For the first time, scientists have been able to accurately measure the mass of the human chromosome. Using a powerful X-ray source at the UK’s national synchrotron science facility, the Diamond Light Source, physicists were able to determine the individual masses of all 46 chromosomes in human cells. The masses were found to be significantly
Discovering a new species and placing it on the tree of life is a big responsibility. I have been fortunate to name four species from some of the deepest, most remote and least sampled parts of the ocean. Each new species helps us uncover how life thrives in the hadal zone (anywhere deeper than 6,000
You can impress family members and friends with magic tricks, but you can also use them to study the differences in perception between animals and humans – and a new study highlights how Eurasian jays aren’t quite as susceptible to sleight of hand as we are. Jays and other large-brained birds often use techniques similar
The legacy of one of the brightest stars in the physics firmament has been secured. Around 10,000 pages of the writings and other papers of legendary theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking will be preserved in a special archive by the Cambridge University Library in the UK. This will include a digitization project, to be made freely
A newly discovered repeating fast radio burst (FRB) named FRB 20200120E is deepening the mystery of these already deeply mysterious space signals. Astronomers have tracked its location to a galaxy 11.7 million light-years away, which makes it the closest known fast radio burst, 40 times closer than the next-closest extragalactic signal. But it also appears
A giant tortoise in the Galápagos Islands that was thought to have gone extinct over a century ago just came out of hiding. Researchers discovered the female tortoise on the Galápagos’ Fernandina Island during a joint expedition carried out by the Galápagos National Park Directorate and the Galápagos Conservancy in 2019, according to a statement. They
The shimmering appearance of frosty, white clouds in the atmosphere of Mars has surprised NASA scientists, with the wispy formations emerging in unexpected ways. Clouds are a rarer weather phenomenon on Mars as compared to Earth, thanks to the red planet’s thin, dry atmosphere, but they’re certainly not unheard of. Still, a number of unusual
The popular conception goes that nothing can escape from a black hole. Once something passes the event horizon – the so-called point of no return – it stays there, forever, bound by a gravitational field not even light can escape. But a rotating black hole generates vast amounts of energy, which, theoretically, can be extracted
Each city is populated by a unique host of microbial organisms, and this microbial ‘fingerprint’ is so distinctive, the DNA on your shoe is likely enough to identify where you live, scientists say. In a new study, researchers took thousands of samples from mass transit systems in 60 cities across the world, swabbing common touch
A potentially new species of tree frog has been discovered in New Guinea, and it’s full of surprises. For starters, instead of the bright green skin of its relatives, this creature sports a beautiful chocolate brown. It was also found in an unexpected location. “What’s a little surprising about this discovery is that the well-known
The inevitable has occurred. A piece of space debris too small to be tracked has hit and damaged part of the International Space Station – namely, the Canadarm2 robotic arm. The instrument is still operational, but the object punctured the thermal blanket and damaged the boom beneath. It’s a sobering reminder that the low-Earth orbit’s
A 2,300-year-old ceramic jar filled with the bones of a dismembered chicken was likely part of an ancient curse to paralyze and kill 55 people in ancient Athens, archaeologists say. The finding reveals new evidence for how people tried to use “magic” in the city. They discovered the jar, along with a coin, beneath the floor
A heavily used group of pesticides, designed to kill insects upon contact, is also poisoning bee colonies. Scientists have discovered a way to deliver an antidote using pollen-like microparticles. The medicine is composed of a special enzyme that can break down certain groups of insecticides called organophosphates. These insecticides pose a deadly threat, but if the
For some time, seismologists have been aware of brief, subtle anomalies in underground electrical fields leading up to an earthquake, sometimes occurring as soon as a few weeks before the quake happens. It’s tempting to think these electromagnetic bursts could be used to predict when a quake will strike. Up until now, however, the cause of
Astronomers have created the most comprehensive map yet of all the dark matter in the universe. That’s no easy feat, considering dark matter is invisible. Scientists know this shadowy cousin of regular matter exists, though, because its strong gravitational forces can pull entire galaxies together. Based on observations of its influence, astronomers estimate that dark
A new map of dark matter made using artificial intelligence reveals hidden filaments of the invisible stuff bridging galaxies. The map focuses on the local universe — the neighborhood surrounding the Milky Way. Despite being close by, the local universe is difficult to map because it’s chock full of complex structures made of visible matter,
