If building a super-secure, super-smart ‘quantum internet’ is ever going to be possible, then quantum-entangled photons are likely to be essential in building it – and scientists just figured out a very useful new way of generating them. Quantum entanglement is the phenomenon where two particles (such as photons) get linked together, irrespective of
Month: March 2020
The world is only just getting used to the power and sophistication of virtual assistants made by companies like Amazon and Google, which can decode our spoken speech with eerie precision compared to what the technology was capable of only a few short years ago. In truth, however, a far more impressive and mind-boggling
If we humans want to go live on the Moon – which we are planning to do – we’re going to have to have something to actually live in. Small landers may have worked for the brief duration of the Apollo missions, but for longer-term stays, we’re going to need something a bit more permanent.
After reports of two dogs testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 in Hong Kong, the most recent news to cause alarm among animal owners is that of a cat in Belgium with apparent symptoms of the virus that causes COVID-19. The owner of the cat had recently tested positive for the virus. It is reported that
Plastics are a growing problem for our environment, in part because they are so difficult to recycle. Now scientists have identified a microbe that might be able to help break down one of the toughest plastics around. The microbe is a bacterium called Pseudomonas sp. TDA1, and it looks as though it might be
It’s fair to say that the world has had more than enough of viruses right now. Unfortunately, the converse is not necessarily true. The incredible vastness of the virosphere is hard to overstate. While several thousand kinds of virus have been studied in detail, scientists say we haven’t even scratched the surface. There could be
Neanderthals were apparently much more partial to seafood than previously thought: new research shows that Neanderthal communities living in Portugal during the last ice age were just as keen on fishing as our modern human ancestors. Molluscs, crustaceans, fish, birds, and marine mammals like dolphins and seals made up as much as half the
Mars. Water. You’d never find two more unlikely companions, even in a buddy cop movie. But once upon a time, the dry, red dustbowl of Mars was lush and soggy. We’re still unravelling the history of that water, and planetary scientists have just discovered at least two distinct reservoirs of ancient water could be preserved
In the far reaches of the Universe, astronomers have managed to capture a rare interaction. As a supermassive black hole ravenously slurps down matter around it, it’s sending out jets of plasma – pushing into and heating the gas in the galaxy around it. This is difficult to capture at the best of times,
As people try to maintain social engagement during self-isolation, citizen science offers a unique opportunity. Defined as “public participation and collaboration in scientific research”, citizen science allows everyday people to use technology to unite towards a common goal – from the comfort of their homes. And it is now offering a chance to contribute to
Around a quarter of a billion years ago, the vast majority of species on land and sea were wiped out in The Great Dying, thanks to a series of volcanic eruptions spewing out noxious greenhouse gases. With the discovery that land animals had a big head start in this tremendous mass extinction, researchers are
Just like in humans, males across many mammal species don’t live as long as their female counterparts, and it’s not because they age differently, biologically speaking. “We’ve known for a long time that women generally live longer than men, but were surprised to find that the [difference] in lifespan between the sexes was even more
In 2015, astronomers found something weird. It was a white dwarf star, 570 light-years from Earth, with a peculiar dimming pattern. It dimmed several times to varying depths, each depth repeating on a 4.5 to 5-hour timeframe; and its atmosphere was polluted with elements usually found in rocky exoplanets. It didn’t take long before
It’s not hard to feel a connection between musicians, the music being played, and the audience at any gig or concert that you go to, but new research suggests this link goes right down to the neural level – and that the brain activity of performers and listeners actually sync up. Based on this
Despite humanity’s current struggle against the novel coronavirus, and despite it taking up most of our attention, other threats still exist. The very real threat of a possible asteroid strike on Earth in the future is taking a backseat for now, but it’s still there. Though an asteroid strike seems kind of ephemeral right
Along the banks of a river of human epithelial cells, flowing across your tongue, many communities of bacteria have made their homes. Just as human cities organise into areas with different types of communities and purposes, so, it turns out, do these miniature equivalents congregate in your mouth. Spherical, oxygen loving Streptococci species (green) loiter
Canadian artist Julie Laurin recently started a livestream of tardigrades — microscopic, eight-legged micro-animals also known as “water bears” — wriggling around on Twitch. And it’s exactly the kind of thing we need right now. You can watch a full, narrated hour of tardigrade action on Laurin’s Twitch channel. The stream, first spotted by
