An important new study suggests octopuses are likely to feel and respond to pain in a similar way to mammals – the first strong evidence for this capacity in any invertebrate. The experience of pain is far more than a simple reflex to harmful stimuli or injury; it’s a complex emotional state, leading to distress
China, which last year overtook the United States as the world’s top filer of international patents, a key measure of technical innovation, increased its lead significantly in 2020, the UN said Tuesday. Even as COVID-19 took a vast human and economic toll, international patent applications continued to grow strongly, with China leading strong gains from
Follow the twisted limbs of your family tree all the way back to its primordial origins billions of years in the past and you’ll find that we all originated from dust rich in organic chemistry. Just where this organic dust came from has been a topic of debate for more than half a century. Now,
This month is a time to celebrate. CERN has just announced the discovery of four brand new particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva. This means that the LHC has now found a total of 59 new particles, in addition to the Nobel prize-winning Higgs boson, since it started colliding protons – particles
More than 17,000 earthquakes have been recorded in the south-west of Iceland, in the Reykjanes Peninsula, during the past week. People living in the area have been advised to be extra careful due to dangers of landslides and rockfall. Many of the larger earthquakes have even been felt in Iceland’s capital city, Reykjavik (where over
An exoplanet just 26 light-years away looks like the one of the best we’ve found yet for peering into the atmospheres of alien worlds. Named Gliese 486 b, the exoplanet is a rocky world that astronomers think could be similar to Venus – rocky, hot, and possibly sporting an atmosphere (although it would be a
It was found in 2015 – an isolated clue to a macabre mystery set in motion thousands of years in the past. This ancient puzzle consisted of just a single piece: a solitary human cranium, discovered all by itself with no other skeletal remains around, resting inside a cave in Bologna, Italy, at the center
The Amazon moonflower (Selenicereus wittii) has one of the most elusive blooms in the plant kingdom. Each year, for just one night, this rare and unusual cactus opens its sepals to the night sky, releasing a gorgeous white flower and a sweet, jasmine-like fragrance into the swampy rainforest air. By morning, it’s gone. Around the
While most of us take the ground beneath our feet for granted, written within its complex layers, like pages of a book, is Earth’s history. Our history. Now researchers have found more evidence for a whole new chapter deep within Earth’s past – Earth’s inner core appears to have another even more inner core within
The idea of a warp drive taking us across large areas of space faster than the speed of light has long fascinated scientists and sci-fi fans alike. While we’re still a very long way from jumping any universal speed limits, that doesn’t mean we’ll never ride the waves of warped space-time. Now a group of
Michael Tubbs didn’t see much risk in giving money to his city’s poorest residents, no strings attached. The former mayor of Stockton, a city in California’s Central Valley, is a strong proponent of universal basic income, a policy that essentially pays people for being alive as a way to alleviate poverty. “My belief in it
SpaceX is attempting another launch of its SN10 Starship prototype – the rocket the company hopes will eventually help take it to Mars. Previous attempts to launch a Starship prototype around 10 km (6.2 miles) into the air and then land it again have ended in explosions on the landing pad. You can watch the launch preparations
Three species of shark that inhabit the twilit depths of the ocean just turned out to have been bioluminescent this whole time. The kitefin shark, the blackbelly lanternshark, and the southern lanternshark have all been discovered to have softly glowing blue patterns on their skin, a first for sharks found in New Zealand waters. Of
It might not look like it, but the arid expanses of Utah conceal an ancient volcanic complex, and this hidden underground system is still active far below the desert’s surface, scientists say. According to a new study, a pair of recent earthquakes in 2018 and 2019 were not indicative of tectonic activity, but were seismic
Everyone’s familiar with the sensation of being trapped in a conversation for too long – be that over the garden fence or by the office water cooler. On the other end of the spectrum, we’ve also experienced conversations that seem to end prematurely, leaving us dissatisfied and maybe even a little hurt. Now, a Harvard
For now life is flourishing on our oxygen-rich planet, but Earth wasn’t always that way – and scientists have predicted that, in the future, the atmosphere will revert back to one that’s rich in methane and low in oxygen. This probably won’t happen for another billion years or so. But when the change comes, it’s
For the first time, a hurricane has been detected in Earth’s upper atmosphere. In 2014, satellites recorded a huge flowing swirl of plasma extending high into the magnetosphere that lasted for hours before dispersing. Although we’ve never seen anything like this before, its detection suggests that space hurricanes, as they are known, could be a
A new test of cephalopod smarts has reinforced how important it is for us humans to not underestimate animal intelligence. Cuttlefish have been put to a new version of the marshmallow test, and the results appear to demonstrate that there’s more going on in their strange little brains than we knew. Their ability to learn
More than 600 years ago, someone intricately folded, sealed and posted a letter that was never delivered. Now, scientists have digitally “unfolded” this and other similarly locked letters found in a 17th-century trunk in The Hague, using X-rays. For centuries prior to the invention of sealed envelopes, sensitive correspondence was protected from prying eyes through complex
When you think of bees, a hive humming with activity probably comes to mind. But most of the world’s 20,000 bee species don’t call a hive home. These wild species lead solitary lives instead, and around 70 percent of them build nests underground where they raise their offspring on the nectar they gather from flowers.
