If Hawaii’s Kīlauea volcano were to offer an apology for its chaos and destruction, it just might come in the form of a beautiful green mineral called olivine. Over the past months we’ve reported on devastating lava flows and bone-shattering boulders. Now it’s raining gems – a rare event that has geologists enthralled and the
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In 1946, Albert Einstein stood in front of students at one of the oldest historically black college in the United States and decried the oppression of African Americans. “There is separation of colored people from white people in the United States. That separation is not a disease of colored people. It is a disease of
We know. We’ve been told. The plastic waste that has been piling up in our oceans is out of control. But sometimes, when the problem is so far away, we can lose track of how dire the situation truly is. A viral video from researchers in the South Pacific has put the consequences of our actions
Mars is not a friendly place to be right now, especially if you’re an aging solar-powered rover. NASA says a global dust storm is forming. The storm is now about 10 billion acres in size, which is enough to cover North America and Russia, or more than one-quarter of Mars. Some regions of the Martian
The most complete analysis to date measuring ice sheet changes in Antarctica reveals Earth’s southernmost continent has lost some 3 trillion tonnes of ice over the past quarter-century. A collective effort by over 80 scientists across the world used satellite data to determine estimates of ice-sheet mass balance between 1992 and 2017, ultimately calculating that
Scientists have created the most extensive brain map to date of a person with an extremely rare form of blindness. To Milena Canning, objects are invisible – unless they are moving. Canning, who is 48 and hails from Scotland, wasn’t born blind. She was left without sight 18 years ago after a respiratory infection, a
A defining trend in human intelligence tests that saw people steadily obtaining higher IQ scores through the 20th century has abruptly ended, a new study shows. The Flynn effect – named after the work of Kiwi intelligence researcher James Flynn – observed rapid rises in intelligence quotient at a rate of about 3 IQ points
They were first discovered on a beach in Santiago, Chile in 2013. And these gargantuan viruses are a far cry from your garden variety, sub-microscopic virus. Not only are the members of the Pandoravirus family stupidly huge, these microbes also have more genes than any virus has business carrying. Now, the discovery of three new
In 1935, Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen hypothesised the existence of wormholes – a sort of “bridge” connecting two regions of space, due to extreme gravitational warping of spacetime. The concept is theoretical, and wormholes are yet to be detected. But according to a new paper, those gravitational waves we’ve detected from colliding black holes?
Mars is currently being blasted with a dust storm the likes of which we’ve rarely seen. And at 1:30 pm EDT (5:30 pm UTC) this Wednesday, NASA will let us know just how this weather event will affect their ongoing operations. A week ago the storm was 18 million square kilometres (7 million square miles)
It might sound like an excuse for a bad hair day, but Uncombable Hair Syndrome (UHS) is actually a real genetic condition. It’s caused by a rare genetic mutation, and creates silvery-blond or straw-coloured hair that is easily damaged and cannot be combed flat. The result? Frizzy, shiny hair that sticks out in all directions. Some
It was a Saturday, and Laura Murray was a 10-year-old girl hanging out with her nanny outside her family’s Cincinnati townhouse. Her mother, giddy with excitement, handed the little girl a small glass vial filled with light-gray dust. It was from the Moon, her mother told her. Along with it was a handwritten note: “To
Particles collected from Earth’s upper atmosphere, originally deposited by comets, are older than our Solar System, scientists say – and these fine bits of interstellar dust could teach us about how planets and stars form from the very beginning. These cosmic particles have lived through at least 4.6 billion years and travelled across incredible distances,
The source of a mysterious microwave glow detected across our galaxy eluded astronomers for decades. But now a crack team has finally pinpointed the source: nanoscopic particles of crystalline carbon, otherwise known as diamond dust. There are several environments across the Milky Way that produce a faint glow known as anomalous microwave emission (AME). Scientists
As President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un have conducted a meeting in Singapore, it’s worth remembering a key impetus for the summit: North Korea can likely strike anywhere in the US with its nuclear weapons. In July and November, North Korea test-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, that can reportedly deliver nuclear warheads to targets
Scientists studying the skulls of long-dead Incas have made a startling discovery: the patients somehow had twice the survival rate after skull surgery than those operated on during the American Civil War – some 400 years later. This flies in the face of western notions of technical superiority, and contradicts previous assumptions that the technology