Ever wondered how a growing horseshoe crab wriggles its way out of a shell that’s grown too small? A new timelapse video lets you watch the fascinating process in action as a young horseshoe crab moults, leaving you wondering how it even fit into the shell it leaves behind. In the wild, this process
Once again, a search for signs of dark matter outside its gravitational effect has turned up zilch – but this time it’s a little more controversial. Astronomers peering into empty space have not found an X-ray glow hypothesised to be the product of one particular dark matter candidate: the sterile neutrino. It is, the
A search for the ‘missing link’ in the chain of the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 has uncovered two close cousins of the new coronavirus in shipments of pangolins being smuggled into China. It’s important to note that the discovery by researchers from across Hong Kong and China falls well short of identifying these precious mammals as the
Earth didn’t always have this much oxygen. Roughly 2.4 billion years ago, the rise of cyanobacteria and the shifting of tectonic plates breathed new life into our planet, tipping off a Great Oxidation Event (GOE). The surge of oxygen-hungry life that followed didn’t last for long. Today, many scientists think the evolution of life
With the right mechanical contraption attached, human running speeds could rival those of cyclists, according to new research – getting runners up to 20.9 metres per second, or more than 46 miles per hour. It’s worth noting that these are theoretical calculations for now, and the team responsible is hoping to have their prototype
An Arizona man died, and his wife was hospitalized, after taking a form of chloroquine, which President Trump has touted as an effective treatment for COVID-19. The couple decided to self-medicate with chloroquine phosphate, which they had on hand to kill parasites in their fish, after hearing the president describe the drug as a “game
Poor old Uranus just can’t seem to catch a break. Something already tipped the planet on its side, so its orbit is perpendicular to those of the other Solar System planets. It probably smells terrible. And now scientists have discovered that the atmosphere of Uranus is leaking out into space. Hidden in the data
Plague Inc, a game that lets users destroy the world with a novel pathogen, has created a new version of the game, in which players can save the world from a virus. The game, which has occupied a position on the App store charts ever since it was created in 2012, reached new levels of
It’s well known that quasars are the most luminous galaxies in the Universe, spewing insane amounts of radiation across space as their supermassive black holes rapaciously devour material from a colossal accretion disc. Well, they just got even more hardcore. Astronomers have discovered that blasts of radiation emanating from quasars can act like a
The ozone layer above Antarctica has recovered so much, it’s actually stopped many worrying changes in the Southern Hemisphere’s atmosphere. If you’re looking for someone to thank, try the world at large. A new study suggests the Montreal Protocol – the 1987 agreement to stop producing ozone depleting substances (ODSs) – could be responsible
In a single announcement on Tuesday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi almost doubled the planet’s tally of people who have been placed under lockdown to avoid the spread of the coronavirus. His strict order to the nation’s 1.3 billion people to stay home brings the global number of people under some form of lockdown
The ice sheet that sits atop Earth’s deepest land canyon stands on shaky ground. A detailed mapping of Denman Glacier in East Antarctica – the most scrupulous to date – has revealed a precarious foundation, the shape of which could leave the heart of this glacier incredibly vulnerable to climate change. In nearly three
A long, long time ago, in what is now the southern United States, several giant dinosaurs, including a relative of the T. rex, were once on the hunt for prey. In their shadow, almost 70 million years later, palaeontologists have now shed light upon a much smaller competitor running underfoot. Standing only one metre tall
Electric cars absolutely do produce less CO2 than gas guzzlers, a new study has confirmed – countering claims that carbon emissions from the manufacture of electric cars and the production of electricity outweighed the savings on the road. Crunching the numbers on data collected from 59 different regions in the world that represent 95
As life starts, the crazy whirl begins. That’s not poetry or philosophy. It’s science. Once an egg is fertilised, billions of proteins ripple out across its surface, unleashing a dizzying cascade of swirling patterns. These spiralling arcs aren’t for show, though; the phenomenon may be pretty, but it’s also a fundamental part of nascent cell
According to Google Trends, the top two most searched terms about mobile phones this week in Australia were “how to disinfect phone” and “how to clean your phone.” And the third most-searched “can I get coronavirus from…?”-style question in the past week in Australia was “can you get coronavirus from mail?” (If you were wondering,
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) delivers once again! Using its advanced imaging instrument, the High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera, the orbiter captured a breathtaking image (shown below) of the plains north of Juventae Chasma. This region constitutes the southwestern part of Valles Marineris, the gigantic canyon system that runs along the Martian equator.
