A cup of mud that has been buried beneath the floor of a cave for millennia has just yielded up the genome of an ancient human. Analysis reveals traces of a woman who lived 25,000 years ago, before the last Ice Age; and, although we don’t know much about her, she represents a significant scientific
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Climate change has already increased the frequency and severity of hurricanes and other extreme weather events around the world. But there’s a smaller, less splashy threat on the horizon that could wreak havoc on America’s coasts. High-tide floods, also called “nuisance floods”, occur in coastal areas when tides reach about 2 feet (0.6 meters) above
Phosphine gas detected in the atmosphere of Venus could have a volcanic origin after all, new research has found. An analysis of potential volcanic activity on the mysterious planet has found that, contrary to findings uploaded to preprint server arXiv last year, there may indeed be sufficient geothermal venting to produce the detected abundances of
A binary star just 1,500 light-years away is spiraling towards a spectacular doom. HD265435 consists of a type of dead star called a white dwarf and its binary companion; they’re orbiting each other so close together, the white dwarf is slurping material from the other star. Eventually, so the theory goes, the white dwarf will
Abnormal hot and cold temperatures account for more than 5 million excess deaths a year across the world, according to a new study – the largest of its kind to date on the link between global climate and mortality rates. The study looked at “non-optimal ambient temperatures”, referring to exposure to abnormal hot and cold
Antarctica may seem like a static environment: a still, white landscape frozen motionlessly into place. But much more is going on under the ice than we realize – even if you have to travel all the way to space to tell for sure. Over a decade ago, scientists made just such a discovery, when an
These days it seems you can’t walk through a bookstore without bumping into a book or magazine pointing out the negative consequences of climate change. Everything from the hottest years on record to ruining astronomy can be tied to climate change. Now some new science lays another potential problem at climate change’s feet – Earth is retaining more than
Virgin Galactic has launched, flown, and landed its first full crew, positioning the company to start commercial tourist flights to the edge of space in 2022. Billionaire Richard Branson, who founded Virgin Galactic in 2004, was aboard the company’s SpaceShipTwo space plane on Sunday morning. He served as a “mission specialist,” testing the passenger experience for future customers. Three
In a time rife with disasters, when more people than ever can find an audience online, conspiracy theories seem to be growing more outrageous by the day. We’re also more prone to believing such things under heightened stress, which is unfortunate given how damaging many of these ideas are proving to our democracies and each
“Suborbital” is a term you’ll be hearing a lot as Sir Richard Branson flies aboard Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity winged spaceship and Jeff Bezos flies aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle to touch the boundary of space and experience a few minutes of weightlessness. But what exactly is “suborbital”? Simply put, it means that while
Scientists have figured out the best forensic technique to get the dirt on criminals. Knowing which technique to use means that a remnant of soil or dust from a suspect or their belongings could substantially narrow down the scene of a crime in a city. When researchers tested their approach in a roughly 250-square-kilometer area –
In our daily lives, we spend a lot more time tapping at a screen and typing on a keyboard than writing with pencil and pen, so does handwriting tuition still offer anything useful? Absolutely, according to a new study. Researchers tasked 42 adult volunteers with learning the Arabic alphabet from scratch: some through writing it
A rare group of humans known as “superagers” can grow up without their minds growing old. Even in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, a lucky few maintain incredibly youthful memories, recalling new experiences, events, and situations just as well as people decades younger. New research now suggests that’s because their brains have somehow resisted the
In order to mitigate the global impacts of climate change, we need to dramatically reduce our carbon emissions, or even better – stop emitting completely. Many countries have recognized the need to switch from fossil fuels to renewable or ‘green’ energy in order to do this. Whilst most of us are in homes that are
Water ice isn’t exactly known for its flexibility. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: rigid and brittle, easily fracturing and snapping. It’s why avalanches and sea ice fragmentation occur. It’s also why new research is so fascinating. Scientists have just grown microfibers of water ice that can bend in a loop – breaking the previous
Earth is not the only world adorned with the glowing atmospheric phenomenon that is aurora. In fact, in a Solar System aurora competition, the clear winner would be Jupiter. The so-called King of Planets is crowned with the most powerful auroras in the Solar System, permanently circling both its poles. Because they glow only in
Tens of thousands of clams, mussels, sea stars, and snails were found boiled to death in a Vancouver, Canada, beach during the country’s record-breaking heat wave. Chris Harley, a marine biologist at the University of British Columbia, was alerted to the deaths when he smelled a foul stench coming from Vancouver’s Kitsilano Beach on Sunday.
