Canadian artist Julie Laurin recently started a livestream of tardigrades — microscopic, eight-legged micro-animals also known as “water bears” — wriggling around on Twitch. And it’s exactly the kind of thing we need right now. You can watch a full, narrated hour of tardigrade action on Laurin’s Twitch channel. The stream, first spotted by
Once again, a search for signs of dark matter outside its gravitational effect has turned up zilch – but this time it’s a little more controversial. Astronomers peering into empty space have not found an X-ray glow hypothesised to be the product of one particular dark matter candidate: the sterile neutrino. It is, the
A search for the ‘missing link’ in the chain of the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 has uncovered two close cousins of the new coronavirus in shipments of pangolins being smuggled into China. It’s important to note that the discovery by researchers from across Hong Kong and China falls well short of identifying these precious mammals as the
Earth didn’t always have this much oxygen. Roughly 2.4 billion years ago, the rise of cyanobacteria and the shifting of tectonic plates breathed new life into our planet, tipping off a Great Oxidation Event (GOE). The surge of oxygen-hungry life that followed didn’t last for long. Today, many scientists think the evolution of life
With the right mechanical contraption attached, human running speeds could rival those of cyclists, according to new research – getting runners up to 20.9 metres per second, or more than 46 miles per hour. It’s worth noting that these are theoretical calculations for now, and the team responsible is hoping to have their prototype
An Arizona man died, and his wife was hospitalized, after taking a form of chloroquine, which President Trump has touted as an effective treatment for COVID-19. The couple decided to self-medicate with chloroquine phosphate, which they had on hand to kill parasites in their fish, after hearing the president describe the drug as a “game
Poor old Uranus just can’t seem to catch a break. Something already tipped the planet on its side, so its orbit is perpendicular to those of the other Solar System planets. It probably smells terrible. And now scientists have discovered that the atmosphere of Uranus is leaking out into space. Hidden in the data
Plague Inc, a game that lets users destroy the world with a novel pathogen, has created a new version of the game, in which players can save the world from a virus. The game, which has occupied a position on the App store charts ever since it was created in 2012, reached new levels of
It’s well known that quasars are the most luminous galaxies in the Universe, spewing insane amounts of radiation across space as their supermassive black holes rapaciously devour material from a colossal accretion disc. Well, they just got even more hardcore. Astronomers have discovered that blasts of radiation emanating from quasars can act like a
The ozone layer above Antarctica has recovered so much, it’s actually stopped many worrying changes in the Southern Hemisphere’s atmosphere. If you’re looking for someone to thank, try the world at large. A new study suggests the Montreal Protocol – the 1987 agreement to stop producing ozone depleting substances (ODSs) – could be responsible
In a single announcement on Tuesday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi almost doubled the planet’s tally of people who have been placed under lockdown to avoid the spread of the coronavirus. His strict order to the nation’s 1.3 billion people to stay home brings the global number of people under some form of lockdown
The ice sheet that sits atop Earth’s deepest land canyon stands on shaky ground. A detailed mapping of Denman Glacier in East Antarctica – the most scrupulous to date – has revealed a precarious foundation, the shape of which could leave the heart of this glacier incredibly vulnerable to climate change. In nearly three
A long, long time ago, in what is now the southern United States, several giant dinosaurs, including a relative of the T. rex, were once on the hunt for prey. In their shadow, almost 70 million years later, palaeontologists have now shed light upon a much smaller competitor running underfoot. Standing only one metre tall
Electric cars absolutely do produce less CO2 than gas guzzlers, a new study has confirmed – countering claims that carbon emissions from the manufacture of electric cars and the production of electricity outweighed the savings on the road. Crunching the numbers on data collected from 59 different regions in the world that represent 95
As life starts, the crazy whirl begins. That’s not poetry or philosophy. It’s science. Once an egg is fertilised, billions of proteins ripple out across its surface, unleashing a dizzying cascade of swirling patterns. These spiralling arcs aren’t for show, though; the phenomenon may be pretty, but it’s also a fundamental part of nascent cell
According to Google Trends, the top two most searched terms about mobile phones this week in Australia were “how to disinfect phone” and “how to clean your phone.” And the third most-searched “can I get coronavirus from…?”-style question in the past week in Australia was “can you get coronavirus from mail?” (If you were wondering,
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) delivers once again! Using its advanced imaging instrument, the High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera, the orbiter captured a breathtaking image (shown below) of the plains north of Juventae Chasma. This region constitutes the southwestern part of Valles Marineris, the gigantic canyon system that runs along the Martian equator.
