The hunt for exoplanets in our galaxy is a deeply important endeavour. The more exoplanets we find, the better we can understand our own Solar System – and how life emerges in the Universe. To date, over 4,000 exoplanets have been confirmed – but a new discovery could widen the search, helping us to find
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A palaeontologist, a medical pathologist, and an orthopaedic surgeon walk into a museum. No, it’s not the start of a joke, but the research team that has now diagnosed the first confirmed case of aggressive bone cancer in a dinosaur. The specimen in question is a fossilised shin bone from Centrosaurus apertus, a plant-eating horned
When an enormous explosion created a mushroom cloud over Beirut, killing dozens of people and injuring thousands more, online commentators and conspiracy theorists quickly jumped to a frightening claim: A nuclear bomb had gone off in Lebanon’s capital city. But as state officials say, and contrary to those fast-spreading rumours, the explosion was almost certainly not caused
The bed of Lake Titicaca, the largest freshwater lake in South America, is turning out to be a veritable museum of ancient offerings. Once sacred to the Incas and before that the Tiwanaku, this body of water, nestled between Bolivia and Peru, is littered with sunken sacrifices from centuries ago. After years of searching, archaeologists
At a time when we crave good news, the giant panda is a beacon of environmental optimism. Since becoming an icon for the conservation movement in the 1980s, 67 panda reserves and countless wildlife corridors have been created in the bamboo forested mountain ranges of central China. The most recent census suggests all that effort
The water scavenger beetle Regimbartia attenuata isn’t known for much. The family of beetles they’re part of can be pests in fish hatcheries, and they’re well suited to the humid tropics. But now, R. attenuata is giving this beetle clan a new claim to fame – thanks to the ability to quickly wiggle its way out of
In February 1987, the sky lit up. In the Large Magellanic Cloud, 167,644 light-years away, astronomers watched as a massive star died in a spectacular supernova, the closest to Earth in hundreds of years. But when the fireworks died down, something was missing. There was no sign of the neutron star that should have been
The question of whether ancient life could have existed on Mars centres on the water that once flowed there, but new research published Monday suggests that many of the Red Planet’s valleys were gouged by icy glaciers not rivers. The study in Nature Geoscience, which comes amid a flurry of new Mars missions trying to
Tropical Storm Isaias was set to regain hurricane strength Monday before slamming into the US eastern seaboard, bringing life-threatening storm surges to North and South Carolina. The storm, currently 60 miles (100 kilometers) southeast of Charleston, South Carolina, was packing sustained winds of 70 miles (112 kilometers) per hour, with wind speeds predicted to increase
Scientists don’t always like being right: take the team that warned in a paper published in 2017 that the St. Patrick Bay ice caps in Canada would soon disappear, for example. The latest NASA satellite imagery shows that their prediction has sadly come true, and even faster than they expected. Scientists from the National Snow
It’s easy to think of black holes as voracious destruction machines, slurping up everything in their immediate vicinity. But that’s not always the case. The environments around active supermassive black holes are complex, and last year, a team of astronomers showed that there’s a safe zone around each supermassive black hole in which thousands of
Hundreds of elephants that died mysteriously in Botswana’s famed Okavango Delta probably succumbed to natural toxins, the wildlife department said Friday. The landlocked southern African country has the world’s largest elephant population, estimated to be around 130,000. Around 300 of them have been found dying since March. Authorities have so far ruled out anthrax, as
There are lots of animals that need conservation help. Cuddly creatures like pandas and koalas, or brainy beasts like whales and octopuses, just to name a few. But a team of scientists is urging us to not forget one particularly unlovable group that also needs our assistance: parasites. Parasites, the team explains, have a bit
A dead star 14,350 light-years away has just become the most important clue in solving the mystery of fast radio bursts. Earlier this year, it spat out a colossal, milliseconds-long radio flare – and now the first published analysis of the event notes its similarity to the enigmatic extragalactic signals. Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are
Microplastics are widespread in seas and oceans, and their harmful effects on many different marine animals are well known. However, we know relatively little about the microplastics in our freshwater rivers, streams and lakes. We still don’t know exactly where they come from, where they end up – and crucially – what damage they can
SpaceX just achieved an historic feat that even its CEO, Elon Musk, thought improbable when he founded the rocket company in 2002: flying people to and from space. On Sunday afternoon, NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley safely careened back to Earth after a 27-million-mile mission in orbit around the planet. The men rode SpaceX’s new
