The Egyptian government is hailing the discovery of more than 20 wooden coffins as “one of the largest and most important” archaeological finds in the past few years. The coffins were found in Assasif, a necropolis on the west bank of the Nile River. Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities tweeted images of the “intact and
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. The families of those on board have been denied closure as the real story as to what happened remains a mystery. However, experts have suggested it could have been machines, not people that
Nostradamus was a French astrologer, physician and foreseer, who is best known for his book “Les Propheties”, a collection of 942 poetic quatrains allegedly predicting future events published more than 500 years ago. In the years since the publication of his prophecies, Nostradamus has attracted many supporters, who credit him with having accurately predicted several major world events. Among some
The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil’s Triangle, is a loosely defined region in the North Atlantic Ocean, where a number of aircraft and ships have disappeared. The vicinity of the Bermuda Triangle is among the most heavily travelled shipping lanes in the world, with ships frequently crossing through it for ports in the Americas, Europe and the Caribbean islands. Popular culture has
“That is what NASA just did – the space agency’s probe just drove past it.” This bizarre image reportedly first surfaced in 2015, but Waring maintains NASA, however, never acknowledged it. Waring claims, without foundation, how the original source for the Mars photo “disappeared” from NASA’s Curiosity website. “I had to find this today to
Exoplanets. They’re very small, and very far away. We usually have to detect them by indirect means. Direct images are rare, and not very detailed. Even working out what’s in their atmosphere is difficult. So you’d think trying to analyse their interiors would definitely be in the too-hard basket. But you’d be wrong. A
A pair of mathematicians from Australia and France have devised an alternative way to multiply numbers together, while solving an algorithmic puzzle that has perplexed some of the greatest math minds for almost half a century. For most of us, the way we multiply relatively small numbers is by remembering our times tables –
SpaceX is really kicking things into high-gear with its Starlink network. The creation of this satellite constellation is central to Elon Musk’s vision of providing high-bandwidth internet access to a global market. Deployment began in earnest back in May with the launch of the first sixty Starlink satellites, with plans to launch an additional
In the lower Ordovician period, 480 million years ago, many trilobites died strangely on the seafloor. Their fossils have recorded it: nose to bottom, in orderly lines, their long spines touching each other – as though carefully queuing, or painstakingly trekking from one location to another. Why they were so arranged has long been
Like an old time carnival show, the Paris Zoological Park’s latest attraction promises a shocking mystery. Dubbed ‘the blob’, the zoo is hoping to draw in the crowds by featuring a goo-like brainless creature with no mouth and hundreds of sexes, which displays an ability to survive – even thrive – when dissected. While
In August, an amateur astronomer detected our Solar System’s second known interstellar visitor, a comet later dubbed 2I/Borisov. Almost immediately, scientists across the globe began training their sights on the object — and now, one has used data collected by the Hubble space telescope to create a stunning video of the interstellar comet. On
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is well aware of a potentially fatal flaw in the company’s plan to use a Moon base as a refueling station, but he’s still hopeful they’ll find the carbon needed to create fuel if they dig deep enough. “Big challenge for Starship refueling on the Moon is finding sources of carbon,” he tweeted on Monday. “Probably
Scientists have rediscovered an ancient city of the Khmer Empire, hidden for centuries by the lush jungle topography of modern-day Cambodia. Mahendraparvata, sometimes dubbed the ‘lost city of Cambodia’, was an early capital city of the Khmer Empire, a Hindu-Buddhist regime of Southeast Asia that lasted from the 9th to 15th centuries of the common
If you’ve ever studied biology, you’ll be familiar with mitochondria – the organelles often referred to as the ‘powerhouse of the cell’. And you’ll probably be aware that they’re often compared to traditional AA batteries, with each organelle operating as a single unit. But an important new study suggests they’re actually more like the
If you travel to the outskirts of a town called Pulpí in Spain, you’ll find an abandoned silver mine. Descend about 50 metres (164 feet) into it, and you’ll enter a strange, shimmering room quite unlike anywhere else on Earth. This incredible natural space is the Geode of Pulpí, the closest thing in real
Although humans might seem adaptable on Earth, outside of our perfect temperature-, gravity-, and radiation-controlled planet, we’re pretty fragile. Squishy even. So to help us deal with the harsh conditions of the rest of the Solar System, NASA has just unveiled a new and improved spacesuit that astronauts will wear to the Moon as part
