In the Gulf of California, an innocent, once-flourishing animal is on the verge of disappearing from the world forever: a victim of nets, and the humans who lay them. The vaquita, the world’s smallest and most endangered cetacean, is almost gone. Last week, scientists announced only about 10 of these porpoises are left in the
A shock discovery is in from Bennu. The NASA spacecraft analysing the asteroid has observed it shooting out plumes of dust that surround it in a dusty haze – a phenomenon we’ve never seen in an asteroid before. In the months that OSIRIS-REx has been studying Bennu, the spacecraft has observed this ejecta no fewer
It’s been a weird month of sunfish showing up in unexpected places. Take, for instance, this impressive sunfish that was found at the mouth of the Murray River in South Australia last weekend. Local Linette Grzelak uploaded a photo to Facebook, which shows off the creature’s truly impressive size. (Ralph Foster/iNaturalist/CC BY-NC 4.0) Although massive,
For the first time, a woman has been awarded the prestigious Abel Prize. Karen Keskulla Uhlenbeck of the University of Texas at Austin will receive the annual prize for her tremendous contributions to the field. “The recognition of Uhlenbeck’s achievements should have been far greater, for her work has led to some of the most
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) say they’ve found a way to levitate and propel objects using only light – though, for the time being, the work remains theoretical. They hope the technique could be used for “trajectory control of ultra-light spacecraft and even laser-propelled light sails for space exploration,” according to a
Nobody ever said having a brother was easy, but for girls who start life by sharing a womb with a male twin, the consequences can be drastically life-altering, scientists say. According to the largest study of its kind, women who share their mother’s womb with a twin brother end up being less likely to graduate
A chemical reaction you learned about in middle school could help solve the energy crisis. Running an electrical current through water splits it into oxygen and hydrogen, the latter of which can be used as a reliable, zero-emission fuel source. In the past, the process of purifying water beforehand was too energy intensive for this
Astronomers have just found 83 quasars, powered by supermassive black holes and dating back to the infancy of the Universe, when it was less than 10 percent of its current age. This discovery reveals that such objects were more common at the dawn of time than we thought, and challenges our entire cosmological model. Quasars
Halfway between the east coast of Africa and Madagascar lies the remote island of Anjouan – a volcanic landmass born in ancient eruptions some four million years ago. Because of Anjouan’s fiery origins, the entire island should be uniformly composed of volcanic basalt: a dark-coloured, lava-derived rock. Should be. But isn’t. For over a century,
A few months ago, on 18 December 2018, a massive airburst in the skies above Earth exploded with the equivalent of 173 kilotons of TNT. That’s over 10 times the amount released by the Hiroshima bombing (15 kilotons), and the third largest meteor explosion in over 100 years, coming in behind the 2013 Chelyabinsk explosion
Do human beings have a magnetic sense? Biologists know other animals do. They think it helps creatures including bees, turtles and birds navigate through the world. Scientists have tried to investigate whether humans belong on the list of magnetically sensitive organisms. For decades, there’s been a back-and-forth between positive reports and failures to demonstrate the
By the time marine biologist Darrell Blatchley arrived at the fishing village Saturday, the young Cuvier’s beaked whale was already floating, dead in the water, its eyes sunken and ribs protruding through its skin. The current off the southern Philippine island of Mindanao had washed away the blood it vomited before its death. He already
Hidden in the evergreen forests of Guinea and Liberia, scientists have discovered a new species of snake that can deliver a venomous stab all without even opening its mouth. It’s an unusual skill that belongs solely to stiletto snakes, which have long fangs they can stick in and out of the corners of their mouths,
As the frozen Antarctic landscape at the bottom of the world adjusts to an ever hotter planet, we keep finding more mysterious phenomena beneath and within the ice. Now, there are “ice quakes” to add to that list. It wasn’t all so long ago that earthquakes were thought to not exist on this unforgiving continent.
Jak Wilmot, the co-founder of Atlanta-based VR content studioDisrupt VR, spent 168 consecutive hours in a VR headset – that’s a full week – pent up in his apartment. “This is quite possibly the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, but welcome to a week in the future,” he said in a video about the experiment.
