Wherever you have fluid, there you can also find vortex rings. Now, scientists have found vortex rings somewhere fascinating – inside a tiny pillar made of a magnetic material, the gadolinium-cobalt intermetallic compound GdCo2. If you’ve seen smoke rings, or bubble rings under water, you’ve seen vortex rings: doughnut-shaped vortices that form when fluid flows back
Month: November 2020
A long-standing and incredibly complex scientific problem concerning the structure and behaviour of proteins has been effectively solved by a new artificial intelligence (AI) system, scientists report. DeepMind, the UK-based AI company, has wowed us for years with its parade of ever-advancing neural networks that continually trounce humans at complex games such as chess
Why and how our dreams are affected by our daily lives has long fascinated scientists, and a new study sheds some light on how the spread of COVID-19 – and the ongoing changes in our habits – is impacting what we dream about. Anger and sadness have become more common in dreams as the
For the first time, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have formally identified a new species of undersea creature based solely on high-definition video footage captured at the bottom of the ocean. And what an undersea creature it is. Meet Duobrachium sparksae – a strange, gelatinous species of ctenophore, encountered by the
Strangely come, strangely go. Only days after the world first became aware of it, a mysterious metal monolith in the remote desert of Utah’s Red Rock Country has now seemingly vanished from sight. The object made headlines last week, after authorities with the Utah Department of Public Safety (DPS) announced the discovery of the
We all want our family life to be as happy as possible – and now researchers have identified some of the personal characteristics and skills that are most likely to make for a harmonious home. One of the key factors when it comes to healthy family and romantic relationships, it would seem, is psychological
On the wide open slopes of China’s Hengduan Mountains, there are perks to being a wallflower. After thousands of years of human harvesting, a rare alpine flower – prized in Chinese medicine – is trying its hardest not to stand out. In the alpine meadows where humans pluck the Fritillaria delavayi plant the most, scientists
Cornered by a dangerous predator, a gecko can self-amputate its still twitching tail, creating a fleeting moment of distraction – a chance for the lizard to flee with its life. Small reptiles such as geckos and skinks are well known for this remarkable ability to sacrifice and then rapidly regrow their tails. Now, to scientists’
Thousands of years ago, ancient Egyptians were laid to rest in Saqqara, an ancient city of the dead. Priests placed them inside wooden boxes adorned with hieroglyphics, and the sarcophagi were sealed and buried in tombs scattered above and below the sand. Archaeologists have discovered 160 human coffins at the site over the last
Nature has a way of putting our best technology to shame. For decades now, scientists have been trying to manufacture the ultimate sound absorber – a carefully engineered material that can manage acoustic waves for stealthy movement or simple peace and quiet. As it turns out, however, that cherished ‘metastructure’ may already exist in
The periodic table of the elements, principally created by the Russian chemist, Dmitry Mendeleev (1834-1907), celebrated its 150th anniversary last year. It would be hard to overstate its importance as an organising principle in chemistry – all budding chemists become familiar with it from the earliest stages of their education. Given the table’s importance,
Throughout all known space, between the stars and the galaxies, an extremely faint glow suffuses, a relic left over from the dawn of the Universe. This is the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the first light that could travel through the Universe when it cooled enough around 380,000 years after the Big Bang for ions and electrons
First we discovered platypus would look great at a rave, now wombats, bilbies and other marsupials can join the blacklight party – with scientists unexpectedly finding they all glow wonderfully fluorescent greens, blues and pinks beneath UV light. Over the last few years scientists have found biofluorescence is more common across mammals than we
A dwindling tribe of chimpanzees in Guinea that gained global fame for uncanny abilities to use tools has a glimmer of hope after its last fertile female gave birth. The tiny community of apes lives in a forest around the village of Bossou, in the far southeastern corner of the country. Scientists have trekked
The discovery of a creature described as resembling a “buck-toothed toucan” that lived some 68 million years ago has upended assumptions about diversity in the birds that lived alongside dinosaurs. At less than nine centimetres (3.5 inches) long, the delicate skull of the bird scientists have dubbed Falcatakely forsterae might be easily overlooked. In
