All life as we know it uses the exact same energy-carrying molecule as a kind of ‘universal cellular fuel’. Now, ancient chemistry may explain how that all-important molecule ended up being ATP (adenosine triphosphate) a new study reports. ATP is an organic molecule, charged up by photosynthesis or by cellular respiration (the way organisms break
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Life’s emergence in a ‘warm little pond‘ some 4.5 billion years ago is a relatively solid foundation of modern biology. In spite of water’s vital role in facilitating early organic reactions on Earth, one of the most basic ingredients won’t form in aqueous surrounds, raising the question of how life initially acquired them. A new
It’s no secret that it feels good to pet a nearby pooch, but a new study confirms it: physically interacting with a dog boosts activity in parts of our brain linked to managing social and emotional interactions. Researchers used a non-invasive, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNRIS) device to measure activity in the prefrontal cortex of 19
The global coronavirus pandemic affected just about everyone across the globe in ways that we’re still trying to understand. It appears that one of the effects is that many of us became moodier along the way, often to the point of becoming more neurotic and less agreeable. According to a new study of 7,109 people
Science fiction is the realm where people traditionally wrestle with the idea of contact with an ETI (Extraterrestrial Intelligence). But now, those discussions are migrating from science fiction into more serious realms. Academics are going back and forth, one paper at a time, concerning the response and geopolitical fallout from potential contact with an ETI.
The Moon could have formed immediately after a cataclysmic impact that tore off a chunk of Earth and hurled it into space, a new study has suggested. Since the mid-1970s, astronomers have thought that the Moon could have been made by a collision between Earth and an ancient Mars-size protoplanet called Theia; the colossal impact
The vast number-crunching capabilities of artificial intelligence systems mean we can better predict the future of chaotic systems based on fewer and fewer patterns of the past – and a new algorithm is adding even more accuracy to the process. Developed through next-gen reservoir computing techniques, which take a more dynamic, speedier approach to machine
A pair of legs belonging to what could be the largest bird species that ever stalked our planet have been unearthed from an outback fossil site in central Australia. Excitingly, more remains could still be laying nearby, waiting to be dug free. Described by one paleontologist as an “extreme evolutionary experiment“, Stirton’s thunderbird (Dromornis stirtoni)
Scientists don’t know much about what the very first mammal looked like, but they do know that it lived around 180-250 million years ago and that every mammal on Earth – from blue whales to platypuses – is descended from it. But thanks to new research, we now know what its genome looked like. An
Great white sharks have been strangely absent off the coast of South Africa in recent years, with suspicions for their decline in numbers falling onto that other most notorious oceanic predator, the orca. Now there’s footage of an actual hunt in action. Two new observations, one from a helicopter and one from a drone, have
Have you ever had that weird feeling that you’ve experienced the same exact situation before, even though that’s impossible? Sometimes it can even seem like you’re reliving something that already happened. This phenomenon, known as déjà vu, has puzzled philosophers, neurologists, and writers for a very long time. Starting in the late 1800s, many theories
As the world braces for a third consecutive year of exceptional La Niña conditions, a new study reveals how our climate models might have missed this disastrous ‘triple-dip’ effect. It’s the first time in a century that La Niña has stuck around for so long, and her wrath is being felt in southern Africa and
The 2022 Nobel prize for physics has been awarded to a trio of scientists for pioneering experiments in quantum mechanics, the theory covering the micro-world of atoms and particles. Alain Aspect from Université Paris-Saclay in France, John Clauser from J.F. Clauser & Associates in the US, and Anton Zeilinger from University of Vienna in Austria,
The dinosaur-killing asteroid that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago also triggered a jumbo-size tsunami with mile-high waves in the Gulf of Mexico whose waters traveled halfway around the world, a new study finds. Researchers discovered evidence of this monumental tsunami after analyzing cores from more than 100 sites worldwide and creating digital models
Built by the last of Spain’s Muslim rulers, the Alhambra is a regal palace that has shimmered over the city of Granada for 800 years. Throughout the day its colors seem to shift, standing out as a terracotta orange beacon under a midday Sun before giving way to red-pinkish hues in dusk’s fading light. On
Decades of patiently watching chimpanzees and gorillas in the wilds of Central Africa has revealed for the first time long-lasting, cooperative, social relationships can develop between the two species. Within the Goualougo Triangle – a conservation stronghold in the Republic of Congo – the two endangered animals often cross paths. While these interactions can occasionally
