The most accurate three-dimensional map yet of the Milky Way is revealing our galaxy’s secrets. Peering deep into the anticentre – the opposite direction of the galactic centre – is helping astronomers piece together the Milky Way’s wild past. The European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite, launched in 2013, has been working for years to map
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The Voyager probes left our Solar System years ago, yet even as they travel through interstellar space, they are still detecting bursts of cosmic rays from our Sun, more than 23 billion kilometres (14 billion miles) away. A detailed analysis of recent data from both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 has now revealed the first
The McCormicks are having a wild Christmas. On Wednesday night, the South Australian family came home to find a mess in their living room. Blue, silver and pink bobbles had been scattered across the floor, and their dog was sniffing their Christmas tree. When the mother looked up into the plastic branches, she came face-to-face
For the first time, physicists have recorded sound waves moving through a perfect fluid with the lowest possible viscosity, as permitted by the laws of quantum mechanics, an ascending glissando of the frequencies at which the fluid resonates. This research can help us to understand some of the most extreme conditions in the Universe –
A baby born in Tennessee can lay claim to being the oldest baby ever born, in that she is believed to be the longest-frozen embryo ever successfully delivered in a live birth. Molly Everette Gibson was born just a week ago on October 26, but her birthday was an event literally decades in the making.
Seeing what the heck is going on inside of us is useful for many aspects of modern medicine. But how to do this without slicing and dicing through barriers like flesh and bone to observe living intact tissues, like our brains, is a tricky thing to do. Thick, inconsistent structures like bone will scatter light
This year is on course to be one of the three warmest ever recorded, the United Nations said Wednesday, as the UN chief warned the world was on the brink of “climate catastrophe”. The past six years, 2015 to 2020, are set to make up all six of the hottest years since modern records began
In September 2019, my colleague Anna Kapinska gave a presentation showing interesting objects she’d found while browsing our new radio astronomical data. She had started noticing very weird shapes she couldn’t fit easily to any known type of object. Among them, labelled by Anna as WTF?, was a picture of a ghostly circle of radio
Our brains are amazing pieces of biological machinery. Among the many tough jobs they handle with apparent ease is telling apart real words from random strings of letters, all with great speed and accuracy. Now, scientists think they’ve found the part of the brain responsible for this task. New research points to the mid-fusiform cortex,
They rank among some of the oldest known art in the world. Strange statuettes of female figures dating back to the Late Stone Age, many with heavily rounded breasts, buttocks, thighs, hips, and stomachs. These iconic, stylised depictions of women from the Upper Palaeolithic – often called Venus figurines, in a loose reference to the
A nearly 40-million-year-old skeleton belonging to what is popularly called a sabre-toothed tiger is going under the hammer next week in Geneva, a year after its discovery on a US ranch. The skeleton, some 120 centimetres (nearly four feet) long, is expected to fetch between 60,000 and 80,000 Swiss francs (US$66,560 to $88,750; 55,300 to
Some people are morning larks. Others are night owls. But not everybody falls neatly into those two categories, scientists say – and a new study suggests there are actually multiple distinct ‘chronotypes’ that define people’s wakefulness and rest. Chronotypes are the behavioural manifestations of the circadian rhythms we experience throughout the day and the night.