Have you ever stared at a cauliflower before preparing it and got lost in its stunningly beautiful pattern? Probably not, if you are in your right mind, but I reassure you it’s worth a try. What you’ll find is that what at first sight looks like an amorphous blob has a striking regularity. If you
Scientists have succeeded in combining two exciting material types together for the very first time: an ultrathin semiconductor just a single atom thick; and a superconductor, capable of conducting electricity with zero resistance. Both these materials have unusual and fascinating properties, and by putting them together through a delicate lab fabrication process, the team behind
We know that our minds can imagine faces everywhere there’s a hint of two eyes and a nose – from cloud formations to car bonnets to plug sockets – and it’s technically known as face pareidolia. A new study gives us insight into what’s actually going on in the brain when this happens. Scientists wanted
The way a planet is tilted on its rotational axis with respect to its orbital plane around a star – what we know as ‘axial tilt’ – could be key to the emergence of complex life. According to a new study, a modest axial tilt, like Earth’s, helps increase the production of oxygen, which is
Songbirds are mysteriously dying across the mid-Atlantic region of the USA. Many have been discovered ill with eye swelling and discharge; some look like they’re having trouble lifting their heads, indicative of head swelling. They also show neurological symptoms like tremors, disorientation, erratic flight, and lack of balance. Over 280 sick or dead birds have
Until recently it was thought neutron star mergers were the only way heavy elements (heavier than zinc) could be produced. These mergers involve the mashup of the remnants of two massive stars in a binary system. But we know heavy elements were first produced not long after the Big Bang, when the Universe was really
When a star is born, the leftover dust and gas in the cloud from which it formed doesn’t just sit there. It clumps together, forming other cosmic objects – asteroids and comets and meteors and, yes, exoplanets. We’ve detected many of these exoplanets in orbit around alien stars in the Milky Way. But not all
Thousands of medieval Islamic tombs in eastern Sudan were arranged in hard-to-detect patterns, with sacred “parent” tombs hosting subclusters of emanating burials, according to archaeologists who studied the funerary monuments with a method designed for cosmology. The team used satellite imagery to identify the locations of more than 10,000 monuments in the Kassala region of eastern
A record-breaking heat wave that hit the western United States and Canada at the end of June would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change, according to an analysis by a group of leading climate scientists. The World Weather Attribution group said that global warming, caused by greenhouse gas emissions, made the heat wave
Converting agricultural land to forests is one way of boosting rainfall and counteracting some of the effects of climate change, according to a new study – with water availability one of the most important climate drivers alongside temperature. Based on computer models trained on real-world data, the study authors conclude that “a realistic reforestation scenario,
Human poop can reveal more than you might think, even when it’s really, really old. In a new study of a Central American Maya civilization, samples of ancient feces have shown how the size of this community varied significantly in response to contemporary climate change. Researchers identified four distinct periods of population size shift as
When the Cassini-Huygens probe dove through the salty plumes belching from the interior of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, it made an unexpected detection: a collection of compounds that are also associated with hydrothermal vents on Earth’s ocean floor. In particular, the amount of methane in the plumes caught astrobiologists’ attention – it seemed peculiarly high. Even
Around 269 million people worldwide use drugs each year. Often forgotten in this story is a problem of basic biology. What goes in must come out. Sewers are inundated with drugs that are excreted from the body, along with the broken down chemical components that have similar effects to the drugs themselves. Sewage treatment plants
A fluffy cluster of stars spilling across the sky may have a secret hidden in its heart: a swarm of over 100 stellar-mass black holes. If this finding can be validated, it will explain how the cluster came to be the way it is – with its stars spaced light-years apart, smearing out into a
A towering inferno, hundreds of feet tall, burned above the Caspian Sea on Sunday (July 4) after a massive explosion in Azerbaijan’s oil and gas fields. The culprit? A mud volcano, authorities now say. The blast occurred around 9:30 pm local time (1:30 pm ET, 5:30 pm UTC) around 6 miles (10 kilometers) from the
