The great white shark is often viewed as the most hardcore thing in the ocean. The top of the food chain. The silent slayer in the dark. But evidence is increasingly emerging that even the great white isn’t safe. In fact, these fish too are prey. Their predator? The orca (Orcinus orca): they of
Month: November 2019
Cupid was late this year. More than eight months late. Hundreds of people reported on social media that overnight on November 8 they had received texts from partners, employers and even dead family members that were originally meant to arrive in February. Many were sent on Valentine’s Day. Alana Johnson, a children’s librarian at
The smears of light you can see arcing across a new Hubble photo aren’t strange artefacts or smudges on the space telescope’s lens. Rather, they’re the light of a galaxy 11 billion light-years away, distorted and replicated by gravity in the foreground. At least 12 copies of the galaxy – called PSZ1 G311.65-18.48 and
Benjamin Schreiber is very much alive. But that hasn’t stopped him from arguing that he died four years ago. After the convicted murderer collapsed in his prison cell in 2015, doctors restarted his heart five times. Recovering back at the Iowa State Penitentiary, Schreiber filed a novel legal appeal. Because he died before he was
NASA recently detected a massive thermonuclear explosion coming from outer space. The culprit seems to be a distant pulsar, the space agency reports, which is the stellar remains of a star that blew up in a supernova but was too small to form a black hole. NASA spotted the burst because it sent out an
A bizarre blacked-out structure in Antarctica has sparked a frenzy of debate about a possible top-secret government cover-up – or a subterranean alien base. The mysterious footage released on YouTube conspiracy page thirdphaseofmoon showed a row of identical structures lined up in Antartica on Google Earth. The site was claimed to be located at 75°
Our Lady of Fatima is the Catholic title given to the Virgin Mary based on the famous Marian apparitions reported in 1917 by three children in Portugal. Lucia dos Santos, one of the apparent witnesses, revealed two secrets she claimed were passed by the Virgin Mary in the Thirties, but one was withheld. The third secret, a vision of
Forget nuclear weapons, biological warfare, and the slew of other ways humanity could cause its own destruction for a moment. If you take into account only naturally occurring phenomena — supervolcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts, and the like — researchers from the University of Oxford recently determined that the probability of our entire species going extinct
When dinosaurs ruled the Earth, the planet was on a completely different side of the galaxy. A new animation by NASA scientist Jessie Christiansen shows just how long the dinosaurs’ reign lasted, and how short the era of humans has been in comparison, by tracing our solar system’s movement through the Milky Way. Our
There is no doubt that climate change is a very serious (and worsening) problem. According to a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), even if all the industrialized nations of the world became carbon neutral overnight, the problem would continue to get worse. In short, it’s not enough to stop
Software detected the woman almost six seconds before Uber’s self-driving car struck her, investigators say, in the crash that would lead to her death and prompt the ride-share giant to slam the brakes on its autonomous vehicle testing. But the SUV didn’t start to stop until about a second before impact. One big reason:
Filling your house with potted plants might make you happier and more productive, but it’s not going to make the air you breathe any cleaner. That is, unless you had a ludicrous number of indoor plants: somewhere between 10 and 1,000 for every square metre of your living space. A critical review, drawing on
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. It is still a mystery what exactly happened to the plane but a shock theory was explored in 2019 Channel 5 documentary ‘Flight MH370’. The theory centres around the idea that a hijacker
For the first time in more than 40 years, NASA scientists have opened up a sample of Moon matter collected during the Apollo missions. Thanks to new analysis tech developed over those decades, this precious artefact could now reveal new insights into the celestial body closest to Earth. The sample of regolith (a top
For the first time, astronomers have directly observed the massive outflow of gas extending hundreds of thousands of light-years from a galaxy. It is, they say, the first direct evidence of how galactic winds feed the circumgalactic medium – the vast clouds of gas that wrap around galaxies as they float in intergalactic space. But
Electron microscopes are great at producing high-resolution images of a material’s atomic structure – if the material is hard, that is. Unfortunately, the devices’ electron beams can destroy softer materials, so scientists typically rely on X-rays, which can’t reach atomic resolution, to image those. But scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National