When it comes to squids, you just can’t keep them down. Not just because they’re slippery, but also because they have an incredible genetic editing ability – it lets them tweak their own RNA long after it’s left the nucleus. Here’s what that means. Genes, in humans at least, mostly stay unchanging until they’re
For the first time, scientists have reprogrammed the stem cells of a 114-year-old woman, the oldest donor to date. After first transforming cells from her blood sample into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), the researchers then generated mesenchymal stem cells, which help to maintain and repair tissues like bone, cartilage and fat. “We set
Most of the laws of physics don’t care which direction time is travelling. Forwards, backwards… either way, the laws work exactly the same. Newtonian physics, general relativity – time is irrelevant to the mathematics: This is called time-reversal symmetry. In the real Universe, things get a bit messier. And now a team of scientists
Scientists have found naturally occurring superconducting materials in extraterrestrial objects for the first time, discovering superconductive grains embedded inside two distinct meteorites that crash-landed on Earth. The discovery is just the latest to show that meteorites are much more than space debris that falls out of the sky. Recent investigations have turned up meteorite-borne
The earliest known ancestor of most familiar forms of animal life living on the planet today appears to have been identified in outback Australia, revealing a strange, worm-like organism that deserves our respect and gratitude. Ikaria wariootia, a sluggish blob about the size of a grain of rice, might not look like much, but
When you’re right in the middle of something, it’s pretty hard to tell exactly how big it is. Like the Milky Way galaxy, for instance. We can’t exactly go take a picture of it from the outside, so our best estimates rely on distance measurements to objects on the outskirts. An estimate based on
Scientists have uncovered a splintered remnant of Earth’s continental crust from millions of years ago, embedded in the isolated wilderness of northern Canada. Baffin Island, located in between the Canadian mainland and Greenland, is a vast Arctic expanse covering over 500,000 square kilometres (almost 200,000 square miles), making it the fifth largest island in the
While we’re on Earth grappling with one of the biggest pandemics in modern memory, NASA’s Curiosity rover is still pottering around Mars, probably enjoying the serenity – just as it has been for the last eight years. We’re still receiving great selfies from the rover, too. Just last month, on February 26, Curiosity took
A comet that entered our Solar System from interstellar space may not make it out again. As it zooms away from the Sun, 2I/Borisov has been spotted spewing out material in two cometary outbursts. These outbursts show that the comet is disintegrating, according to Polish astronomers from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow and the
NASA said it has suspended work on building and testing the rocket and capsule for its Artemis crewed mission to the Moon due to the rising number of coronavirus cases in the community. The space agency is shutting down its Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where the Space Launch System rocket is being
Tropical forests are hugely important carbon sinks. We need these beautifully diverse areas to help maintain Earth’s atmosphere – and now, a new study has looked into just how much carbon these forests absorb. It’s not just a curiosity. Estimating the efficiency of such natural carbon sinks is one of the numerous factors that
One of the key challenges of getting quantum computing working in a practical and useful way is to do with temperature – being able to put together a machine that doesn’t need ultra-low, laboratory-maintained temperatures to stay stable enough to operate. Now scientists have found a new technique to get qubits, the basic building
Every planet in our Solar System, including our own, is enclosed in a bubble of solar wind, emanating from our Sun at supersonic speeds. The particles making up this wind create an invisible magnetic field, which protects us from the rest of interstellar space. For decades now, astronomers have been analysing this system of radiation
Butterflies have taken the colour black to an entirely new level. The scales that shingle this insect’s dark wings are nearly on par with the blackest of black coatings made by humans – except they’re only a fifth of the thickness. At just a few microns wide, these natural nanostructures absorb 99.94 percent of
The way oral bacteria sets up shop in our mouths is not unlike how we humans settle into our cities, a new study has found. There’s a reason bacteria are said to live in ‘colonies’, and the more we learn about how these tiny architects build their communities, the more familiar their behavior seems to