Gorillas living in larger groups might have more friends to choose from, but new research suggests at a certain point, they max out on close relationships. That’s eerily similar to what is thought to happen in our own species, where a link between brain size and group size has led to the famous idea that we
Not all volcanoes are suddenly explosive. Some spew steady rivers of gloppy, slow-moving lava for millennia on end, like those in the Hawaiian or Galápagos islands. These are what volcanologist Michael Stock from Trinity College Dublin in Ireland calls the ‘boring’ volcanoes – yet underneath their monotonous exterior, lurks a bombshell that Stock and his colleagues
After travelling more than 27 million miles around planet Earth, NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are headed home inside SpaceX’s new Crew Dragon spaceship. Despite the threat of Hurricane Isaias strafing coastal Florida with brutal weather, the two-man crew undocked their ship from the International Space Station Saturday evening, beginning the return of the first
No matter where you are, where you’ve been, and where you’re going, it’s always good to see home. And we all love seeing pictures of our home planet, as seen from space. The latest image of the Terran System comes from China’s Mars mission, Tianwen-1, which launched on July 23. It captured an image of
Producing something useful out of waste materials that would otherwise be discarded is the ideal scenario when it comes to sustainable recycling. One place where we could put old tyres? Literally on the surface of the road. Using a blend of old tyres and rubble left over from construction projects, a newly developed material has
Despite the threat of Hurricane Isaias strafing coastal Florida with brutal weather, NASA and SpaceX are “go” to return the first commercial astronauts to planet Earth this weekend. SpaceX made history in May when it became the first company to launch a crewed spaceship to the International Space Station. In doing so, Elon Musk‘s rocket company also revived the
The Crew Dragon spacecraft, produced by private company SpaceX, is scheduled to return from the International Space Station (ISS) and splash down in the Atlantic ocean on August 2. Contingent on a favourable weather forecast and a successful final week at the ISS, NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley will begin the undocking procedure
Longer-lasting, more efficient batteries would be a boost for everything from smartphones to electric vehicles, and scientists have now made an unexpected discovery that could help develop next-gen battery tech, as well as faster catalysts and other advanced materials. An analysis of the very earliest stages of lithium battery charging – known as nucleation –
Dating is hard enough when you have ample choice, but imagine drifting through a dark nothingness, half-formed and hopeless, starved for nutrients and love. So goes the life of a bachelor anglerfish, and when there aren’t plenty of fish in the deep sea, you can’t blame them for being a little clingy when they do
Exoplanets have been a particularly hot topic of late. More than 4,000 of them have been discovered since the first in 1995. Now one more can potentially be added to the list. This one is orbiting Gliese 3470, a red dwarf star located in the constellation Cancer. What makes this discovery particularly interesting is that this planet
Every good story deserves a sequel – and the strange white cloud spotted above an extinct Martian volcano back in 2018 just got one, because the stunning fog trail has made another appearance. In fact, this is the latest instalment in a long-running series, and this time scientists were looking out expectantly for the event.
Victoria Falls is said to be the largest waterfall on Earth, and Angel Falls the highest, but no matter how impressive they might look to us, both these natural wonders fall far short of the true victors. The largest and most powerful waterfalls we know of are actually surrounded by water, deep beneath the lapping
The perilous rise of our seas is pushing tides, waves and storms further inland from our shores – so much so, that in the coming century, scientists predict enormous swathes of land will be regularly inundated by water. By 2100, if we have failed to put up defences and do nothing to curb our global
Before our Solar System had planets, it had planetesimals. Scientists think that most of the meteorites that have struck Earth are fragments of these planetesimals. Scientists also think that these planetesimals either melted completely, very early in their history, or that they remained as little more than collections of rocks, or “rubble piles”. But one
Here’s the story – our protagonist rewinds history, locates baby Hitler, and averts global war by putting him on a path to peace … but, oh noes! This sets off a domino chain of events that stops our hero from being born, or worse, kicks off the apocalypse. Unintended ‘butterfly effect‘-style consequences of time travel might be
NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, who made spaceflight history on May 30 by becoming the first people to launch to orbit aboard a SpaceX vehicle, might see their weekend homecoming plans thrown to the wind. After docking SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour ship to the International Space Station and spending two months there, the men are preparing to
