Changes in the flow of iron around Earth’s outer core are thought to contribute to very small fluctuations in the length of our days. Now researchers say the sloshing of our planet’s core could also be used for potential earthquake warnings, possibly even years ahead. You’ve probably never noticed variations in the length of
Month: October 2017
Happy Halloween! If you’re a regular reader, you know that science isn’t all quantum entanglement – sometimes it’s spooky action at a distance. For your delight, we’ve rounded up 13 of our favourite unnerving science stories so far this year. Turn the lights out (but make sure you can still read), things are about to
A new method of using photons to carry information might provide a new wireless solution for communication. A collaborative team of researchers developed a way to ‘twist’ photons to improve on open-area quantum information transfer. Using particles of light, i.e. photons, to transmit information isn’t exactly new. Photons have seen use in a number of tests
Hear the word psychopath and most of us think of violent, dominant men. There are lots of male psychopathic monsters from movies to illustrate this point. Think Alex in A Clockwork Orange, or Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. But we do have some female examples: Annie Wilkes in Misery, and who could forget Alex
Earth’s concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) has hit a threshold not seen in at least 3 million years, after a record annual increase in 2016. In 2015, globally averaged concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere stood at 400 parts per million (ppm), but this surged to 403.3 ppm last year, due to human-caused emissions
A puzzling passage from the Old Testament Book of Joshua could be one of the earliest solar eclipses we have on record – and it could help refine the dates of the reign of Ramesses the Great. Using both the passage in question and an ancient Egyptian text, researchers from the University of Cambridge in
Thousands of art pieces produced by a vanished civilisation have been uncovered on a Caribbean island, shining a light on a long-lost culture from the days before Europeans arrived. The mix of faces, hybrid human-animal beings, and complex geometric designs marking the walls of Mona Island’s caves has revealed details about the beliefs and lifestyle
Atop a jagged, 50-foot-high (15-metre-high) cliff on the Bahamian island of Eleuthera sit two enormous boulders known as “The Cow and the Bull”. Each is several times taller than a person; the squatter and wider of the two, the “Bull”, weighs around a thousand tons. The boulders are a tourist attraction, but in recent years, they’ve become
Fear may be as old as life on Earth. It is a fundamental, deeply wired reaction, evolved over the history of biology, to protect organisms against perceived threat to their integrity or existence. Fear may be as simple as a cringe of an antenna in a snail that is touched, or as complex as existential
Back in June, an image generator that could turn even the crudest doodle of a face into a more realistic looking image made the rounds online. That system used a fairly new type of algorithm called a generative adversarial network (GAN) for its AI-created faces, and now, chipmaker NVIDIA has developed a system that employs
Proteins, the building blocks in every cell, have usually been thought of as blobs of inert organic matter. Now scientists have caught one particular protein doing something incredible: conducting electricity. If the findings can be replicated and used, we could have ourselves a powerful new diagnostic tool for medical use, capable of identifying single protein
From a sample of bat guano spanning across 1,200 years, researchers have uncovered an unprecedented climate record for a large swathe of the European continent. As their findings show, digging through poop can offer a great reconstruction of climatic changes in parts of the world where researchers can’t drill for a more typical ice core
One of the most widespread security systems used on the internet to prevent non-humans from accessing websites has been defeated by a powerful new kind of artificial intelligence (AI). CAPTCHAs are those frustrating online tests that challenge you to identify fuzzy-looking letters and numbers – which automated bots supposedly can’t recognise. Only now they can,
We’re heading into a solar minimum, the period of the least sunspot activity in our Sun’s roughly 11-year cycle. But despite that, in September this year the Sun erupted into massive activity. From one single active sunspot region our home star belched out more than 30 solar flares, including the biggest one we’ve seen since
Just in time for the culmination of this year’s spooky season, NASA has debuted a playlist of sounds from space. And even though we know none of it is aliens, those noises are creepy as. From cacophonic plasma waves to eerie Saturn radio emissions and whispers caught off Jupiter’s moons, this playlist of space sounds
At first, a spectacular glowing orb of light seen floating above Siberia on Thursday night sparked fears of an alien invasion. But thanks to physicists, we now have a more down-to-Earth explanation after all. The sensational light show, which was visible over a large area of northern Siberia, was witnessed by multiple people in the
Octopuses have been filmed taking night-time strolls out of the water and onto the shore on the coast of Ceredigion in Wales, UK. More than 20 of the brainy cephalopods were spotted crawling out of the water after 10pm on Friday, when a local tour company manager and a group returned from a sunset trip.
