The origins of life, a few billion years ago, were humble. Single-celled organisms squirming in the ooze, over millions and billions of years developing into multi-celled plants and, eventually, animals. But when and how these evolutionary spurts occurred has been difficult to puzzle out. Organic material doesn’t necessarily preserve well, and when it does,
Month: November 2020
The remains of two victims of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius almost 2,000 years ago have been unearthed at a grand villa on the fringes of Pompeii, officials at the archaeological site said Saturday. “Two skeletons of individuals caught in the fury of the eruption have been found,” the officials at the Italian site
As our need for electronic gadgets and sensors grows, scientists are coming up with new ways to keep devices powered for longer on less energy. The latest sensor to be invented in the lab can go for a whole year on a single burst of energy, aided by a physics phenomenon known as quantum tunnelling.
Microplastics of our own making are turning up in the rain, wind, soil, and snow of the most remote and mountainous regions on our planet. First they were found in the French Pyrenees. Then it was the North American Rocky Mountains. Now it’s Nepal’s Sagarmāthā National Park – home of Mount Everest, the tallest peak
Several countries in East Africa – namely Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, and South Sudan – are still trying to contain the worst desert locust invasion the region has experienced in over 70 years. The locusts have destroyed vegetation – especially staple cereal crops, legumes, and pastures – resulting in huge economic losses. The World Bank
Greenland is the largest island in the world and on it rests the largest ice mass in the Northern Hemisphere. If all that ice melted, the sea would rise by more than 7 metres. But that’s not going to happen, is it? Well, not any time soon, but understanding how much of the ice sheet
Leonardo da Vinci is famous for his elaborate, nuanced artworks and advanced technological ideas. But new research has revealed another level of complexity to his drawings: a hidden world of tiny life-forms on his artwork. The findings, the researchers said, could help build a microbiome “catalogue” for artwork. Each of the pieces had a
The clouds that hang low and thick in our sky, reflecting sunlight back out into space, are melting into thin air as the world warms. The loss will not only trigger greater climate changes than we expected, but new research suggests it could also undermine the potential of future geoengineering solutions. The idea of
Is that light particle more like a ball careening through space, or more of a smeary mess that is everywhere at once? The answer depends on whether the absurd laws of subatomic particles or the deterministic equations that govern larger objects hold more sway. Now, for the first time, physicists have found a way
Telling faces apart has been an important social skill in the evolution of our species. But our ability to recognise faces actually varies much more than you might think. On the one end of the scale are those with face blindness – a condition where people struggle to recognise faces at all. At the other end are
We live in an age of division. Of red hats versus blue votes. Black lives versus blue lines. Green energy versus gold purses. Society, it seems, is melting like some proverbial iceberg. It’s a metaphor that extends beyond the poetic. A model of social cohesion created by researchers from the Complexity Science Hub Vienna
Life on planet Earth is a fragile thing. All it takes is one wayward asteroid, and bam, there goes the most dominant group of land animals on our planet. If it wasn’t for the 10 kilometre-wide meteorite that hurtled into Earth some 66 million years ago, dinosaurs might have continued to dominate the land, a
More than 500 years ago, a medieval soldier’s dead body settled at the bottom of a Lithuanian lake, and for centuries it lay hidden beneath the mud. Now, those submerged remains have finally been found. The skeleton was discovered during an underwater inspection of the old Dubingiai bridge in eastern Lithuania’s Lake Asveja. Though the skeleton lay under
In nature, diamonds form deep in the Earth over billions of years. This process requires environments with exceptionally high pressure and temperatures exceeding 1,000℃. Our international team has created two different types of diamond at room temperature — and in a matter of minutes. It’s the first time diamonds have successfully been produced in a
How did life arise on Earth? How did it survive the Hadean eon, a time when repeated massive impacts excavated craters thousands of kilometres in diameter into the Earth’s surface? Those impacts turned the Earth into a hellish place, where the oceans turned to steam, and the atmosphere was filled with rock vapour. How could any living
If you’ve ever studied any chemistry or biology, there’s a very good chance you’ve come across the common pictorial representation of what a chromosome is supposed to look like. As millions of high-schoolers and undergraduates will attest, it’s a tall, narrow X-shape – visualising what two joined chromatids look like after DNA replication takes place, but
