“And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.” The outrageous coronavirus theory was picked up by scores of conspiracy theories online. One person said on Twitter: “Even in today’s age we can see
Month: February 2020
A boring, unremarkable star 26 light-years away has turned out to be not so boring after all. Astronomers have found that it has a planet – not just any planet, but one with a mass only about five times Earth’s mass – using a wild new method inspired by Jupiter’s auroras. Radio wave activity
The Mars pictures were taken by NASA’s Curiosity Rover, which landed in the Gale Crater in 2012 as part of the space agency’s Mars Science Laboratory project. The curious spread of debris on the surface of the Red Planet has had space fans, alien hunters and conspiracy theorists talking for years as there does seem
The Gray Whale is the 10th largest creature alive today, and the 9 creatures larger than it are all whales, too. Gray Whales are known for their epic migration routes, sometimes covering more than 16,000 km (10,000 miles) on their two-way trips between their feeding grounds and their breeding grounds. Researchers don’t have a
The first rover ever to visit the far side of the Moon has discovered a layer of lunar dust up to 12 meters (39 feet) deep. The rover and its lander, which sits in the Moon’s Von Kármán crater, are part of China’s Chang’e 4 mission. Their landing there on 3 January 2019 marked the
Recent reports from scientists pursuing a new kind of nuclear fusion technology are encouraging, but we are still some distance away from the “holy grail of clean energy”. The technology developed by Heinrich Hora and his colleagues at the University of NSW uses powerful lasers to fuse together hydrogen and boron atoms, releasing high-energy particles
Although we humans generally have control of our skeletal musculature, there’s at least one we don’t always have a handle on. In the middle ear sits the tensor tympani, and it seems most people are unable to contract it voluntarily. Those that can contract their tensor tympani – a small muscle located above the
Before it’s observed, an electron is a hot mess of possibility. Just like the metaphorical Schrödinger’s cat, it’s only once we lift the lid from its metaphorical box and take a good, close look that an electron settles on a clear position around an atom. We’ve now had a closer look at exactly how
Once upon a time, a small worm mucking about on the Cambrian seafloor did something really, really careless: it lost its legs. As the old saying goes, “use it or lose it”. Since the worm – a squirmy creature belonging to the Facivermis genus – was not using its legs for locomotion, it evolved into a more
There may be no life on Mars, but there’s still a lot going on there. The Martian surface is home to different geological process, which overlap and even compete with each other to shape the planet. Orbiters with powerful cameras give us an excellent view of Mars’s changing surface. The HiRISE (High Resolution Science
Dear Moon, we love you very much. For 4.51 billion years you’ve been a steady and true orbital companion. So, with that in mind, please excuse us for a brief moment while we absolutely freak out over the tiny minimoon we’ve just discovered looping around our planet. Designated 2020 CD3, so far we know
The space station currently serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory for astronauts in space and was a joint project between NASA, Roscosmos, JAXA, ESA and CSA, and cost more than £150billion when it was launched in 1998. The space agencies carry out various experiments on board, as well as missions to and from the space station,
Researchers at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research have discovered the largest explosion ever observed in the universe since the Big Bang. The explosion emanated from a supermassive black hole at the center of the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster some 390 million light-years from Earth. “We’ve seen outbursts in the centres of galaxies before
The climate crisis poses an escalating threat to scientists everywhere and research of all kinds, scientists in Australia are now warning. The unprecedented wildfires sweeping their nation have been a “brutal wake-up call” to a simple fact: their work is “far from immune” to climate change. In all its physical and practical glory, science
MH370 went missing on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. The official investigation concluded the plane likely flew south and crashed into the southern Indian Ocean. However, extensive search missions in the area found no wreckage, leaving many to conclude something in their investigation was incorrect.