We often think of Venus as our closest Solar System sibling. It’s the most similar to Earth in size, mass and composition. And we thought it was the closest in terms of physical distance – but it looks like that honour could belong to Mercury. No, the order of the planetary orbits is still the
A sunken ship found in the Nile river may have lain undisturbed for over 2,500 years, but now it is finally ponying up its secrets. Scientists think that this ship has revealed a structure whose existence has been debated for centuries. In fragment 2.96 of Herodotus’ Histories, published around 450 BCE, the Ancient Greek historian –
The phrase “mass extinction” typically conjures images of the asteroid crash that led to the twilight of the dinosaurs. Upon impact, that 6-mile-wide space rock caused a tsunami in the Atlantic Ocean, along with earthquakes and landslides up and down what is now the Americas. A heat pulse baked the Earth, and the Tyrannosaurus rex
Tests show that dormant herpes viruses reactivate in more than half the astronauts who travel on the Space Shuttle and International Space station, according to new NASA research – a phenomenon the space agency says could pose problems for deep space missions. “During spaceflight there is a rise in secretion of stress hormones like cortisol
Every once in a while, the Milky Way ejects a star. The evicted star is typically ejected from the chaotic area at the center of the Galaxy, where our Super Massive Black Hole (SMBH) lives. But at least one of them was ejected from the comparatively calm galactic disk, a discovery that has astronomers rethinking this whole star ejection
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, which launched in 2016, just sent back some spectacular images of the Martian surface. The orbiter is equipped to take images of the Martian surface in glorious 3D. The picture above might look like some kind of hairy structure, but it’s actually a false-colour image of
Birth order, according to conventional wisdom, molds personality: Firstborn children, secure with their place in the family and expected to be the mature ones, grow up to be intellectual, responsible and conformist. Younger siblings work harder to get their parents’ attention, take more risks and become creative rebels. That’s the central idea in psychologist Frank
By combining math with 3D printing, researchers from Boston University have created a new material that seemingly defies logic: light and air have no trouble passing through it — but sound cannot. “The idea is that we can now mathematically design an object that can block the sounds of anything,” researcher Xin Zhang said in
Returning to Earth from the International Space Station, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield remarked how making the right decision is vital in high pressure environments, saying: Most of the time, you only really get one try to do most of the critical stuff and the consequences are life or death. Mankind is preparing for a new
The last three ice ages might have been triggered by tectonic collisions between Earth’s continents, according to new research, and it could give us clues as to how the planet’s climate might suddenly shift again in the future. What’s likely to have happened, the new study says, is these massive collisions pushed oceanic rocks up
Facebook just had a very bad day. Facebook, including Messenger, and Instagram users across North America experienced outages for most of Wednesday, starting in the afternoon and ending late the same night. Third party outage sites suggested it affected users across the entire globe. The media reported it was perhaps the longest interruption ever experienced
If you’ve been on social media this week, you might have noticed Californians going crazy over the sudden appearance of millions of butterflies, flying north en masse through the state. It’s pretty much the exact joyful display of nature that the world needs right now. But it’s also a beautiful and rare sight in a world where insects
After more than a decade of patiently waiting and watching, astronomers have seen signs that one of the rarest stars known to science is waking up from its slumber. It’s called XTE J1810–197, and it’s part of an exclusive club of weird stars – it’s one of just four highly magnetic magnetars that have been found to
Back in 2015, scientists found something amazing – a classic formula for pi hidden in the world of quantum physics. Pi is the ratio between a circle’s circumference and its diameter, and is incredibly important in pure mathematics. But this was the first time scientists had found it “lurking” in the world of physics, when
The human capacity for language divides our species from the rest of the animal kingdom. Language has not only allowed us to conquer all corners of the globe, but to devise writing, mathematics and all things thereafter. But researchers can find many of language’s basic design features in the communication systems of other animals. For
Around 13.7 billion years ago, our Universe sprang into existence, but what was around before the Big Bang? In an episode of Star Talk released just a few weeks before his death in March 2018, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking sat down with host Neil deGrasse Tyson to talk about what exactly pre-dated the beginning of our
