Experts in Chile on Tuesday were investigating the appearance of an enormous sinkhole, bigger than a tennis court, that has appeared near a copper mine in the Atacama desert. Experts were dispatched to examine the hole, some 32 meters (104 feet) across and twice as deep, which appeared in an area about 800 kilometers (nearly
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Humans are filling the world with trash, but not all of our waste is visible to the human eye. While plastic litter on the beach is easy to spot, microplastics and ‘forever chemicals’ have leached far and wide without our barely noticing. Both forms of pollution are now so ubiquitous in the environment, they are
Reduced to the size of an apple with their eyes and lips stitched shut, it’s easy to forget that these iconic shrunken heads are, in fact, the remains of real humans who once lived and breathed. For centuries, the famous relics (known as tsantsas) of the indigenous Ecuadorean Shuar people have been sold as novelties,
Physicists have just caught light acting the part of ‘glue’ between atoms, in a kind of loosely bonded molecule. “We have succeeded for the first time in polarizing several atoms together in a controlled way, creating a measurable attractive force between them,” says University of Innsbruck physicist Matthias Sonnleitner. Atoms connect to form molecules in a
Active for at least the last 700,000 years, and dominating the landscape of Hawaii, Mauna Loa is the largest shield volcano on Earth (above water, at least) – and scientific data reveals more about what might be enough to set off future eruptions. Looking at shifts in the ground tracked by GPS and satellite data,
The discovery of multiple exoplanets that appear to be shrinking appears to resolve a ‘missing link’ in planetary evolution. Four mini-Neptunes in close proximity to their stars have been found leaking their atmospheres at a rate consistent with eventual total loss. This suggests that these worlds will eventually shrink into terrestrial, roughly Earth-sized planets –
What little we know of dark matter comes from calculations based on the glow of surrounding galaxies. The further away we look, however, the dimmer that starlight gets, making it harder to see the subtle influence of this most mysterious of forces. Now a collaboration between astronomers from Japan and the US has found a
Cave explorers have traversed what’s now the deepest known cave in Australia. On Saturday, a group of explorers discovered a 401-meter-deep cave, which they named Delta Variant, in Tasmania’s Niggly-Growling Swallet cave system within the Junee-Florentine karst area. Its depth just beat out its predecessor, the Niggly Cave, by about 4 meters. With a descent
Archaeologists recently stumbled upon a set of mysterious ‘ghost footprints’ in the salt flats of a Utah desert. These unusual ancient tracks get their eerie name not because they are from an ethereal realm, but due to their earthly composition: They become visible only after it rains and the footprints fill with moisture and become
Australian farmers mysteriously found space debris scattered across their fields last month. An astrophysicist who examined the junk now believes it was from a SpaceX flight. People near Dalgety, New South Wales, found three large pieces of debris, with the largest – a 10-foot-tall triangular structure – found planted firmly into the ground, the Australian Broadcasting
Scientists may have just tracked down the source of some mysterious infrared glows detected emanating from stars and clouds of interstellar dust and gas. These Unidentified Infrared Emission (UIE) bands have baffled scientists for decades; according to a theoretical new work, at least some of these bands can be produced by highly ionized buckminsterfullerene, more
One in five adults in Michigan doesn’t have children and isn’t planning on starting a family any time soon. Regardless of fertility, childfree adults have decided to opt out of parenthood entirely. “We estimate 21.64 percent of Michigan adults are #childfree,” Michigan State University (MSU) sociologist Zarchary Neal wrote in a tweet about the study. He’s
Ever wondered why kissing feels better than holding hands? The tongue is a pretty incredible piece of kit, though notoriously difficult to study, due to its position inside the mouth. Obviously, it gives us access to the wonderful world of taste, but more than that, it has greater sensitivity to touch than the fingertip. Without
New Zealand may seem to be under meteor bombardment at the moment. After a huge meteor exploded above the sea near Wellington on July 7, creating a sonic boom that could be heard across the bottom of the South Island, a smaller fireball was captured two weeks later above Canterbury. Fireballs Aotearoa, a collaboration between
The first mammals to return to the sea, more than 35 million years ago, had eyes for the deep. According to new research, the visual systems of modern whales, dolphins, and porpoises – collectively known as cetaceans – all derive from a common ancestor with powerful underwater vision. Both whales and hippos are thought to