The Universe is a mysterious place. We don’t know why it exists, and there are a lot of unanswered questions as to the how. But what if it was created, on purpose, by an intelligent entity? Is there some way we could find out? In 2005, a pair of physicists proposed that if there was
China has landed an ambitious rock-collecting mission on the Moon. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) abruptly cut off its live coverage about a half hour before the landing, which was scheduled for 10:13 am ET (0313 UTC) on Tuesday. The agency later announced that the spacecraft had touched down, according to CGTN. The lander is
The celebrated Arecibo Observatory telescope in Puerto Rico, which once starred in a James Bond film, collapsed Tuesday when its 900-ton receiver platform plunged 450 feet (140 meters) onto the radio dish below. Engineers had recently warned of the huge structure’s decrepit condition, and the US National Science Foundation (NSF) announced only last month that
A small, mysterious galaxy 44 million light-years away is finally yielding up its secrets. Revealed last year to have a shockingly low amount of dark matter, the galaxy NGC 1052-DF4 posed a significant challenge to our models of galaxy formation. Those models yet live another day. According to new research, NGC 1052-DF4 is indeed lacking
The dark web has a shady reputation. Hidden below the transparency and visibility of the internet’s surface, the complex anonymity networks that make up the dark web host and distribute all kinds of murky content: illicit drugs, child abuse material, illegal weapons, extremist paraphernalia, and more. But the dark web is also a misunderstood place,
Wherever you have fluid, there you can also find vortex rings. Now, scientists have found vortex rings somewhere fascinating – inside a tiny pillar made of a magnetic material, the gadolinium-cobalt intermetallic compound GdCo2. If you’ve seen smoke rings, or bubble rings under water, you’ve seen vortex rings: doughnut-shaped vortices that form when fluid flows back on
A long-standing and incredibly complex scientific problem concerning the structure and behaviour of proteins has been effectively solved by a new artificial intelligence (AI) system, scientists report. DeepMind, the UK-based AI company, has wowed us for years with its parade of ever-advancing neural networks that continually trounce humans at complex games such as chess and
Astronomers have mapped about a million previously undiscovered galaxies beyond the Milky Way, in the most detailed survey of the southern sky ever carried out using radio waves. The Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (or RACS) has placed the CSIRO’s Australian SKA Pathfinder radio telescope (ASKAP) firmly on the international astronomy map. While past surveys have
Why and how our dreams are affected by our daily lives has long fascinated scientists, and a new study sheds some light on how the spread of COVID-19 – and the ongoing changes in our habits – is impacting what we dream about. Anger and sadness have become more common in dreams as the pandemic
For the first time, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have formally identified a new species of undersea creature based solely on high-definition video footage captured at the bottom of the ocean. And what an undersea creature it is. Meet Duobrachium sparksae – a strange, gelatinous species of ctenophore, encountered by the remotely
Like all stars, our Sun is powered by the fusion of hydrogen into heavier elements. Nuclear fusion is not only what makes stars shine, it is also a primary source of the chemical elements that make the world around us. Much of our understanding of stellar fusion comes from theoretical models of atomic nuclei, but
Strangely come, strangely go. Only days after the world first became aware of it, a mysterious metal monolith in the remote desert of Utah’s Red Rock Country has now seemingly vanished from sight. The object made headlines last week, after authorities with the Utah Department of Public Safety (DPS) announced the discovery of the strange,
On the wide open slopes of China’s Hengduan Mountains, there are perks to being a wallflower. After thousands of years of human harvesting, a rare alpine flower – prized in Chinese medicine – is trying its hardest not to stand out. In the alpine meadows where humans pluck the Fritillaria delavayi plant the most, scientists have
We all want our family life to be as happy as possible – and now researchers have identified some of the personal characteristics and skills that are most likely to make for a harmonious home. One of the key factors when it comes to healthy family and romantic relationships, it would seem, is psychological flexibility.
Cornered by a dangerous predator, a gecko can self-amputate its still twitching tail, creating a fleeting moment of distraction – a chance for the lizard to flee with its life. Small reptiles such as geckos and skinks are well known for this remarkable ability to sacrifice and then rapidly regrow their tails. Now, to scientists’ surprise,
Although the ground beneath our feet feels solid and reassuring (most of the time), nothing in this Universe lasts forever. One day, our Sun will die, ejecting a large proportion of its mass before its core shrinks down into a white dwarf, gradually leaking heat until it’s nothing more than a cold, dark, dead lump
Thousands of years ago, ancient Egyptians were laid to rest in Saqqara, an ancient city of the dead. Priests placed them inside wooden boxes adorned with hieroglyphics, and the sarcophagi were sealed and buried in tombs scattered above and below the sand. Archaeologists have discovered 160 human coffins at the site over the last three
Nature has a way of putting our best technology to shame. For decades now, scientists have been trying to manufacture the ultimate sound absorber – a carefully engineered material that can manage acoustic waves for stealthy movement or simple peace and quiet. As it turns out, however, that cherished ‘metastructure’ may already exist in the