When it comes to squids, you just can’t keep them down. Not just because they’re slippery, but also because they have an incredible genetic editing ability – it lets them tweak their own RNA long after it’s left the nucleus. Here’s what that means. Genes, in humans at least, mostly stay unchanging until they’re
For the first time, scientists have reprogrammed the stem cells of a 114-year-old woman, the oldest donor to date. After first transforming cells from her blood sample into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), the researchers then generated mesenchymal stem cells, which help to maintain and repair tissues like bone, cartilage and fat. “We set
Most of the laws of physics don’t care which direction time is travelling. Forwards, backwards… either way, the laws work exactly the same. Newtonian physics, general relativity – time is irrelevant to the mathematics: This is called time-reversal symmetry. In the real Universe, things get a bit messier. And now a team of scientists
Scientists have found naturally occurring superconducting materials in extraterrestrial objects for the first time, discovering superconductive grains embedded inside two distinct meteorites that crash-landed on Earth. The discovery is just the latest to show that meteorites are much more than space debris that falls out of the sky. Recent investigations have turned up meteorite-borne
The earliest known ancestor of most familiar forms of animal life living on the planet today appears to have been identified in outback Australia, revealing a strange, worm-like organism that deserves our respect and gratitude. Ikaria wariootia, a sluggish blob about the size of a grain of rice, might not look like much, but
When you’re right in the middle of something, it’s pretty hard to tell exactly how big it is. Like the Milky Way galaxy, for instance. We can’t exactly go take a picture of it from the outside, so our best estimates rely on distance measurements to objects on the outskirts. An estimate based on
Scientists have uncovered a splintered remnant of Earth’s continental crust from millions of years ago, embedded in the isolated wilderness of northern Canada. Baffin Island, located in between the Canadian mainland and Greenland, is a vast Arctic expanse covering over 500,000 square kilometres (almost 200,000 square miles), making it the fifth largest island in the
While we’re on Earth grappling with one of the biggest pandemics in modern memory, NASA’s Curiosity rover is still pottering around Mars, probably enjoying the serenity – just as it has been for the last eight years. We’re still receiving great selfies from the rover, too. Just last month, on February 26, Curiosity took
A comet that entered our Solar System from interstellar space may not make it out again. As it zooms away from the Sun, 2I/Borisov has been spotted spewing out material in two cometary outbursts. These outbursts show that the comet is disintegrating, according to Polish astronomers from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow and the
NASA said it has suspended work on building and testing the rocket and capsule for its Artemis crewed mission to the Moon due to the rising number of coronavirus cases in the community. The space agency is shutting down its Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where the Space Launch System rocket is being
Tropical forests are hugely important carbon sinks. We need these beautifully diverse areas to help maintain Earth’s atmosphere – and now, a new study has looked into just how much carbon these forests absorb. It’s not just a curiosity. Estimating the efficiency of such natural carbon sinks is one of the numerous factors that
One of the key challenges of getting quantum computing working in a practical and useful way is to do with temperature – being able to put together a machine that doesn’t need ultra-low, laboratory-maintained temperatures to stay stable enough to operate. Now scientists have found a new technique to get qubits, the basic building
Every planet in our Solar System, including our own, is enclosed in a bubble of solar wind, emanating from our Sun at supersonic speeds. The particles making up this wind create an invisible magnetic field, which protects us from the rest of interstellar space. For decades now, astronomers have been analysing this system of radiation
Butterflies have taken the colour black to an entirely new level. The scales that shingle this insect’s dark wings are nearly on par with the blackest of black coatings made by humans – except they’re only a fifth of the thickness. At just a few microns wide, these natural nanostructures absorb 99.94 percent of
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