A sample extracted from an asteroid far from Earth has confirmed that RNA nucleobases can be found in space rocks. Analysis of dust ferried home from asteroid Ryugu has been found to contain uracil – one of the four nucleobases that make up RNA – in addition to niacin, a form of the vitamin B3,
Month: March 2023
Our planet hides its scars well. It’s a shame, actually, as evidence of previous asteroid strikes might help us better plan for the next catastrophic impact. In fact, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center chief scientist, James Garvin, thinks we might have been misreading traces of some of the more serious asteroid strikes that have occurred
The world hungers for more food while wildlife yearns for untouched habitats. So goes the conflict between our seemingly insatiable need for agricultural land, razing forests to make way for cattle and crops. But an unlikely food source could go some way to ameliorating the loss of forested lands to agriculture. A new study suggests
Don’t miss the planet parade taking place at the end of March. Jupiter, Mercury, Venus, Uranus, and Mars are set to align in an arc formation on the nights of March 25 through 30, alongside the Moon. Jupiter may sink into the sunset and get lost in sunlight after the 28th, though, so aim to
The world will cross the key 1.5 degree Celsius global warming limit in about a decade, the United Nations (UN) said Monday, warning that devastating impacts of climate change are hitting faster than expected. In the final instalment of a major series of reports, delivered in a crucial decade in human history, the UN’s climate
A plant-eating dinosaur that once grazed the greenery in what is today northwest China could hold the title of the longest neck ever known, according to a new analysis of its fossilized bones. Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum was unearthed from fossil beds in northwest China in 1987 and named in 1993. Revisiting the fossil and comparing its
In 2013, a monstrous marine heatwave known as ‘The Blob’ developed off the coast of Alaska and soon stretched as far south as Mexico along the Pacific coast of North America. It lingered far longer than anyone expected, decimating fisheries, triggering toxic algal blooms, disturbing kelp forests, and starving sea birds of food. At one
Millions of dead and rotting fish have clogged a vast stretch of river near a remote town in the Australian outback as a searing heat wave sweeps through the region. Videos posted to social media showed boats plowing through a blanket of dead fish smothering the water, with the surface barely visible underneath. The New
The operator of a nuclear facility in Minnesota said on Thursday the plant suffered a leak last November of water containing radioactive tritium, but that contamination was largely limited to the plant itself. Xcel Energy, operator of the nuclear plant northwest of Minneapolis in the Midwest state of Minnesota, did not say why it waited
We don’t know what a galaxy named RAD12-B did, but it must have been something heinous. That’s because its companion galaxy has blasted a hot plasma jet right at it, in what seems (if we’re going to be anthropomorphic about it) like a targeted attack. Discovered during observations by a team led by astronomer Ananda
For all the damage that the 2019 Notre Dame fire wrought, it presented archaeologists in Paris with a unique opportunity to peer into through the landmark’s history. Parts of the famous cathedral that were concealed for centuries are now being picked apart and put back together, providing a window into the architectural innovations that once
Most of the light streaming through the Universe is invisible to human eyes. Beyond the mid-range wavelengths we can see, there’s a whole cosmos shining in high- and low-energy radiation. But we humans are clever little animals and have managed to build instruments that can see the light we cannot. One of these is NASA’s
Creating rocky planets is a messy, dangerous, hot business. Planetesimals accrete together, which creates heat and pressure on the newborn world. The nearby adolescent star bombards them with intense radiation. That likely “bakes off” any surface oceans, lakes, or rivers, which is a disaster if you’re looking for places where life might arise or exist.