By peering through a high-tech microscope at flash-frozen proteins, researchers have just solved a 50-year-old mystery of how bacteria, and their ancient foe, archaea, actually swim. We have long known they use a little coiled ‘tail’ called a flagellum, but details of how their stringy appendage forms its curled shape to push them forth has
Smothered in a hazy atmosphere that hides shallow lakes of liquid hydrocarbons, Titan is one weird world we’re dying to look at up close. Which is why NASA is preparing to launch a robotic rotocraft to scope out the scenery in 2027. We now have a better idea of just what kind of scenery awaits
Everything dies in the end, even the brightest of stars. In fact, the brightest stars are the ones that live the shortest lives. They consume all the hydrogen they have within a few million years, then explode as brilliant supernovae. Their core remains collapse into a neutron star or black hole. These small, dark objects
More than half of the digital data firms generate is collected, processed, and stored for single-use purposes. Often, it is never re-used. This could be your multiple near-identical images held on Google Photos or iCloud, a business’s outdated spreadsheets that will never be used again, or data from internet of things sensors that have no
Uranus marches to the beat of its own weird little drum. Although it shares many similarities with our Solar System’s other ice giant, Neptune, it has a bunch of quirks that are all its own. And one of these is impossible to miss: Its rotational axis is so skewed it may as well be lying
Way back in 1979, astronomers spotted two nearly identical quasars that seemed close to each other in the sky. These so-called ‘Twin Quasars’ are actually separate images of the same object. Even more intriguing: the light paths that created each image traveled through different parts of the cluster. One path took a little longer than
Burmese pythons are huge, growing up to 5 meters (16 feet) long. But their sheer size alone can’t explain their incredible gape – the amount the animal can open its mouth – required to ingest prey as large as deer or alligators. A new study details how Burmese pythons (Python molorus bivittatus) have evolved a
Another record has been broken on the way to fully operational and capable quantum computers: the complete control of a 6-qubit quantum processor in silicon. Researchers are calling it “a major stepping stone” for the technology. Qubits (or quantum bits) are the quantum equivalents of classical computing bits, only they can potentially process much more
Around an orange dwarf star just 130 light-years from Earth, astronomers have discovered an unexpected treasure. Not only is the star orbited by three rocky super-Earth worlds, but two more exoplanets in the system are almost incredibly rare in our records. These two are super-Mercuries, a type of exoplanet so difficult to spot that we’ve
Queen Elizabeth’s newly released death certificate contains just two curious words under her cause of death – old age. We might talk about people dying of old age in everyday speech. But who actually dies of old age, medically speaking, in the 21st century? Such a vague cause of death not only raises questions about
The future of neural network computing could be a little soggier than we were expecting. A team of physicists has successfully developed an ionic circuit – a processor based on the movements of charged atoms and molecules in an aqueous solution, rather than electrons in a solid semiconductor. Since this is closer to the way
Narwhals are enigmatic marine mammals, fascinating us with their unique appearance and secretive lifestyles under the Arctic sea ice. Yet while we still have a lot to learn about narwhals – including how to save some endangered populations from ourselves – scientists have also made a few key discoveries in recent years. Known for their
A bristly armored “worm” that scuttled across ocean reefs 518 million years ago is the ancestor to three aquatic animal groups that today live very different lifestyles, and it offers new clues about the explosion of diverse species at the time, a new study finds. An international team of researchers recently discovered the fossil of
Talking about someone behind their back might sound malicious or dishonest, but it doesn’t have to be. If the information being shared is based on truth, it can actually have a positive effect on our relationships with others, according to new research. The findings are based on a mathematical model of gossip that recently won
A heatwave the size of 10 Earths has been discovered rippling through Jupiter‘s atmosphere. It was 130,000 kilometers (around 81,000 miles) across, and a scorching 700 degrees Celsius (1,292 degrees Fahrenheit), traveling at speeds up to 2,400 meters per second away from the Jovian north pole. And this, scientists say, could resolve one of the
The oceans absorb more than 90 percent of all extra heat trapped by the emissions we’ve produced by burning fossil fuels. This heat is enormous. It’s as if we exploded an atom bomb underwater, every second of every day. The ocean isn’t warming at the same rate everywhere. We know the heat is concentrated in