The center of the Milky Way is a strange and wild place. There dwells our galactic nucleus – a supermassive black hole 4 million times the mass of the Sun, a beast named Sgr A*. It’s probably the most extreme environment in our galaxy, dominated by Sgr A*’s gravitational and magnetic fields. It’s also very
One of the oldest known war cemeteries, discovered in the Nile River Valley, did not necessarily originate from a single epic battle like we once thought. According to a full reanalysis of this ancient burial site, known as Jebel Sahaba, the humans buried here were probably subject to a series of violent skirmishes rather than
During its sixth flight on the red planet, the Ingenuity helicopter experienced a little mishap – but, thanks to planning and built-in failsafes, it survived to fly another day. This is actually great news, because it demonstrates the multiple ways in which the vehicle is robust to errors – as well as giving engineers here
A study has found that monkeys are capable of picking up new “accents” to be more friendly to their neighbors. The study, which was published earlier this month in the peer-reviewed Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology journal, looked at two different species of monkeys that live in the Brazilian Amazon: The bald-headed white pied tamarins and their
NASA is preparing to rocket around 5,000 tardigrades – those adorably pudgy ‘water bears’ – and 128 glow-in-the-dark baby squid into space. The animals are heading to the International Space Station (ISS) next week as part of SpaceX’s 22nd cargo resupply mission. SpaceX is set to launch the microscopic critters onboard a Falcon 9 rocket
A set of cut and sharpened turkey bones excavated decades ago from an ancient Native American grave seem to be the oldest tattooing tools we’ve found to date. A new, detailed analysis of these artifacts has allowed archaeologists to determine that they were likely used to tattoo skin, bringing us a little closer to understanding
While the rest of the world continues to tackle the global pandemic, in eastern Australia, waves of mice are flooding farms and towns. For months now, this plague has been wreaking havoc on crops, damaging electrical wires in buildings, and even biting hospital patients, leaving a stench of rodent urine and feces in its wake.
Jupiter’s ice-encrusted moon Europa is increasingly looking like the best place in the Solar System to search for extraterrestrial life. New modeling suggests that the rocky mantle, deep below the thick ice and salty ocean, could actually be hot enough for volcanic activity. Moreover, it could have been this hot over most of its 4.5-billion
While we all recognize bees for their importance in our food chain as pollinators, the clever creatures have a series of other talents, including math ability, face recognition, and even tool use. A new video, originally posted on Twitter, shows a pair of bees apparently unscrewing the orange lid of a Fanta to reach the
A “lost” letter written by Albert Einstein to a rival physicist recently sold to an anonymous collector for US$1.2 million at auction. The handwritten letter includes Einstein’s famous E=mc2 equation and is one of just four known examples of the equation in the physicist’s own handwriting, according to archivists from the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech and
There’s already a strong link between sleep and memory, and scientists have just found out more about how that relationship works: there are specific patterns of brain activity that open up windows on our past experiences, fixing them in our long-term memory. These patterns involve the slow oscillations (SOs) of brain waves that normally accompany
A “super blood moon” appeared in the sky early on Wednesday, but only certain parts of the world caught a glimpse. Thanks to a total lunar eclipse, the Moon took on a reddish hue around 7:14 a.m. ET in parts of North America, South America, Asia, and Oceania. The event coincided with a supermoon –
From the waters we creatures of the land emerged. Some animals, like whales, returned to it. Others, like frogs, never truly let go of their watery origins, and even now we’re still discovering clever ways in which terrestrial creatures can find refuge within this soothing liquid medium. Case in point: air-breathing anoles have developed a
Hidden in the vast, arid expanses of India’s Thar Desert lie mysterious old drawings carved into the land. These newly discovered designs are of such immense scale, they were likely never able to be glimpsed in their entirety by those who made them, researchers say. The huge motifs are examples of geoglyphs – giant hand-made
A spherical unidentified flying object (UFO) hovers in midair, moves side to side like a ball in the “Pong” video game and then seems to dive into the ocean, in footage that was recently released online by a filmmaker who produces documentaries about UFOs. Though a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed that the US Navy did capture the footage,
Russia is planning to send a nuclear-powered spacecraft to the Moon, then Venus, then Jupiter. Roscosmos, Russia’s federal space agency, announced Saturday that its “space tug” – the term for a spacecraft that transports astronauts or equipment from one orbit to another – is scheduled to launch on an interplanetary mission in 2030. The spacecraft’s energy module,
