A talking CGI dinosaur just gave an impassioned speech about climate change to world leaders in a new UN video. Will they take it seriously? The dinosaur, named Frankie according to its Twitter page, bears a strong resemblance to the velociraptors from the film Jurassic World and is voiced by multiple celebrities in different languages, including film star and musician Jack
Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere reached record levels last year, the United Nations said Monday, in a stark warning as Britain’s Boris Johnson admitted being “very worried” about the COP26 summit going awry. The UN’s blunt report on rising global warming comes as Prime Minister Johnson, the COP26 host, said it was “very,
Almost 20 years after researchers first predicted electron quadruplets, evidence of their existence has been shown to occur in experimental setups, representing a brand new state of matter that opens up a whole new field of possibilities in physics. Technically what we’re talking about here is fermionic quadrupling, referring to the type of particles
For the first time, physicists have been able to directly measure one of the ways exploding stars forge the heaviest elements in the Universe. By probing an accelerated beam of radioactive ions, a team led by physicist Gavin Lotay of the University of Surrey in the UK observed the proton-capture process thought to occur in
If you’re wondering just how much scientific consensus there is that humans have caused the climate of our planet to change, we can now put a number on it: 99.9 percent. That doesn’t leave much room for doubt. To get to that figure, researchers looked in detail at a total of 3,000 peer-reviewed studies randomly
Microplastics are turning up everywhere. We’ve found them in rivers, lakes, and oceans; in soil, snow and ice; in fish, whales, and us. In recent years, we’ve even started to measure these tiny particles in the very air we breathe. We still don’t know what, if anything, that’s doing to human health, but researchers
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) sparked worldwide excitement in March as particle physicists reported tantalizing evidence for new physics – potentially a new force of nature. Now, our new result, yet to be peer reviewed, from CERN’s gargantuan particle collider seems to be adding further support to the idea. Our current best theory of
In attempts to understand the very nature of our reality, physicists sure have some mind-bending theories. Like what if information is a tangible and fundamental aspect of physical reality itself – alongside matter and energy? Or, alternatively, what if information is the fifth state of matter? Information is, after all, something all matter and
The Arctic may no longer be the refuge it once was for migrating animals. Scientists now fear that climate change and environmental degradation have turned the yearly journey of numerous species, including birds, butterflies and ungulates, into an ecological trap. Upon reaching their destination, many animals are likely starving, being hunted or dying of
If Earth’s temperature rises by a significant enough margin, we could see a major restructuring of the plankton species living in our oceans. Not only would the diversity of species radically change, but warming oceans could see plankton migrating from the tropics towards the poles, away from waters growing too warm for habitability. In
The standard white cane is an essential aid for getting out and about for many visually impaired people, but to date, it hasn’t offered much in the way of affordable modern updates – which is something that a group of researchers wants to change. Borrowing technology designed for autonomous vehicles, the team has come
The aviation industry is necessary for the world we live in today, but it places a strain on the environment, thanks to emissions from petroleum-based fossil fuel. According to a new study, we could reduce these emissions by up to 68 percent – by switching to a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) derived from plants. Specifically,
The patterns of activity produced by our brains are unique. They’re so unique that we can use brain connectivity maps to identify individuals just as reliably as fingerprints. “An individual’s functional brain connectivity profile is both unique and reliable, similar to a fingerprint, and it is possible, with near-perfect accuracy in many cases, to identify
The fossil of a jaw bone could prove that domesticated dogs lived in Central America as far back as 12,000 years ago, according to a study by Latin American scientists. The dogs, and their masters, potentially lived alongside giant animals, researchers say. A 1978 dig in Nacaome, northeast Costa Rica, found bone remains from
Scientists just broke the record for the coldest temperature ever measured in a lab: They achieved the bone-chilling temperature of 38 trillionths of a degree above -273.15 Celsius by dropping magnetized gas 393 feet (120 meters) down a tower. The team of German researchers was investigating the quantum properties of a so-called fifth state
It’s clear that a nuclear war would be catastrophic for us and our planet – but just how catastrophic? A new study models the impact that smoke from the fall-out of a nuclear conflict would have on our atmosphere – and the results are predictably bleak. The models used here are some of the
When I wake at 3am or so, I’m prone to picking on myself. And I know I’m not the only one who does this. A friend of mine calls 3am thoughts “barbed-wire thinking”, because you can get caught in it. The thoughts are often distressing and punitive. Strikingly, these concerns vaporize in the daylight,
Scientists are getting closer to being able to spot Hawking radiation – that elusive thermal radiation thought to be produced by a black hole’s event horizon. Just understanding the concept of this radiation is tricky though, let alone finding it. A new proposal suggests creating a special kind of quantum circuit to act as a
A single bad El Niño can drive almost 6 million children into severe hunger, a new study has found. This is up to three times as many children that have gone hungry due to the global pandemic, and a clear demonstration of how El Niños can directly impact human wellbeing on a massive scale.