The Earth had its shortest ever day this summer, thanks to a wobble in its axis which meant it completed a single spin in a fraction of a second less than 24 hours. June 29 was 1.59 milliseconds shorter than 86,400 seconds, or exactly 24 hours, according to the website timeanddate.com. In recent decades the Earth
Giant pandas were not always native only to China – and they didn’t always love bamboo. A pair of fossilized panda teeth, originally found in northwestern Bulgaria, suggests these lovable bears once roamed across Europe where they gobbled up much softer plants than their modern cousins. The Bulgarian gnashers do not belong to a direct
Speculating over humanity’s demise is a sport we humans have enjoyed since forever. We build religions on our eschatological hopes, weave fiction out of our dystopian fears, and even write songs about the end of the world as we know it. So it’s surprising that in the midst of an escalating global climate crisis, one
The Universe is littered with galaxy clusters – huge structures piled up at the intersections of the cosmic web. A single cluster can span millions of light-years across and be made up of hundreds, or even thousands, of galaxies. However, these galaxies represent only a few percent of a cluster’s total mass. About 80 percent
What appear to be ripples of blue sand dusting the Martian landscape make the Red Planet appear even more alien than usual. The striking coloration is not, however, what it seems. To see the true beauty, you need to look a little deeper than its make-up. Imaged by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter earlier this year,
The motion of single atoms through liquid has been caught on camera for the first time. Using a sandwich of materials so thin they’re effectively two-dimensional, scientists trapped and observed platinum atoms ‘swimming’ along a surface under different pressures. The results will help us better understand how the presence of liquid alters the behavior of
A Chinese booster rocket made an uncontrolled return to Earth on Saturday, leading US officials to chide Beijing for not sharing information about the potentially hazardous object’s descent. US Space Command “can confirm the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Long March 5B (CZ-5B) re-entered over the Indian Ocean at approx. 10:45 am MDT on 7/30,”
The decapitated head of an ancient Egyptian mummy found in an attic in Kent, England, has been put under a CT scan, revealing it belonged to a woman that lived at least 2,000 years ago. The head is believed to have been brought back from Egypt as a souvenir in the 19th century, researchers from Canterbury
In the permanent twilight of the mesopelagic, a silent predator hunts. The enigmatic giant squid is rarely observed in its natural habitat. In the first videos of their kind, unveiled in 2021, marine scientists caught its hunting behavior in the wild – revealing for the first time how these monsters of the deep stalk and
One of the most extreme stars in the Milky Way just got even more wack. Scientists have measured the mass of a neutron star named PSR J0952-0607, and found that it’s the most massive neutron star discovered yet, clocking in at a whopping 2.35 times the mass of the Sun. If true, this is very
A newly developed, water-activated disposable paper battery promises to make a big impact on single-use electronics – those temporary gadgets used in medical and industrial fields where electronic waste can quickly start piling up. The battery that has been demonstrated by researchers is biodegradable, made from sustainable materials, and cheap to put together. What’s more,
A Polish scientific institute has categorized domestic cats as an “invasive alien species.” The Polish Academy of Sciences has defined the house cat (Felis catus) as “alien” as it was domesticated in the Middle East and has deemed cats as “invasive” due to the “negative influence of domestic cats on native biodiversity,” they explained in a
A climate scientist at Tohoku University in Japan has run the numbers and does not think today’s mass extinction event will equal that of the previous five. At least not for many more centuries to come. On more than one occasion over the past 540 million years, Earth has lost most of its species in
A farm in England was the unlikely source of a Jurassic jackpot: A treasure trove of 183 million-year-old fossils. On the outskirts of Gloucestershire in the Cotswolds, beneath soil that is currently trampled under the hooves of grazing cattle, researchers recently uncovered the fossilized remains of fish, giant marine reptiles called ichthyosaurs, squids, insects, and
Grab any physics textbook and you’ll find formula after formula describing how things wobble, fly, swerve and stop. The formulas describe actions we can observe, but behind each could be sets of factors that aren’t immediately obvious. Now, a new AI program developed by researchers at Columbia University has seemingly discovered its own alternative physics.