While we can learn a lot about mummification from ancient examples of the practice, questions remain about exactly how the Egyptians prepared their dead for the afterlife. In an exciting discovery, researchers have discovered an original ‘how to’ manual, hidden inside an ancient text, which explains the crucial steps to embalming and creating a mummy.
On 21 May 2019, from a distance of 7 billion light-years away, our gravitational wave detectors were rocked by the most massive collision yet. From analysis of the signal, astronomers concluded that the detection was the result of two black holes smashing together, weighing in at 66 and 85 times the mass of the Sun
Our Neanderthal cousins had the capacity to both hear and produce the speech sounds of modern humans, a new study has found. Based on a detailed analysis and digital reconstruction of the structure of the bones in their skulls, the study settles one aspect of a decades-long debate over the linguistic capabilities of Neanderthals. “This
A little over a week ago (18 February 2021), NASA’s Perseverance rover landed in the Jezero crater on the surface of Mars. In what was truly a media circus, people from all over the world tuned to watch the live coverage of the rover landing. When Perseverance touched down, it wasn’t just the mission controllers at NASA who triumphantly jumped
There’s an old stereotype about the difference between cats and dogs. Dogs are loving and fiercely loyal, they say, while cats are aloof and indifferent. Most cat people probably disagree – I certainly find it hard to believe, with my cat purring away in my lap, that she doesn’t care about me. Overall, cat cognition
It may be a single-celled organism, but the slime mould Physarum polycephalum has some pretty fascinating tricks up its pretty yellow sleeves. Now new research has found that it seems to “remember” where it previously found sources of food – even without a brain or nervous system. This could help explain how network organisms can
Near the Markha River in Arctic Siberia, the earth ripples in ways that scientists don’t fully understand. Earlier this week, NASA researchers posted a series of satellite images of the peculiar wrinkled landscape to the agency’s Earth Observatory website. Taken with the Landsat 8 satellite over several years, the photos show the land on both sides of the
The coronavirus pandemic has had the world fixated on viruses like no time in living memory, but new evidence reveals humans never even notice the vast extent of viral existence – even when it’s inside us. A new database project compiled by scientists has identified over 140,000 viral species that dwell in the human gut
Scientists are using a radar-like weather system to watch as a storm of pathogens brew inside living tissue. The strategy is entirely novel, according to the authors, and relies on a technique very similar to Doppler radars, which can detect the motion of precipitation and predict upcoming weather patterns. Doppler ultrasounds, which use sound waves
Beyond Earth, the general scientific consensus is that the best place to search for evidence of extraterrestrial life is Mars. However, it is by no means the only place. Aside from the many extrasolar planets that have been designated as “potentially-habitable,” there are plenty of other candidates right here in our Solar System. These include the
An ornate Roman chariot has been discovered “almost intact” near Italy’s buried city of Pompeii, the archaeological park announced on Saturday, calling it a discovery with “no parallel” in the country. The four-wheeled processional carriage was found in the portico to stables where the remains of three horses were unearthed in 2018, including one still
If you’re in the right place at the right time, and you turn your eyes to the sky, you just might catch sight of something eerily beautiful: Wisps of cloud, high in the sky, glowing softly even though the Sun has already slipped below the horizon. These are noctilucent, or night-shining, clouds, appearing at twilight
Having dominated the planet’s surface for hundreds of millions of years, dinosaur diversity came to a dramatic conclusion some 66 million years ago at the hot end of an asteroid impact with what is today Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. It’s a theory so swollen with data that it’s hard to imagine any room for doubt remains that this
A giant iceberg, more than 20 times the size of Manhattan, just split off from Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf. This dramatic breakup comes after a major crack formed on the shelf in November 2020 and continued to grow until the ‘berg finally broke off Friday morning (Feb. 26). The so-called “North Rift” crack is the