Your dog may be the apple of your eye, but let’s be honest: she is an animal, with her own instincts and idiosyncrasies, and there are going to be times when she makes you want to tear your hair out. However much you want to, however, new research suggests that you should never yell
It has long been thought that one of the reasons we humans developed large brains was to allow us to maintain complex social structures. But the social system of a small-headed guineafowl now suggests that large brains are not necessarily a requirement for complex multi-levelled societies. Even amongst a crowd, vulturine guineafowl (Acryllium vulturinum) can
Sea levels rose 10 metres above present levels during Earth’s last warm period 125,000 years ago, according to new research that offers a glimpse of what may happen under our current climate change trajectory. Our paper, published today in Nature Communications, shows that melting ice from Antarctica was the main driver of sea level
Getting everything right all of the time might sound like the ideal scenario, but such a perfect success rate can mean you’re not actually learning anything new. To make sure you’re learning at the optimal rate, new research finds you should be aiming to fail around 15 percent of the time – or 15.87 percent
Something strange is happening in America. Research shows fewer Americans are identifying with organised religion, but in pockets of the country, a seeming explosion in new-found faith borders on the miraculous. Take Vermont, for example. After 2016, the number of families professing deep religious convictions spiked suddenly by over seven times, a new study
The fact we can confidently balance on top of a pair of meat-sticks without toppling over is the very symbol of human evolution. Yet just how we came to stand upright in the first place remains a hotly debated topic. Now we have a new piece in the puzzle. Recently discovered fossils left by
In November 1990, archaeologists found a burial cave in south Jerusalem, containing 12 bone boxes, two of which featured the inscription “Caiaphas” – the name given to the Jewish high priest who was behind the crucifixion of Jesus according to the Gospels of the New Testament. Alongside the finds, two Roman-era nails were found, one inside the
The largest fire ever recorded in Sonoma County, California has spent nearly two weeks rampaging across the hills, burning everything in its path. So far, the Kincade Fire has burnt 77,758 acres of vegetation – and it’s still raging. Its scorched and blackened path has now been revealed in a new NASA satellite photo.
When it comes to squeezing maximum amounts of energy out of the daylight hours, plants have a head start thanks to evolution. Now, engineers have designed solar panels that mimic the sunflower’s sun-chasing talent, through clever use of nanotechnology. By moulding temperature-sensitive materials into thin, supportive structures, scientists have come up with tiny ‘stems’
How older people feel about younger people says far more about themselves than future generations. At some point in our lives, we’ve all heard or grumbled about “kids these days”. It’s a popular sentiment that’s been felt for millennia, and as it turns out, it’s probably not the youth’s fault, nor has it ever been.
A new online tool calculates just how much cosmic destruction a run-in between the Earth and a black hole would cause. The aptly-named Black Hole Collision Calculator determines how much a black hole would expand and the amount of energy it would release if it absorbed the Earth — or any other object, since the
Even in a hopeless place, ants will find a way. No food, no light, no escape? No problem. In the woods of western Poland lies a dismantled Soviet nuclear base, complete with two underground bunkers where nuclear ammunition was once kept. After the military complex was abandoned, these eerie human-made caves became great roosting places
Evolutionary biologist Athena Aktipis from Arizona State University who hosts a podcast called ‘Zombified’ has said that more than half of the species on Earth are parasites. She told the Asia Times: “If you actually look at the proportion of species overall that are parasitic in one way or another … more than half of
Smart speakers have become a home addition for many, but the choice requires some vigilance over potential security breaches. Now, researchers have shown that hackers could get these small devices to do their bidding without making a single noise. Devices running Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and Siri were all shown to be vulnerable to
There is more – a lot more – to finding habitable exoplanets than whether they’re the right distance from their star for liquid water. Is, for instance, the planet rocky, like Earth, Mars, and Venus? Does it have plate tectonics and a magnetic field? Does it have an atmosphere? There’s also another important question:
When you’re inside something, it’s hard to see its shape. We’re still finding out new things about the shape of our galaxy. The shape of the Universe? That’s a lot harder to gauge, but years of observational data, cosmological models and physics suggest it’s flat. Send a beam of photons out across the void, and