It’s hard coming up with clever new Halloween costume ideas, so why do all the work yourself? Research scientist Janelle Shane decided to enlist her computer to help with the annual task, and she’s built a first-of-its-kind neural network that can spit out brand-new Halloween costume ideas. First, she fed her computer data on
In September, to much fame, a man who claimed to have studied astronomy in Kentucky and deciphered the Book of Revelation predicted an ominous sign would appear on September 23 and foretell the world’s end. “It’s a very biblically significant, numerologically significant number,” David Meade told The Washington Post then. A series of catastrophic events
In recent years, a great deal of progress has been made toward the first large-scale, universal quantum computer. However, there are still many problems to solve, like creating a method to store quantum information for extended periods of time. Now, scientists have discovered a material that might be up to the task. The challenge
No one can say with 100 percent certainty that a couple is heading for disaster. But social scientists have gotten pretty good at predicting who’s most likely to wind up there. These couples share certain commonalities – in the way they fight and the way they describe their relationship, but also in their education level
Since it established orbit around Jupiter in July of 2016, the Juno mission has been sending back vital information about the gas giant’s atmosphere, magnetic field and weather patterns. With every passing orbit – known as perijoves, which take place every 53 days – the probe has revealed more interesting things about Jupiter, which scientists will rely on
The thinking has always been that one giant volcanic eruption created the Yellowstone Caldera or volcanic crater in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming – but new research suggests we might have been thinking too small. By studying layers of ash and sediment off the California coast, scientists have been able to find evidence of not one,
Scientists have revealed new atomic-level images of the finger-like growths called dendrites that can breach battery compartment barriers, and go on to cause short circuits or even fires. Understanding more about these tiny protrusions is not only going to lead to safer smartphones, it’s going to help us develop stable batteries for our cars, our
A heated discussion over how humans treat their reptilian companions has flared up in a series of articles published this week in the journal Veterinary Record. As reptiles and amphibians are becoming increasingly popular pets, animal experts are calling for renewed attention to the trade to ensure we’re not hurting our slithery and scaly friends.
Bacteria may not have a central or sensory nervous system as we know it, but they can still physically “feel” the world around them, according to a new study. It turns out the tiny microorganisms don’t just respond to chemical signals – they also have a sense of touch, and can recognise surfaces and respond
Consciousness is a slippery concept to pin down, but a small group of neuroscientists just made a solid attempt at doing just that. Their goal was to determine if we’re anywhere near the holy grail of AI – artificial self-awareness. Now, the short answer is no. Sorry. But before you weep for a bleak
Models used to estimate past ocean temperatures might be based on a flawed assumption, according to new research. If true, it would mean our ancient seas were far cooler than previously calculated, and our planet’s current warming trend is even more extraordinary than we thought. A team of scientists from some of Europe’s leading
An empty-eyed humanoid named Sophia has become the first robot in the world to be granted a citizenship. Saudi Arabia bestowed citizenship on Sophia ahead of the Future Investment Initiative, held in the kingdom’s capital city of Riyadh on Wednesday. “I am very honoured and proud of this unique distinction,” Sophia told the audience, speaking
What has six legs, two antennae, four furry appendages sprouting from its backside – and a big chunk of the Internet freaked out? The world’s most viral and terrifying moth. A man in Indonesia posted a picture and video of the insect on Facebook last week, drawing more than 40,000 comments, many from people
The first feathered dinosaur ever found is still spilling its secrets. Sinosauropteryx was uncovered two decades ago, when a farmer in northeastern China unearthed a remarkable fossil while digging a well. The dinosaur’s ancient feathery fluff stunned experts and helped cement the idea that birds are living, avian dinosaurs. Paleontologists continue to wring new
Up until now, all asteroids and comets we’ve seen have originated in our own Solar System. But a few days ago astronomers spotted our first visitor from outer space. Preliminary observations suggested it to be a comet with a velocity that indicated – it was flung out from a nearby star rather than getting caught
