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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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,
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
Scientists have found what may be the earliest evidence of clothing manufacture in a cave in Morocco, dating back 120,000 years. It can be easy to take clothing and their origins for granted, as putting on an outfit at the start of the day is such an ingrained part of what it means to be
Dogs often seem uncannily shrewd about what we’re trying to tell them. A handful of recent studies offer surprising insights into the ways our canine companions are hard-wired to communicate with people. The most recent of those studies, published last week in the journal Scientific Reports, found that dogs can understand the difference between their owners’
Two polished stone balls shaped about 5,500 years ago – linked to a mysterious practice almost unique to Neolithic Britain – have been discovered in an ancient tomb on the island of Sanday, in the Orkney Islands north of mainland Scotland. Hundreds of similar stone balls, each about the size of a baseball, have
Incredibly well-preserved tracks of prehistoric baby elephants have revealed a crucial, ancient stomping ground for one of the largest animals to walk on Earth’s surface since the dinosaurs. On a beach in what is now southwest Spain, archaeologists have identified 34 sets of footprints belonging to the straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus). These huge land
As well as the local and immediate threat to life and property they present, bushfires can also have far-reaching, long-lasting consequences for the rest of the planet, as was the case with the huge Australian bushfires of the summer of 2019/2020. A new study combining satellite data with measurements in the field reveals one
By disrupting the thermodynamic equilibrium of liquids, physicists have made them behave quite differently from how they do in nature – managing to coax liquids into straight-sided squares and hexagons, and patterns of lattices. This is not just fascinating for its own sake, but could help us better understand how liquids behave under different
Physicists have created the first-ever atomic vortex beam – a swirling tornado of atoms and molecules with mysterious properties that have yet to be understood. By sending a straight beam of helium atoms through a grating with teeny slits, scientists were able to use the weird rules of quantum mechanics to transform the beam into a whirling
Having evolved with storytelling as a means to pass information across generations, our brains are powerfully attuned to narratives, so much so that we can recall well-told stories better than basic facts. Stories play a powerful role in shaping the world we’ve created for ourselves, and it turns out they may even be able
Fossilized footprints, and more rarely, hand prints, can be found around the world; left as people went about their daily business, preserved by freak acts of geological preservation. In new research our international team have discovered ancient hand and footprints high on the Tibetan plateau made by children. The team argues that these traces
While quantum computers are already here, they’re very much limited prototypes for now. It’s going to take a while before they’re fulfilling anything close to their maximum potential, and we can use them the way we do regular (classical) computers. That moment is now a little nearer though, as scientists have got three entangled qubits operating together on
Can we toilet train cattle? Would we want to? The answer to both of these questions is yes – and doing so could help us address issues of water contamination and climate change. Cattle urine is high in nitrogen, and this contributes to a range of environmental problems. When cows are kept mainly outdoors, as
Firing beams of neutrons at samples of silicon could lead us to an elusive, unknown ‘fifth force’ of nature, according to researchers. Using a technique called pendellösung interferometry, a team of physicists led by Benjamin Heacock of the National Institute of Standards and Technology have used neutron beams to probe the crystal structure of silicon
Animal farming accounts for twice as many greenhouse gas emissions as plants grown for consumption, according to a study published Monday that mapped agricultural activities worldwide. What humans eat accounts for a major chunk of the emissions behind climate-change – transportation, deforestation, cold-storage. and the digestive systems of cattle all send polluting gases into
Levels of molecular hydrogen (H2) in the atmosphere have surged in modern times due to human activity, according to new research. When scientists analyzed air samples trapped in drilled cores of Antarctica’s ice, they found atmospheric hydrogen had increased 70 percent over the course of the 20th century. Even as recent air pollution laws
It is the elephant in the genomics room: can extinct species be resurrected? One bioscience firm insists they can, announcing Monday its intent to use emerging technology to restore the woolly mammoth to the Arctic tundra. New company Colossal, capitalizing on a partnership with a Harvard geneticist, said its species “de-extinction” effort has the
We live in fake times. Reality is as prevalent as it ever was, of course, but it’s becoming harder to find all the time. Perhaps nowhere is this phenomenon more unsettling than in the weird world of ‘deepfakes’ and other computer-generated faces of people who don’t actually exist (yet look uncannily like the real thing).
