Back in 1976, the late Carl Sagan sat down on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson to talk about a new form of space propulsion called solar sailing. Four decades later, and The Planetary Society has officially demonstrated this “tremendously exciting prospect” in practice. Drawing on ten years of hard work and 7 million
Month: July 2019
Researchers have developed artificial cells that can respond to external chemical forces, just like real ones do. This exciting step could get us closer to using synthetic biological structures in real-world situations, such as targeted drug delivery or cleaning up pollution. In this proof-of-principle study, scientists have succeeded in getting artificial cells to glow
The ancient Egyptian city of Heracleion was once a bustling trading port. Now, it lies 45 metres (about 148 feet) under the Mediterranean Sea. Recently, divers have revealed perhaps the best find since the submerged city was rediscovered two decades ago. In their most recent underwater expedition, Egyptian and European experts have found significant
NASA researchers believe we are heading towards a reversal of the planet’s magnetic field. And this would have catastrophic consequences for humanity as when the polar shift happens the Earth will have no magnetic field for about 200 years. When the polar shift happens the Earth will have no magnetic field for about 200 years.
Using NASA observatory images, conspiracy theorists believe they have spotted a strange fleet of UFOs zooming through deep space. In the photos from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite, what appears to be a feel of spaceships can be spotted hovering in space. A series of images appear to show the strange bright lights
The Marfa Lights appear almost every clear night between Marfa and Paisano Pass in Texas. These mystery yellow, white and even sometimes colored lights move through the air with no real pattern, but disappear when approached closely, making scientific observation difficult. Magic! Mystery Marfa lights suddenly appear in northeastern Presidio County just in the desert facing the
Wandering can be dangerous! Especially in forests of the Ryazan, Kaluga and the Krasnoyarsk regions of Russia where weird deep round holes have been discovered while exploring dense forests. Some mysterious deep craters discovered in Russian forests. This strange phenomenon was reported in some Russian forests where no cars and trucks can drive… so where
What started as an initial joke on Facebook has now gained international attention and genuine enthusiasts are planning on raiding Area 51. This is now evident from the fact hotels in the small towns of Nevada are struggling to cope with the demand of the incoming visitors. A staggering 1.9 million people have joined a
Astronomers have discovered a new main sequence star that’s the fastest of its kind ever found in the Milky Way. It’s hurtling through the galaxy at an eye-popping speed of around 1,700 kilometres per second, and it’s racing away from the centre of the galaxy. This also makes it the first star that astronomers
Mount Iliamna, Augustine Volcano, Mount Redoubt and Mount Spurr, Anchorage’s closest neighbor volcanoes have an explosive, active history. But the region around Alaska’s biggest city is hardly a stranger to volcanic eruptions and the mayhem they can cause. Cook Inlet volcanoes – Mount Iliamna, Augustine Volcano, Mount Redoubt and Mount Spurr – could have devastating consequences for Anchorage
Indian tiger numbers are up, according to one of the most detailed wildlife surveys ever conducted. Tiger populations have risen by 6 percent, to roughly 3,000 animals. The massive survey may set a new world standard in counting large carnivores. The encouraging results validate India’s impressive investments in tiger conservation. A mammoth effort Large,
The Planetary Society has been busy recently. On June 25, its LightSail 2 launched into orbit; just last week on July 24, the craft opened its sails successfully, a key stage of its mission to demonstrate solar sailing in practice. And now, the nonprofit foundation has released a statement, revealing that tomorrow (July 31), there
Every once in a while, mysterious red rain sporadically falls on the southern Indian state of Kerala and Sri Lanka. Now what is behind this strange phenomenon, staining clothes of baffled residents with blood-like water? Mysterious red rain falls in Kerala, India and Sri Lanka. Picture via Asrilanka.com The strange red colored rain phenomenon Red rains have first been
Tesla on Monday announced its largest battery product. Called Megapack, it’s designed to simplify the installation process for large energy-storage projects. Each Megapack can store up to 3 megawatt hours of energy and convert up to 1.5 megawatts of energy from a direct current (DC) to an alternating current (AC) so homes can use it.
