Scientists studying the pattern of circadian rhythms have found that one central body clock could be controlling several others at the same time. By examining fruit flies – which, like humans, have several circadian clocks affecting the rhythm their daily biological processes – researchers have found evidence of a single ‘master’ clock that leads all other internal clocks related
Month: May 2017
The Black Death tore through Europe in the years 1346–1353, killing as many as 200 million people as the deadliest plague known to humans carved its path through history. Now, an analysis of ancient ice dating back through those dark days reveals an unexpected quirk of the plague – and researchers say the discovery provides
Scientists have found new evidence to support the idea that matter vanishes completely when it falls into a supermassive black hole, suggesting Einstein was right about these unquenchable voids lurking throughout the Universe. The findings show that black hole event horizons – the invisible barriers beyond which nothing can escape the intense pull of gravitational
More than 99 percent of your genetic information is exactly the same as every other person on the planet. Your genes determine your skin colour, sex, and hair colour and whether or not you have certain genetic diseases. But it’s in that less than 1 percent that things get interesting. Specific genetic variations allow some of
Changing your meal times could be enough to reset one of your internal body clocks, researchers have found, giving us new insight into the relationship between when we eat and our body’s circadian rhythms. While previous studies have spotted a connection between nutrition, metabolism, and circadian rhythms in the human body, this new research pins
Researchers in Russia say they’ve developed and tested the world’s first blockchain that won’t be vulnerable to encryption-breaking attacks from future quantum computers. If the claims are verified, the technique could be a means of protecting the vast amounts of wealth invested in fast-growing cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum – which are safe from today’s
A new report released by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) reveals that solar jobs in the US (and other nations) are expanding quickly. As of November 2016, the American solar industry employed 260,077 workers. This is an increase of 24.5 percent from 2015, with a growth rate that is 17 times faster than the United
If you’ve never felt weird about speaking, singing, yelling, or even breathing through your mouth, be prepared to feel really grossed out by all of those things when you see what your body has to go through to make all that happen. Australian musician Tom Thum does the honours by visiting ear, nose, and throat
Our current understanding of the Universe states that it’s governed by four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetic, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. But there are hints of a fifth force of nature, and if it exists, we’d not only be able to fill the remaining holes in Einstein’s general relativity – we’d have to
The Great Barrier Reef can no longer be saved by existing plans to protect the ecological site, experts have warned, saying that efforts should shift to a lesser, backup plan of maintaining the reef’s “ecological function” instead. Scientists have told an Australian government committee that the current strategy to protect the reef – the Reef
First developed almost three decades ago, the MP3 format made large digital audio files relatively small and easy to pass across an internet that was largely accessed via a very slow (by today’s standards) phone dial-up connection. Now the companies behind the file compression format, Technicolor and Fraunhofer IIS, have decided to end their support
Summer soon arrives, and the big planets Jupiter and Saturn will entertain evening onlookers, Venus will distract morning dog walkers and Mars starts a season-long hiatus. Catch a fattening, waxing moon as it approaches the bright Jupiter (-2.2 magnitude) in the southern sky on the evening of June 2 and then scooting past the planet June 3. Our lunar neighbour sails over the star Spica on
Still waiting patiently for quantum computing to bring about the next revolution in digital processing power? We might now be a little closer, with a discovery that could help us build quantum computers at mass scale. Scientists have refined a technique using diamond defects to store information, adding silicon to make the readouts more accurate
This Wednesday, NASA will officially announce its intention to launch a probe that will dip inside the Sun’s atmosphere, calling it the first ever mission to “touch the Sun”. The Solar Probe Plus mission will have to cope with temperatures and radiation unlike any other probe, but the data it will collect in the process
A new study has found that the average person is holding onto 13 secrets, five of which they’ve never told a living soul. And it’s not the secret itself that will haunt you – it’s all the mental energy you spend thinking about it. Scientists have found that the burden of having secrets can affect
Scared of a future where you can no longer discern if you’re dealing with a human or a computer? A team of Australian researchers have come up with what they call the Anti-AI AI. The wearable prototype device is designed to identify synthetic speech and alert the user that the voice they’re listening doesn’t belong to
