provide a natural, biodegradable alternative to certain plastics and other materials in the future. As its name suggests, the wood-eating fungus has historically been used to catch a spark for fires, though it has also been incorporated
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
Sending a lander to Venus presents several huge engineering problems. Granted, we’d get a break from the nail-biting entry, descent, and landing, since Venus’ atmosphere is so thick a lander would settle gently to the surface like a stone settles in water – no sky cranes or retrorockets required. But the rest of the endeavor
A handful of objects uncovered in JWST data has astronomers stumped. What’s thought to be half a dozen galaxies appear to be massive and well-formed, in spite of appearing as they were just 500 to 700 million years after the Big Bang. Yet according to current cosmological models, there simply wasn’t enough time for them
Animals are contaminated with hazardous forever chemicals on every continent except Antarctica, according to a new report. Creatures ranging from tigers and polar bears, to red pandas and voles, to plankton in the sea, are likely accumulating per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) by eating fish, drinking water, or simply breathing air, and it could put
The US military is intensifying its commitment to the development and use of autonomous weapons, as confirmed by an update to a Department of Defense directive. The update, released 25 January 2023, is the first in a decade to focus on artificial intelligence autonomous weapons. It follows a related implementation plan released by NATO on
Who would’ve thought a wrinkled-up, nearly blind sac of a mammal would be such a guru on ways to stay forever young? That pink and flabby-skinned rodent we fondly call the naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber) once again is teaching us something about the wonders of a long and healthy life, right up to the bitter
Mars rovers tasked with hunting for traces of biology could roll over microscopic life forms without smelling a thing, simply because their instruments aren’t up to the task. A new study carried out in Earth’s oldest desert shows how current technology can’t always spot the signatures of life on our own planet’s surface. Let alone
A “very lethargic” alligator was captured in a New York park, city officials said Monday, likely released by its owner far away from the species’ warmer habitat in the southeast United States. The reptile was spotted Sunday morning in Prospect Park, a favorite place for Brooklyn residents to picnic and stroll with their pets, especially
Our home planet is seeming more like a jawbreaker the more we learn about its interior. A new analysis of Earth’s innards suggests the presence of an inner core within the inner core – a dense ball of iron at the very center of our planet. This could reveal some previously unknown details about the
Scientists have produced a sensor that converts light into an electrical signal at an astonishing 200 percent efficiency – a seemingly impossible figure that was achieved through the weirdness of quantum physics. Such is the sensitivity of the device known as a photodiode, the team responsible for its innovation says it could potentially be used
An in-depth analysis has finally revealed the make-up of a bizarre ‘mummified mer-monkey’ housed at the Enju-in Temple in Asakuchi City, Japan. The peculiar artifact has been an object of curiosity for decades, though according to an accompanying note it’s oceanic origins are purported to date back centuries. At a total of 30 centimeters (1
Archaeologists have uncovered what could be a rare example of an ancient sex toy carved from wood, found in a Roman fort known for a plethora of phallic motifs. The ruins of Vindolanda fort sit near Hadrian’s Wall in England on the borderlands of what was once the great Roman Empire. On this politically tense
Jupiter is well known for its spectacular aurorae, thanks in no small part to the Juno orbiter and recent images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Like Earth, these dazzling displays result from charged solar particles interacting with Jupiter’s magnetic field and atmosphere. Over the years, astronomers have also detected faint aurorae in
Two newly discovered forms of frozen salt water could help scientists resolve a mystery concerning the Solar System’s ice-encrusted moons. When subjected to higher pressures and lower temperatures than can be found in nature on Earth, the atoms in hydrated sodium chloride – more commonly known as salt water ice – arranged themselves in never-before-identified
By listening to the echo of earthquakes bouncing about inside our planet, we can make a good guess at what’s inside Earth without slicing it up. Unfortunately seismic waves often have inconsistencies that scientists are yet to fully understand. One source of variability occurs in low-density pockets of material some 3,000 kilometers (just under 1,900
Russia’s space agency said Saturday it was planning to send a rescue ship on February 24 to bring home three astronauts whose return vehicle was damaged by a tiny meteoroid. “The launch is expected on February 24,” a spokesman for the Roscosmos space agency told AFP. Last Monday, the space agency said it had delayed
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