Imagine trying to film an event that was over and done within a mere 125 trillionths of a second. It’s something that molecular physicists have long been dreaming of, and at last it seems they’ve achieved their goal. Using precisely tuned pulses of laser light, an international team of scientists from four different institutions
Spare a thought for the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate, not long for this world (in tectonic plate terms) as it slowly slides under the continent of North America. Geologists are hoping it can help solve one of the biggest mysteries in their field – how tectonic plates die. The Juan de Fuca plate
A mysterious geologic event that is emitting fire, steam and a sulfur smell baffles residents and officials in Eagle, Alaska. As if a little volcano crater had opened up out-of-nowhere. A mysterious steaming crater opened up after explosion in Eagle, Alaska. Picture by NPS Alaska Public reports that a mysterious geologic event occured near Eagle,
A small church in New Mexico has been inundated with visitors after a statue of the Virgin Mary was seen weeping at the site. Initially thinking that the ‘tears’ were simply a reflection of the light, the witnesses were left amazed when, upon getting closer to the statue, they, indeed, saw some kind of moisture
Sometimes, strange stuff forms in the skies. Like this squadron of fluffy alien saucers over Puerto Natales, Chile. The following pictures feature eerie, saucer-shaped puffs that seem to hang over the sky like UFOs. Technically called “lenticular clouds,” the weird phenomenon seen over Puerto Natales has a simple explanation. And these so-called “UFO clouds” are
The Area 51 raid organisers could see upwards of two million people storm the restricted area in Lincoln County, Nevada, with another 1.4 million interested in attending. The public event organised on Facebook as a joke and dubbed Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us, aims to break into the supposed hotbed of
Earth’s sun is totally epic. And scientists have newly discovered a new form of solar epicness you should probably be aware of. When one solar cycle ends and the next begins, the sun may experience cataclysmic magnetic field collisions, also known as “terminator events”, resulting in gargantuan tsunamis of plasma that can charge across the
Researchers recently found more than 200 dead reindeer on the island of Svalbard in Norway. The animals starved to death due to the ongoing climate anomalies, disrupting their access to the plants that they typically eat. More than 200 dead reindeer starved to death on the island of Svalbard in Norway. Picture: ELIN VINJE JENSSEN
A vast cloud of nuclear radiation that spreadover continental Europe in 2017 has been traced to an unacknowledged nuclear accident in southern Russia. The cloud of radiation could only have been caused by a nuclear fuel-reprocessing accident at the Mayak Production Association, a nuclear facility in the Chelyabinsk region of the Ural Mountains in Russia, sometime
Self proclaimed ‘truth seekers’ have long been on the hunt for solid evidence of aliens, and now they believe they have the proof they have been looking for. The evidence comes in the form of a video of a bright light which was seen over Cambridge. In the video, a bright light appears in the
If the US economy is looking good (think: low unemployment, strong GDP), the Fed often decides it can handle higher rates. But if the economy isn’t looking too hot, the Fed gives it a boost with lower rates. That helps encourage people to spend money and companies to invest in those big ideas bosses keep
The probable culprit behind a mysterious cloud of radioactive particles detected floating above much of Europe in 2017 appears to have been identified. The radiation spike – in the form of an extremely high airborne concentration of the radioactive isotope ruthenium–106 – was detected by scientists in October 2017, but the source of the dramatic
New images of the Majorana fermion have brought physicists a step closer to harnessing the mysterious objects for quantum computing. These strange objects – particles that acts as their own antiparticles – have a vast as-yet untapped potential to act as qubits, the quantum bits that are the basic units of information in a quantum
A Facebook group which has now garnered an astonishing two million attendees has encouraged users to “storm Area 51” on September 20 to uncover any potential alien secrets. The description reads: “We will all meet up at the Area 51 Alien Center tourist attraction and coordinate our entry. If we naruto run, we can move
“Electromagnetic forces” within the solar system could wreak havoc on Earth today as some conspiracy theorists are claiming it will cause a major earthquake. The position of the Moon in relation to the Earth could cause an earthquake, according to one ‘new-age’ earthquake researcher. The claim was made by Frank Hoogerbeets, who believes a magnitude
A bizarre and brilliantly effective optical illusion going viral on the internet tricks your brain into seeing a colour image… but if you look closer, you’ll notice the photo you’re staring at is only black and white. Created by digital media artist and software developer Øyvind Kolås as a visual experiment, the technique, which
Over 200 Svalbard reindeer have been found dead on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. That’s one of the highest recorded death tolls since population monitoring commenced in 1978, and scientists believe climate change played a key role. According to a report on the Norwegian Polar Institute’s website, the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus) suffered a