What is it about a creative work such as a painting or piece of music that elicits our awe and admiration? Is it the thrill of being shown something new, something different, something the artist saw that we did not? As Pablo Picasso put it: “Others have seen what is and asked why. I have
In the middle of two of Greenland’s hottest ever summers researchers detected for the first time a build-up of ice slipping down the length of one of the island’s glaciers in a single wave. In a never before seen melting process, scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California detected a pulse of ice
There are a lot of weird words you learn to pronounce and spell if you pay much attention to health, science and the environment. By the time Iceland’s spectacular volcanic eruption simmered down in 2010, for instance, “Eyjafjallajokull” was as familiar as “Mount Etna”. You should hear “Papahanaumokuakea” roll off the tongue of Juliet Eilperin, who
A star which normally would have been expected to end in a supernova surprised astronomers by going out with fizzle rather than a bang, leading them to suspect they’d just witnessed the rather quiet birth of a black hole. While researchers have long understood how black holes can form from the collapse of massive stars,
In 2015, a record heat wave roasted Southern California. At the time, Nick Obradovich was a graduate student at the University of California at San Diego. During the day, he said, everyone on campus turned sluggish and grumpy. Sundown brought little relief. “For a number of nights in the heat wave, I was lying in bed with lots of
Knowledge is power, the old saying goes, but it isn’t much use if it’s hidden away – so we’re excited to learn that the US Library of Congress is making 25 million of its records available for free, for anyone to access online. The bibliographic data sets, like digital library cards, cover music, books, maps,
We humans think we’re so special. To determine what sets us apart from the rest of the animal world, scientists investigate features that might be uniquely human, such as self-awareness or language. But every now and then, a new finding throws the narrative, leaving us to wonder what those truly unique human traits really are.
If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you learned to read as a child in school, but in many countries around the world, illiteracy prevents millions of adults from being able to decipher the written word. Now scientists have discovered that when people learn to read in their adult years, significant changes take place
For years, tourists visiting the picturesque Uluwatu temple in Bali have been warned about a local gang of marauding macaques who expertly snatch loose items you might have about your person, and then barter them back for food. Sunglasses, flip-flops, hats, and even jewellery – everything is fair game, and temple staff have become experts at
While the world marvels at the seemingly unstoppable growth of digital cryptocurrency Bitcoin, its closest rival, Ethereum, has enjoyed an even more unbelievable rise in 2017. Spurred on in part by investors’ unshakeable belief in Bitcoin, Ethereum – which currently ranks as the world’s second largest cryptocurrency in terms of market value – has actually
The rise of Bitcoin has become undeniable: while it was once notoriously relegated to the darkest corners of the web, its ascension to become one of the world’s most popular cryptocurrencies has been rapid. It’s become even more difficult to deny in the last few months. In 2016, Bitcoin surged past the value of all bank-issued currency. It’s
Just when we thought we had Jupiter all figured out, NASA’s Juno spacecraft reveals new results that challenge almost every assumption we’ve made about the gas giant. The first, said Juno’s principal investigator said Juno’s principal investigator from Juno’s initial two flybys back in August 2016 describe giant cyclones, a super powerful magnetic field, and weird
If we used DNA like we use magnetic tape to store data today, it’s theoretically possible to store all of the information humans have ever recorded in a space roughly the size of a double garage. Sharing their goals with MIT Technology Review this week, Microsoft Research computer architects say they want to start storing their data
For the first time, scientists have found what appears to be an extra layer of plate tectonics lurking in Earth’s mantle under east Asia, and it could finally explain a mysterious series of earthquakes between Fiji and Australia. Evidence of a huge slab of ancient Earth has been imaged under the tiny Pacific island of
Researchers have completed the world’s first scan of a living cell membrane down to a nanoscale level, revealing details that could finally resolve a longstanding debate on how they function. The technique used to create this incredible image could fundamentally change how nanoscale structures are studied in living things. The research was carried out
Perhaps one of the most intriguing and interesting phenomena in quantum physics is what Einstein referred to as a “spooky action at a distance” – also known as quantum entanglement. This quantum effect is behind what makes quantum computers work, as quantum bits (qubits) generally rely on entanglement to process data and information. It’s also the working theory