Throughout the world and across various different cultures, it’s often assumed atheists are untrustworthy and lack the same guiding principles as those who believe in a god of some kind. In 2020, an international survey spanning six continents found 45 percent of people think it’s necessary to believe in a god to be moral and
Although its main mission is staring at the Sun, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will take any opportunity to send data back home to Earth. The planet Venus represents just such an opportunity, or rather, seven of them. Seven times during its mission, the probe will swing around Venus for a gravity assist, using the planet’s
Like the Universe’s tiniest matryoshka dolls, atoms are typically modelled as particles within particles – a nuclei built of protons and neutrons, which in turn contain trios of fundamental particles called quarks. As convenient as this simple metaphor might be, the quantum engine operating within these subatomic particles is an incomprehensible ledger of quantum economics:
In a stormy Hawaiian sky in July 2017, streaks of red and blue lightning seemed to meet above a bed of white light. Cameras on the Gemini North telescope at the Gemini Observatory in Mauna Kea snapped a stunning picture of the multi-colored light show. The National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab) released the photo
Pollen grains from flowering plants were meant to fly, sometimes travelling hundreds of kilometres on the wind. Now it appears that the climate crisis has accelerated that travel, making allergy season in some areas of the world start earlier, last longer, and get more severe each year. In the past three decades, warmer temperatures from
For the first time, physicists have captured an enigmatic state of matter on video. Using a scanning transmission X-ray microscope, the research team has recorded the oscillations of a time crystal made out of magnons at room temperature. This, they said, is a significant breakthrough in the study of time crystals. “We were able to
A team of US scientists has demonstrated that the offspring of huge carnivorous dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex, who grew from the size of house cats to towering monsters, reshaped their ecosystems by outcompeting smaller rival species. Their study, published in the journal Science on Thursday, helps answer an enduring mystery about the 150-million-year rule of
In total, there are thousands of them – a giant landscape of strange, hollowed jars, carved from ancient stone. Some have lids. Most are open to the sky. These surreal cauldron-like megaliths in Laos are known as the Plain of Jars, an archaeological relics whose original purpose is still shrouded in mystery, their significance long
A tiny, ancient bone fragment found in Southeast Alaska is a lot more than meets the eye. It belonged to a dog that lived in the region 10,150 years ago, which means it’s a piece of the puzzle of dog migration into the Americas – and the humans that likely came along with it. Scientists
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) sea currents are vital in transporting heat from the tropics to the Northern Hemisphere, but new research suggests climate change might knock the AMOC out of action much sooner than we anticipated. That could have profound, large-scale impacts on the planet in terms of weather patterns, upending agricultural practices,
It should be simple. When temperatures on Earth get hotter, huge amounts of water ice trapped in giant glaciers begin to thaw, releasing water into the oceans, and causing sea levels to rise. It’s the story of our lives. By contrast, when global temperatures plummet, which happens during ice ages, sea levels proceed to drop,
SpaceX is preparing to rocket its latest Starship prototype tens of thousands of feet into the air as early as this week. The challenge is landing it back on the ground – that maneuver has ended in explosion both times the company previously attempted it. This time around, SpaceX founder Elon Musk estimated that the prototype has a 60
Artwork that had adorned the walls of an Egyptian prince’s tomb for more than four millennia has been found to contain images of a bird completely unknown to modern science – until now. Although archaeologists have been eyeing the representations of local waterfowl since the fresco’s discovery at the dig site of Meidum in 1871,
When NASA’s Perseverance rover made its daring descent to the red planet, you may have noticed that its parachute bore an unusual arrangement of red and white chevrons. That pattern, it turns out, was not random at all, but a hidden code. Within just six hours, internet sleuths had cracked it, revealing a beautifully uplifting
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