For centuries – millennia even – they’ve towered over the savannah like giants from another world, but their long, almost immortal watch is at last beginning to fade. The African baobab, the largest and longest-living tree among all angiosperm (flowering) plants, is in the midst of a deadly crisis, with new research finding several of
Remember Elon Musk’s Not-A-Flamethrower – a propane-fuelled, oversized barbecue starter that looks more like a modified Nerf gun? It might have been a joke when Musk first posted about it on Instagram in January, but it got deadly serious when 20,000 people pre-ordered it. On Saturday, the first wave of 1,000 people have received their
Hunger is a complex thing. We’ve all heard of the term ‘hangry’ – when something as simple as skipping a meal can change your mood from pleasant into irrationally cranky. But, as new research shows, ‘hanger’ might be more complicated than just a drop in blood sugar, and according to the researchers, it appears to
NASA has suspended science operations on its brave little Mars rover, Opportunity, as a huge dust storm rages over its location in the planet’s Perseverance Valley. First detected by NASA on June 1, the storm has worsened over the weekend, the intense dust darkening the sky over Mars and leaving Opportunity in the dark. And
You’d think that in the age of the internet, where more information than we can possibly consume in several lifetimes is at our fingertips, stubborn myths from the past would die away. But who among us still thinks the Great Wall of China is visible from space, and that it’s a bad idea to pick
At work, a calendar filled with meetings and deadlines often dictates the cadence of our days. But despite what tightly timed agendas might try to insist, our internal body clocks are secretly running the show. Scientists call this personalised daily pattern of sleep and wakefulness a circadian rhythm. Whether you know it or not, our bodies have a
In an exciting first, Indian scientists have discovered a sub-Saturn exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star around 600 light-years away. The planet has been named EPIC 211945201b or K2-236b and it’s big – around 27 times more massive than Earth. The find sees India join a small group of countries to have confirmed a planet outside our
In life it often pays to keep a close eye on competitors and rivals. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, Team of Rivals, tells how US president Abraham Lincoln persuaded each of his political rivals to join his cabinet, thereby turning them into his allies. But the formation of alliances with potential competitors is not unique
During the 1970s, astronomer became aware of a massive radio source at the center of our galaxy that they later realized was a Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH) – which has since been named Sagittarius A*. And in a recent survey conducted by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers discovered evidence for hundreds or even thousands of black holes located in
[ad_1] When you first start dating someone, at least one of your friends will tell you to “play it cool.” It’s a piece of advice that’s almost as old as dating itself, and it’s based on the idea that if you act like you’re not really eager for the relationship, you suddenly become irresistible.
Every second, millions of emails, clicks, and searches happen via the world wide web with such fluidity that the internet seems almost omnipresent. As such, people often mistakenly assume that internet traffic happens by air – our mobile devices, after all, aren’t wired to anything. But satellites carry less than 1 percent of human interactions,
In 1999, radiologist Nicola Strickland went on a holiday to the Caribbean island of Tobago, a tropical paradise complete with idyllic, deserted beaches. On her first morning there, she went foraging for shells and corals in the white sand, when the holiday quickly took a turn for the worse. Scattered amongst the coconuts and mangoes
By the age of three or four, we all start to lie. At this point in our brain’s development, we learn that we have an incredibly versatile and powerful tool at our disposal – our language – and we can use it to actually play with reality and affect the outcome of what’s happening. Sooner
[ad_1] At the end of last year, scientists discovered a small octopus city – dubbed Octlantis – a find that suggests members of the gloomy octopus species (Octopus tetricus) are perhaps not the isolated and solitary creatures we thought they were. Octlantis features dens made out of piles of sand and shells, and is home
Buried under a pair of hills at Israel’s northern border, at the nexus of three ancient kingdoms, is one of the last large biblical sites yet to be uncovered. So said an international team of archaeologists after they started to dig up the ruins of Abel Beth Maacah five years ago. The lost town is
From daily tooth-brushing to the 11am coffee, we all have dozens of habits that get us through our daily routine. Some are great – weekly gym visits are often encouraged – others not so much, like smoking a pack a day, or dialling the number of the pizza place way too often. Because we recognise
