While many people’s reaction to big hairy spiders is usually “AHHH”, you’ve got to admit, this spider’s odd-looking back appendage does look rather amusing. The peculiar and previously undocumented protrusion belongs to the tarantula Ceratogyrus attonitifer found in Angola, Central Africa. While scientists have observed related species of baboon spiders with a back bulge before, they’ve never
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An invisible force is having an effect on our Universe. We can’t see it, and we can’t detect it – but we can observe how it interacts gravitationally with the things we can see and detect, such as light. Now an international team of astronomers has used one of the world’s most powerful telescopes to
A new study shows that Mars may very well be volcanically active. Nobody’s seen direct evidence of volcanism; no eruptions or magma or anything like that. Rather, the proof is in the water. In the past, Mars was a much warmer and wetter place. Now, Mars is still home to lots of water, mostly as
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. It’s not enough. When it comes to the crisis of mounting plastic waste, we’re still coming up short on ways to plug the flow. Soon, we might be able to add ‘rewind’ to that list – thanks to a new technique for turning the polypropylene that makes up a proportion of plastic
In a sensational test of technological independence, Russia is making plans to cut off its internet from the rest of the world, with a giant ‘unplugging’ experiment that will affect over 100 million Russian internet users. The action – which the nation has boasted of doing for years – would be a temporary test, designed
On shadowy paws in the dark of the night, the rare black leopard is rarely seen by human eyes. But now its breathtaking beauty has been captured in exquisite detail, thanks to trail cams and camera traps set up in Laikipia County in Kenya. San Diego Zoo caught the gorgeous animal on remote video cameras
Deep in the Watagans Mountain Range in Australia, a red-eyed green tree frog (Litoria chloris) had bitten off much more than it could chew. Its dinner was to be an unassuming red triangle slug (Triboniophorus graeffei); instead, the frog ended up covered in a sticky mucus and completely stuck to a tree branch. Researchers from
Behind this sentence lies a solid bedrock of mathematics, one that has been shown to govern all human languages. Linguists have found the hoots and hollers, gestures and expressions used by chimpanzees obey some of the same basic principles, demonstrating the foundations of language have deep evolutionary roots. A study led by the University of
The life of a sperm isn’t easy. From cervix to egg, the female reproductive tract puts these tiny swimmers through an obstacle course of doom. It’s like being forced into a haunted house where the only way out is forward. At every turn there are more ways to die: bathed in acid, tangled in mucus, attacked
Rolling up to the crater’s edge, the Opportunity rover took in a landscape unlike anything any Earthling had ever seen. A vast, meteorite-blasted expanse of volcanic rock and iron oxide extended for 15 miles, ringed by rugged mountains under a dusky orange sky. In months to come, the enterprising robot would uncover signs that warm,
Greenland is covered in one of the largest ice sheets on the planet, but underneath its frozen exterior, the landscape is more pockmarked than we once thought. Buried underneath two kilometres of ice, researchers think they have found a second huge impact crater, hiding in the northwest corner of the world’s largest island. As scientists
Earth is getting a special celestial visitor this week in the shape of comet C/2018 Y1 Iwamoto – this sparkling, green-hued hunk of ice and minerals is already visible in the night sky through telescopes and even binoculars. It’s the first binocular comet of 2019 – which means a comet that’s visible from Earth through
When you’re older, your hometown will feel different. That’s true for everybody. But for people living today, the changes will be impossible to ignore. We usually measure climate change in terms of rising temperatures. But scientists say there’s another way of thinking about it: spatial displacement. In a new study, researchers say cities in North
By now, you’ve probably heard that the Arctic is not doing so well. It’s warming faster than the rest of the world, blue lakes are bubbling with methane gas, and Arctic soils could be releasing carbon that’s been trapped there since ancient times. But there’s a sliver of good news – a new study suggests
Universities in the US have long wrangled over who owns the world’s largest drum. Unsubstantiated claims to the title have included the “Purdue Big Bass Drum” and “Big Bertha“, which interestingly was named after the German World War I cannon and ended up becoming radioactive during the Manhattan Project. Unfortunately for the Americans, however, the
It’s the start of a new year, which means it’s time for another stern talking to from Harrison Ford. Speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai this week, the 76-year-old actor and climate activist practically begged us to stop electing people who don’t understand science. “All of us whether rich or poor, powerful or powerless,
