The most energetic light and particles in the Universe represent an enduring mystery: we don’t know where they come from. Sure, we can trace some; but there’s more gamma radiation and neutrinos streaming through the Universe than we can account for. A lot more. And astronomers have just found an explanation for some of them:
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An ecologist’s blunder led to the release of a ‘Russian doll’ set of stomach-bursting parasites onto a remote Finnish island, a new study has revealed. Thirty years ago, when ecologist Ilkka Hanski introduced Glanville fritillary butterflies (Melitaea cinxia) onto the island of Sottunga in the Åland archipelago, he planned to watch how a population of
If you live at a high latitude, it’s time to break out the camera. Space weather agencies are predicting a solar storm for Monday 27 September: moderate, with a chance of aurora. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the British Met Office have both issued predictions for the storm, which is predicted
DNA evidence has finally ended the debate about where the ancient Etruscans – an ancient civilization whose remains are found in Italy – came from. According to almost 2,000 years worth of genomic data, collected from 12 sites across Italy, these enigmatic people did not emigrate from Anatolia (a region that’s now part of Turkey), but
There are many reports based on scientific research that talk about the long-term impacts of climate change – such as rising levels of greenhouse gases, temperatures and sea levels – by the year 2100. The Paris Agreement, for example, requires us to limit warming to under 2.0 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end
It’s something that has long been suspected. Now, we have evidence from a new study – once the Autopilot self-driving tech is enabled on Tesla cars, human drivers tend to pay less attention to what’s happening on the road. The study highlights the awkward in-between phase that we’re now in: Self-driving tech has become good
A new telescope system has managed to capture the highest resolution image of the Moon ever taken from Earth using radar technology. The feat took years of work, and the result is spectacularly detailed. The focal point is Tycho Crater, one of the most prominent impressions on the Moon. And even though it was taken
Let’s face it. Sex isn’t always worth the effort. For many animals, the whole mating game is so inconvenient, going it alone and reproducing asexually is the best option. As appealing as it might sound, however, evolution puts a heavy price on a population that gives up sex for too long. Sooner or later, a
Researchers have managed to keep tabs on 1 million different neurons in the brains of mice at one time – taking scientists an impressive step closer towards one day being able to track the very-complex activity of human brains. The key is an innovation that’s being called ‘light beads microscopy’. It improves on current two-photon
They’re incredible. Amazing. Magical. But perhaps the most fantastic thing about lucid dreams – in which the dreamer becomes aware they’re dreaming – is how realistic they seem. Sadly, only about half of us ever experience lucid dreams in our lives, and efforts to trigger the phenomenon have delivered mixed results. But a study published
One of the most spectacular Einstein rings ever seen in space is enabling us to see what’s happening in a galaxy almost at the dawn of time. The smears of light called the Molten Ring, stretched out and warped by gravitational fields, are magnifications and duplications of a galaxy whose light has traveled a whopping
Our planet and everything that lives on it is buckling under the weight of all the plastic waste we’re producing. The volume of these non-biodegradable materials discarded after use is only increasing, so we need new ways to tackle them, and fast. A new study demonstrates the proof-of-concept of an entirely new approach to plastic recycling, inspired
Using data from multiple telescopes, scientists have detected clouds on a gas giant exoplanet some 520 light-years from Earth. So detailed were the observations, they even discerned the altitude of the clouds and the structure of the upper atmosphere, with the greatest precision yet. It’s work that will help us better understand exoplanet atmospheres –
Culturally, this is an era in which people are held in high esteem when they stick with their beliefs and negatively labeled as “flip-floppers” or “wishy-washy” when they change what they think. While the courage of convictions can be a plus in situations where people are fighting for justice, sticking with beliefs in a dynamic
Nobody ever said parenting was easy, but depending on circumstances, some people can find it much harder than others. In recent years researchers have begun to recognize ‘parental burnout‘ – a condition in which exhausted parents become overwhelmed by their role as primary carers, potentially leading to emotional distance from their children, parental ineffectiveness, neglect,
A new discovery offers definitive evidence that humans were in North America far earlier than archaeologists previously thought – a whopping 7,000 years earlier. Fossil footprints found on the shore of an ancient lake bed in New Mexico’s White Sands National Park date as far back as 23,000 years ago, making them the oldest ever