Even if humanity beats the odds and caps global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, seas will rise for centuries to come and swamp cities currently home to half-a-billion people, researchers warned Tuesday. In a world that heats up another half-degree above that benchmark, an additional 200 million of today’s urban dwellers
Physicists have taken the first ever image of a Wigner crystal – a strange honeycomb-pattern material inside another material, made entirely out of electrons. Hungarian physicist Eugene Wigner first theorized this crystal in 1934, but it’s taken more than eight decades for scientists to finally get a direct look at the “electron ice”. The
We now know, to within a tenth of a percent, how long a neutron can survive outside the atomic nucleus before decaying into a proton. This is the most precise measurement yet of the lifespan of these fundamental particles, representing a more than two-fold improvement over previous measurements. This has implications for our understanding of
Exactly how and when people settled in North America is a topic of much fascination for experts, and now a new analysis of ancient documents is shedding light on some lesser known details of this long-contested timeline. A document written by a Milanese friar, dated to around 1345, has been found to contain what
Pre-human history is immensely hard to untangle. There are no early writings from the Neanderthals handily summarizing all the differences between the Australopithecus and the Orrorin. While we’re finding more ancient bones all the time, they’re still very limited, making it difficult to analyze and catalogue fossil discoveries into one of the many species of Homo, Graecopithecus, and all
When the Nobel Prize-winning US physicist Robert Hofstadter and his team fired highly energetic electrons at a small vial of hydrogen at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in 1956, they opened the door to a new era of physics. Until then, it was thought that protons and neutrons, which make up an atom’s nucleus,
In the beginning, there was … well, maybe there was no beginning. Perhaps our Universe has always existed – and a new theory of quantum gravity reveals how that could work. “Reality has so many things that most people would associate with sci-fi or even fantasy,” said Bruno Bento, a physicist who studies the
Some problems are so big, you can’t really see them. Climate change is the perfect example. The basics are simple: the climate is heating up due to fossil fuel use. But the nitty gritty is so vast and complicated that our understanding of it is always evolving. Evolving so rapidly, in fact, that it’s basically
At some point in life, you have probably enjoyed a ‘flow’ state – when you’re so intensely focused on a task or activity, you experience a strong sense of control, a reduced awareness of your environment and yourself, and a minimized sense of the passing of time. It’s also possible to experience ‘team flow’,
For now, life is flourishing on our oxygen-rich planet, but Earth wasn’t always that way – and scientists have predicted that, in the future, the atmosphere will revert back to one that’s rich in methane and low in oxygen. This probably won’t happen for another billion years or so. But when the change comes,
Communities that rely on the Colorado River are facing a water crisis. Lake Mead, the river’s largest reservoir, has fallen to levels not seen since it was created by the construction of the Hoover Dam roughly a century ago. Arizona and Nevada are facing their first-ever mandated water cuts, while water is being released
The more we look into the harsh extremes of Chile’s Atacama Desert, the more we find. Phenomena both mystifying and wonderful, occasionally bordering on alien. But in this incredibly dry place, it wasn’t just the climate that was unforgiving. Its ancient human inhabitants, making do in a parched place not best suited to hosting them,
Archaeologists recently discovered a 2,700-year-old private toilet inside the remains of an ancient royal estate in Jerusalem. It is a rare find, as thousands of years ago pooping in toilets was a luxury only for the elite. Private bathrooms were previously “found in only a very few locations in Israel and Jerusalem,” Yaakov Billig,
Our planet’s air during the preindustrial period was not quite as pristine as you might think, according to new research out of Antarctica. An analysis of six ice core drillings taken from the southernmost continent has revealed a substantial increase in black carbon starting in the 14th century. That’s long before humans in the
Japanese-American scientist Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann of Germany and Giorgio Parisi of Italy on Tuesday won the Nobel Physics Prize for climate models and the understanding of physical systems. The Nobel committee said it was sending a message with its prize announcement just weeks before the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, as the rate
More than five billion people could have difficulty accessing water in 2050, the United Nations warned Tuesday, urging leaders to seize the initiative at the COP26 summit. Already in 2018, 3.6 billion people had inadequate access to water for at least one month per year, said a new report from the UN’s World Meteorological Organization.
