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? An experiment earlier this year shows just how much wiggle room we can expect when it comes to distinguishing the past from the future, at least
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A massive 19th century storm in the pacific United States opened up a 300-mile-long (480-km-long) sea that stretched through much of the central part of California. And it looks like the state is due for another megaflood. For 43 days, from late 1861 to early 1862, it rained almost nonstop in central California. Rivers running down
On Friday, the Chinese space station Tiangong-2 was spectacularly decommissioned — it was set on a crash course with a remote patch of the Pacific Ocean called the “Spacecraft Cemetery.” Tiangong-2 is no more, but we can re-live its final moments. The state-owned China Global Television Network posted a YouTube video of the space station
Instagram is running a social media experiment in Australia and elsewhere to see what happens when it hides the number of likes on photos and other posts. If you have an Instagram account, you’ll get to see the numbers but your followers won’t – at least, not automatically. They will be able to click and
SpaceX filled the South Texas air with the roar of a Raptor engine on Tuesday night. However, Elon Musk’s rocket company also set off a fireball that briefly engulfed the rocket ship that the engine was attached to. The rocket, called Starhopper, is a squat, six-story prototype of a larger interplanetary launch system known as
Even though we can see the Moon shining brightly in the night sky – and sometimes in daylight – it’s hard to put into perspective just how large, and just how distant, our nearest neighbour actually is. So just how big is the Moon? That answer isn’t quite as straightforward as you might think. Like
What has the magnetic properties of a solid magnet, but the mechanical properties of a liquid? If you answered ‘nothing,’ you’re wrong – because engineers have just created just such a substance, by using a modified 3D printer. Yes, ferrofluid is already a thing, but this is different. Unlike the ferrofluid you may know and
To the disgust of many of our readers, we recently discovered that keeping leeches as pets is actually a thing. And yeah, it’s certainly… a bit different. But in light of humanity’s disconnect with nature, and our concerning lack of knowledge about parasitic creatures, the idea that some of us are nurturing these parasites is also, uh, fascinating.
An orbit has now been decided for the first permanent lunar outpost. When the lunar Gateway space station gets into position around the Moon, it will be in a highly eccentric “halo” orbit, perpendicular to Earth. This particular type of orbit is called a near rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO). It helps minimise the use of
More than 28,000 species around the world are threatened, according to the Red List of Threatened Species compiled by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The list, updated on Thursday night, has assessed the extinction risk of almost 106,000 species and found more than a quarter are in trouble. While recent headline-grabbing
Hundreds of protesters gathered at the base of a mountain in Hawaii on Monday to block the construction of a billion-dollar telescope on its peak. To Native Hawaiians, Mauna Kea is a sacred place. To astronomers, it is one of the best places on earth to observe space. Hawaiian elders, known as kupuna, sat in
When you put a tardigrade under a microscope, you never know what you’re going to get. These weird-looking ‘water bears’ are some of the strangest creatures on the planet, and they are constantly surprising us. Even once you see them with your own eyes, it can be hard to figure out what the heck is
The giant West Antarctic Ice Sheet is at a tipping point, scientists have warned, and it’s going to take something dramatic to save it from complete collapse – something like blowing 7.4 trillion tons of artificial snow on top of it. That’s the conclusion of a new study into how the destabilisation of the ice
We may not know what dark matter is, but one thing we do know: it doesn’t appear to have killed anyone by slamming into them – an event that would, at the very least, result in serious injury. So you can scratch that one off your list of things to worry about in this worrisome
In 2015, David Hole was prospecting in Maryborough Regional Park near Melbourne, Australia. Armed with a metal detector, he discovered something out of the ordinary – a very heavy, reddish rock resting in some yellow clay. He took it home and tried everything to open it, sure that there was a gold nugget inside the
FaceApp is the most popular free app on Google Play and Apple’s App Store thanks to an age filter that makes people in photos look much older. But while countless photos of aged celebrities and casual FaceApp users have been shared online in the past week, there are mounting concerns with how FaceApp handles user
Exhale. We are safe from the asteroid that scary headlines were warning us about in early June, according to new observations from the European Space Agency and the European Southern Observatory. The space rock is called 2006 QV89. It’s around 20 to 50 metres (65 to 164 feet) across, and its orbit around the Sun
