A cluster of ancient canine fossils from a single cave in southwestern Germany has shown astounding genetic diversity, encompassing nearly the entire breadth of dog domestication: from wild wolf to modern hound. According to researchers, the age of these remarkable specimens, which include dogs, wolves and foxes, is older than nearly 60 other ancient canines
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More and more, it seems that the existence and persistence of life on Earth is the result of sheer luck. According to a new analysis of the history of the Milky Way, the best time and place for the emergence of life isn’t here, or now, but over 6 billion years ago on the galaxy’s
They say beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, but in actuality, it goes far deeper than that. The concept of physical beauty resides in the mind, defined by whatever features we find attractive in other people’s faces. These subtle preferences represent some of our most private inner thoughts – but that doesn’t mean
Scientists have found another piece in the puzzle of how echolocation evolved in bats, moving closer to solving a decades-long evolutionary mystery. All bats – apart from the fruit bats of the family Pteropodidae (also called flying foxes) – can “echolocate” by using high-pitched sounds to navigate at night. An international study led by us,
A regime change of almost unimaginable scale has taken place in the natural world, reflecting humanity’s vast and growing dominance over one of our planet’s most vital resources: freshwater. In what researchers say is the first global survey of human impacts on the water cycle, scientists have used NASA satellite measurements to remotely quantify changes
After 200 years of European farming practices, Australian soils are in bad shape – depleted of nutrients and organic matter, including carbon. This is bad news for both soil health and efforts to address global warming. The native Australian echidna may hold part of the solution. Echidnas dig pits, furrows, and depressions in the soil
Humans have evolved big, energy-hungry brains that require us to consume many more calories than our closest animal relatives. The same, however, does not appear to hold for our water intake. Compared to apes, a surprising new study has found our bodies churn through far fewer fluids on a daily basis. Researchers found that, on
The Mars rover Perseverance has successfully conducted its first test drive on the Red Planet, the US space agency NASA said Friday. The six-wheeled rover travelled about 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) in 33 minutes on Thursday, NASA said. It drove four meters forward, turned in place 150 degrees to the left, and then backed up
Social distancing to stop the spread of COVID-19 might feel unnatural to us humans, but other animals intuitively do something similar, without the need for rules or regulations to keep them in line. Staying away from others when you’re sick is a natural consequence of animal disease. Even when humans feel sick, the physical effects
You may not be all that familiar with planet LHS 3844b, but it now has its own particular distinction: It’s the first planet outside of our Solar System where astronomers think they might have evidence of tectonic activity. That evidence is a set of advanced simulations based on observations of the rocky planet, which is
In the struggle to slow the runaway freight train of humanity’s destructive impact on Earth, scientists are increasingly looking at the role our oceans can play. Teaming up with industry, scientists from the University of Southern California have discovered a ‘kelp elevator’ technique that produces ample seaweed, potentially providing a high-yield biofuel to help wean
Efforts to build a super-fast, super-secure quantum internet are steadily progressing, and scientists have now figured out how an important part of that network could function: an integral switch that manages how data passes between users. The newly constructed switch addresses one of the key barriers to constructing a quantum internet: the way that information
An asteroid the size of the Eiffel Tower will zip past Earth Friday (March 5) and be out of our planetary neighborhood until 2029. The space rock, dubbed Apophis (an ancient Egyptian demon), was first spotted in 2004 and won’t pose any danger to Earth during this week’s flyby; it will travel past the planet at more
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
It was recently revealed that in 2017 Microsoft patented a chatbot which, if built, would digitally resurrect the dead. Using AI and machine learning, the proposed chatbot would bring our digital persona back to life for our family and friends to talk to. When pressed on the technology, Microsoft representatives admitted that the chatbot was
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
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