A few weeks ago, scientists at Ukraine’s Vernadsky Research Base in Antarctica awoke to find their usually pristine white surrounds drenched in a shocking blood-red. From the gory-looking images, you could be forgiven for wondering if there’d been some sort of horror-movie-style penguin massacre. The good news is that the real cause is far less
Recent days have brought reports of shoppers clearing out supermarket shelves from Wuhan and Hong Kong to Singapore and Milan in response to the spread of coronavirus. This behaviour is often described as “panic buying”. However, the research shows that what’s going on here is nothing to do with panic. It’s a perfectly rational
Robert Weiter tweeted: “Coronavirus, locusts, species dying off in massive numbers, authoritarian leaders with bombs? “Climate change denied. Wars and rumours of wars. The ability to totally destroy our world. Book of Revelation, anyone?” Another Twitter user said: “Even in today’s age we can see what’s going on from the Book of Revelation in the
In the skies above Earth, astronomers with the Catalina Sky Survey have spotted what might be a new friend: an asteroid temporarily captured by our planet’s gravity, what we call a minimoon. It’s named 2020 CD3, a small chunk of likely carbonaceous rock between 1.9 and 3.5 metres (6.2 and 11.5 feet) in diameter.
Seagulls have an eye for good food, and while beggars can’t be choosers, all things being equal, they’re more interested in that tasty morsel you’re clutching than a scrap of food simply lying on the ground. New research in the United Kingdom suggests herring gulls (Larus argentatus) tend to go for edibles already handled
Our attempts to ‘seed’ clouds with extra snow or rain may actually be working, a new study suggests, although perhaps not quite as much as some had hoped. It may sound like something straight out of science fiction, but cloud seeding has been around since the 1940s. Despite the fact that this form of ‘weather
Bizarre new footage shows a large seemingly-silhouetted spherical UFO transmitting the Sun. In the space of 20 seconds the unexplained object shows up against the fiery star before abruptly returning to its initial position. A time stamp in the corner of the verified NASA footage dates the incident to February 23 of this year. The
Scientists have used super high-speed cameras to capture the moment liquid droplets combine together, providing a unique, preternatural glimpse of fluid dynamics the human eye can’t observe on its own. Using an experimental setup involving two synchronised high-speed cameras – one shooting from the side, and the other looking upwards (courtesy of a mirror
A planet just 124 light-years from Earth could be teeming with life even as you read these words. Astronomers have conducted in-depth analyses of the properties of an exoplanet mid-weight between Earth and Neptune, and found that it could be hospitable after all. The discovery broadens the range of planets astronomers can include in their search
The effect that fossil fuels are having on the climate emergency is driving an international push to use low-carbon sources of energy. At the moment, the best options for producing low-carbon energy on a large scale are wind and solar power. But despite improvements over the last few years to both their performance and
A “doomsday vault” nestled deep in the Arctic received 60,000 new seed samples on Tuesday, including Prince Charles’ cowslips and Cherokee sacred corn, increasing stocks of the world’s agricultural bounty in case of global catastrophe. Mounting concern over climate change and species loss is driving groups worldwide to add their seeds to the collection
Of all the volcanic eruptions to shake our planet in the last 2 million years, the Toba super-eruption in India was one of the most colossal. But it may not have been the global catastrophe we once thought it was. The massive eruption happened roughly 74,000 years ago, spewing roughly 1,000 times as much rock as
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared nearly six years ago on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. While the official investigation concluded the plane ended up at the bottom of the southern Indian Ocean, two extensive searches never found the wreckage. Last week, former Australian Prime Minister
Why do Leap Years usually happen every four years? During a Leap Year, one extra day is added to the Gregorian calendar, meaning that there are 366 days in the year in total. The calendar dictates there are usually 365 days annually, as this is the approximate time it takes for our planet to orbit
More than 80,000 people have been affected by the deadly virus now, with more than 2,600 fatalities recorded worldwide. The Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, announced a policy of eased restrictions yesterday, allowing residents to leave in small groups. But, just three hours later, the decision was reversed, placing its nine million residents back
The question of life after death is an interesting one but there is no scientific consensus about the afterlife being real. Some researchers believe visions of the afterlife are a natural phenomenon in response to the body being pushed to the edge of death. Dr Sam Parnia, of the NYU Langone School of Medicine in
But there is another author who many claim predicted the outbreak of a deadly contagion in the years 2020. In her 2008 book End of Days: Predictions and Prophecies about the End of the World, supposed psychic Sylvia Brown wrote of a pneumonia outbreak ravaging the world. The book reads: “In around 2020 a severe
