Here on Earth, we pay quite a lot of attention to the sun. It’s visible to us, after all, and central to our lives. But it is only one of the billions of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. It’s also quite small compared to other stars – most are at least eight times
Our planet is in a tight spot. We’re not hitting the targets we know we need to hit, and we’re breaking all the wrong kinds of records. What’s it going to take for us to get out of this mess? Researchers have long known the answers, at least on a purely scientific front: we
SpaceX is poised to launch its first astronauts into space this spring: Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. Their flight on the company’s Crew Dragon spaceship will mark the first time an American spacecraft has carried NASA astronauts since the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011. Behnken and Hurley’s liftoff is expected to launch a
The first-ever direct image of a black hole‘s event horizon was a truly impressive feat of scientific ingenuity. But it was extremely difficult to achieve, and the resulting image was relatively low-resolution. Techniques and technology will be refined, and it’s expected that future direct images of black holes will improve with time. In September
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been in orbit around Mars for almost 14 years. It carries a variety of instruments with it, including the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) instrument. That instrument has collected thousands of images of Mars. CRISM’s main purpose is to created detailed maps of the surface mineralogy
Many think of dogs as loyal, love-filled companions, and cats as cute beasts that tolerate us – but we might have to rethink that a little. According to 2019 research, cats can get just as bonded to their human friends as dogs do. This may not come as a huge surprise to those who
Sightings of Bigfoot have surged in recent days, after traffic cameras in Washington state appear to capture a mysterious creature. Footage from the Washington State Department of Transportation revealed an ape-like human walking on its foot across a snowy field. The video, which was posted on Twitter, sent the Internet into a meltdown, as conspiracy
Over the years, Star Trek has been responsible for inspiring real world innovations from tablet computers to needleless injection devices and real time translators. Now, the science fiction franchise appears to have influenced Space Force, the US military’s newest branch, in its choice of logo: a symbol resembling an arrowhead ringed by an orbiting object
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. The official investigation concluded that the plane most likely ended up at the bottom of the southern Indian Ocean, after being hijacked shortly after take-off. However, no wreckage was ever found in the
For the first time, scientists have produced snake venom toxins in the lab, opening up a much-needed path for developing drugs and venom antidotes that doesn’t involve having to breed and milk real-life snakes. The toxins have been produced through mini glands called organoids, following a process adapted from growing simplified human organs –
According to legend, the devil once took a walk down the side of a volcano in southern Italy, each step preserved forever in solid rock. The tracks are known as the “Ciampate del Diavolo“‘ or “Devil’s Trail” – but new details reveal a less diabolical yet far more interesting story on how they came to
Artists like to anthropomorphise stars as pretty ladies, but in truth, they can be violent bastards. And astronomers have found a particularly bloodthirsty example in a binary star 3,000 light-years away, in which a small dead star slowly and periodically strips its binary companion of gas. This type of interaction is known as a
The coronavirus epidemic is sweeping through China like wildfire with an estimated 18 million people in three cities under quarantine. The deadly virus, which triggers pneumonia-like symptoms, was first detected last year in Wuhan City, Hubei Province. But with an increasing number of coronavirus infections being confirmed outside of China’s border, concerns are growing for
There are some awe-inspiring secrets hiding under the ocean, and scientists diving off the coast of the Philippines have just found a new one. Below the waves, 60 metres (200 feet) down, the ocean floor is bubbling like champagne… with vast amounts of carbon dioxide. For once, humans aren’t the cause of these emissions.
