Shark Week, the Discovery Channel’s annual bonanza of shark documentaries, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this week. It’s the longest-running series on cable, and that longevity has given it a prime role in pop culture and public understanding of shark science. But its legacy is a mixed bag. As a shark conservation biologist, I both
Archaeologists working in Ukraine have found something they’ve never seen before: the bones of a young woman, buried 4,500 years ago, carefully decorated with black markings before being interred in a burial mound. The bones, of a woman aged 25-30 and excavated by a Polish-Ukrainian team, were actually discovered a few years ago, in a
Samples of permafrost sediment frozen for the past 40,000 years were recently thawed to reveal living nematodes. Within weeks the roundworms began to move and eat, setting a record for the time an animal can survive cryogenic preservation. Aside from revealing new limits of endurance, it just might prove useful when it comes to preserving
The first comprehensive mapping of ocean wilderness revealed that no part of the ocean is untouched by humans, and only 13 percent could be classified as “wilderness.” “Nowhere is safe,” said James Watson of the University of Queensland, an author on the study, in a video abstract for the report. The exhaustive analysis of human
On July 27th, 2018 most of the world will be treated to an extraordinary evening of activity in the sky. First, there will be a total lunar eclipse and although uncommon, this one is special because it’s going to last a lot longer than usual – in fact the longest this century. But that’s not
If you’re out to start a religion, it might be more important to aim high rather than wide and sign up the big names first. That’s the take-home message from a study on the history of Christianity, which found its reach across the globe had less to do with the hoi polloi spreading the word,
Scientists have long understood that in the course of cosmic evolution, galaxies become larger by consuming smaller galaxies. The evidence of this can be seen by observing galactic halos, where the stars of cannibalized galaxies still remain. This is certainly true of the Andromeda Galaxy (aka. M31, Earth’s closest neighbor) which has a massive and nearly-invisible
Conditions on Mars are not forgiving. Just ask the Opportunity rover. Oh, you can’t. It’s been forced into a drastic hibernation by deadly dust storms so intense they’ve engulfed the entire planet. During the intrepid explorer’s shutdown, scientists announced the discovery of something amazing: a massive water lake hidden under the Martian ice. But across
For the first time, Einstein’s theory of general relativity has been confirmed in a new context: in the most extreme gravitational field in the Milky Way, created by Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. Bringing 26 years of observations to an amazing climax, a star named S2 in orbit
His formal title is His Imperial Majesty the Emperor, Akihito, who succeeded to Japan’s Chrysanthemum Throne upon the death of his father in 1989. Now, the 84-year-old Akihito is giving up that noble seat, officially abdicating in 2019. When he goes, it won’t just signal the end of a decades-long reign, and the first time
Around 500 or 600 years ago, two young girls, aged roughly 9 and 18 years, were buried in the finest of Incan style in Northern Chile. Their grave goods were rich and abundant; their burial clothes coloured the deepest red – and a heavy sprinkling, researchers have now found, of the toxic pigment cinnabar. It’s
Yellowstone National Park’s supervolcano could be the result of rubbing tectonic plates after all, a new study suggest – challenging the favoured explanation which pins it on heat billowing up from deep beneath the crust. Virginia Tech geoscientist Ying Zhou has identified anomalies in the crust that suggest sliding layers of rock are responsible for
Amelia Earhart waded into the Pacific Ocean and climbed into her downed and disabled Lockheed Electra. She started the engine, turned on the two-way radio and sent out a plea for help, one more desperate than previous messages. The high tide was getting higher, she had realized. Soon it would suck the plane into deeper
Two of the most bizarre phenomena in quantum physics have been brought together in a single experiment for the first time – and scientists are already using the set-up to probe the very limits of reality. With the aid of two wires placed in very close proximity on a microchip, both the very weird Casimir effect
We finally know where all that Martian water has been hiding! This latest epic discovery was achieved using a radar instrument on a Mars orbiter, with Italian scientists finding a huge liquid reservoir hidden 1.5 kilometres (0.93 miles) under the southern polar ice cap, extending 20 kilometres (12.4 miles) across. The researchers say it’s a
Why do batteries die? And, why can they only be recharged so many times before they won’t hold a useful amount of charge? My young son asked me about that years ago when his battery-powered toy car stopped moving, wondering about what he called an “everlasting battery”. And this same question has probably crossed the
