Picture this: you’re nestled comfortably in your seat cruising towards your holiday destination when a flight attendant’s voice breaks through the silence: “Ladies and gentlemen, both pilots are incapacitated. Are there any passengers who could land this plane with assistance from air traffic control?” If you think you could manage it, you’re not alone. Survey
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Astronauts visiting the alien skies of the red planet might one day feast their eyes on a view like the one above. It’s a new image of the horizon of Mars, snapped by NASA’s Odyssey orbiter as it looped its way around the planet, from an altitude of about 400 kilometers (250 miles) – similar
Galaxies come in many shapes and sizes. The Milky Way, for example, is a spiral galaxy because of the way that stars, dust, and gas spiral out from the center of the galaxy. But spiral galaxies like ours are surprisingly rare in our galactic neighborhood, and for years, astronomers have wondered why since the 1960s.
The explosive end of non-avian dinosaurs is the most infamous blow to life on Earth. But there’s long been hints that the asteroid may not be the main culprit behind this mass extinction, just the most spectacular isolated contribution. Before this dramatic event, 66 million years ago, toxic winds of change were already brewing in
Those blissfully peaceful months we spend in the womb before being born could be where our language learning starts, according to a new study that offers fresh insights into the ease with which newborns are able to pick up listening and speaking skills. A team of researchers, led by experts at the University of Padua
The Earth’s magnetic field plays a big role in protecting people from hazardous radiation and geomagnetic activity that could affect satellite communication and the operation of power grids. And it moves. Scientists have studied and tracked the motion of the magnetic poles for centuries. The historical movement of these poles indicates a change in the
Stars are gravitationally fastened to their galaxies and move in concert with their surroundings. But sometimes, something breaks the bond. If a star gets too close to a supermassive black hole, for example, the black hole can expel it out into space as a rogue star. What would happen to Earth if one of these
Let’s face it, going to space is havoc on the human body. We evolved in an Earth environment, over hundreds of millions of years; so take away the Earth environment and things start going a little awry. There’s bone and muscle density loss. There’s vision problems from too much fluid in the brain; without gravity,
The notion of black holes is one that invokes terror and dread. They’re inescapable! They devour everything! Nothing ever comes out! The accuracy of these beliefs falls on the spectrum of debatable to incorrect. And a pair of physicists has now calculated how proverbial blood might be wrung from the black hole stone. According to
Honeybees in man-made hives may have been suffering the cold unnecessarily for over a century because commercial hive designs are based on erroneous science, my new research shows. For 119 years, a belief that the way honeybees cluster together gives them a kind of evolutionary insulation has been fundamental for beekeeping practice, hive design and
Flicking the switch on any kind of electrical device triggers a marching band of charged particles stepping to the beat of the circuit’s voltage. But a new discovery in exotic materials known as strange metals has found electricity doesn’t always move in step, and can in fact sometimes bleed in a way that has physicists
You’re out for dinner with a bunch of friends, one of whom orders pizza with anchovies and olives to share, but you hate olives and anchovies! Do you pipe up with your preferred choice – Hawaiian – or stay quiet? This scene plays out every day around the world. Some people ferociously defend their personal
The extraordinary capacity for the brain to rewire itself after a stroke, an amputation, or sudden loss of vision or hearing has been shown repeatedly in studies over decades. At least, that’s what we all thought. Now, writing in eLife, two neuroscientists – Tamar Makin and John Krakauer – argue that the most influential experiments
In 2013, a group of scientists squeezed through a deep, twisting cave system to examine hundreds of bones belonging to a newly discovered species of human ancestor named Homo naledi . Ever since, the cave and its bones have challenged our understanding of human evolution. The remains bore a puzzling mix of primitive and modern-looking
One of the rarest mammals in the world, a black rhino, was just born in broad daylight at a zoo in England, and the footage is breathtaking. For such a large newborn, the female calf landed on the soft, sandy floor of its enclosure with surprising aplomb. In a recent press release, zookeepers at Chester
Quantum advantage is the milestone the field of quantum computing is fervently working toward, where a quantum computer can solve problems that are beyond the reach of the most powerful non-quantum, or classical, computers. Quantum refers to the scale of atoms and molecules where the laws of physics as we experience them break down and