Volcanoes rank among the most destructive and awe-inspiring phenomena on the planet. But these fiery fissures do much more than just destroy. They also create. In a new study, researchers in Russia report the discovery of one such creation – an unusual mineral never before documented by scientists: an alluring, vibrantly blue-and-green crystallised substance the
Orcas are suspected to be behind the disappearance of great white sharks off Cape Town’s coast over the last few years, according to a report published by South Africa’s government on Tuesday. The vanishing of great whites from the coastal sites False Bay and Gansbaai had previously been blamed on illegal hunting and overfishing,
One fascinating quirk of the Universe is that shapes and patterns can be found in hugely different contexts: the Golden Spiral can be seen in the human cochlea and the shape of a spiral galaxy; the fractal geometry of veins echoed in the branching of lightning. In a bold new pilot study, an astrophysicist
Scientists have identified an old piece of the Pacific Ocean – the ancient remains of its long-ago seabed – extending hundreds of miles underneath China, as it is pulled downward into Earth’s mantle transition zone. This rocky slab that used to line the bottom of the Pacific is a relic of the oceanic lithosphere,
The Triassic-Jurassic extinction event that ended the Triassic period and brought in the Jurassic around 200 million years ago was one of the biggest mass extinctions in the history of our planet. In total, around 25-34 percent of marine genera are thought to have been lost during the event, and many land groups wiped out,
A giant underground river fed by melting ice could be running in a state of perpetual darkness far below the surface of Greenland, according to new research. Nicknamed the ‘Dark River’, this hypothetical waterway – if it truly exists, that is – may stretch for 1,000 kilometres (620 miles), flowing from the deep interior of
Climate change is testing the resilience of our planet’s birds. While tropical avian species appear especially vulnerable to habitat loss, drought, natural disasters, and declining prey, new research suggests they can withstand heat waves quite well. Using the largest dataset of its kind, the research calls into question a commonly-held conclusion that tropical birds,
With global travel curtailed during the COVID-19 pandemic, many people are finding comfort in planning future trips. But imagine that you finally arrive in Venice and the “floating city” is flooded. Would you stay anyway, walking through St. Mark’s Square on makeshift catwalks or elevated wooden passages – even if you couldn’t enter the Basilica
Egypt announced Saturday the discovery of an ancient treasure trove of more than 100 intact sarcophagi, dating back more than 2,500 years ago, the largest such find this year. The sealed wooden coffins, unveiled on-site amid much fanfare, belonged to top officials of the Late Period and the Ptolemaic period of ancient Egypt. They
The ocean floor of the South Pacific contains traces of ancient dust that may have changed Earth’s very climate, and new research suggests it came all the way from beneath ice-age glaciers of what is now Argentina. Whipped up by strong westerly winds some 20,000 years ago, these microscopic minerals would have circumnavigated nearly
Black holes are notable for many things, especially their simplicity. They’re just … holes. That are ‘black.’ This simplicity allows us to draw surprising parallels between black holes and other branches of physics. For example, a team of researchers has shown that a special kind of particle can exist around a pair of black
Massive greenhouse gas reserves, frozen deep under the seabed, are alarmingly now starting to thaw. That’s according to an international team of scientists whose preliminary findings were recently reported in The Guardian. These deposits, technically called methane “gas hydrates”, are often described as “fiery ice” due to the parlour trick of burning atop a Bunsen
People in wealthy, industrialized countries are used to finding their supermarket shelves fully stocked. Yet for a brief period early in the COVID-19 pandemic, some of those shelves emptied out, as panic drove shoppers to stockpile and supply chains were interrupted. For many, this came as a reminder that our food supply system is
Traditional computer chips use separate areas for calculations and data storage, but new research has shown how these areas can be combined together on a 2D material for the first time – which should lead to smaller, more powerful, more energy-efficient devices. It’s technically known as a logic-in-memory architecture or a single architecture, where
Inch by inch, they gently pick through the soil in search of thousand-year-old relics. Racing against on-setting mould yet painstakingly meticulous, archaeologists in Norway are exhuming a rare Viking ship grave in hopes of uncovering the secrets within. Who is buried here? Under which ritual? What is left of the burial offerings? And what
An ancient grave in Austria may represent the oldest burial of twins on record, a new study finds. The 31,000-year-old burial dates to the Upper Paleolithic (a period lasting from 40,000 to 10,000 years ago), also known as the Old Stone Age. One of the infants died shortly after birth, while his twin brother lived