In an effort to trace a pathway from non-evolving organic chemistry to the first truly living cells, scientists from Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts have proposed those early building blocks contained little-known nucleic acids that aren’t part of any modern genome. The question of how we evolved genomic libraries encoded in DNA that are
If the dead could talk, they’d probably have a lot to say. Still, it’s pretty darn tough when you can only make one sound and you’ve lost your tongue. Under these unforgiving conditions, the 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy Nesyamun should be forgiven for merely grumbling out an “eeeeyhh”. After several millennia of not making a
The Doomsday Clock has jumped closer to midnight than it’s ever been in its 73-year history, indicating looming apocalyptic threats. The clock is a symbol created at the dawn of the Cold War. Its time is set annually by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a group founded by researchers who helped build the first
Mysterious fossils that had been sitting idle for decades in a Belgian museum have just been identified, and they’re something wonderful. According to new analysis, these are fungal structures dating between 715 and 810 million years ago – making them some of the earliest fungus specimens ever recorded. And, with the discovery, the history
The devastating volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE – which wiped out settlements including Pompeii and Herculaneum in blasts of molten rock and ash – may have turned the brains of some of its sorry victims to glass, a new study concludes. Analysis of one skull, recovered from the Herculaneum site in
Professor Hawking, who passed away in 2018, was a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was the director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge before his death. His scientific work included a collaboration with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularity theorems in the framework of general relativity and the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation. He was also the first to set
It’s been just over a year since China’s Chang’e 4 lander and Yutu 2 rover landed on the far side of the Moon. All this time, they’ve been studying the Von Kármán crater and sharing the results through a solitary link – the Queqiao relay satellite that bounces signals to Earth. As part of
In 2015, a team of scientists from the United States and China traveled to Tibet to gather samples of Earth’s oldest glacial ice. Earlier this month, they published a paper on the pre-print server bioRxiv detailing their discovery of 28 new virus groups in the 15,000-year-old ice – and warning that climate change could free
During a devastating and unprecedented bushfire season, Australians in Sydney and the surrounding central coast were practically begging for rain. A “bonanza” of deadly spiders was not exactly part of that request, and yet experts at the Australian Reptile Park strongly suspect that’s what’s coming. “We are issuing a message of warning to the
Betelgeuse keeps getting dimmer and everyone is wondering what exactly that means. The star will go supernova at the end of its life, but that’s not projected to happen for tens of thousands of years or so. So what’s causing the dimming? Villanova University astronomers Edward Guinan and Richard Wasatonic were the first to
Snakes – the Chinese krait and the Chinese cobra – may be the original source of the newly discovered coronavirus that has triggered an outbreak of a deadly infectious respiratory illness in China this winter. The illness was first reported in late December 2019 in Wuhan, a major city in central China, and has
The concrete global treaty to protect our planet’ atmosphere, known as the Montreal Protocol, is beginning to show cracks. A few years after a mysterious spike in a known ozone-destroying chemical, another of the protocol’s banned substances is also on the rise. Despite global promises to dial down the use of hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) –
Scientists continue to push the boundaries of what cameras are capable of – like a newly developed phase-sensitive compressed ultrafast photography (pCUP) device, which is capable of snapping an impressive one trillion frames every second. That’s mind-boggling, but it’s not a record, because some of the same researchers developed a camera that can take
Self-proclaimed ET enthusiast Scott Waring took to his etdatabase.com site to speculate about the supposed ISS UFO encounter. He said: “I was looking at the latest photos taken by the space station today and noticed a glowing oval UFO moving around in the distance. “The UFO would go up and down and then move to
Pakistan residents were left bemused as a black O-shaped cloud was spotted over a city. The phenomenon was seen floating over Lahore on Tuesday and was dubbed the “evil cloud” by some. Once the footage was posted to social media a slew of theories of the phenomenon were suggested. Many viewers simply took to posting gifs
Thank you, evolution. Source link
Black holes are cosmic objects of such fearsome density that even light cannot escape their extreme gravitational clutches. But just because they’re invisible, doesn’t mean we can’t find ways to observe them. This time, astronomers have mapped the contours of a supermassive vortex in the host galaxy IRAS 13224-3809, found in the Centaurus constellation some