Strange, vein-like shadows imprinted in ancient rocks are some of the most important clues yet in piecing together the timeline of photosynthesis. At 1 billion years old, the tiny fossils are the oldest example of green algae we’ve ever discovered. Even from all those aeons ago, the fossils show evidence of characteristics in common
It was said that all he touched turned to gold. But destiny eventually caught up with the legendary King Midas, and a long-lost chronicle of his ancient downfall appears to have literally surfaced in Turkey. Last year, archaeologists were investigating an ancient mound site in central Turkey called Türkmen-Karahöyük. The greater region, the Konya
In the current era of space exploration, the name of the game is “cost-effective”. By reducing the costs associated with individual launches, space agencies and private aerospace companies (aka NewSpace) are ensuring that access to space is greater. And when it comes to the cost of launches, the single greatest expense is that of
Some truths about the Universe and our experience in it seem immutable. The sky is up. Gravity sucks. Nothing can travel faster than light. Multicellular life needs oxygen to live. Except we might need to rethink that last one. Scientists have just discovered that a jellyfish-like parasite doesn’t have a mitochondrial genome – the
Australia’s wildfires have destroyed more than a fifth of the country’s forests, making the blazes “globally unprecedented” following a years-long drought linked to climate change, researchers said Monday. Climate scientists are currently examining data from the disaster, which destroyed swathes of southeastern Australia, to determine to what extent they can be attributed to rising
Katherine Johnson, a ground-breaking black NASA mathematician whose life was portrayed in the movie Hidden Figures, died on Monday aged 101, the space agency said. Johnson’s calculations helped put the first man on the Moon in 1969, but she was little known until the Oscar-nominated 2016 movie that told the stories of three black women
“These are locusts on a biblical scale. It’s catastrophic, it’s cataclysmic, it’s apocalyptic and it’s happening right now. “We’ve been talking about it for a while but guys, now it has turned the skies black, which takes us to two places in the Bible. “You’ve got to go to Exodus Chapter 10 and the plagues
Although we’re yet to detect any sort of life on Mars, the planet is not a quiet one. Deep in its guts, the Red Planet rumbles – the seismic stirrings of a geologically active chunk of rock. The first slew of data from NASA’s Mars InSight lander is in, and the results have given
A mysterious comet identified last year as only the second-ever known interstellar object in our Solar System inevitably prompted some big scientific questions. Chief among them: what, if anything, can it tell us about the hypothesised existence of extraterrestrial intelligence out there in space? Well, if the object known as 2I/Borisov holds alien secrets,
The latest round of observations of the star Betelgeuse are in, and the dimming that some were reporting as a precursor to supernova has stopped; now, there’s evidence of brightening. This means the star isn’t coming to a premature end, as some have hoped; but everyone is still a little bit baffled about why
Antarctica is supposed to be an extremely cold place. The annual mean temperature of the snow-laden continent’s central area is -57 degrees Celsius (−70.6°F); even the coast averages around -10°C (14°F). But on February 6, the weather station at Esperanza Base on the Antarctic Peninsula – the northernmost tip of the content – logged the hottest temperature
An amateur American astronaut who said he wanted to prove the Earth is flat has been killed in the crash of his homemade rocket in California, said the Science Channel, which filmed the launch. “Michael ‘Mad Mike’ Hughes tragically passed away today during an attempt to launch his homemade rocket,” the channel, which is
To cram ever more computing power into your pocket, engineers need to come up with increasingly ingenious ways to add transistors to an already crowded space. Unfortunately there’s a limit to how small you can make a wire. But a twisted form of rare earth metal just might have what it takes to push the
Scientists have ‘puppeteered’ the movements of a jellyfish and made it even faster than the real thing. Taking artificial control with a microelectronic implant, researchers have increased the natural swimming speed of a live moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita) by nearly threefold. What’s more, they achieved this with only a little bit of external power
Self-styled UFO expert Scott Waring revealed his latest shock find on his etdatabase.com site. He said: “I think I have have found a plane being abducted by a UFO in the Fiji area. “If you look carefully you can see a black shadow around the plane as if there was a bubble forming, like it
Astonishing footage of a UFO hovering above Earth has been caught by NASA cameras. The incredible video, captured on the NASA live camera from the International Space Station (ISS), sees the cone-shaped object keep pace with the ISS above it. In a bizarre twist, the NASA camera zooms in on the object, appearing to show
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