Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are conducting an expedition to explore the uncharted waters in the deepest parts of the Gulf of Mexico – and the footage they’re bringing back is stunning, or horrifying, depending on your view of the underwater world. Last week, one of NOAA’s submersibles came across a large octopus on the seafloor just
Diamond isn’t the first material that springs to mind when it comes to bending and stretching, but scientists have found a way to manipulate one of the hardest minerals on Earth – and it could lead to a slew of technological advances. Not only is diamond hard, it’s also very brittle. But the new study
Astronomers have just finished using an X-ray telescope to peer into galactic haloes, only to find Universe’s missing matter isn’t hiding there, either. But it’s gotta be out there somewhere… The Universe is made up of loads of matter. There’s normal, or baryonic, matter – that’s the stuff we can detect. Space dust and
The mass quantities of food Americans waste every year has staggering environmental consequences, according to a study published Wednesday. “Our data suggest that the average person in the United States wastes about a pound of food per day,” said the University of Vermont’s Meredith Niles, one of the study’s authors along with researchers at the
The first scientific expedition to the depths of the Indian Ocean southwest of Java has returned with some amazing treasure: at least 11 unusual deep-sea species that were previously unknown to science. Jointly conducted by the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, the expedition collected over 12,000 specimens from
When it comes to defending the nest, ants have developed a whole bunch of unique and painful ways to stop their enemies. But a new and bizarre species of “exploding ant” (Colobopsis explodens) blows them all away. During territorial combat, these tree-dwelling ants latch onto their enemies, split open their own insides, and spill yellow,
An unusual pair showed up in the pre-dawn hours at Fire Station 82 in Wayne Township, Indiana, last week. Repeatedly pressing the doorbell was a frantic woman. In her arms was a furry, masked animal that firefighters later described as “lethargic,” fire department spokesman Michael Pruitt said. Through her panic, the woman divulged that
The deepest dive recorded by the free-diving Bajau Laut people of Southeast Asia was to an impressive 79 metres (259 feet), and the longest time spent underwater by them was just over three minutes. Although the Bajau do not dive to these depths or for this length of time during their day-to-day fishing, they
In chaos theory, they say the infinitesimal flapping of a butterfly’s wings can hypothetically cascade into a fierce tornado. Now, scientists have demonstrated how some of the smallest creatures in the ocean could have the same outsized impact under the waves – with swarms of marine organisms inadvertently producing powerful currents that mix and churn
The gemstone opal is beloved for its scintillating array of colours. Now the nanostructures that make those dazzling colours possible have been found elsewhere – in a common type of seaweed found throughout European coastal regions. Brown algae (Cystoseira tamariscifolia) is also called “rainbow wrack.” When out of the water and dry, it’s a
On 27 August 1883, Earth made the loudest noise in recorded history. Emanating from the island of Krakatoa, which sits between the islands of Java and Sumatra in Indonesia, the sound could be heard clearly almost 5,000 kilometres (3,100 miles) away and by people across 50 different geological locations around the world. According to
Amateur mathematician Aubrey de Grey has stunned the maths world by making the first significant progress in decades towards solving a longstanding riddle – one that’s perplexed mathematical thinkers for over 60 years. The riddle, called the Hadwiger-Nelson problem, is basically all about untouchable colours, and how many of them – or, rather, how
In 2016 the Great Barrier Reef suffered unprecedented mass coral bleaching – part of a global bleaching event that dwarfed its predecessors in 1998 and 2002. This was followed by another mass bleaching the following year. This was the first case of back-to-back mass bleaching events on the reef. The result was a 30
An unexpectedly heavy cardboard box, filled with flat-packed formations. Seemingly superfluous pieces of particle board. A madness-inducing number of screws, nails, and washers, plus the lingering fear that one might be left over. Even if you like putting together IKEA furniture, you’ve gotta admit that it’s no walk in the park. It’s the ultimate
NASA’s newest satellite is scheduled to launch on the evening of Wednesday 18 April, 22:51 UTC. Known as TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite will play a crucial role in humanity’s search for planets outside our own Solar System. And it’ll be blasted into orbit by SpaceX’s famous, reusable Falcon 9 rocket. Shortly after the launch, SpaceX
How’s the air in your neighbourhood today? A new State of Global Air report suggests more than 95 percent of the planet’s population currently have to breathe polluted air – air containing fine particle levels that exceed the global air quality guidelines. What’s more, the burden of bad air quality is affecting the poorest