“Dozens of raccoons die from viral ‘zombie’ outbreak” scream the headlines. That sounds pretty terrifying. Grab your emergency supply kit and your dog and head for the hills. Actually, maybe not. As far as we know, there is no ‘zombie’ outbreak or zombie virus on the loose, but what’s actually going on is a serious
There’s something just so incredibly satisfying about the idea of the Kármán line – the invisible boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space. Situated at an altitude of 100 kilometres (62 miles), it represents the point at which aeronautics end, and astronautics take over. But maybe it’s a little too neat, according to a new paper that seeks to
Earlier this month, a small island village in remote northwestern Greenland slipped into the shadow of an epic, monstrous iceberg. Living just north of the Upernavik Ice Fjord, the people of Innaarsuit are used to seeing large icebergs drift by. But in recent memory, there has never been a visitor quite this big. Weighing in
It turns out Lassie might not be such an outlier: dogs with strong bonds to their owners will hurry to their aid if they know a way to help, a new study suggests. In an experiment run with a variety of breeds, around half the dogs involved tried to push through a door to get
Russian hackers infiltrated US electric utilities last year and had the ability to cause widespread blackouts, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a briefing on Monday. Symantec first reported on a hacking campaign by the state-sponsored group Dragonfly targeting dozens of victims in the US energy sector in 2017. But this is the
Grey wolves are among the top predators on the Arctic tundra, but there’s a little fellow underfoot who has their lupine compadres beat. A calculation for a new paper estimates that, in terms of raw biomass, the wolf spider outweighs the grey wolf by just over 80 to 1. That, friends, is a lot of
Nobody knows his name, nor the language he speaks, or spoke. But there he is, still alive and still alone, in newly released footage shot deep in the lush growth of the Amazon rainforest. Some call him the the Man of the Hole, in reference to the deep pits he digs to catch wildlife. Others
Dreaming is one of the strangest things that happens to us, and for as long as we have been recording history, we have been puzzling over why our minds are so active while we sleep. Finally, new research claims to have evidence as to what dreaming is all about – and it will probably surprise
At the far end of town where the Grickle-grass grows, a team of professors has finally cracked The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss. You may not have realized that The Lorax needed cracking, but that’s why you’re not an anthropologist at Dartmouth College. In a paper released Monday in the prestigious journal Nature Ecology & Evolution,
A group of German engineering students won the third SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition on Sunday, as their prototype pod shattered speed records and raced through a nearly mile-long tunnel at 290 miles per hour (466 kilometre per hour). WARR Hyperloop, from the Technical University of Munich, won first place for the third time in a
We may not need to travel far from our home planet to find a spot in our solar system that could once have supported life. Long ago, Earth’s Moon may have had conditions in which life could arise, according to a study published Monday in the journal Astrobiology. In fact, such conditions could have arisen
“Just how old do you think my dog is in dog years?” is a question I hear on a regular basis. People love to anthropomorphize pets, attributing human characteristics to them. And most of us want to extend our animal friends’ healthy lives for as long as possible. It may seem like sort of a
Scientists have created a tiny rotor that rotates at speeds of up to 60 billion revolutions a minute – the fastest-spinning human-made rotor in history, and 100,000 times faster than your average dental drill. The record-breaking invention not only pushes the boundaries of physics but could also be used to study some of the mysteries
A first-of-its-kind four-day work week experiment in New Zealand has come to an end after two months, but the trial went so well the company actually wants to make the changes permanent. While lots of research has shown the numerous benefits a reduced work week can provide to employees, what’s remarkable about this trial is
In 2015, 96 million floating plastic ‘shade’ balls were dumped into the reservoir of drought-embattled Los Angeles. It was a plan to save water by preventing evaporation – and it did – but there was one big wet elephant in the room that was somehow overlooked. Manufacturing that many plastic balls actually used more water
The radioactive fallout of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 cast an irrevocable toll on the environment within Japan – and outside of it – and years later, the legacy of its toxic contamination is still being discovered. Even the sun-kissed vineyards of California weren’t immune to Fukushima’s shadow, it seems, with scientists having now