A large-scale animal study from 2021 revealed something interesting about yawning: Vertebrates with larger brains and more neurons tend to have longer-lasting yawns. Researchers collected data on 1,291 separate yawns from zoo trips and online videos, covering a total of 55 mammal species and 46 bird species. They found “robust positive correlations” between how long
Europa is the smoothest solid object in our Solar System, thanks to its thick shell of ice. Yet beneath its smooth exterior, Jupiter‘s fourth-largest moon seems to harbor secrets – namely a deep, salty ocean with intriguing potential for alien life. That ocean makes Europa a prime target for scientific study, including two separate orbiter
It’s sometimes difficult to imagine how the planet we call home, with its megalopolis cities and serene farmlands, was once dominated by dinosaurs as big as buses and five-story buildings. But recent research has helped deepen our understanding of why dinosaurs prevailed: the answer may lie in their special bones, structured like Aero chocolate. Brazilian
The secret behind the ghost catfish’s iridescent twinkle has been uncovered by a team of scientists. Kryptopterus vitreolus casts ethereal, flickering rainbows along its flanks when it shimmies through water. This eye-catching sheen within its otherwise glass-like body makes the Thai native a popular choice among aquarium owners worldwide. It also caught the attention of
Countless shelves line the walls of a basement at Denmark’s University of Odense, holding what is thought to be the world’s largest collection of brains. There are 9,479 of the organs, all removed from the corpses of mental health patients over the course of four decades until the 1980s. Preserved in formalin in large white
For billions of years, viruses and bacteria have been locked in a never-ending arm’s race, and it has caused one predator to evolve “a monster of a tail”. The unique bacteria-devouring virus, or bacteriophage, is officially named P74-26, though it’s more colloquially known as the ‘Rapunzel’ virus. Like the absurdly long locks of the fairytale
Earth, currently, is our only blueprint for planetary habitability. There may be life elsewhere out there in the big, wide galaxy, but ours is the only world on which we know, for a certainty, that it has emerged. The problem is that we’ve found nothing out there that’s exactly like our own planet: of the
An adult bear recovered from the Siberian permafrost in the Lyakhovsky Islands in 2020 is not, as originally thought, around 30,000 years old. In fact, its age is more in the region of 3,500 years old. That’s the verdict of researchers from the North-Eastern Federal University in Russia, who carried out a new necropsy of
An enormous stretch of seaweed measuring 5,000 miles (8,047 kilometers) wide is set to bring stench, pests, and bacteria to the beaches of Florida and Mexico. The “Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt” is a massive bloom of brown algae that stretches from the coast of West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico. It is the largest
Don’t be alarmed, but as you read this, an asteroid roughly the size of a house is about to zoom past Earth. Depending on your location, the newly found asteroid 2023 EY will pass by our planet late Thursday night or Friday morning at a distance of just 240,000 kilometers (149,000 miles) – a little
The Sun has been spitting out some pretty powerful eruptions in the last few weeks, but one that took place a few days ago is a real doozy. On March 12, Sun-monitoring spacecraft recorded a huge amount of material blasting away from the far side of the Sun from a coronal mass ejection. Detected as
We all had to make adjustments as the coronavirus pandemic unfolded – even zoo animals who were suddenly not seeing crowds of visitors pass by every single day. In a study published last year, researchers discovered how primates reacted to that shift, looking at the behavior of bonobos, chimpanzees, western lowland gorillas, and olive baboons,
It’s easy to envisage other universes, governed by slightly different laws of physics, in which no intelligent life, nor indeed any kind of organized complex systems, could arise. Should we therefore be surprised that a universe exists in which we were able to emerge? That’s a question physicists including me have tried to answer for
There’s scintillating beauty to be found in cosmic death. In a new image from the JWST, the spectacular final throes of a star nearing the end of its life are revealed in all their intricate detail. Located in the constellation Sagittarius, the star WR 124 is what’s known as a Wolf-Rayet, which are rarely seen
An eight-year survey of the famous SS Thistlegorm shipwreck has revealed that it’s been transformed by marine life into an artificial reef, where dozens of different species have made their home. A team of researchers from the University of Bologna in Italy enlisted the help of volunteer divers to check off organisms on a list
Dog ownership is a lot of furry companionship, tail wags and chasing balls, and ample unconditional love. However, some dog owners are also managing canine pals struggling with mental illness. A newly published study in PLOS One has examined the brain scans of anxious and non-anxious dogs, and correlated them with behavior. The research team
We might be getting closer to understanding why hundreds of large stone structures were built across the deserts of northwest Saudi Arabia thousands of years ago. According to an in-depth new analysis, the mysterious, rectangular enclosures were used by Neolithic people for unknown rituals, depositing animal offerings, perhaps as votives to an unknown deity or