Archaeologists have uncovered a “treasure trove” of artifacts as another major ice patch melts away in the Norwegian mountains, revealing a total of 68 arrows and many more items from an ancient reindeer hunting site. The earliest finds go back some 6,000 years, according to radiocarbon dating. They include reindeer bones and antlers, as
The question of whether a 7-million-year-old primate, nicknamed ‘Toumai,’ walked on two or four legs has whipped up drama amongst palaeontologists – complete with a vanishing femur. Since the discovery of Sahelanthropus tchadensis’s first fossil back in 2001, it has often been cited as our earliest known hominin ancestor. Initial analysis suggested that Sahelanthropus regularly walked
For a long time, Hawai’i Island has been home to a mystery. Somehow, the amount of freshwater in underground aquifers has seemed much smaller than it should be, given the amount of rainfall. Scientists have just found out why. Deep underground, running below the island’s coast, vast quantities of freshwater are transported from the flanks
The largest sharks ever to have roamed the oceans parked their young in shallow, warm-water nurseries where food was abundant and predators scarce until they could assume their title as kings and queens of the sea. But as sea levels declined in a cooling world, the brutal mega-predator, Otodus megalodons, may have found fewer
An Egyptian mummy that was decorated with a woman’s portrait contained a surprise – the body of a child who was only 5 years old when she died. Now, scientists have learned more about the mysterious girl and her burial, thanks to high-resolution scans and X-ray “microbeams” that targeted very small regions in the intact artifact. Computed X-ray
Who embedded a large metal monolith in the remote Utah desert? State wildlife officials are scratching their heads after discovering a bizarre 10-foot-tall (3 meters) installation in Red Rock Country in southeastern Utah. The shiny silver rectangle sits in the center of the dead end of one of the many shallow rock ravines that scour this
Before we start mining for precious metals in the darkness of the deep sea, we might try switching on the light first and observing our surroundings. In this seemingly isolated abyss, at deeper than 3,000 metres (9,800 ft) below sea level, scientists were able to coax a massive swarm of 115 cutthroat eels (Ilyophis arx)
Two of Charles Darwin’s notebooks containing his pioneering ideas on evolution and his famous “Tree of Life” sketch are missing, believed stolen, the Cambridge University Library said on Tuesday. The British scientist filled the leather notebooks in 1837 after returning from his voyage on the HMS Beagle. The library said they were worth millions
How might The Terminator have played out if Skynet had decided it probably wasn’t responsible enough to hold the keys to the entire US nuclear arsenal? As it turns out, scientists may just have saved us from such a future AI-led apocalypse, by creating neural networks that know when they’re untrustworthy. These deep learning
When a dead thresher shark washed up onshore, it was obvious what had killed it – a swordfish had stabbed it from behind and left a large hunk of its “sword” embedded in the beast, a new study finds. No one saw the actual attack, so it’s unclear why the swordfish jabbed the shark.
Ants are pretty organised little creatures. Highly social insects, they know how to forage, build complicated nests, steal your pantry snacks, and generally look after the queens and the colony, all by working together. Leaf-cutter ants turn that cooperation up several notches. Leaf-cutter ant colonies like Acromyrmex echinatior can contain millions of ants, split
Just before going into a hallucinogenic trance, Indigenous Californians who had gathered in a cave likely looked up toward the rocky ceiling, where a pinwheel and big-eyed moth were painted in red. This mysterious “pinwheel,” is likely a depiction of the delicate, white flower of Datura wrightii, a powerful hallucinogen that the Chumash people took
We’ve seen evidence that COVID-19 lockdowns have reduced at least some forms of pollution, temporarily – but the overall picture remains disturbingly grim, according to new figures from the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). The WMO says that there will be a reduction in global CO2 emissions for 2020 – but that it
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,
Every now and then, Earth reminds us it’s capable of releasing some furious energy. Case in point: scientists have just detected a new extreme in hotspots of lightning activity called ‘superbolts’: intense lightning strikes that shine up to 1,000 times brighter than typical lightning strikes. The observations come from researchers at the US Los
We often hear about people being “in the zone” when they have excelled, be it at sport, playing music, video gaming, or going for a run. For decades, researchers have tried to find out what the zone is and how to enter it. And the assumption has been that there is one zone that we
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,