Scientists experimenting on mice have found evidence that key parts of the modern human brain take more time to develop than those of our long extinct cousin, the Neanderthal. Like the hare and the tortoise, slow and steady is the winner here. The extra time is caused by protein differences that also appear to reduce
Miners in Angola have uncovered a massive pink diamond that may be the biggest gem of its kind found in the past 300 years. The pink diamond is estimated to weigh 170 carats, making it just a smidge smaller than the 182-carat Daria-i-Noor diamond – the largest pink diamond in the world, which today is part of the Iranian
During a recent expedition to the largely unexplored depths of the northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge, marine researchers stumbled upon something odd: tiny holes excavated in the sediment, all arranged in dozens of relatively straight lines. Holes on the sea floor wouldn’t usually be too perplexing, but these were dotted in an incredibly neat and evenly spaced
The temperature on the Moon can vary from boiling to freezing depending on whether it’s night or day, but scientists think there might well be sheltered pits and caves where the temperature is quite reasonable – no matter what time it is. In such spots, the temperature hovers around 17 degrees Celsius (63 degrees Fahrenheit),
Peer long enough into the heavens, and the Universe starts to resemble a city at night. Galaxies take on characteristics of streetlamps cluttering up neighborhoods of dark matter, linked by highways of gas that run along the shores of intergalactic nothingness. This map of the Universe was preordained, laid out in the tiniest of shivers
This weekend, a massive, uncontrolled rocket booster is predicted to hurtle back to Earth, with a high chance that at least some of the debris will be large enough to survive the descent and smash into our planet. The booster is 53.6 meters (176 feet) long and weighs around 23 metric tons, and belongs to
In a time when flaunting your best self on social media has become a norm, narcissistic traits seem to be everywhere. In today’s slang, off-putting behaviors like entitlement, superiority, and self-congratulating are known as ‘flexing’. Such traits might be more common these days, but being narcissistic is still seen as a pathological personality trait, akin to
Ever since space probe Juno gave us our first incredible views of the poles of Jupiter, the regions have fascinated and mesmerized us. In one of the latest pictures Juno has sent back of the north pole, you can see why: a medley of storm vortices, connected and interconnected, appearing serene from a distance, but
Two skyscraper-size asteroids are zooming toward Earth this weekend, with one making its closest approach on Friday (29 July) and the second whizzing by on Saturday (30 July). The first asteroid, dubbed 2016 CZ31, will fly by around 7 pm ET (23:00 GMT) on Friday, whizzing at an estimated 34,560 mph (55,618 km/h, according to NASA. Astronomers
Humankind marks a dubious milestone Thursday, the day by which humanity has consumed all Earth can sustainably produce for this year, with NGOs warning the rest of 2022 will be lived in resource deficit. The date – dubbed “Earth Overshoot Day” – marks a tipping point when people have used up “all that ecosystems can
Once upon a time, when our planet Earth was very young and very new, there was not a single scrap of life on it to be found. Then, somewhere, somehow, some quirk of chemistry happened, and the molecular building blocks of our very first single-celled ancestors emerged: the amino acids and nucleic acids that came
Amongst thousands of impressions in a large rock surface, one stood out from the crowd. The imprint of a tough tubular exoskeleton topped with waving tentacles, now frozen in time, looked strikingly familiar, unlike any of its neighbors. It looked just like a relative of corals, anemones, and jellyfish from a sediment layer dated 20
A third set of human remains were found in Nevada’s Lake Mead on 25 July as water levels have receded to historic lows during a drought fueled by climate change. The remains were spotted by a witness at Swim Beach on Lake Mead during the afternoon of 25 July, the National Park Service announced. Investigators retrieved the
The chance of someone being killed by space junk falling from the sky may seem ridiculously tiny. After all, nobody has yet died from such an accident, though there have been instances of injury and damage to property. But given that we are launching an increasing number of satellites, rockets and probes into space, do
The biggest shark in our oceans already has a reputation for being a gentle giant, and it seems there’s more to this than we ever realized. Whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) are filter feeders, thought to carefully comb the waters for tiny animals like krill. Among the litany of tiny swimmers they scoop up are greens
At 5:29 am on the morning of 16 July 1945, in the state of New Mexico, a dreadful slice of history was made. The dawn calm was torn asunder as the United States Army detonated a plutonium implosion device known as the Gadget – the world’s very first test of a nuclear bomb, known as
New footage showing a giant, peculiar-looking tentacled sea creature floating languidly in the depths of the Pacific Ocean has left researchers questioning if what they’re seeing is a new species. A team of scientists spotted the strange animal while on board the E/V Nautilus, a research vessel used by the Ocean Exploration Trust – a
Moscow said Tuesday it was leaving the International Space Station “after 2024” amid tensions with the West, in a move analysts warned could lead to a halt of Russian-crewed flights. The confirmation of the long-mooted move comes as ties unravel between the Kremlin and the West over Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine and several rounds