Away from the glare of civilisation’s blinding lights, an unimpeded view of the night sky makes you feel like you’re standing on the shores of eternity. But there is one place on Earth where the sights stretch just that little bit further than anywhere else. Researchers have measured the clarity of the stars at a
Mars 2020, the spaceship carrying NASA’s new rover Perseverance to the Red Planet, experienced technical difficulties and was temporarily running on essential systems only, the agency said Thursday. “Data indicate the spacecraft had entered a state known as safe mode, likely because a part of the spacecraft was a little colder than expected while Mars
A rocket carrying NASA’s most ambitious Mars rover yet has launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, though its crucial journey through space is just beginning. The Perseverance rover and its landing apparatus is packed inside the top of a 197-foot Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida, Thursday morning. At 7:50 am ET, the rocket’s boosters fired and
On Thursday morning, NASA will launch its fifth Mars rover: A robotic scientist the size of an SUV. The $US2.4 billion, nuclear-powered vehicle, named Perseverance (“Percy” for short) is designed to trundle along the Martian surface, mine for signs of ancient life, capture high-quality video and audio, and collect rock and soil samples for an eventual return
Elon Musk‘s growing constellation of internet satellites has been sending streaks of bright light across night skies around the world. Even the biggest comet to pass Earth in 25 years wasn’t spared. A striking photo showing Comet Neowise behind those streaks of light shows how easily the satellites can upstage observations of distant objects in
Stonehenge, a Neolithic wonder in southern England, has vexed historians and archaeologists for centuries with its many mysteries: How was it built? What purpose did it serve? Where did its towering sandstone boulders come from? That last question may finally have an answer after a study published Wednesday found that most of the giant stones
It’s not just honeybees that pollinate our crops and put food on our plates. In North America alone there are roughly 4,000 species of native bee, and new research has calculated these wild insects provide over US$1.5 billion each year from pollinating just a handful of crops. Analysing the production of 131 commercial farms in
For the first time, scientists have observed that ‘megaripples’ on Mars – huge sand waves seen on the Martian surface – are moving structures, and not ancient relics stuck in place since the Red Planet’s distant past. Megaripples, which also occur in deserts on Earth, are generally larger than smaller sand ripples, and are composed
Researchers have successfully revived tiny microbes trapped dormant in a seemingly lifeless zone of the seabed for more than 100 million years. A team of scientists from Japan and America were looking to see whether microscopic life survives in the less-than-hospitable conditions beneath the seafloor of the Pacific Ocean. “We wanted to know how long
Air pollution cuts life expectancy for every man, woman, and child on Earth by nearly two years, according to data released Tuesday which experts said showed poor air quality is “the greatest risk to human health”. The Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) said that as the world races to find a vaccine to bring the
Dozens of US states have reported mysterious seeds showing up in packages from China and are warning citizens not to plant them because they could be an invasive species. The US Department of Agriculture said Tuesday that it was investigating the unsolicited packages of seeds reported by at least 27 states and urged anyone who
Fourteen years after receiving the official go-ahead, scientists on Tuesday began assembling a giant machine in southern France designed to demonstrate that nuclear fusion, the process which powers the Sun, can be a safe and viable energy source on Earth. The groundbreaking multinational experiment, known as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), has seen components arrive in
Common chemicals nicknamed ‘forever chemicals‘ for their tendency to stick around in the environment for a disconcertingly long time have been detected in Arctic seawater. PFAS (per and polyfluoroalkyl substances) chemicals are used in a lot of household products. While the effects of PFAS on human health are still being debated, they have been detected in
Scientists have developed an experimental device and protocol for manipulating the content of people’s dreams while they are sleeping, by making them recall specific cues that can trigger targeted dream themes and experiences. While the boundless dream-building of Inception remains the stuff of science fiction for now, the new research shows that the evolving science
Humans are about to make history by sending a little piece of a Martian rock back to the surface of Mars for the first time ever. The meteorite fragment Sayh al Uhaymir 008 (or SaU 008) will hitch a ride on the 2020 NASA Perseverance rover mission on Thursday – some 600,000 years after it
Norway’s Arctic archipelago Svalbard on Saturday recorded its highest-ever temperature, the country’s meteorological institute reported. According to scientific study, global warming in the Arctic is happening twice as fast as for the rest of the planet. For the second day in a row, the archipelago registered 21.2 degrees Celsius (70.2 Fahrenheit) in the afternoon, just
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