You didn’t misread that headline. People have been putting soy sauce on their testicles to see whether their nether parts can detect the salty condiment, and recording their reactions for the benefit of social media, particularly Tik Tok. How did we get here in the year of our lord 2020, you ponder? In short,
Throughout its life, our planet has been pummelled by countless asteroids and comets – even more so than the crater-ridden Moon. Today, thanks to Earth’s continually changing surface, there are remarkably few scars left to tell the tale. Australia’s relatively stable and ancient landscape not only harbours potentially the largest of those blemishes, scientists
A new SARS-like virus has killed six people in China and infected nearly 300 others. Fears have been mounting that the virus will spread during the massive annual Lunar New Year migration. A host of Asian countries and the United States have introduced new screening checks for passengers from Wuhan, the Chinese city identified as
We all take a lot of breaths every day – it’s sort of essential to living – so the science of what we’re actually taking into our lungs is hugely important. That air might contain two to three times more in the way of fungal spore fragments than previously thought, according to a new study.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. No wreckage has ever been found and it is somewhat a mystery as to what happened to it. The official investigation concluded that it most likely crashed into the southern Indian Ocean, west
A serious cardiac arrest back in 2012 resulted in a man, who just gave his name as Steven, dying for several minutes. Steven said he was clinically dead for several minutes before the paramedics arrived, and during that time he had otherworldly visions. In this ‘other world’, Steven claimed he saw rolling, lush green meadows,
The world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope is officially open for business according to Xinhua, China’s official state-run media. The FAST Radio Telescope saw fist light in 2016 but has been undergoing testing and commissioning since then. FAST stands for Five-hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope. FAST’s nickname is Tianyan, which means “Eye of the
Imagine that you roll out of bed onto a living fungus floor. The walls and ceiling – heck, the whole apartment building, down to the plumbing and electrical systems – are made of fungus too. Wood and concrete are remnants of the distant past; this entire city, from the schools to the stores to
The British passenger liner famously sunk to the North Atlantic Ocean seabed in the early hours of April 15, 1912, after colliding with an iceberg during its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, with more than 1,500 people losing their lives as a result. But some have refused to accept the official story as fact,
China is going all out in its nation-wide bid to tackle plastic waste. Several years ago, the country announced it would no longer be accepting the rest of the world’s recycling. This week, the nation took an even bigger step towards ridding its vast expanse of waste. In the next five years, the state plans
A 120 million-year-old fossil is helping paleontologists to bridge the ‘phantom’ evolutionary leap between feathered dinosaurs and modern birds. Dubbed “the dancing dragon”, or Wulong bohaiensis, this newly described species is a strange mix between bird and dinosaur, ancient and new. First discovered in China more than a decade ago, in one of the
The basis of the claims come from the predictions of Saint Malachy, the Archbishop of Armagh, to whom several miracles were attributed to in the 12th-century. In 1139, Malachy went to Rome from Ireland to give an account of his affairs, when he reportedly received a strange vision about the future, including the names of 112
Waring took to his etdatabase.com blog to expound on his theory about the purported extraterrestrial encounter. He said: “I found a glowing UFO near a module bringing supplies to the International Space Station (ISS).” The alien life conspiracy theorist proceeds to zoom-in on the space anomaly to get a clearer look at the bizarrely coloured
Once, Oliver Henderson, reportedly told his wife that he flew a plane loaded with debris, along with several small alien bodies, from Roswell to Wright Field. The children of another pilot, World War 2 ace Marion “Black Mac” Magruder, their father claimed to have seen a living alien at Wright Field in 1947 and told
They look amazing. All across the internet, you can find them: images of rocks, stones, and pebbles assembled into elaborate, sometimes gravity-defying stacks. These eye-catching photos, usually framed against stunning natural backdrops, evoke an almost mystical sense of calmness when we see them. But there’s a dark side to their contrived wonder, researchers warn.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, as the saying goes. And it seems that could be true of Homo sapiens as a whole. Just as our activities today drive other animals to extinction, so too, new research suggests, did those of human ancestors millions of years ago. By examining the fossil record in East
Gravitational waves are caused by calamitous events in the Universe. Neutron stars that finally merge after circling each other for a long time can create them, and so can two black holes that collide with each other. But sometimes there’s a burst of gravitational waves that doesn’t have a clear cause. One such burst
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