A massive alliance of more than 11,000 scientists have signed, sealed and delivered an important message to the world: if we don’t make rapid, deep and lasting changes to our lives, they write, there will soon come “untold human suffering”. For more than 40 years, the word’s scientists have warned of a looming climate
One of the finest spectacles in astronomy is to witness the passage of one object in front of another. This can transpire as an eclipse, an occultation, or a rare event known as a planetary transit. We get a shot at seeing just such a singular event next Monday on 11 November, as a
Weeks after a stray puppy was discovered in a backyard in rural Australia, DNA tests revealed that the furry creature is not a dog at all but an Australian alpine dingo. The news was a welcome surprise for conservationists: Australian alpine dingoes are an endangered species vulnerable to extinction because of inbreeding, hunting and government
It’s the closest thing we’ve seen to real-life Transformers: robotic blocks that can travel independently, attach themselves to each other in predefined structures, follow paths and light sources, and more. MIT researchers just released video footage of these new M-Blocks 2.0 cubes in action, and we can’t stop watching. They can shuffle themselves into
A miracle is an event that can not be explained by natural or scientific laws, often attributed to a supernatural being. For Christians, the Bible tells the story of Jesus’ said miracles, including walking on water, turning water into wine and the resurrection. The stories have come under fire from many atheists, who claim they are no more than myths and legends
Voyager 2 has left the Solar System. After making a careful analysis of the data, scientists have confirmed it: like Voyager 1 before it, the little space probe is now out beyond the heliopause, and heading deeper into the vast unknown of interstellar space. With five separate papers appearing today in Nature Astronomy, scientists
We invoke their name as an insult, but continuing discoveries about the extinct Neanderthal culture suggest the existence of a rich, complex symbolism we still do not fully understand. Now, we have another artefact to admire. New archaeological research in Spain has uncovered the most modern evidence yet of a form of primitive jewellery
A giant boulder in Arizona that went missing for weeks has mysteriously reappeared, only days after authorities announced it had vanished. The ‘Wizard Rock’, a distinctive black boulder marked with striking lines of white quartz, is a well-known local landmark along State Route 89 in Prescott National Forest (PNF), near the centre of Arizona.
California has been caught in the midst of a fiery assault fueled by historically powerful winds, humidity levels stuck in the single digits, and the effects of long-term climate change. Fierce, fast-moving wildfires exploded up and down the state during October, prompting utilities to shut off power to millions and forcing hundreds of thousands
Curiosity is climbing. In the Gale Crater it calls home, the Mars rover has been making its way up an eroded pediment called the Central Butte. It’s studying the weather-worn layers of rock around the base of Mount Sharp, which towers from the centre of the crater. But it’s not just close-ups of rock that feature
These days, it’s hard to know whom to trust online, and how to discern genuine content from fakery. Some degree of trust in our devices is necessary, if we’re to embrace the growing number of technologies that could potentially enhance our lives. How many of us, however, bother trying to confirm the truth, and how
From daily tooth-brushing to the 11am coffee, we all have dozens of habits that get us through our daily routine. Some are great – weekly gym visits are often encouraged – others not so much, like smoking a pack a day, or dialling the number of the pizza place way too often. Because we
Though it looks like it to us, Jupiter’s clouds do no form a flat surface. Some of its clouds rise up above the surrounding cloud tops. The two bright spots in the right center of this image are much higher than the surrounding clouds. Jupiter’s atmosphere is a swirling, colourful, chaotic mix-up of currents
Approximately 383,000 gallons of crude oil have spilled into a North Dakota wetland this week in the latest leak from the Keystone Pipeline, further fueling long-standing opposition to plans for the pipeline network’s extension. With about half an Olympic swimming pool’s worth of oil covering roughly half an acre, the leak is among the
An Australian anti-vaxxer mum has reportedly said she was giving trick-or-treaters chicken pox-tainted lollipops for Halloween, claiming the candies would help give kids the infection that her son has so they can get the chicken pox over with and be immune for life, according to a post shared in a pro-vaccine group called “Light for
The world’s insects are in trouble. In recent years, growing evidence has found a scary number of bugs are missing from the face of our planet. And there’s a chance we may have underestimated the scale of the problem. In a large-scale biodiversity study, an international team of researchers has found insect species in