One of the best-known regions of the brain, the cerebellum accounts for just 10 percent of the organ’s total volume, but contains more than 50 percent of its neurons. Despite all that processing power, it’s been assumed that the cerebellum functions largely outside the realm of conscious awareness, instead coordinating physical activities like standing and
When it comes to future challenges, one of the biggest will be water scarcity – on a warming planet we’re going to have plenty of seawater, but not enough fresh, clean water in the right places for everybody to drink. And while a lot of research has focussed on desalination, a team of scientists have
Welcome to the age of the urban rat. There are about 2 million New York City rats, a 2014 estimate suggested, which would mean the rodents in New York outnumber the humans in Philadelphia. Do not discount the power of gnawing teeth in aggregate — Cornell University scientists once calculated rats cause $19 billion in damage annually. Rats and other
When it comes to bees, it seems that nothing really does matter. As shown in a paper published today, our research demonstrates that the honeybee can understand the quantitative value of nothing, and place zero in the correct position along a line of sequential numbers. This is the first evidence showing that an insect brain
Last week the corpse of a mysterious, 6-metre (20-foot) long sea creature washed up in Namibia, confusing experts over whether the remains belonged to a whale or a dolphin. Scientists have now identified the animal – and it’s a unique deep-diving species of whale that hasn’t been seen in Namibia since 2000. After measuring the
If the elk of Yellowstone National Park had a spokeswoman, she would be working overtime trying to set the record straight about elk-human interactions: Despite the headlines, the average elk has a lot more to fear from the average human. There are, after all, myriad websites with details on how to kill the mostly docile woodland creatures
Scientists have reported finding traces of plastic and hazardous chemicals in Antarctica, which before now was the last part of the planet that remained mostly untouched by the damaging effects of human activity. Samples of water and snow, collected over a three-month period earlier this year, paint a sorry picture of the environmental consequences of
This summer, the fifth installment of the Jurassic Park franchise will be on the big screen, reinforcing a love of dinosaurs that has been with many of us since childhood. There is something awe inspiring about the biggest, fiercest, and “deadest” creatures that have ever walked the planet. But the films have had an additional
Between 1971 and 1977, Apollo scientists conducting experiments on the Moon discovered that the surface of our li’l satellite buddy got mysteriously warmer. But the data from 1974 onwards went missing, and the strange warming phenomenon remained an enigma. Now a team of researchers from Texas Tech University has found and restored that data –
As researchers around the globe race to create the next element on the periodic table – an atom that contains 119 protons – one scientist from Michigan State University is looking into where the table might end. While there’s no conclusive answer, it seems we still have a lot left to discover. According to nuclear
We learn about some awesome science in high school – like Einstein’s theory of relativity, the Periodic table, and DNA replication. The knowledge we pick up there sets the foundations for all the other amazing things we go on to study. But science definitely doesn’t end at high school, and it’s once you take your
The search is heating up for a planet beyond Pluto – not just over the evidence, but also over the hypothetical world’s name. No one knows for sure if there really is a missing planet out there, since astronomers have yet to identify it in telescope images. However, they keep turning up indirect evidence that
A Texas man narrowly survived a venomous rattlesnake sinking its fangs into him – after he had already decapitated it with a shovel. According to local news station KIII-TV, Jennifer Sutcliffe and her husband Jeremy were working in their yard in Corpus Christi, South Texas on the weekend of May 27. While weeding, she spotted
The Leaning Tower of Pisa and its 5.5 degree lean has vexed engineers for centuries. Partially constructed on unexpectedly soft soil, the ancient bell tower began to lean before it was even finished, a historical goof that went on to become one of the world’s historical oddities – and made the tower a UNESCO World
One minute, you’re chilling on a mountain. The next you’re being dwarfed by the biggest Moon you’ve ever seen – one that seems to be coming right down to rest on Earth’s surface. That’s what appears to be happening in this video on NASA’s Astronomy Picture of The Day (APOD) site for 4 June 2018.
It’s a simple fact of life that older people reminisce about the glory days. You might believe you’ll stay young and free-spirited forever, but one day you’ll find yourself grumbling about not understanding the latest slang words and asking a young person what a meme is. For some it might be happening earlier than they