For four years between 2015 and 2019, roughly 2,500 Icelanders were involved in two major experiments to see how a shorter working week would affect productivity. Now the results are in – and the experiments seem to have been a resounding success. Some key points: reducing a 40-hour working week to 35 or 36 hours
For many people, summer vacation can’t come soon enough – especially for the half of Americans who canceled their summer plans last year due to the pandemic. But when a vacation approaches, do you ever get the feeling that it’s almost over before it starts? If so, you’re not alone. In some recent studies Gabriela
The Sun appears to be waking up from the quiet period of its 11-year cycle. On 3 July 2021, at 14:29 UTC (10:29 EDT), our wild star spat out its first X-class flare of Solar Cycle 25; it was the most powerful flare we’ve seen since September 2017. X-class flares are among the most powerful
Seven Viking tombs holding well-preserved skeletons, including possible twin infants, have been discovered in the Swedish town of Sigtuna. The archaeologists discovered the 1,000-year-old remains of eight people – four adults and four children – inside the tombs; they were likely Vikings who had converted to Christianity. “The Christian character of the now-excavated graves is obvious because
In October 2019, I set sail with a team of scientists aboard the Canadian Coast Guard Vessel John P. Tully in the northeast Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Vancouver Island. Battling rough seas and lack of sleep, we spent the better part of a week working shoulder-to-shoulder in a small stand-up refrigerator, analyzing seafloor
Some of the best robots are inspired by nature. Now, engineers have developed a small, scurrying bot based on the humble cockroach – with almost as much speed and squashability as its biological equivalent. About the size of a postage stamp, the as-yet-unnamed soft robot is able to move at a speed of 20 body lengths
As humans, we like to think we have some pretty unique traits in the animal kingdom. Language enables us to communicate efficiently with one another. Culture preserves and accumulates knowledge through generations. Technology and tools help us solve problems. Symbols and art reveal clues about our complex experiences. A growing body of evidence suggests the
In the yawning vacuum of intergalactic space, something large is lurking. Not a galaxy, although it’s of a comparable size: A vast cloud of hot, faintly glowing gas, bigger than the Milky Way, in the space between galaxies congregating in a huge cluster. Scientists believe this cloud may have been unceremoniously stripped from a galaxy
Deep in the tissues of sea anemones, corals, and jellyfish are strange yellow cells which are genetically distinct from the marine animals. More than a century after these cells were first assigned a now forgotten genus, a new paper has resurrected the name and described six new species from around the world. “Because our team
The Milky Way is 13 billion years old. Some of our galaxy’s oldest stars were born near the beginning of the Universe itself. During all these eons of time, we know at least one technological civilization has been born – us! But if the galaxy is so ancient, and we know it can create life,
We just got our best views yet of the eerie alien aurora on Mars. The United Arab Emirates’ Hope orbiter, which arrived at the red planet earlier this year, used its ultraviolet spectrometer to catch glowing structures of glowing atomic oxygen high up in the Martian night sky. “The full set of data collected during
Researchers have demonstrated how to keep a network of nanowires in a state that’s right on what’s known as the edge of chaos – an achievement that could be used to produce artificial intelligence (AI) that acts much like the human brain does. The team used varying levels of electricity on a nanowire simulation, finding
Scientists are continually discovering more about how we pick up language from the earliest ages, and a new study looks specifically at how very young children integrate different sources of information to learn new words. Those sources can be everything from whether or not they’ve seen an object before (which points to whether or not
Deadly climate conditions could soon become the norm in most parts of the world, according to a systematic review. If we do nothing to curb our greenhouse gas emissions, the authors who conducted the review predict between 44 and 75 percent of the human population will be chronically stressed by heat by the end of
A pandemonium of parrots, a cackle of hyenas, an exaltation of larks – these are just a few of the animals that we define by the sounds they make. For humans, communication is the bedrock of our relationships and part of how we successfully function in our daily lives. Animals make sounds to issue warnings,
Within the depths of a Malaysian rainforest’s shadows an astonishingly plant, lacking sunlight-eating leaves, bizarrely blooms. This small, otherworldly growth, belonging to a group of rare flowering plants known as fairy lanterns (Thismia), has just been scientifically described for the first time. They’re tiny plants, too deep within the forest to receive sunlight, and often
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