Greenland’s melting ice sheet is unleashing an astonishing amount of mercury into the nation’s rivers and fjords. Downstream of three glaciers in the southwest, researchers have found coastal ecosystems are swimming in high concentrations of the heavy metal, which can build up in the food web to toxic levels. The quantity of mercury observed in
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 new data have revealed more about what might be enough to set off future eruptions. Looking at shifts in the ground tracked by GPS and satellite
If you have an overreaction to ‘triggering’ sounds such as other people chewing or drumming their fingers, you probably have misophonia. Now, scientists have discovered a key brain connection responsible for setting it off. The connection runs from the auditory cortex (the brain’s hearing center) to the orofacial motor cortex (controlling movement of the face, mouth
New calculations from bored physicists have just brought us a bit closer to understanding how material can fall onto neutron stars to flare out powerful blasts of X-ray light. If enough plasma is gravitationally attracted to the dead star from a binary companion, its mass is sufficient to force a way through the barrier created
The Red Planet, called that for its rusty oxidized soil, looks vastly different to our planet’s green and blue appearance. Well, at least usually. The two planets can also appear incredibly similar, as European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet discovered while taking a photo of Earth looking decidedly red earlier this month, while onboard the
The first lunar eclipse of 2021 is going to happen during the early hours of May 26. But this is going to be an especially super lunar event, as it will be a supermoon, a lunar eclipse and a red blood moon all at once. So what does this all mean? What’s a super moon?
The science replication crisis might be worse than we thought: new research reveals that studies with replicated results tend to be cited less often than studies which have failed to replicate. That’s not to say that these more widely cited studies with unreplicated experiments are necessarily wrong or misleading – but it does mean that,
Ever since the Gaia satellite began mapping the Milky Way in three dimensions with the highest precision yet, we’ve been learning a lot about our home galaxy’s violent past. The scrappy cannibal has collided with, and subsumed, multiple other galaxies over its 13.6-billion year lifespan. The largest of these, the Gaia-Enceladus dwarf galaxy (AKA the
Gold, for all its wonderful uses, isn’t hugely abundant in Earth’s upper layers. For each ton of crust material, there’s an estimated just 0.004 grams of the precious metal. Yet somehow, there are regions that contain “bonanza” abundances – hyper-enrichment, in the scientific parlance. How these gold veins form in time spans as short as
Almost 60 years after British nuclear tests ended, radioactive particles containing plutonium and uranium still contaminate the landscape around Maralinga in outback South Australia. These “hot particles” are not as stable as we once assumed. Our research shows they are likely releasing tiny chunks of plutonium and uranium which can be easily transported in dust
Not all flowers smell like roses. An unusual plant in Greece gives off the scent of decaying insects, probably as a way to attract and trap coffin flies (Megaselia scalaris). The stinky flower is called Aristolochia microstoma, and according to scientists, it’s the first known case of a plant that reeks of dead invertebrates to
Pharmaceuticals, the chemicals found in medicines and drugs, are widely used across the world and allow us to treat and prevent disease. There is a growing concern that some of these pharmaceuticals are leaching into natural waterways like rivers, streams, and lakes. To find out if this poses a problem, we asked 4 experts in
The mystery of fast radio bursts (FRBs) continues to fascinate astronomers. No one is quite sure what’s behind these super-short, super-intense radio wave pulses from deep space, but now astronomers have tracked down five FRBs to their home galaxies. It’s the Hubble Space Telescope that has come up with the goods again. The ultraviolet and
An online game developed by a team of social psychologists could be a useful tool in the fight against misinformation, helping internet users spot misinformation and call it out for what it is: manipulative. Misinformation – often spread by automated bots, but also unsuspecting people – worms its way into our heads by appealing to a
The wonderful mess of molecules that make up living things is so complex, biologists have overlooked an entire class of them – until now. This missed bit of biochemistry is neither rare nor hard to find; it’s just no one had thought to look for it before. “This is a stunning discovery of an entirely
We have developed and tested a secure new computer processor that thwarts hackers by randomly changing its underlying structure, thus making it virtually impossible to hack. Last summer, 525 security researchers spent three months trying to hack our Morpheus processor as well as others. All attempts against Morpheus failed. This study was part of a program
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