The first thing you’d see if a nuclear bomb exploded nearby is a flood of light so bright, you may think the Sun blew up. Wincing from temporary blindness, you’d scan the horizon and see an orange fireball. The gurgling flames would rise and darken into a purple-hued column of black smoke, which would turn in
It might have just pushed back its manned mission to Mars, but NASA just fast-tracked a planned journey to 16 Psyche – an asteroid made almost entirely of nickel-iron metal. Estimated to contain $10,000 quadrillion in iron alone, if we could somehow mine Psyche’s minerals and bring them back to Earth, it would collapse our
We are closer than ever to producing holograms that’ll make your inner Star Wars nerd hyperventilate into a brown paper bag. In the latest iteration of holographic technology, scientists have developed the world’s thinnest holographic material. At 1,000 times thinner than a human hair, it’s tiny enough to be incorporated into everyday devices, such as
Our brains are pretty good at filling in the blanks when it comes to our sense of perception – often to the point we have a mental movie of an entire event before it even finishes unfolding. New research has shown this ‘mind’s eye’ prediction of future motion occurs at a higher speed than in
It didn’t take long for detractors of the Dakota Access Pipeline to have their fears met, with reports surfacing that the facility sprung two leaks in March, leaking more than 100 gallons (378 litres) of oil before it was contained. While both leaks were relatively small, and were cleaned up before affecting nearby waterways and
It was 40 years ago today, on 25 May 1977, that Star Wars first burst onto cinema screens, and from that time the world changed for the better. Star Wars introduced the world to Jedi knights with lightsabers, an evil empire building a moon size planet killer weapon, a rebel alliance with X-wing fighters and
If you ever had the misfortune of being hunted by a snake, in spite of everything, you could consider yourself lucky – at least it’s not an entire nest of serpents teaming up to run you down and devour your flesh. While scientists have never really been sure if snakes consciously coordinate their hunts – or
1. Lungs don’t just facilitate respiration – they also make blood. Mammalian lungs produce more than 10 million platelets (tiny blood cells) per hour, which equates to the majority of platelets circulating the body. 2. It is mathematically possible to build an actual time machine – what’s holding us back is finding materials that can physically
Literature professor Simon John James and physicist Richard Bower were both involved in curating the exhibition, Time Machines – the past, the future, and how stories take us there. Their conversations quickly revealed to them the many, wildly various, meanings of “time travel”. Here, they discuss how time travelling in literary and scientific terms might,
New research has expanded on the discovery of a strange phenomenon called blackbody force, showing that the effect of radiation on particles surrounding massive objects can be magnified by the space that warps around them. The find could affect how we model the formation of stars and planets, and even help us finally detect a theoretical form of
By the end of this week, it’s a good bet that the world’s best player of the ancient Chinese board game Go will no longer be a human being. The Chinese Go champion, 19-year-old Ke Jie – ranked number one in the world – was just narrowly beaten by Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo in the first of a
Scientists have proposed that an unknown type of planetary object has been lurking in our Universe this whole time, and it might have even given rise to Earth as we know it. Called a synestia, this doughnut-shaped object is thought to form when one planet slams into another, and if made official by the astronomy
The first part of a now-viral video shows a sea lion swimming near a dock in Steveston, a seaside community on Canada’s western coast. The sound of cameras clicking can be heard in the background as onlookers marvelled at its size. The animal swims closer to the dock after grabbing a piece of food that
For the first time, Chinese engineers have successfully extracted natural gas from icy deposits beneath the South China Sea. Just last year, China’s government announced that geologists had found new reserves of methane hydrate – also known as ‘flammable ice’ – and now it looks like they’ve managed to harvest some of it, bringing the world
The physiology of Himalayan Sherpas has evolved over thousands of years to help them become virtually superhuman mountain climbers, nimbly guiding and assisting others who seek to ascend the extreme heights of Mount Everest. But what is it in their biology that enables them to overcome the hypoxia (oxygen deficiency) and altitude sickness that plague
For the first time, physicists have demonstrated that a universe like ours with three spatial dimensions could actually host a naked singularity – an event so intense, the laws of physics would fall apart. Until now, researchers have only been able to place naked singularities in five-dimensional universes, but by proving that they could theoretically
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