Extreme urban heat exposure has dramatically increased since the early 1980s, with the total exposure tripling over the past 35 years. Today, about 1.7 billion people, nearly one-quarter of the global population, live in urban areas where extreme heat exposure has risen, as we show in a new study released Oct. 4, 2021. Most
US scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian on Monday won the Nobel Medicine Prize for discoveries on receptors for temperature and touch. The duo’s research, conducted independently of each other in the late 1990s and 2000s, is being used to develop treatments for a wide range of diseases and conditions, including chronic pain. Patapoutian,
A huge oil spill is killing wildlife and threatening California’s beaches on Monday, in what officials said amounted to an “environmental catastrophe”. Birds and fish had begun washing up on the shore as a 126,000-gallon slick of crude oil choked waters south of Los Angeles, after spewing from a pipeline connected to an offshore rig.
Many of us come away from conversations with strangers feeling that the interaction has been awkward and unwanted on both sides. But what if we’re wrong? A new study suggests that wanting to chat in depth with new people is actually a common feeling. In other words, the next time you’re talking to someone
There’s a chance we’re overestimating how much children understand about the minds of others – in fact, we might be expecting too much of kids at too young an age. For decades now, psychologists have largely agreed that a human child acquires a ‘theory of mind’ during preschool. Experiments indicate that by age five, most
The polar jet stream circles the northern hemisphere, swirling up to nine miles above our heads like a curvy, ethereal crown on the planet. This band of strong wind separates cold air from the Arctic from warmer air to the south, and it’s responsible for transporting weather from west to east across the US, over
Earth is getting dimmer, researchers have found, and climate change is likely to blame. As the oceans get hotter, they appear to be generating fewer bright clouds, which means less sunlight is reflected back into space – and that warms up the planet even more. Researchers measured the reflectance or albedo of Earth by
In this day and age, it’s harder than ever before to disconnect from work. Once a person has signed off for the day, they might feel pressured to reply to an after-hours email that pops up on their phone, even if it’s not urgent. A new psychology study by researchers from the London Business School
Research exploring how people forget things appears to have unintentionally stimulated better memory among its participants, a new study suggests. The experiment was originally conducted in 2012 and was supposed to explore the role of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in voluntary forgetting. While the 2012 experiment successfully demonstrated forgetting was something actively
When it comes to the weather report, it’s not just tomorrow’s weather that meteorologists try to discern. As well as long-term forecasts, weather models are often tasked with predicting meteorological conditions over the next hour or so, known as ‘nowcasting’. Over at Google-backed artificial intelligence company DeepMind, researchers have now made a major step forward
A cave chamber sealed off by sand for some 40,000 years has been discovered in Vanguard Cave in Gibraltar – a finding that could reveal more about the Neanderthals who lived in the area around that time. “Given that the sand sealing the chamber was [40,000] years old, and that the chamber was therefore older, it
Younger generations are going to grow up in a very different world to that of their parents – and through no fault of their own. Compared to babies born in 1960, a series of new models suggests children born after 2010 will experience four times as many extreme climate events in their lifetimes on average,
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