NASA’s Mars InSight lander has detected its three most powerful quakes yet. On 25 August, InSight detected two quakes, at magnitude 4.1 and 4.2. Then, on 18 September – the lander’s 1,000th Mars day of operation – it picked up the rumbles of another magnitude 4.2 quake. These new quakes blow the previous record of
As the polar ice sheets melt, the process is not just raising sea levels – it’s also warping the underlying surface of Earth, a new study reveals, and some of the effects can be seen across thousands of miles. What’s happening is that Earth’s crust is rising and spreading as the weight of the ice
Easter Island’s famous megaliths have relatives on islands thousands of miles to the north and west – and so did the people who created them, a study said Wednesday. Research showed that over a 250-year period separate groups of people set out from tiny islands east of Tahiti to settle Easter Island, the Marquesas and
Microplastics are everywhere. Even what should be untouched wildernesses – the icy plains of Antarctica, the crushing depths of the deepest ocean chasms – has been polluted by our garbage. So it’s no surprise that we ingest plastic, too; it’s been found in our feces, probably as a result of eating from plastic containers. But a
Now, perhaps more than ever, engineers and scientists have been taking inspiration from nature when developing new technologies. This is also true for the smallest flying structure humans have built to date. Inspired by the way trees like maples disperse their seeds using little more than a stiff breeze, researchers developed a range of tiny flying
Cracks are appearing on the International Space Station (ISS), and retired NASA astronaut Bill Shepherd says they’re a “fairly serious issue.” After Russian cosmonauts spotted the cracks on the station’s Zarya module, Vladimir Solovyov, flight director of the Russian segment of the ISS, publicly revealed the discovery in August. The cracks don’t pose a danger to astronauts
The magnificently long, spined tails of ancient dinosaurs are unlike anything that’s alive today. New research suggests that they elegantly swished side-to-side while their owners walked, and enthusiastically wagged when they ran. It took around 80 million years for the bird lineage of dinosaurs to lose such lengthy tails, which they did in line with
Reservoir computing is already one of the most advanced and most powerful types of artificial intelligence that scientists have at their disposal – and now a new study outlines how to make it up to a million times faster on certain tasks. That’s an exciting development when it comes to tackling the most complex computational
It may not appear so to us, but the space between the stars isn’t completely empty. Tenuous and not-so-tenuous clouds of gas and dust drift in the darkness. A region of space some 700 light-years away is a fascinating exception. There, among the constellations of Perseus and Taurus, astronomers have found a large, spherical void
Catchy songs that ‘go viral’ are downloaded in a way that closely resembles the spread of an actual virus, according to new research out of Great Britain. The data was collected before the days of streaming music, but the findings suggest some tunes are downright infectious, jumping from one host to another in a similar
NASA is embarking on a new Moon shot, aiming to one day build a permanent crewed station on the lunar surface. Before it sends any people, though, the agency is launching a golf-cart-sized robot to the Moon‘s freezing, shadowy south pole. The rover, called the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER), will spend 100 days
About 1,500 years ago, Maya builders crafted a massive pyramid out of rock that had been ejected by a volcano, in an eruption that was so powerful it chilled the planet, scientists recently discovered. Around 539 CE, in what is now San Andrés, El Salvador, the Ilopango caldera erupted in what was the biggest volcanic
The unusually large hole that opened up in the ozone layer over the Arctic last year seems to have been triggered by record-breaking winter temperatures in the North Pacific ocean, according to new analysis. The huge hole, which encompassed nearly the entire ozone layer overhead, closed in early spring, but there’s a chance it could
Modern roads and developments share more similarities with ancient urban centers than we often realize – which is certainly the case with the sprawling Teotihuacan settlement, once located around 40 kilometers (25 miles) northeast of Mexico City. Researchers have used LIDAR (“light” and “radar”) scanning to reveal that the contours of Teotihuacan – much of
The death of a massive star has to be one of the most beautiful endings in the Universe. They eject colossal quantities of material into the space around them, carved out by explosion shockwaves and stellar winds, illuminated by the star’s own light. That’s what’s happening with AG Carinae, a dying massive star 15,000 light-years
A tabletop gravitational wave detector based around a piece of ringing quartz has recorded two mysterious signals in its first 153 days of operation. It’s unclear exactly what these signals are; they could be from a number of phenomena. But one of those phenomena is exactly what the detector is designed to pick up –