Sound waves don’t always hit our ears directly – they can also bounce off other objects and the walls of the space that we’re in, which is why listening to a band play in a cavernous cathedral is a different experience to listening in a small music club. Now scientists have developed a technique
Given that our first direct detections confirming the existence of black holes only took place in this century, humanity can be forgiven for not knowing a few things about these mysterious cosmic objects. We don’t even know everything we don’t know – a fact that’s been made evident in a new discovery. While running equations for
Leave a cheap plastic bag in the sun long enough and it’ll eventually crumble into a powdery mess, its petrochemical fragments destined to be blown far and wide by the elements. Microplastic fragments – considered a major ecological hazard all on their own – might not even be the worst thing to come out
On someone’s desk, one of the little gray cubes wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. To the untrained eye, they look like paperweights. “Marie Curie‘s granddaughter has one. She uses it as a doorstop,” Miriam Hiebert, a historian and materials scientist, told Insider. The weight of the 2-inch (5 cm) objects might be surprising, though –
Nuclear fusion offers the tantalizing prospect of a sustainable energy source that can never be exhausted – and scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have announced what they describe as a “watershed moment” in making the technology viable. Fusion happens when two or more atomic nuclei merge together to create larger elements,
Physicists sifting through old particle accelerator data have found evidence of a highly-elusive, never-before-seen process: a so-called triangle singularity. First envisioned by Russian physicist Lev Landau in the 1950s, a triangle singularity refers to a rare subatomic process where particles exchange identities before flying away from each other. In this scenario, two particles –
The world’s largest plant designed to suck carbon dioxide out of the air and turn it into rock started running on Wednesday, the companies behind the plant said. The plant, named Orca, after the Icelandic word “orka” meaning “energy”, consists of four units, each made up of two metal boxes, similar in appearance to the
The vast majority of the world’s fossil fuels are effectively “unextractable” and must remain in the ground if we want even half a chance at meeting our climate goals, according to a new study. For nations like Indonesia and Australia, the world’s leading exporters in coal, that will require abandoning 95 percent of their
Global warming is a big challenge for warm-blooded animals, which must maintain a constant internal body temperature. As anyone who’s experienced heatstroke can tell you, our bodies become severely stressed when we overheat. Animals are dealing with global warming in various ways. Some move to cooler areas, such as closer to the poles or
Elon Musk announced a humanoid robot designed to help with those repetitive, boring tasks people hate doing. Musk suggested it could run to the grocery store for you, but presumably it would handle any number of tasks involving manual labor. Predictably, social media filled with references to a string of dystopian sci-fi movies about
In metals, electrons are normally expected to be diffusive in their movement, operating as individual particles – in other words, they don’t gain momentum as a group. In a new study, scientists have now discovered a type of metal where electrons actually do flow in a fluid-like way – like water in a pipe –
NASA is commonly thought of as America’s space agency, but its name also emphasizes another research area. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is also America’s civilian aerospace research organization. In that role, it has been instrumental in developing new technologies ranging from rocket engines to aircraft control systems. Part of that role is
When you know you’re being watched by somebody, it’s hard to pretend they’re not there. It can be difficult to block them out and keep focus, feeling their gaze bearing down upon you. Strangely enough, it doesn’t even seem to really matter whether they’re alive or not. In new research, scientists set up an
You may well have seen sci-fi movies or television shows where the protagonist asks to zoom in on an image and enhance the results – revealing a face, or a number plate, or any other key detail – and Google’s newest artificial intelligence engines, based on what’s known as diffusion models, are able to pull
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