Many of us will have experienced that super friendly cat who seems to love being stroked one minute, only to bite or swipe at us the next. It might be easy at this point to blame it on the cat, but what’s likely happening here is that we’re just not stroking them right. To
The spinning ball of plasma that is our Sun produces a spinning magnetic field too, and where that magnetic field weakens, solar winds can escape. Now scientists have been able to recreate those same effects in a lab for the first time, meaning we can study the bizarre science around our star at close quarters,
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. There are many theories as to what fate has befallen the plane, one of which suggests an oxygen bottle exploded causing devastating damage. This is what happened to EgyptAir Flight 667 on July
Across the United States, nuclear waste is accumulating in poorly maintained piles. 90,000 metric tons of nuclear waste requiring disposal are currently in temporary storage. Now, the United States has to find a solution. The United States has yet to construct a long-term storage solution for this waste, leaving the nuclear material vulnerable to extreme weather
Almost six years after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe famously declared the contaminated water problem at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant “under control,” today it remains anything but. Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) continues to face difficulties in dealing with water contaminated with radioactive substances at its crippled plant. Fukushima disaster update: Toxic water level at
While excavating a 3,600-year-old palace in the once-great city of Avaris, Egypt, a team of archaeologists unearthed four pits. What’s in the pits? It’s hands. There are no bodies – just a bunch of dismembered hands. Most of the hands are quite large and some of them are very large, further signifying that they were all
Here we go again! The Piton de la Fournaise is a shield volcano on the eastern side of Réunion island (a French department) in the Indian Ocean has started erupting at 1pm local time on July 29, 2019. Piton de la Fournase volcano erupts for the third time in 2019 on July 29th. Picture by ImazPress This is
There are some strange things down there, in the ocean depths, where crushing pressures and low light make for some bizarre adaptations. It’s not easy for humans to get down there, but remote-controlled submarines have, in recent years, been slowly revealing to us the strange wonders at the bottom of the sea. Like this:
We may have discovered thousands of exoplanets, but few have astronomers as excited as a newly discovered system located just 73 light-years away. It could not only tell us about planet formation, it could lead us to the discovery of a habitable world. Around an unusually quiet red dwarf 73 light-years away, the planet-hunting
For 38 excruciating minutes, Hawaii feared the worst. In January 2018, phones all over the Aloha State were buzzing with an emergency alert of unprecedented, catastrophic scale. “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII,” the text message said. “SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.” Fortunately for the more than 1 million Hawaiians lying
If this headline looks familiar to you, that’s because we wrote an almost identical one in 2016. Except back then, we were freaking out because we’d used a year’s worth of Earth’s resources by August 8. Now, three years later, we’ve accomplished this worrying milestone more than a week earlier. This year, July 29th marks
An resident of Rachel, Nevada – the closest town to Area 51 – set up a motion sensor camera in their garden and was shocked to see the results. After the person reviewed the footage, they noticed a strange metallic looking object zoom past in the distance. The object is long and thin and moves
Sometimes all you need is a wild weekend in Las Vegas, amongst the lights, sounds, and attractions of the Sin City. And it seems like grasshoppers are no exception, descending on Las Vegas last week in such numbers that you can even see them on the weather radar. ? Some of you have been
When Japanese probe Hayabusa2 touched down on asteroid Ryugu on 11 July 2019, its camera was not sitting idle. The entire event was photographed using its small monitor cam (CAM-H). Now JAXA has compiled those images into an animation, showing the probe closing in to collect mineral samples, then bouncing back off again to
About a quarter of the universe’s mass consists of a mysterious, unseen substance called dark matter. And there’s a chance that one form of it could behave like tiny, high-speed projectiles, blasting through human flesh like bullets. A huge ring of dark matter surrounds the center of the massive galaxy cluster CL0024+17. Picture: Hubble Space
DEA tracked every opioid pill sold in the US. And the results are horrific. 6 drug distributors and 3 drug manufacturers are accused to be behind the unprecedented opioid crisis ravaging America right now. Picture: Laura Buckman/Bloomberg via Getty Images Between 2006 and 2012, 3 opioid drug makers and 6 distributors flooded the country with
The Air Force has already issued a stern statement after the number of people pledging to attend a Facebook event entitled Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us, and fixed for 3am on September 20, headed towards two million. However, KM Lewis, author of a novel about Area 51 entitled The Thirteenth Guardian,
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