Egypt has opened its 4,600-year-old “bent” pyramid to visitors, who can travel deep inside its tunnels to visit the chambers inside. As of Saturday, visitors can walk through a 256-foot (78-meter) tunnel, down to two chambers inside the pyramid, Reuters reported. The pyramid, built for Pharaoh Sneferu around 2,600 BC, looks different to Egypt’s most
Stars aren’t supposed to come back to life after the death throes of the supernova stage, but astronomers have spotted three that have done just that – surviving the catastrophic explosion that usually marks the end of a star’s life, and heading off through the galaxy on a new adventure. These peculiar ‘zombie’ stars move
Your mind and computer may have gotten one step closer. Elon Musk on Tuesday announced in a livestream that his neurotechnology startup, Neuralink, hoped to begin implanting devices into human brains as early as next year. “We hope to have this aspirationally in a human patient before the end of next year,” Musk said at
In a major step forward for atomic-scale quantum computing, scientists have built the first two-qubit gate between atoms in silicon, allowing qubits to communicate with each other and perform operations faster than ever before. Since a two-qubit gate is the fundamental building block of a quantum computer, this has pretty amazing implications. “A lot of
When astronauts first saw Earth from afar in the Apollo 8 mission in 1968 – the US’s second manned mission to the Moon – they described a cognitive shift in awareness after seeing our planet “hanging in the void.” This state of mental clarity, called the “overview effect”, occurs when you are flung so far
In episode four of the HBO miniseries Chernobyl, Soviet officials assess the damage of a 1986 power-plant explosion, which released plumes of radioactive material into the air. The roof of the power plant, they argue, has become “the most dangerous place on Earth” – a place where two minutes of exposure would cut a person’s
A giant human settlement dating back to the Stone Age has been discovered near Jerusalem, and researchers say it’s not just the largest of its kind in Israel, but one of the most monumental such cities ever found. The sprawling Neolithic mega-site, unearthed in the neighbourhood of Motza about 5 kilometres (3 miles) to the
When modern humans started emerging from Africa and spreading throughout Eurasia, they found many places already occupied by older hominids such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. As humans do, we got rather friendly with our new neighbours: evidence of that hanky panky lives on in our DNA today. But we’re also starting to find glimpses of
There may be fundamental flaws with our understanding of the Universe. The problem came to light as scientists tried to calculate and measure a value called the Hubble Constant, which represents how rapidly the Universe is expanding outward. The value was first calculated by astronomer Edwin Hubble in the 1920s. But since then, astronomers observing
SpaceX thinks it may know what caused its new Crew Dragon spaceship to explode during a test on April 20. The capsule-like ship is designed to ferry NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station, but it first has to pass a series of major tests. In April, SpaceX conducted an uncrewed ground test
Coral reefs are one of the most threatened ecosystems on our planet, and in the past two decades alone, half of the coral in Florida has died off completely. Global warming is known to be a deadly factor, but rising ocean temperatures are only part of the story. Thirty years of research in the Looe
Seeing countless renewable energy records broken and milestones passed has been a constant source of encouraging news for our planet. Now, we have yet another impressive stat to celebrate: in the first half of 2019, Scotland generated enough energy from wind power to supply its homes twice over. Specifically, turbines generated 9.8 million megawatt-hours of electricity between January
Physicists in the US have discovered a material that could qualify as the first known three-dimensional example of a quantum spin liquid – an exotic theoretical phase of matter. Quantum spin liquids were first predicted by scientists back in the 1970s. While researchers have studied them for decades, these phases largely remain a theoretical concept, although
The plot has thickened on a huge discovery from earlier this year that appeared to prove the existence of seemingly ‘impossible’ long-lived galaxies – ones without any dark matter. According to new distance calculations, the galaxy in question is much closer than initial measurements suggested. This changes both the mass of the galaxy as a
We’ve all seen footage of astronauts bouncing around on the Moon, looking like they’re having the best time ever. But getting your body to cooperate in low gravity is not that easy – and, delightfully, NASA has a footage collection of men in puffy spacesuits falling over on the lunar surface. It’s not just for giggles,