A rare freshwater reserve has been discovered underneath the sea off the coast of the South Island of New Zealand, which could help head off future droughts and mitigate the impact of climate change in the coming years. The offshore freshened groundwater (OFG) was discovered through a combination of seismology and electromagnetic wave scanning
Restoring and protecting the world’s soil could absorb more than 5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year – roughly what the US emits annually – new research showed Monday. Last year the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that the world needed to work harder to retain the land’s ability to
If the United Kingdom put aside even a small fraction of its urban land to grow fruit and vegetables, it could quadruple the amount of food the nation produces from current horticulture, according to new research. Using the city of Sheffield as a case study, researchers showed that if just 10 percent of this
Mercury has a reputation, one largely informed by where it exists – closer to the Sun than any other planet in the Solar System. That unforgiving proximity means Mercury gets hot. Really hot. Daytime temperatures on Mercury can reach a scorching 430 °Celsius (800 °Fahrenheit), but they also plummet to –180 °C (–290 °F)
At night, they rise. As the Sun disappears over the horizon, a vast movement takes place in the world’s oceans, as countless sea creatures begin the long trek upwards towards the surface waters above. They do not stay long. When the Sun rises, bringing light and the threat of watchful surface predators, they will
The shape of the earliest building blocks of life dating back as far as 3.5 billion years ago may have been identified, due to a new effort to envisage the molecular arrangements of the planet’s very first proteins. Using computer modelling to simulate the configuration of ancient molecules that no longer exist on Earth,
The proliferation of fake news about the COVID-19 pandemic has been labelled a dangerous “infodemic“. Fake news spreads faster and more easily today through the internet, social media and instant messaging. These messages may contain useless, incorrect or even harmful information and advice, which can hamper the public health response and add to social
Not all dogs cope well when their owners leave them at home. Some get so anxious they end up barking all day long, while others destroy the house and precious objects in their cooped-up state. Still, pinning it down to ‘separation anxiety’ isn’t particularly helpful for pet owners. Instead, new research suggests this is
From our vantage point here on the surface, it might not seem like it sometimes, but we live on a breathtakingly gorgeous world. And it’s incredibly special. Of all the over 4,000 exoplanets scientists have found out there in the wider galaxy so far, none is exactly like Earth. Unfortunately, most of us are
In the heart of a galaxy cluster 200 million light-years away, astronomers have failed to detect hypothetical particles called axions. This places new constraints on how we believe these particles work – but it also has pretty major implications for string theory, and the development of a Theory of Everything that describes how the physical
Sure – after cracking open that refreshing bottle of chilled mountain spring water you have every intention of throwing it into recycling, right? Sorry to say, but just unscrewing the lid unleashes a dusting of tiny plastic particles, according to new research. Just how much of a dusting depends on a variety of factors,
Since the 1970s, a parasitic worm that infects fish, squid, whales, dolphins and sometimes even us has increased globally by 283-fold, according to a new meta analysis. That’s no small amount, and yet because this creature is so tiny and the oceans so vast, it’s somehow evaded our notice until now. Not even the researchers
NASA’s InSight lander, which is currently on the surface of Mars, has faced some unexpected problems during its mission to explore and study the planet. Namely, a digging probe that was built to burrow beneath the surface like a jackhammer got stuck because Mars’ soil is clumpier than scientists expected, Popular Science reports. After
Back when fearsome dinosaurs roamed the land, an unimpressive avian, about the size of a very small duck, somehow survived alongside them – eking out a life along a prehistoric European seashore. It had the long slender legs of a shorebird, and a face like a chicken, according to the Cambridge University researchers, who
The Abel Prize for mathematics was on Wednesday awarded to Israeli-American Hillel Furstenberg and Russian-born Gregory Margulis, both probability experts, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters said. The pair were honoured “for pioneering the use of methods from probability and dynamics in group theory, number theory and combinatorics,” the Academy said in a
A year ago, history was made. The long, painstaking work of scientists around the globe produced the very first direct image of the event horizon of a black hole, a supermassive monster called M87* 55 million light-years away. That glorious, golden, blurry image confirmed many of our ideas about black holes. But the science
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