This year marks the 100-year anniversary of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb and, even after all this time, the famous burial site is still revealing its secrets and stirring up controversy. A renowned British Egyptologist and former British Museum curator claims to have found evidence that the tomb’s royal murals and hieroglyphics might have been
On Thursday morning, NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew within 219 miles of the surface of Europa, a large icy moon that orbits Jupiter. It’s humanity’s closest look at the frozen world in more than 20 years. The Juno mission launched in 2011 to study Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system. After it successfully completed
Being under stress can cause all kinds of physiological shifts in the human body, from heart rates to the chemicals released into the bloodstream – and it turns out our canine pals can sniff out those stress-related changes, even in strangers. Of course, we already know that dogs are super-sniffers, but this new study is
The James Webb and Hubble telescopes on Thursday revealed their first images of a spacecraft deliberately smashing into an asteroid, as astronomers indicated that the impact looks to have been much greater than expected. The world’s telescopes turned their gaze towards the space rock Dimorphos earlier this week for a historic test of Earth’s ability
NASA and SpaceX have agreed to study the feasibility of awarding Elon Musk‘s company a contract to boost the Hubble Space Telescope to a higher orbit, with a goal of extending its lifespan, the US space agency said Thursday. The renowned observatory has been operating since 1990 about 335 miles (540 kilometers) above Earth, in
Based on its market share, the world’s most notorious cryptocurrency Bitcoin results in more climate damage than the production of beef and nearly as much damage as crude oil, researchers in the United States have calculated. The findings of the new three-pronged analysis suggest Bitcoin is potentially unsustainable and could have disastrous social and environmental
The very first deep field image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has just delivered a new treasure from the early Universe. In a splash of light that has traveled for 9 billion years to reach us, astronomers have spotted clusters of stars sparkling around a distant galaxy they have named the Sparkler. These
A new look at an extremely rare infant burial in Europe suggests humans were carrying around their young in slings as far back as 10,000 years ago. The findings add weight to the idea that baby carriers were widely used in prehistoric times, although archaeological evidence of such cloth is not usually preserved in the
Microscopic fragments of glass from the Moon have revealed a history of lunar impacts that lines up precisely with meteorite impacts here on Earth – including the giant asteroid impact 66 million years ago that killed most life on Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs. Using a range of techniques, a team of scientists precisely
As Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida on Wednesday afternoon and residents braced for what could be days of threatening weather, the shallow estuary of Tampa Bay on the state’s west coast was eerily transformed into a vast mud flat. The levels were so low in parts that the floor of the usually-bustling harbour was
Planet-heating methane spewing into the atmosphere from the damaged Nord Stream pipelines only has a modest impact on climate change, say scientists, but sharply highlights the risks of fossil-fuel-driven greenhouse gas emissions. The European Union has said it believes the leaks to the strategically important pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and 2, were caused by a
Road excavations in China’s Guizhou Province have unearthed a trove of ancient fish fossils. As a part of rock layers known as the Rongxi Formation, the new fossil bed is filled with never-before-seen species that push back the dates of our first jawed animal ancestors by about 15 million years. “Until this point, we’ve picked
The Vredefort crater in South Africa is the largest of its kind on Earth, estimated to stretch as far as 300 kilometers (more than 180 miles) from rim to rim. Walking non-stop, it would take a good two-and-a-half days to make it from one side to the other. The scars left by an asteroid collision
Electrons whizzing through a grid-like lattice don’t behave at all like pretty silver spheres in a pinball machine. They blur and bend in collective dances, following whims of a wave-like reality that are hard enough to imagine, let alone compute. And yet scientists have succeeded in doing just that, capturing the motion of electrons moving
Yesterday, humanity achieved a new and amazing first, 11 million kilometers (6.8 million miles) from home. After years of planning, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) finally slammed into a moonlet, Dimorphos, orbiting an asteroid, Didymos, in our first ever attempt to redirect the path of a significantly sized cosmic object. The images of the
What scientists thought were lakes of liquid water hiding under the southern polar ice cap of Mars could turn out to be… just regular old rock. New analysis has found that the brightly shining radar signal interpreted as underground water on the red planet could also have been produced by geological layering. It’s not a
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