The periodic table of the elements, principally created by the Russian chemist, Dmitry Mendeleev (1834-1907), celebrated its 150th anniversary last year. It would be hard to overstate its importance as an organising principle in chemistry – all budding chemists become familiar with it from the earliest stages of their education. Given the table’s importance, one
Throughout all known space, between the stars and the galaxies, an extremely faint glow suffuses, a relic left over from the dawn of the Universe. This is the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the first light that could travel through the Universe when it cooled enough around 380,000 years after the Big Bang for ions and electrons
Skywatchers admiring November’s full moon will also get to see another treat: a penumbral eclipse, when the Moon passes through Earth’s outer shadow, on Monday, November 30, according to NASA. The Moon will be at its fullest for only a moment — on Monday, that happens at 4:30 am EST (9:30 UTC) — but the
First we discovered platypus would look great at a rave, now wombats, bilbies and other marsupials can join the blacklight party – with scientists unexpectedly finding they all glow wonderfully fluorescent greens, blues and pinks beneath UV light. Over the last few years scientists have found biofluorescence is more common across mammals than we realised
It seems that Earth has been misplaced. According to a new map of the Milky Way galaxy, the Solar System’s position isn’t where we thought it was. Not only is it closer to the galactic centre – and the supermassive hole therein, Sagittarius A* – it’s orbiting at a faster clip. It’s nothing to be
A dwindling tribe of chimpanzees in Guinea that gained global fame for uncanny abilities to use tools has a glimmer of hope after its last fertile female gave birth. The tiny community of apes lives in a forest around the village of Bossou, in the far southeastern corner of the country. Scientists have trekked to
The discovery of a creature described as resembling a “buck-toothed toucan” that lived some 68 million years ago has upended assumptions about diversity in the birds that lived alongside dinosaurs. At less than nine centimetres (3.5 inches) long, the delicate skull of the bird scientists have dubbed Falcatakely forsterae might be easily overlooked. In fact,
Space is a hostile place. We may have developed the technology to launch astronauts into orbit and get them home safely, but scientists are still figuring out how space travel affects human health, especially over the long haul. That’s essential before any planned missions to Mars go ahead, to assure the health and safety of
Archaeologists have uncovered a “treasure trove” of artifacts as another major ice patch melts away in the Norwegian mountains, revealing a total of 68 arrows and many more items from an ancient reindeer hunting site. The earliest finds go back some 6,000 years, according to radiocarbon dating. They include reindeer bones and antlers, as well
The question of whether a 7-million-year-old primate, nicknamed ‘Toumai,’ walked on two or four legs has whipped up drama amongst palaeontologists – complete with a vanishing femur. Since the discovery of Sahelanthropus tchadensis’s first fossil back in 2001, it has often been cited as our earliest known hominin ancestor. Initial analysis suggested that Sahelanthropus regularly walked upright
The surface of the Sun is a turbulent dance of gravity, plasma, and magnetic fields. Much like the weather on Earth, its behavior can seem unpredictable, but there are patterns to be found when you look closely. The first pattern to be observed on the solar surface was that of sunspots. Sunspots were noticed by
For a long time, Hawai’i Island has been home to a mystery. Somehow, the amount of freshwater in underground aquifers has seemed much smaller than it should be, given the amount of rainfall. Scientists have just found out why. Deep underground, running below the island’s coast, vast quantities of freshwater are transported from the flanks of
The largest sharks ever to have roamed the oceans parked their young in shallow, warm-water nurseries where food was abundant and predators scarce until they could assume their title as kings and queens of the sea. But as sea levels declined in a cooling world, the brutal mega-predator, Otodus megalodons, may have found fewer and
An Egyptian mummy that was decorated with a woman’s portrait contained a surprise – the body of a child who was only 5 years old when she died. Now, scientists have learned more about the mysterious girl and her burial, thanks to high-resolution scans and X-ray ”microbeams” that targeted very small regions in the intact artifact. Computed X-ray tomography (CT)
In June of 1670 – almost exactly 350 years ago – French astronomer Voituret Anthelme recorded a ‘new’ star in the sky. In the Northern constellation of Vulpecula, a pinpoint of light flared into brightness before gradually fading from view with the naked eye over a year later. The event was classified as a nova,
An extremely magnetised star 16,700 light-years away could be the next clue in solving the mystery of fast radio bursts. In data from observations of the magnetar 1E 1547.0-5408 taken in 2009, astronomers have just discovered a pair of bursts of radio emission that look incredibly similar to bursts from SGR 1935+2154 – a magnetar
Who embedded a large metal monolith in the remote Utah desert? State wildlife officials are scratching their heads after discovering a bizarre 10-foot-tall (3 meters) installation in Red Rock Country in southeastern Utah. The shiny silver rectangle sits in the center of the dead end of one of the many shallow rock ravines that scour this desert
Two of Charles Darwin’s notebooks containing his pioneering ideas on evolution and his famous “Tree of Life” sketch are missing, believed stolen, the Cambridge University Library said on Tuesday. The British scientist filled the leather notebooks in 1837 after returning from his voyage on the HMS Beagle. The library said they were worth millions of
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