I had what seemed like rather a good idea a few weeks back. Building on some prominent findings in social psychology, I hypothesised that politicians on the right would wipe their bum with their left hand; and that politicians on the left would wipe with their right hand. Ludicrous? Yes – absolutely. But for once
Forty-nine years ago this Friday, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the Moon. That day, they also became the first people to harvest samples from another celestial body and bring them back to Earth. Over the course of the Apollo missions, astronauts collected about 2,200 individual samples weighing
We all know that helium makes your voice all squeaky like a chipmunk, but in the last few years, there’s been a new voice-altering gas on the block. It’s an ultra-dense substance called sulfur hexafluoride, and it makes your voice go all deep and demony. The science behind this is actually really cool. When lighter-than-air
To glimpse a meteor shower, sometimes you’ve got to wake up in the middle of the night, bundle up against frigid cold, and wait many minutes or hours. All to see a streak of light, a piece of space that crosses briefly into our world. Soon, though, all you may need is enough cash. A
In 1969, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the Moon. Forty-nine years later, his family is auctioning off a number of incredible and rare items, according to Heritage Auctions in Texas. We can’t imagine these items are going to go cheap, but those who have a bit of money
It’s been a few days since archaeologists from Egypt’s antiquities ministry pried open a mysterious, 27 tonne (30 ton) black sarcophagus, and no ancient curse has befallen the planet despite tabloid warnings. The sarcophagus was first found earlier in July by construction workers in a residential area of Alexandria, a city on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast.
Poring over four decades of satellite data, climate scientists have concluded for the first time that humans are pushing seasonal temperatures out of balance – shifting what one researcher called the very “march of the seasons themselves.” Ever-mindful of calculable uncertainty and climate deniers, the authors give “odds of roughly 5 in 1 million” of
Last year, astronomers discovered a massive supercluster of galaxies located approximately 4 billion light-years from Earth – and not only is it one of the largest known structures in the cosmos, it’s also the most distant supercluster we’ve ever observed. See, in space, everything is a question of perspective. From where you sit, the planet
Global warming isn’t the cause of slowdown in a huge circulation pattern in the Atlantic Ocean, which is, in fact, part of regular, decades-long cycle that will affect temperatures in coming decades, according to a new study. Oceanographers are concerned about the long-term stability of the Atlantic Ocean circulation, and previous studies show that it
When you add a smiley face to the end of a message, you may be saying more than you realise. Emoticons, faces formed from punctuation symbols such as :-), and emojis, picture symbols such as 😀, are now common features of the way we communicate using phone and internet messaging services and social media. They
One snowy January day, I asked a classroom of college students to tell me the first word that came to mind when they thought about mathematics. The top two words were “calculation” and “equation.” When I asked a room of professional mathematicians the same question, neither of those words were mentioned; instead, they offered phrases
The soaring temperatures in Europe and North America have seen a rise in reports of dogs being rescued from hot cars. Police across England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, and Canada have all saved dogs from certain death. But in the US, a Great Dane in Juneau, Alaska, a Pitbull Boxer mix in Trussvile, Alabama,
You probably know that, for the most part, Yellowstone National Park is located in Wyoming. But there’s a small sliver of the park that crosses the border into Idaho, and that tiny, 130-square-km (50-square-mile) patch is known as the Zone of Death. Why? Well, thanks to a loophole in the US Constitution, you could technically get
It’s hard to say exactly why you like someone. Maybe it’s their goofy smile; maybe it’s their razor-sharp wit; or maybe it’s simply that they’re easy to be around. You just like them. But scientists generally aren’t satisfied with answers like that, and they’ve spent years trying to pinpoint the exact factors that draw one
What has six legs, two antennae, four furry appendages sprouting from its backside – and a big chunk of the Internet freaked out? The world’s most viral and terrifying moth. A man in Indonesia posted a picture and video of the insect on Facebook in October last year, drawing more than 36,000 comments, many from
After days of intense and viral speculation, archaeologists in Egypt this week finally opened up that mysterious, 2,000-year-old giant black sarcophagus. So far, no curse has been unleashed (that we know of), but the team did discover something slightly gruesome inside – three skeletons, most likely soldiers, decaying in a pool of dark red, murky