NASA and the DLR are making some progress with the Mole. The Mole has been stuck for months now, and NASA/DLR have been working to get it unstuck. After removing the mole’s housing to get a better look at it with InSight’s cameras, the team came up with a plan. The team is using
We’ve just hit another major milestone in the shift towards renewables: in the third quarter of 2019, the UK generated more electricity from renewable sources than it did from fossil fuel power stations, an industry report says. If confirmed, that means the combined energy produced from wind farms, solar panels, biomass and hydropower plants
The theory of evolution by natural selection, first formulated in Darwin’s book “On the Origin of Species” in 1859, is the process by which organisms change over time as a result of changes in heritable physical or behavioural traits. Changes that allow an organism to better adapt to its environment will help it survive and have
When it comes to space, there’s a problem with our human drive to go all the places and see all the things. A big problem. It’s, well, space. It’s way too big. Even travelling at the maximum speed the Universe allows, it would take us years to reach our nearest neighbouring star. But another
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already re-configuring the world in conspicuous ways. Data drives our global digital ecosystem, and AI technologies reveal patterns in data. Smartphones, smart homes, and smart cities influence how we live and interact, and AI systems are increasingly involved in recruitment decisions, medical diagnoses, and judicial verdicts. Whether this scenario is utopian
Did you know some cetaceans use “nets” to catch their food? Like humpback whales. They’ll dive down and swim in a ring around their prey, blowing out bubbles as they go. That rising ring forms a column that traps fish, allowing other whales in the group to swim up from below, mouths agape, through the bubble
We’ve spent decades and billions of dollars to answer one simple question: is there life on Mars? But according to an opinion piece for Scientific American by former NASA scientist Gilbert Levin, we may already have learned we’re not alone in the Universe during an experiment Levin led for NASA’s Viking mission to Mars in
Typhoon Hagibis proved to be extraordinarily devastating for northern Japan when it struck this weekend, unleashing more than three feet of rain in just 24 hours in some locations, causing widespread flash flooding as well as river flooding. The storm has killed at least 58, according to the Japanese public broadcaster NHK. In addition,
Scientists have come up with an innovative way to try and counter the massive amounts of carbon dioxide we’re still pumping into the air, even as a climate crisis unfolds around us: turning that CO2 into a useful organic polymer. The newly developed method sucks CO2 molecules out of the air, without expending much
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. The missing Boeing 777 has not been located to this day and there are many theories as to what happened to it. The investigation naturally looked into those who could be responsible for
We’ve been hearing a lot about interstellar comet 2I/Borisov after its amazing discovery on 30 August 2019. Now the first analysis has hit peer-reviewed publication, landing a description of the comet in the prestigious pages of Nature Astronomy. If you’ve been following along, you will be familiar with the findings, posted to preprint server
Antarctic ice shelves are being destabilised by hidden, upside-down ‘rivers’ of warm water that course below the shelves and melt them from underneath, new research shows. Scientists have known about these basal channels in ice shelves for a number of years now, but the circumstances behind their formation weren’t well understood. Now, we’ve discovered more
A black hole flickering in the Milky Way galaxy has been filmed in unprecedented detail, with a new high frame-rate technique that is helping us understand the wild dynamics of these most enigmatic objects. The black hole is named MAXI J1820+070, discovered in 2018, roughly 7 times the mass of the Sun and just
A kazoo might seem a world away from the spoken word. But our ability to produce its buzzing, Donald Duck-like sound at will was key in us ever developing the ability to speak at all. And while our capacity for speech is unique, my colleague Robert Shumaker and I have used the novelty instrument
Orbiting is par for the course in our universe. The Earth orbits the Sun, the Moon orbits the Earth, and more than 50 galaxies orbit the Milky Way, the biggest of those being the Large Magellanic Cloud. Now, new research indicates that at least six of the galaxies currently orbiting the Milky Way actually used to
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
In the sci-fi universe of “Star Trek”, spaceships with warp drives can zoom past the normally impenetrable limit of light speed, or about 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometers per second) in a vacuum. This trouncing of theoretical physics makes reaching alien-rich planets across the galaxy seem like just a convenient TV-commercial-break-length trip away.