It took a birds’ eye view for archaeologists to realize prehistoric communities of Central and Eastern Europe were still thriving during the Late Bronze Age. That’s a big deal, because these Carpathian Basin societies were thought to be in a state of fragmentation and collapse at that time. In fact, most of the civilizations that
In 2018, archaeologists made a staggering discovery in Swaga Swaga Game Reserve in central Tanzania: 52 previously undocumented rock shelters, deliberately painted with rock art. Weathering had mostly destroyed all but a handful; but of those that were preserved, one was an absolute enigma. The site, named Amak’hee 4, was elaborately painted with a frieze
Four gargantuan undersea sediment deposits – or ‘megabeds’ – discovered in the western Marsili Basin near Italy show evidence of a series of supereruptions stretching back some 50,000 years, suggesting another one could be on the way. A team from Ohio State University in the US and the Institute of Marine Sciences (CSIC) in Spain
Do you know what the padlock symbol in your internet browser’s address bar means? If not, you’re not alone. New research by my colleagues and I shows that only 5% of UK adults understand the padlock’s significance. This is a threat to our online safety. The padlock symbol on a web browser simply means that
While preparing for the threat of an asteroid strike might seem like a hypothetical exercise, it’s really not. The Solar System has calmed down a lot from earlier times when impacts were more frequent. But it is only a matter of time before an asteroid heads straight for Earth. The probability of an impact is
Evolution is unfolding all around us as species tussle to survive or find ways to coexist, but it’s still a relatively rare privilege to stumble across examples of life in the wild adapting right before our eyes. So you can imagine researchers’ surprise when they realized a genus of fungi appears to be straddling the
Our Neanderthal cousins had the capacity to both hear and produce the speech sounds of modern humans, a study published in 2021 found. Based on a detailed analysis and digital reconstruction of the structure of the bones in their skulls, the study settled one aspect of a decades-long debate over the linguistic capabilities of Neanderthals.
Venus is so tantalizingly close to being a twin of Earth. Its size, composition, and density are so similar to the properties of our homeworld… but when it comes to habitability, Venus couldn’t be more different. Wrapped in a dense, choking shroud of toxic, acidic clouds, the surface of Venus is hostile, and not just
If there’s one chemical that causes excitement in the search for biosignatures on other worlds, it’s methane. It’s not a slam dunk because it has both biotic and abiotic sources. But finding it in an exoplanet’s atmosphere means that planet deserves a closer look. Methane captures scientific attention mainly because of its short duration in
We can show a lot about ourselves through our eyes during conversation. Do we need to make direct eye contact with each other though, or is just looking at each other’s faces sufficient for communication? Researchers in Canada found pairs of people in conversation rarely engaged in mutual looking (each participant looking at their partner’s
In 2015, David Hole was prospecting in Maryborough Regional Park near Melbourne, Australia. Armed with a metal detector, he discovered something out of the ordinary – a very heavy, reddish rock resting in some yellow clay. He took it home and tried everything to open it, sure that there was a gold nugget inside the
A cosmic ray that smacked into Earth’s atmosphere has absolutely gobsmacked astrophysicists. The tiny particle was carrying in excess of 240 exa-electron volts of energy, or 2.4 x 1020 electron volts – second only to the famous, mind-blowing Oh-My-God particle detected back in 1991, with its 320 exa-electron volts. But here’s the sting in the
There’s a new way in which going to space could mess with the human body. A study on rats in simulated space environments suggests that being weightless and exposed to space radiation unprotected by Earth’s atmosphere could have a deleterious effect on the vascular tissues associated with erectile dysfunction. Even more than a year after
Exoplanets are definitely a bit of a hot topic at the moment. Throw in a sprinkling of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and you have the recipe for magic! I still cannot believe that we have discovered, yes actually discovered 5,539 exoplanets and there are more being confirmed every day! The first exoplanet was
A single-celled organism with no brain or nervous system to speak of may still form memories and pass those memories on to future generations, according to new research. The ubiquitous bacterium, Escherichia coli, is one of the most well-studied life forms on Earth, and yet scientists are still discovering unexpected ways that it survives and
Underwater cameras have captured a unique dolphin behavior off the coast of Western Australia in what scientists suspect is a world-first. For decades now, bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) and local crabbers in the Bunbury area, roughly 160 kilometers south of Perth, have been locked in a battle over bait. When a crab pot is dropped