Humans have a need to leave a legacy behind us when we pass on. For some, that might mean inspiring an entire region to build massive rock structures, such as Stonehenge. New research suggests the megaliths littering ancient Europe weren’t conceived independently, but were all influenced by the work of a single hunter-gatherer community that lived in
All the war, conflict, and misery that has beset civilisation for centuries and longer may lead you to think human society is tragically defined by a constant clash of irreconcilable cultures. Not so, according to a new study, which in fact found startling and optimistic evidence to the contrary: all cultures are actually bound by
Scientists have discovered what they say are the earliest known fossilised traces of multicellular moving organisms, beating the previous record-holder by an incredible 1.5 billion years. Hidden in a shale rock deposit on the west coast of Africa, thin tube-like structures carved in ancient sediment reveal the footprint of tiny slug-like creatures that lived and
Wisdom, a Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis) who is at least 68 years old, has done it again – she’s hatched a new chick at her nesting ground in Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. Each year since at least 2006, Wisdom and her mate Akeakamai have been coming back to the atoll in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii
Remember Mars One, the startup that said it was going to fund a crewed mission to Mars by turning the journey into a reality television spectacle? Now the company is bankrupt, according to financial documents published online. Engadget confirmed the bankruptcy with Mars One co-founder Bas Lansdorp, who told the publication that he was working
Fences have risen around kindergartens. Special vehicles transport military personnel to their work sites. Residents of the island settlement are afraid to leave their homes. Novaya Zemlya is a Russian archipelago stretching into the Arctic Ocean. It once played host to Soviet nuclear tests, including the largest human-made explosion, when the “king of bombs” detonated
In recent years, scientists have been warning us about the disappearance of a type of creature we think we wouldn’t miss much – but the dramatic fall of insect numbers across the world has been driven into sharp focus by a new report which warns of a “catastrophic” collapse of natural ecosystems. A newly published
Nobody knows who she was, just that she was different: a teenage girl from over 50,000 years ago of such strange uniqueness she looked to be a ‘hybrid’ ancestor to modern humans that scientists had never seen before. Only now, researchers have uncovered evidence she wasn’t alone. In a new study analysing the complex mess
Prior to Columbus’s arrival in the Americas in 1492, the area boasted thriving indigenous populations totalling to more than 60 million people. A little over a century later, that number had dropped close to 6 million. European contact brought with it not only war and famine, but also diseases like smallpox that decimated local populations.
You know you’re a tough nut when the two options that could explain your continued existence are either having spent the last ice age in a cave buried by a sheet of ice, or having ‘fast’ travelled between continents in the last few tens of thousand years. But those are the two most likely stories
It’s one of the weirdest, most magical-seeming tricks there is: the ability to instantly transform hot, boiling water into an icy mist in the blink of an eye. This bizarre demonstration of what’s called the Mpemba effect might seem like sorcery, but just because you can impressively fling hot, scalding water into the sky above
We’re not sure why it happened. Even ‘when’ is a topic of ongoing debate. But at some point, for some reason, our brains got big. There are plenty of hypotheses as to how we got here, but to find supporting evidence we need experiments on the brains of chimpanzees and humans, which involves practical (not to
My ideas about animal behaviour were turned upside down in 2002 when I watched Betty, a New Caledonian crow, fashion a hook from a piece of wire and use it to pull a small container with meat from a tube. Betty’s behaviour captivated scientists because it seemed so creative: there was no obvious solution to
The most distant object our species has ever visited, a space rock called 2014 MU69, is less snowman-shaped than scientists previously thought. NASA flew its New Horizons probe by the rock, which is nicknamed Ultima Thule and located 4 billion miles from Earth, on New Year’s Day. New Horizons flew within 2,200 miles of MU69,
Life is miraculous, and watching it unfold in real time is even more so. A new video from Netherlands-based filmmaker Jan van IJken now lets you watch a baby salamander twisting and turning as it grows in its transparent egg. Simply called Becoming, this beautiful short film follows a single salamander embryo (Ichthyosaura Alpestris) as
We’ve seen 3D printed rockets before, but never on this scale. UK space startup Orbex just showed off its Prime Rocket’s gigantic second stage — the “world’s largest 3D printed rocket engine,” according to a press release. The entire rocket, including the engine, will stand at 56 feet (17 meters) tall — roughly a quarter