Researchers have rewritten Japanese history after uncovering a third, and previously unknown, group of ancestors that migrated to Japan around 2,000 years ago, of modern-day Japanese populations. Ancient Japan can be split into three key time periods: the Jomon period (13,000 BCE to 300 BCE), a time when a small population of hunter-gatherers who were
As the inhabitants of an ancient Middle Eastern city now called Tall el-Hammam went about their daily business one day about 3,600 years ago, they had no idea an unseen icy space rock was speeding toward them at about 38,000 mph (61,000 kph). Flashing through the atmosphere, the rock exploded in a massive fireball about
We often talk about the strong similarities between Earth and Mars, but it’s the differences that are likely behind why one planet has life and the other doesn’t – at least, no life we’ve found so far. Specifically, new research suggests it could be down to the size discrepancy. The diameter of Mars is just
Scientists are working on rechargeable, glow-in-the-dark plant life that could one day replace some of the inefficient, energy-intensive electric lights that we currently rely on for modern-day living. The technology works through embedded nanoparticles that sit near the surface of leaves. A charge from an LED light lasting 10 seconds is enough for the plant
Sleep is one of the most vital things a human does, but millions of us don’t do enough of it. Some of the distractions that prevent us from getting enough sleep are obvious. Others are less so, remaining mysterious and debated – even if they’ve probably been disrupting human shut-eye for thousands of years. In
The biodiversity of the deep ocean is difficult to track, given its inhospitality to us – soft, air-breathing land dwellers. Down in the darkness, there’s much more life than we have accounted for. Nevertheless, a new discovery is an exciting one: six new species and one previously unknown genus of glass sponge, at depths up
Four SpaceX tourists returned to Earth safely on Saturday after spending three days in space, successfully concluding the first orbital mission in history with no professional astronauts on board. The SpaceX Dragon capsule, whose heat shield allowed it to withstand descent, was slowed down by four large parachutes before splashing into the Atlantic Ocean off
There are around 7,000 human languages that we know of worldwide, and while they’re all unique, they’re also more similar than you might have realized – particularly when it comes to the grammar, or the way that sentences can be formed and used. That might be because of certain genetic tendencies, scientists have theorized, or
Apart from the global catastrophe that killed off most of the dinosaurs, some experts think almost all the mass extinctions in Earth’s history were followed by a proliferation of microbes in rivers and lakes. After the Permian extinction event 252 million years ago – the largest mass extinction event in Earth’s history – there appears
Researchers have observed it in the wild many times: Primates from baboons to apes carrying around their infants after they’ve died. This happens regularly across non-primate species as well, but what’s not clear is the motivation or reason behind it. In the largest analysis of this kind of behavior in primates so far, a new
Over 35 countries, including the world’s largest carbon emitters, are falling short of their commitments to curb climate change, according to a bleak new analysis – with the exception of one lone African nation. The report found few countries are on track to cut carbon emissions and limit runaway climate change to 1.5 °C Celsius
Last year, XENON1T, the world’s most sensitive dark matter detector, seemed to deliver a hit. Not of dark matter, but something else. Perhaps neutrinos, perhaps solar axions, perhaps radioactive pollution in the detector. Now a different team of physicists has come up with a different answer. The signal could be consistent not with dark matter,
The world’s longest known cave system just set a new record after surveyors spent hours mapping an additional 8 miles (13 kilometers) of the passageways at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. The corridors at Mammoth Cave now measure a whopping 420 miles (676 kilometers) in length, according to the National Park Service (NPS). That’s
For 900 years, scholars and stargazers have sought to explain a bright cosmic object that briefly lit up the skies above China and Japan in 1181 CE. A new study may have solved the mystery at long last. The nebula Pa 30 – named Parker’s Star, one of the hottest in the Milky Way – and the
You only have to take a look at the Moon to see that it’s had something of a rough time during its roughly 4.5-billion-year history, but a new study suggests that it’s survived more early asteroid hits than its surface actually shows today. The new research proposes that some of the oldest impacts on the
The scars on dozens of Tyrannosaurus rex skulls suggest these apex predators repeatedly bit one another’s faces once they hit reproductive age. When paleontologists analyzed 202 T. rex fossils of various sizes and ages, they found evidence of tooth marks in 60 percent of the adult specimens. Some 66 million years ago, T. rex were
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