No matter what we do, the Arctic of the future is going to be poles apart from the one we know today. A new paper from the UN reveals that even if we pull the plug on all carbon emissions tomorrow, our hands are ultimately tied; the Arctic region is still going to warm by
Congratulations Italy! Scientists just discovered a new coral reef in the Adriatic Sea, near the town of Monopoli in Puglia. Not only is it the first coral reef known to be off the Italian coast (at least in modern time), it’s also a rather unusual one. Stretching for at least 2.5 kilometres (about 1.5 miles),
Waterfalls are one of the most majestic things on the planet: a beautiful, thunderous display of water and physics. But where do these cascading creations come from? The conventional wisdom has it that waterfalls are formed by external forces, such as earthquakes, landslides, or changes in sea level that vastly alter and disrupt landscapes and
We already knew China kept a close eye on its population, monitoring everything from their spending habits to their social interactions. Now we know someone in the nation is also tracking which female citizens are “breedready”, a term apparently used to signal that a woman is likely able to have children – and the disturbing
Before its circuits ran cold in the shadow of a Martian dust storm, Opportunity took one long look at its surroundings and saved it for posterity. The image represents a poignant conclusion to the rover’s mission; a detailed panorama combining the most recent tracks of its marathon journey with a glimpse of the sands it
Half a century ago, NASA’s Apollo program sent a handful of people to walk around on the Moon, take a few pics, say something witty, play golf, and bring back some souvenirs. Not all of those souvenirs got handed out for analysis, but NASA had good reasons to keep a few on ice. Now nine
Death metal has a reputation. Its lyrics and imagery revel in a stomach-churning zone of ultra-violence, profanity, and torment. We’re talking crushed skulls. Slit throats. Mutilated everythings and violated etceteras. What kind of effect does this nightmarish barrage have on people who listen to the music? According to new research by psychologists from Macquarie University
Love them or hate them, traffic laws exist to keep people safe and to help vehicles flow smoothly. And while they aren’t legally enforceable, pedestrian traffic also tends to follow its own set of unwritten rules. Most pedestrians use walking etiquette as a way to minimize discomfort – “Oops! Sorry to bump you!” – and
It’s easy to take time’s arrow for granted – but the gears of physics actually work just as smoothly in reverse. Maybe that time machine is possible after all? A recent experiment shows just how much wiggle room we can expect when it comes to distinguishing the past from the future, at least on a
The idea of one day travelling to another star system and seeing what is there has been the fervent dream of people long before the first rockets and astronauts were sent to space. But despite all the progress we have made since the beginning of the Space Age, interstellar travel remains just that – a
When a child first does something without being asked, their parents want to celebrate. Researchers at the University of Southern Carolina (USC) are having that moment right now. The team claims to have created the first AI-controlled robotic limb that can learn how to walk without being explicitly programmed to do so. The algorithm they
Our Solar System is filled with dust from crumbling asteroids and comets, but only some planets are honoured with a grainy ring to call their own. Both Venus and Earth have this pleasure, escorted around the Sun by a band of cosmic matter. The little planet of Mercury, on the other hand, was once thought
Jupiter: a massive, lifeless gas giant out there on the other side of the asteroid belt. It’s a behemoth, containing 2.5 times as much mass as all the other planets combined. To top it off, it’s named after the Roman king of gods. Earth: a tiny rocky world, almost too close to the Sun, where
Viruses are the IKEA furniture of the living world. In the right kind of cell, a handful of instructions and a few molecular tools can churn out multitudes of infectious Billy bookcases. No DIY builder wants to travel all over town to gather materials – theoretically, germs shouldn’t be any different. Yet a new discovery
Her name is Yuka: an ancient woolly mammoth that last lived some 28,000 years ago, before becoming mummified in the frozen permafrost wastelands of northern Siberia. But now that icy tomb is no longer the end of Yuka’s story. The mammoth’s well-preserved remains were discovered in 2010, and scientists in Japan have now reawakened traces
A team of scientists and designers recently teamed up to create a tool that would show Australians what the climate is expected to be like in their cities in the year 2050 – and it led to a startling discovery. “In 30 years’ time, winter as we know it will be non-existent,” researcher Geoff Hinchliffe
Death Valley, the hottest and driest place in North America, isn’t exactly known for record rainfall or pop-up lakes stretching as far as the eye can see. But after a massive storm lashed the desert with rain and brought chilly temperatures through Southern California, that’s exactly what happened, according to photographer Elliott McGucken. He was trying
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