There’s a saying in medicine: You’re not dead until you’re warm and dead. Turns out it applies to cats, too. The polar vortex was raging in the Upper Midwest last week, and temperatures had dropped below zero on the morning of Jan. 31 in the city of Kalispell, Mont., near Glacier National Park. Fluffy —
We’ve been gazing out at the Solar System for a very long time, and by now we know, more or less, where things go. Sun, planets, asteroid belt, more planets, then millions more asteroids (we’re not really sure how many). Maybe another planet. OK, so it’s a little tricky. But a new discovery has hinted
The amount of close and comforting contact that young infants get doesn’t just keep them warm, snug, and loved. A 2017 study says it can actually affect babies at the molecular level, and the effects can last for years. Based on the study, babies who get less physical contact and are more distressed at a
There’s no two-ways about it, the Universe is an extremely big place! And thanks to the limitations placed upon us by Special Relativity, traveling to even the closest star systems could take millennia. As we addressed in a previous article, the estimated travel time to the nearest star system (Alpha Centauri) could take anywhere from
Some 115,000 years ago, Homo sapiens were still living in bands of hunter gatherers, largely confined to Africa. We still shared the globe with the Neanderthals, although it’s not clear we had met them yet. And though these various hominids didn’t know it, the Earth was coming to the end of a major warm period.
Mind reading and the ability to predict the future are not skills people generally associate with the human race. Yet, research shows many people genuinely believe in the existence of psychic powers. You would think that instances of proven psychic fraud over the years would weaken the credibility of psychic claims. There have been historical
Valentine’s Day. It’s for suckers, right? A Hallmark holiday designed just to part you with your money. But El Paso Zoo in Texas can help you celebrate in a way that will warm the cockles of your cold, black heart – and it won’t cost you a thing. In a livestreamed event called “Quit Bugging
In 2021, Rosalind Franklin will set down on the rust-stained sands of Mars before setting off in hunt for chemical building blocks that could indicate the presence of life. The new name of the European Space Agency (ESA) ExoMars rover was selected to honour a British chemist who contributed to the discovery of DNA’s helical
Back in 2005, professional yo-yo performer Dave Schulte AKA “Dazzling Dave” started having weird sensations in the index finger of his right hand. It felt cold, and later became tender and even began to turn purple – not ideal in the hand he uses for yoyo tricks. “I had no idea what caused it ..
The scientific community has strict standards for organ transplant research. Researchers can’t use organs from executed prisoners or ones obtained without the consent of the donor, and an international ethics committee must green light every study prior to publication in a research journal. But a startling new report reveals that Chinese researchers may have transplanted
Humans are in the process of herding the world’s largest animals right over the brink of extinction, and the main driving force is our insatiable appetite for meat. It’s a dire warning, and it comes from the first analysis to look at how humans have impacted the world’s “megafauna”. Bringing together over 300 species of unusually
Astronomers have been treated to a truly special look at some of the organic building blocks of the Universe, thanks to a newborn star that’s been spotted around 1,300 light-years away from Earth. That star is V883 Ori - as it grows, the bursting heat is pushing back the star’s ‘snow line’ – that’s the area around the
We’ve seen it before, but never this clearly. For the first time, China’s Longjiang-2 satellite photographed the entirety of the Moon’s far side and the Earth in a single shot, Popular Mechanics reports. The 16 kilobyte image was downloaded by the Dutch Dwingeloo Radio Telescope over the course of about 20 minutes. We already received
Maggots repulse us. Despite being the innocent babes of the insect world, there’s something about these larval critters that just gets under our skin. Yes, literally too. And dangerously. But there are good reasons we should overcome our aversion. It’s becoming increasingly clear how incorporating insects into our diets stands to benefit the environment –
A month after China pulled off its historic Chang’e 4 mission, which landed robots on the moon’s far side for the first time, NASA has released an image further proving the feat was a success. NASA photographed the Chinese landing site on January 30 with a moon-circling spacecraft called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Researchers published
Two bird lovers in Erie, Pennsylvania were only expecting to enjoy the company of their colourful feathered friends when they began setting up backyard feeders 25 years ago. But then the lavish spread attracted an unusual visitor: a northern cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) that was half the brilliant vermilion of the male of the species, and
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