A common, widespread fungus that’s probably hiding in your garden soil right this moment is capable of transforming into a formidable predator when it gets too hungry. Scientists have known about the hunting abilities of Arthrobotrys oligospora since at least the 1980s, but they’re still in the process of figuring out exactly how this otherwise
The Great Sand Sea Desert stretches over an area of 72,000km² linking Egypt and Libya. If you find yourself in a particular part of the desert in south-east Libya and south-western parts of Egypt, you’ll spot pieces of yellow glass scattered across the sandy landscape. It was first described in a scientific paper in 1933
Researchers think they’ve finally confirmed the identity of an object that smashed into the Moon on 4 March 2022 – and explained why the piece of space debris left two craters on the lunar surface, rather than one. The object, according to a team of engineers-turned-detectives from the University of Arizona, is the Long March
Eventually, we’re going to want to expand the World Wide Web across the galaxy, and NASA just demonstrated a key piece of tech that could help, beaming messages via laser across a distance of almost 16 million kilometers or 10 million miles. That’s about 40 times farther than the Moon is from Earth, and it’s
Astrophysicists working with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have found a surprising amount of metal in a galaxy only 350 million years after the Big Bang. How does that fit in with our understanding of the Universe? The origin of the Universe’s first metals is a foundational question in astrophysics. Shortly after the Big
The hole in the Antarctic ozone layer has been getting deeper in mid-spring over the last two decades, despite a global ban on chemicals that deplete Earth’s shield from deadly solar radiation, new research suggested Tuesday. The ozone layer 11 to 40 kilometers (seven to 25 miles) above Earth’s surface filters out most of the
Defects in materials don’t always lead to a collapse. They can sometimes make them stronger. As you might imagine, it’s important for scientists to know which it’s going to be. Now a new study has provided some vital insight into the differences by tracking the speed at which tiny cracks can travel. Researchers from several
The enduring idea that men evolved to hunt and women evolved to gather is a relatively baseless assumption that is facing greater academic resistance than ever before. A new review of archaeological evidence and human physiology strongly suggests that modern gender roles have colored our reconstructions of the distant past. According to biological anthropologists Sarah
Scientists have solved the mystery of one of the animal kingdom’s most disproportionately large penises thanks to a Dutch retiree recording bat sex in a church attic. The serotine bat does not use its strangely large penis for penetration, but instead as a “copulatory arm” during mating, a European team of researchers said on Monday.
The global average temperature on Friday was more than two degrees Celsius hotter than pre-industrial levels for the first time on record, Europe’s Copernicus climate monitor said Monday, adding Saturday likely continued the unprecedented warming streak. Months of extraordinary heat are expected to make 2023 the hottest year in history, with droughts, massive wildfires and
Vampires may be lurking in space in the most ironic way possible – by hiding evidence of their kills in broad daylight. What’s more, just as Dracula had a diabolical assistant, these life-draining stars might be getting a little help from another nearby object. A study of some of the brightest, hottest stars in the
Thanks to its infrared capabilities, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) allows astronomers to peer through the gas and dust clogging the Milky Way’s center, revealing never-before-seen features. One of the biggest mysteries is the star forming region called Sagittarius C, located about 300 light-years from the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole. An estimated 500,000
Green sea turtles are already an endangered species, mainly due to humans hunting them, harvesting their eggs, degrading their habitats, or entangling them in garbage of some kind. But they also face another, more insidious threat from people: the loss of male hatchlings from the species. You probably already know that this is partly caused
Entropy is one of those fearsomely deep concepts that form the core of entire fields of physics (in this case, thermodynamics) that is unfortunately so mathematical that it’s difficult to explain in plain language. But we will give it a try. Whenever I see the word entropy, I like to replace it with the phrase
Seen through a lens of ongoing technological and medical progress it’s easy to feel optimistic about humanity’s future prosperity. Scratch a little deeper, it soon becomes clear that our success as a species is anything but guaranteed. New research led by a team from the University of Stockholm in Sweden outlines 14 different “evolutionary traps”
Using a high-temperature plasma tunnel, scientists have discovered what it might be like to plumb the depths of Uranus. Sure, we know it would be smelly; but there are other considerations that need to be taken into account when designing a probe that can withstand the rigors therein. So scientists simulated the atmospheric conditions of