Around 2500 BCE, on one of our planet’s many isles, some Neolithic people were undertaking an incredible feat – huge bluestones were being dragged across the British countryside to be placed in a giant circle. Despite the grandness and scope of this task, nearly 5,000 years and hundreds of studies later, we still aren’t sure
India called off the launch of its much-awaited second lunar mission shortly before liftoff Monday, citing a technical snag, in a setback for the country’s growing ambitions in space. The countdown clock for the Chandrayaan-2 mission – which had been due to blast off from the country’s east coast at 2:51 am – was halted
Lizzie Daly was diving Saturday off the coast of Cornwall in Britain when she saw something large in the distance and did a double take. Daly had seen a barrel jellyfish before but nothing of this size. Daly, a biologist and broadcaster, swam up to the peach-colored creature gliding through the water, as cameraman Dan
Should everything go according to plan, more than 1.1 million strangers will gather in a remote Nevada town in mid-September, united by a common goal: to raid Area 51 in the wee hours of the morning — using a strength-in-numbers approach to reveal any extraterrestrial treasures stashed within the notoriously clandestine government base. Or, put
Alan Turing, a founding father of computer science and artificial intelligence, was revealed Monday as the face of Britain’s new 50-pound bank note. Turing was also famed as a World War II codebreaker whose work was widely credited with hastening the end of the war and saving thousands of lives. But at the time, his
Just outside the northernmost city of Alaska, underneath an expanse of white tundra, researchers have found a rich community of microbes bathing in ancient seawater. According to a team from the University of Washington, this underground tomb of briny fluid, known as a cryopeg, has probably been here since at least the last ice age,
Those who persist in denying the reality of human-caused climate change have resorted to scraping the very bottom of the barrel. Last week, climate deniers at several blogs and news outlets jumped on a new “paper” that supposedly “proves” the vast majority of climate scientists are wrong. Except, according to a scientific review from the
Hidden underneath the Naryn-Kala fortress in Derbent, Russia, is a mysterious subterranean vault – a buried structure whose original purpose has been unknown for decades. Now, thanks to clever use of scanning technology, we might finally know what the building is. Researchers used a nuclear physics technology known as muon radiography. It works by tracking the charged
Once upon a time, the great planet Jupiter was orbited by a glorious ring of dust, according to astronomers. Now, nothing of it remains, having coalesced long ago into the planet’s Galilean moons. But these moon-forming discs should be found around other planets in alien star systems. And for the first time we have confirmation
While our warming atmosphere on Earth threatens many living things, spurring on global warming on Mars could be the key to making the planet habitable for Earthly life. And scientists think they may have identified a material that can help turn up the thermostat for parts of the Red Planet. “Mars is the most habitable
If all goes to plan, in November this year the International Space Station (ISS) is about to get a bit spicier. Researchers are hoping to send up Española chili pepper plants (Capsicum annuum), which could make peppers the very first fruit to be grown in space by US astronauts. “We were also looking for varieties
Using some of the world’s most advanced microscope technology, scientists have captured images of molecules changing their charge state in real time. To do this, they added and removed electrons, directly observing changes to the structure of four molecules. Although we’ve known for a long time that such changes occur, this marks the first time
It’s not enough for humans to pump less carbon into the atmosphere. To address climate change, many experts say we’re going to need to find a way to remove some of the emissions already polluting our air. While some scientists are focusing on mechanical solutions to carbon capture, researchers at the Salk Institute’s Harnessing Plants
In an incredible first, scientists have captured the world’s first actual photo of quantum entanglement – a phenomenon so strange Einstein famously described it as ‘spooky action at a distance’. The image was captured by physicists at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, and it’s so breathtaking we can’t stop staring. It might not look like
SpaceX is about to perform its most ambitious test-launch yet of a shiny Mars rocket prototype in south Texas. Workers have descended upon the developing coastal launch site over the past 8 months to build and prepare the stout, three-legged prototype for testing. It’s built out of stainless steel, has the shape of a badminton
Caring about the climate crisis can often feel like a lonely and helpless burden, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Simply talking about the issue with your friends and family can actually make a big difference, according to a new study. The advice might sound like a political minefield, especially if you have
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