An ancient sea dragon buried for 150 million years has been discovered by Indian researchers, and it’s thought to be the first time an ichthyosaur (Greek for “fish lizard”) from the Jurassic period has ever been found in India. Ichthyosaurs were ocean-dwelling predators that lived alongside dinosaurs in the Mesozoic Era from around 250 million
From the seedy underbelly of the natural world where invertebrates prey on anything they can get their fangs on, we have brand new nightmare fuel – giant centipedes crunching away on snakes. A team of biologists in Thailand has reported the “fortuitous observation” of a centipede attacking a snake, made all the more disturbing by
Quantum physics’ two-faced nature has been put to the test over and over again, and every time it’s still damn weird. This time physicists have gone to some lengths – literally – by splitting and merging light and then bouncing it from a satellite before testing its odd-ball properties. And, yeah, even over a stupidly
When hunting for potentially habitable exoplanets, one of the most important things astronomers look for is whether or not exoplanet candidates orbit within their star’s habitable zone. This is necessary for liquid water to exist on a planet’s surface, which in turn is a prerequisite for life as we know it. However, in the course
We learn about some awesome science in high school – like Einstein’s theory of relativity, the Periodic table, and DNA replication. The knowledge we pick up there sets the foundations for all the other amazing things we go on to study. But science definitely doesn’t end at high school, and it’s once you take your
A 6,000-year-old skull fragment from the town of Aitape in Papua New Guinea probably belonged to the victim of a tsunami – a massive, devastating ocean wave. Researchers have analysed the geological sediment from the area where the mid-Holocene skull was found in 1929, and found strong evidence that it was swept by a tsunami
Now that the United States is officially getting back into space exploration, the Moon now seems to be the focus – or at least the starting point – of a lot of plans involving space travel. The Trump administration has redirected NASA’s priorities to settling on our lunar neighbor before Mars, and SpaceX CEO Elon
He is known as one of the great minds in 20th-century science. But this week, Albert Einstein is making headlines for his advice on how to live a happy life – and a tip that paid off. In November 1922, Einstein was traveling from Europe to Japan for a lecture series for which he was
A chemical scent contained in the spilt blood of mammals is irresistible to predator species craving fresh kill, but provokes a very different reaction in animals that are hunted. Researchers have found that E2D, a molecular component of animal blood, is as effective as actual blood in luring wolves, tigers, and wild dogs, but produces
A rescued moon bear in Myanmar had to have surgery after its tongue got so big it was dragging along the floor. By the time vets managed to finally remove the growth, it had swollen to over 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds) of tissue – long past the point of fitting in the bear’s head.
Our culture has changed immensely as a result of the smartphone. We can get reassurance for every doubt just by texting our friends. We can feel approval by getting “likes” on our Instagram post or Facebook status. But heavy reliance on devices is responsible for a shift in how we regulate our emotions. A by-product
Unable to stay focused? Frequently going away with the fairies? It may be because you have so much brain capacity that it needs to find ways to keep itself occupied, according to new research. A team of psychologists has found a positive correlation between a person’s tendency to daydream and their levels of intelligence and
It’s obnoxious enough when strangers tell you to smile, but now a smart mirror is doing the same thing – specifically designed for cancer patients, it won’t reflect unless it detects that the person is smiling. It’s called the Smile Mirror, and it’s a screen with a camera in the frame. Facial recognition software gauges
The first of Elon Musk’s solar energy-Powerwall projects has successfully restored power to a local hospital in Puerto Rico, according to a tweet from Tesla earlier today. Hospital del Niño, a children’s hospital in San Juan, Puerto Rico, is among those working with Musk. The Tesla CEO and founder offered to provide a few
Scientists just confirmed the problem at the centre of the Universe: it shouldn’t really exist at all. That’s because at the very beginning of existence, the equal amounts of matter and antimatter present should have annihilated each other, meaning you wouldn’t be reading this article around 13.8 billion years later. One explanation is that
If dealing with the ravages of Alzheimer’s in humans wasn’t enough, the neural disease has now shown up in dolphins, marking the first time it’s been spotted in a wild animal. A new study found protein plaques and tangles, usually the tell-tale signs of Alzheimer’s in humans, in the brains of dolphins that had died
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