It’s the prettiest powder keg on the planet – the Yellowstone supervolcano, simmering under the mystique and grandeur of the national park that adorns the fearsome caldera. And scientists just got one step closer to understanding the hidden geology of this epic blowhole. Using supercomputers to model the behaviour of two known magma chambers concealed
There’s something sorely lacking in the scientific fields of astronomy and astrophysics. As it turns out, we’re still lacking logical consistency in how we measure what goes on in space. Writing for the journal Astronomy & Geophysics, retired physics professor Keith Atkin of the University of Sheffield says that our current global “system” – if
Evolution never really stops, so it stands to reason that we humans are still undergoing evolutionary changes. Now some researchers have figured out how, finding evidence in the human genome that our fertility and heart function is changing. Natural selection isn’t like getting superpowers. It involves slowly wrought changes that take generations, and are
An inspired display of animal ingenuity at a biomedical research institute in Texas saw a team of baboons work together to escape from the facility, briefly tasting sweet freedom outside its walls before eventually being recaptured. The breakout, which took place on Saturday at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute (TBRI) in San Antonio, was
Off the coast of Costa Rica, about 3 kilometres (roughly 2 miles) beneath the ocean’s surface, there is a literal mother-lode of octopuses, where octopuses have no business being. Not only does this concentration of cephalopods represent an entirely new species – which is exciting news in itself – but their numbers and unusual
Hundreds of basking sharks (Cetorhinus maximus) have been spotted swarming in massive groups, and it’s all a big mystery. A new study has revealed that when researchers were trying to locate the endangered North Atlantic right whales, they came across something strange. Between 1980 and 2013, these researchers spotted hundreds of basking sharks in
A realistic-looking video that seemed to show former President Barack Obama cussing and calling President Donald Trump a “total and complete dips—,” went viral on Tuesday, bringing attention to the dangers of a controversial video-editing technology that many have called “the future of fake news.” About halfway through the video, originally published by BuzzFeed,
The hypothetical cosmic portals linking two points of space-time that we call wormholes are the stuff of science fiction and space theory right now – but if they really do exist, one scientist has come up with a way we might spot them: by the shadows they leave. It’s similar to the way that
One of the fundamental climate constants that has helped define and divide the United States for centuries is shifting in response to global warming, according to new research. The 100th meridian west – the invisible line of longitude that roughly bisects the continental US in half – was historically seen as a boundary separating
Scientists have discovered that tiny diamonds found inside a meteorite show signs of originating in a lost planet – one that dates back to the earliest days of the Solar System. This amazing finding could help us figure out one of the most enduring questions of astronomy, that of the formation of planets. According
As a species, we humans tend to take it for granted that we are the only ones that live in sedentary communities, use tools, and alter our landscape to meet our needs. It is also a foregone conclusion that in the history of planet Earth, humans are the only species to develop machinery, automation, electricity,
They found the first ones in Japan. Hidden in the soil at a plastics recycling plant, researchers unearthed a microbe that had evolved to eat the soda bottles dominating its habitat, after you and I throw them away. That discovery was announced in 2016, and scientists have now gone one better. While examining how
An incredibly rare cache of Viking Age treasure has been unearthed on the German island of Rügen in the Baltic sea. Discovered by a 13-year-old boy and his teacher, the find consists of necklaces, pearls, brooches, bracelets, rings and up to 600 silver coins – and some of the treasure has been linked to a
The US and British governments on Monday accused Russia of conducting a massive campaign to compromise computer routers and firewalls around the world – from home offices to Internet providers – for espionage and possibly sabotage purposes. The unusual public warning from the White House, US agencies and Britain’s National Cyber Security Center follows a years-long
While the world was busy doing its thing on Saturday, a giant asteroid the size of a football field whizzed by our planet. NASA scientists noticed the massive asteroid at an observatory in Arizona just a few hours before it gave Earth a surprise flyby. A mere 21 hours after that initial sighting, Asteroid
The dazzling Lyrid meteor shower is starting this week. The annual shower, which happens between April 16 and 25 each year, occurs when the Earth passes through the tail of a comet. While meteor showers are difficult to accurately predict, you’ll probably get your best glimpse of it in the early morning hours of