NASA and Axiom Space Inc. provided a first, limited look at the new spacesuits that will be worn by the next astronauts to land on the Moon. The Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit that will be worn for the Artemis missions was only partially revealed at an event at Johnson Space Center in Houston,
We have exciting new evidence that Venus is geologically active. Using radar images taken by the Magellan spacecraft during the early 1990s, scientists have found a volcanic vent that changed shape and grew over an eight-month period in 1991. It’s one of the most compelling clues yet that volcanism is still active on Venus, shaping
Each year, hundreds of mountaineers camp at the South Col on Mount Everest’s southern side in preparation for their attempt to reach the roof of the world. While these adventure seekers may be taking home some well-deserved bragging rights, a new study shows they may also be leaving behind some tenacious microbes that seem capable
A massive 40-ton fin whale swimming off the coast of Valencia in Spain has been filmed with a severe bend in its 17-meter-long body (56 feet) in what appears to be a pronounced case of scoliosis. At first, when the skipper of a local boat caught sight of the poor creature from afar, it seemed
Transferring information from one location to another without transmitting any particles or energy seems to run counter to everything we’ve learned in the history of physics. Yet there is some solid reasoning that this ‘counterfactual communication‘ might not only be plausible, but depending on how it works could reveal fundamental aspects of reality that have
The company behind the ChatGPT app that churns out essays, poems or computing code on command released Tuesday a long-awaited update of its artificial intelligence (AI) technology that it said would be safer and more accurate than its predecessor. GPT-4 has been widely awaited ever since ChatGPT burst onto the scene in late November, wowing
Researchers have revealed the first aerial footage of the massive iceberg that broke free from an Antarctic ice shelf in January. Designated A81, the Greater-London-sized chunk of ice had finally calved from Antarctica’s Brunt Ice shelf a decade after the first cracks appeared, joining other glacier fragments floating in the Weddell Sea. This is the
Humans aren’t the only primate messing around with their state of mind for fun. Footage online appears to show gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans deliberately spinning themselves around to get dizzy with it. While few of these animals were filmed in the wild, the findings suggest our primate relatives may have a similar proclivity for
There’s a new group of people on Earth who believe they’re aliens. Star people, or starseeds, are individuals who believe they have come to Earth from other dimensions to help heal the planet and guide humanity into the “golden age” – a period of great happiness, prosperity, and achievement. It might sound a little crazy
Compared to Earth, the Moon doesn’t have much going on. Where our planet’s surface features an impressive mix of windswept plains, ice-carved ravines, and volcanic mountain peaks, the lunar surface has impact craters. Lots of impact craters. Earth’s satellite is pocked and scarred from being pummeled with space shrapnel over billions of years, without the
There was a critical point early in Earth’s history when chemical reactions among the mix of organic molecules began to be powered from within, forming something we might start to think of as biological. Just what this first metabolic reaction might have looked like remains an area of speculation. It had to have been simple
March 14 is celebrated as Pi Day because the date, when written as 3/14, matches the start of the decimal expansion 3.14159… the most famous mathematical constant. By itself, pi is simply a number, one among countless others between 3 and 4. What makes it famous is that it’s built into every circle you see
Walk through a maze of mirrors, you’ll soon come face to face with yourself. Your nose meets your nose, your fingertips touch at their phantom twins, stopped abruptly by a boundary of glass. Most of the time, a reflection needs no explanation. The collision of light with the mirror’s surface is almost intuitive, its rays
Venus may be one of the brightest and most beautiful objects in our night sky, but don’t be fooled. Our neighboring planet is deeply inhospitable to life as we know it – a toxic, scorching world on which humans will never be able to tread. In spite of the differences in habitability, though, Venus shares
The smoke from recent wildfires is threatening to slow and even reverse the recovery of Earth’s ozone layer – the same one that the world has worked so hard to heal since 1987. The ozone layer is a crucial part of the stratosphere that stops our planet from getting scorched by the Sun’s radiation. It’s
Advances in artificial intelligence are coming so hard and fast that a museum in San Francisco, the beating heart of the tech revolution, has imagined a memorial to the demise of humanity. “Sorry for killing most of humanity person with smile cap and mustache,” says a monitor welcoming a visitor to the “Misalignment Museum“, a
A mysterious exoplanet just 138 light-years from Earth could be in the process of transforming. An analysis of an exoplanet named HD-207496b reveals that the world, clocking in at 6.1 and 2.25 times the mass and radius of Earth, respectively, either has a gaseous atmosphere, a global ocean, or a mixture of both – and
An enormous carpet of seaweed stretching 5,000 miles (8,047 kilometers) is set to cause problems along the beaches of Florida and Mexico as scientists become increasingly concerned about the impacts of the algae. The “Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt” is a massive bloom of brown algae that stretches from the coast of West Africa to the