When the end of the world comes, how will you tweet? Thankfully for those of us who didn’t have a plan ready, Motherboard reports that software developer Virgil Dupras has built an operating system — Collapse OS — that can be run on parts salvaged from a post-apocalyptic hellscape. The idea is to find
We know that Leonardo da Vinci was a genius who was well ahead of his time, but even the great man himself might have struggled to believe that engineers would still be marvelling over his creations some 500 years later. Engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have analysed a bridge designed by
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. Dubbed a “dubious and far-fetched story” by Channel 5’s ‘Flight MH370’, an author unveiled a sensational theory in the 2019 book ‘The Hunt for MH370’. Journalist Ean Higgins accused Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah
With the discovery of 20 more moons orbiting Saturn, the ringed planet has overtaken Jupiter as host to the most moons in the Solar system. Saturn now has 82 known moons, whereas Jupiter has a paltry 79. Announced at the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Centre by a team of astronomers from the Carnegie
Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, described the horror of the authoritarian regime of Gilead. In this theocracy, self-preservation was the best people could hope for, being powerless to kick against the system. But her sequel, The Testaments, raises the possibility that individuals, with suitable luck, bravery and cleverness, can fight back. But can
A strange, undulating blob found in the waters of Ørstafjorden in Norway has turned out to be a rare sight: a giant mass of squid eggs. The otherworldly ball, floating mysteriously in the darkness of the fjord, was discovered by captain Nils Baadnes and diver Ronald Raasch with the research vessel REV Ocean. It wasn’t
You might not know the term ‘oobleck’, but it’s highly likely you came across it as a kid. Also known as a non-Newtonian fluid, the strange material sometimes behaves like a liquid, and sometimes acts like a solid. It’s usually made of corn-starch and water, and it produces hours of fun for children everywhere. Punch
It’s been a busy week for astrophysicist Michel Mayor. On Tuesday, he won a Nobel Prize for his work detecting exoplanets. Then, on Wednesday, he crushed the dreams of anyone hoping to one day colonize those planets. “If we are talking about exoplanets,” Mayor told Agence France-Presse when asked about off-world colonization, “things should be clear: we will not migrate
There’s a fish that can live on land. Georgia officials want you to kill it immediately. A northern snakehead fish was caught earlier this month in a Gwinnett County pond, according to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ Wildlife Resources Division, and it’s the first time the species has been reported in Georgia waters, the
Unlike some creatures, humans can’t regenerate their limbs – but a new study suggests we do have a hidden ‘salamander-like’ ability to regrow cartilage in the body, a finding which could help treatment for joint injuries and even arthritis. Using mass spectrometry techniques on 18 specimens, researchers were able to identify a mechanism by
Ninety-nine per cent of all freshwater ice on Earth is sitting on top of Greenland and Antarctica, and each year, a little more of it melts into the ocean. Normally, it would take hundreds to thousands of years for it all to melt away. But what if something happened that caused a massive global melt
Those Knightscope security robots may not be so great at their jobs. When a woman in a park near Los Angeles saw people fighting and tried to summon help via a police robot patrolling nearby, the robot merely told her to “step out of the way” and continued along its pre-determined route, according to NBC
If you’re a millennial who likes to indulge in a bit of retail therapy to cope with anxiety over the climate crisis, we’ve got some bad news. New research says children of the ’80s to mid-’90s who buy less stuff have less psychological distress and a better sense of wellbeing compared to materialistic but well-intentioned
The Moon is a pretty inhospitable place for humans. It’s all dry and dusty, and there’s no atmosphere for us to breathe. But there is a bunch of oxygen: The lunar regolith – the crumbly top layer of dirt and rubble on the Moon’s surface – is loaded with it. And now scientists have figured
NASA astronomers have used data from the Voyager probes to measure the bustle of particles rippling at the very edge of our Solar System, and discovered the pressure in the distant borderlands of our star is higher than they expected. The results suggest “that there are some other parts to the pressure that aren’t
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