Stonefish are already pretty badass – they’re the most venomous type of fish we know of, and have a number of sharp fin spines on their body that can unsheathe and attack you at a moment’s notice. But stonefishes have just gone up a level, with scientists discovering the group also has what is
NASA’s latest planet hunting satellite TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) was scheduled to be launched into space by SpaceX this evening at 22:32 UTC, Monday 16 April. But the team has just announced that the launch has been scrubbed. They’re now working towards a launch window the evening of Wednesday, 18 April. “Standing down
NASA’s newest satellite is on scheduled to launch on the evening of Monday 16 April, 22:32 UTC. Known as TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite will play a crucial role in humanity’s search for planets outside our own Solar System. And it’ll be blasted into orbit by SpaceX’s famous, reusable Falcon 9 rocket. Shortly after the
Where the heck are all the aliens? According to a pair of psychologists, it might be us, not them – we could be missing obvious signs of non-terrestrial civilisations out there. Being a human is weird. There’s so much information our brains need to process for us to function in the world, sometimes we
Elon Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, is raising about US$500 million in new funding. The cash investment would be a boon to SpaceX, which is chasing three incredibly ambitious projects in the coming decade, including a global satellite-internet network, a spaceship to explore and colonize Mars, and the world’s fastest transportation system. SpaceX confirmed that
If we want quantum computers, we’re going to need a complex system of quantum entangled particles – particles that are intrinsically linked so that whatever happens to one instantaneously affects another. That’s a whole lot easier said than done, of course – but a team of physicists has just breached an exciting milestone by
Everyone had died – not that you’d know it, from how they were laughing about their poor choices and bad rolls of the dice. As a social anthropologist, I study how people understand artificial intelligence (AI) and our efforts towards attaining it; I’m also a life-long fan of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), the inventive fantasy
A quaint, historic village in the south of England is steadily rising up out of the ground, and scientists are at a loss to explain what’s causing the phenomenon. The quiet parish of Willand in Devon has a steady population of some 6,000 inhabitants, but the ground the town is built upon isn’t quite so
Researchers have found a deposit of rare-earth minerals off the coast of Japan that could supply the world for centuries, according to a new study. The study, published in the journal Nature on Tuesday, says the deposit contains 16 million tons of the valuable metals. Rare-earth minerals are used in everything from smartphone batteries
The United States, Britain, and France, conducted “precision strikes” on Syria on Friday, in response to a suspected chemical weapons attack that reportedly killed dozens in the rebel-held town of Douma. The Pentagon said the strikes hit three targets believed to have been involved in creating chemical weapons. The sites included the Barzah Research
Near what is today the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi, some 1,400 years or so ago, somebody buried a whole bunch of documents in a jar. It’s now been revealed that fragments of one of those manuscripts are somewhat different to the others in this hidden library. For one thing, they’re written in Greek rather
Researchers have determined how satellite DNA, considered to be “junk DNA”, plays a crucial role in holding the genome together. Their findings, published recently in the journal eLife, indicate that this genetic “junk” performs the vital function of ensuring that chromosomes bundle correctly inside the cell’s nucleus, which is necessary for cell survival. And this function appears
Facebook’s founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg faced two days of grilling before US politicians this week, following concerns over how his company deals with people’s data. But the data Facebook has on people who are not signed up to the social media giant also came under scrutiny. During Zuckerberg’s congressional testimony he claimed
Not everyone is a weather enthusiast. But ever since I was old enough to start forming memories, I’ve been fascinated – even obsessed – with weather. For my seventh-grade science fair project, I predicted the weather for a week using nothing but homemade materials, including a simple barometer and hygrometer. I was pretty darned
In the summer of 1935, the physicists Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger engaged in a rich, multifaceted and sometimes fretful correspondence about the implications of the new theory of quantum mechanics. The focus of their worry was what Schrödinger later dubbed entanglement: the inability to describe two quantum systems or particles independently, after they
Loggerhead sea turtles that nest on beaches with similar magnetic fields are genetically similar to one another, according to a new study. “Loggerhead sea turtles are fascinating creatures that begin their lives by migrating alone across the Atlantic Ocean and back,” says Kenneth Lohmann, professor of biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
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