They’ve been watching us for decades. Monitoring our movements. Studying our behaviour. Tracking our routines. Stealing our chips. In the seaside city of Bristol gulls are the ultimate human stalkers, and the timing of their peck is impeccable. Scientists tracking these birds have discovered gulls are so well adapted to human urban environments, they
Even if humanity stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, Earth will warm for centuries to come and oceans will rise by metres, according to a controversial modelling study published Thursday. Natural drivers of global warming – more heat-trapping clouds, thawing permafrost, and shrinking sea ice – already set in motion by carbon pollution will take
It may sound like something straight out of a sci-fi movie, but real-life scientists have been busy working on a super-precise laser tractor beam system to change the path and direction of lightning. There’s a very practical reason behind it too: lightning strikes are the main natural cause of bushfires in Australia, and a growing
It appeared in 1973, seemingly out of nowhere: a hole in the sea ice off the coast of Antarctica. But this was no ordinary hole. It was so big it could swallow California. The mysterious opening remained in place for the following three winters. Then it seemed to largely disappear before emerging again in 2017,
After months of searching, in October scientists located and destroyed the first nest of giant ‘murder hornets’ ever discovered in the US, eradicating a hidden enclave of the invasive insects concealed in a tree in Washington State, close to the Canadian border. While the discovery and elimination of the nest is considered a victory
In 1934, theoretical physicist Eugene Wigner proposed a new type of crystal. If the density of negatively charged electrons could be maintained below a certain level, the subatomic particles could be held in a repeating pattern to create a crystal of electrons; this idea came to known as a Wigner crystal. That’s a lot easier
The Virgin Hyperloop made its first journey carrying passengers Sunday, in a test the company claimed represented a major step forward for the “groundbreaking” technology capable of transporting people at 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) an hour. The Hyperloop is intended to carry passengers in small pods through a vacuum tube, with proponents arguing it
The remains of a giant, ancient lake have been discovered under Greenland, buried deep below the ice sheet in the northwest of the country and estimated to be hundreds of thousands of years old, if not millions, scientists say. The huge ‘fossil lake bed’ is a phenomenon the likes of which scientists haven’t seen
The bigfin squid (Magnapinna) is one of the most elusive creatures that we know. It dwells in the permanently dark depths of the ocean and is an extremely rare sight, with only around a dozen confirmed spottings worldwide. Now, for the first time, bigfin squids have been seen off the coast of Australia not
Amongst the many problems we’ve had with the spread of COVID-19 is the coronavirus‘s ability to survive on surfaces for hours on end. While we can effectively wipe down hard materials or sterilize them with alcohol, what about more delicate surfaces like cardboard? Even in the atmosphere, SARS-CoV-2 can survive up to a few
Two ancient mummies discovered in a rock-cut tomb in Egypt more than 400 years ago are finally spilling their secrets, now that scientists have CT scanned their remains, a new study finds. Both mummies, as well as a third on display in Egypt, represent the only known surviving ‘stucco-shrouded portrait mummies’, from Saqqara, an
This year’s hurricane season has seen a record 29 named tropical storms wreak havoc across the southeastern United States, the Caribbean and Central America, experts said on Tuesday. The cyclonic storms, which are given named status in the Atlantic when their wind speeds exceed 62 kilometres per hour (39 miles per hour), have already
The discovery of a 2-million-year-old skull in a South African cave is changing what we think we know about one of humanity’s primitive ancestors, scientists report in a new study. But the newly unearthed fossil specimen from the extinct human species Paranthropus robustus is also giving researchers a unique snapshot on the transformations that
Growing microbes in a petri dish is pretty simple – swab basically anything, wipe it on an agar plate, let it sit for a few days in a warm room and presto! You’ve grown some new furry friends. But the microbial species you can cultivate in a petri dish are only a tiny fraction
A 2-inch-long (5 centimeters) spider thought to be extinct in Great Britain is actually alive and thriving on a British military base. A program manager at the Surrey Wildlife Trust rediscovered the great fox-spider (Alopecosa fabrilis) on an undeveloped portion of a military installation in Surrey, England, after a two-year search. The last time the
Scientists in Australia have made a remarkable discovery, with DNA evidence revealing that one of the country’s adorable airborne marsupials is in fact three separate species. The furry-bodied greater glider subsists on eucalyptus leaves much like its marsupial mate, the koala. But unlike the distinctly tree-bound koala, the greater glider can take to the air,